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 m a g a z i n e
FOUNDED IN 1850 / VOL. 347, NO. 2079
AUGUST 2023
HARPERS.ORG

Letters 2
Rules of Engagement Eric S. Rubin, Michael Friend
Easy Chair 5
Street Life Rachel Kushner
Harper’s Index 9
Readings 11
Moral Fixation Jacqueline Rose
Fidelia Córdoba Amalialú Posso Figueroa
Oh, Bother a Tigger warning
Long Day’s Journal into Night Ian Sansom
Sedan of the Crime lost in transportation
Happiness Anne Carson
And . . . Ece Gökalp, Richard Mosse, and Maia Cruz Palileo,
and the cops fought the law and the law won
Essay 25
DOCTOR’S ORDERS Jason Blakely
COVID-19 and the new science wars
From the Archive 31
The Mournful Observer Erwin Chargaff
Folio 32
WHO WALKS ALWAYS BESIDE YOU? Benjamin Hale
A disappearance in Arkansas
Letter from Lagos 51
LOVE IN THE TIME OF SICKLE CELL DISEASE Krithika Varagur
What’s the cost of rolling the genetic dice?
Poetry 62
TO THE CUCKOO PAPER WASP Robyn Schiff
Story 67
THE RETURN Joyce Carol Oates
Reviews 77
NEW BOOKS Dan Piepenbring
FROM CHURN TO BURN Lawrence Jackson
Colson Whitehead’s half-true Harlem
Puzzle 87 Richard E. Maltby Jr.
Findings 88 Cover illustration by Fausta Kingué
 m a g a z i n e
LETTERS

John R. MacArthur, President and Publisher

Editor
Christopher Beha
Deputy Editor
Jon Baskin
Managing Editor
Stephanie McFeeters
Senior Editors
Joanna Biggs, Christopher Carroll,
Joe Kloc, Katherine Ryder,
Elena Saavedra Buckley, Will Stephenson
Art Director
Kathryn Humphries
Editor Emeritus
Lewis H. Lapham Rules of Engagement Schwarz and Layne’s argument for a
Washington Editor negotiated peace depends on the as-
Andrew Cockburn
Poetry Editor Benjamin Schwarz and Christo- sumption that Vladimir Putin is a nor-
Ben Lerner pher Layne claim that Russia had mal, rational statesman whose actions
Associate Editors
Megan Evershed, Charlie Lee warned the United States since the will be driven by the cool calculations
Deputy Art Director
Maria Dubon end of the Cold War that it would of realist theory. The authors make
Assistant Editors violate fundamental principles of in- much of the Cuban Missile Crisis, but
Susanna Brustin, Lake Micah,
Maya Perry, Isabel Ruehl, Becky Zhang ternational law if we did not let it a better historical analogy is unmissa-
Production Manager and Designer dominate Ukraine, and that we ble: the British policy of appeasement
Chloe Arnold
Editorial Interns should have respected Russia’s threats in the Thirties. Historical scholarship
Cecilia Barron, Chandler Fritz, to invade and destroy its neighbors has demonstrated that this policy was,
Kevin Lind, Angelina Torre
Art Interns [“Why Are We in Ukraine?,” Essay, strictly speaking, rational— flawed
Finn Kassell Osborne, Jenny Wang
Contributing Editors
June]. This line of argument inaccu- only in its judgment that Adolf Hit-
Andrew J. Bacevich, Kevin Baker, rately reflects history. Russia recog- ler’s goals were reasonable in light of
Tom Bissell, Joshua Cohen,
John Crowley, Wes Enzinna, nized the independence of the former the many perceived injustices dictated
Tanya Gold, Gary Greenberg, Soviet republics by ratifying binding by the Treaty of Versailles. Schwarz
Jack Hitt, Edward Hoagland, Scott Horton,
Frederick Kaufman, Garret Keizer, international agreements, including and Layne’s analysis of the Ukrainian
Mark Kingwell, Walter Kirn, the Paris Charter, the NATO-Russia situation closely parallels this judg-
Rafil Kroll-Zaidi, Richard Manning,
Clancy Martin, Duncan Murrell, Founding Act, and the Budapest ment: just as any rational German
Rachel Nolan, Vince Passaro, Memorandum; by invading Ukraine, statesman would have sought to undo
James Pogue, Francine Prose,
Ellen Rosenbush, Jeff Sharlet, Russia went back on its promise to re- much of the Treaty of Versailles, any
Christine Smallwood, Zadie Smith,
Rebecca Solnit, Matthew Stevenson, spect Ukrainian sovereignty. rational Russian statesman would per-
Barrett Swanson, John Edgar Wideman To blame the United States and ceive foreign powers gaining influence
Contributing Artists
Lisa Elmaleh, Balazs Gardi, our allies for the current conflict be- along its border as a threat.
Samuel James, Nicole Tung, cause we crossed Russia’s “redlines” The problem with appeasement, of
Tomas van Houtryve
Contributing Designer is to endorse those boundaries and course, was that Hitler’s goals were not
Sheila Wolfe
to justify Russia’s barbarous and ille- limited to an orderly revision of the
Vice President and General Manager gal actions. I expected better from Treaty of Versailles. As Schwarz himself
Lynn Carlson
Vice President, Circulation
Harper’s Magazine. noted in a 2015 article for The American
Shawn D. Green Conservative, Nazi Germany’s “foreign
Vice President, Marketing and Communications Ambassador Eric S. Rubin policy was animated, not by a calculated
Giulia Melucci Washington, D.C.
Vice President, Advertising assessment of German national inter-
Jocelyn D. Giannini
Vice President, Digital ests, but by a universal, apocalyptic,
Violet Lucca Harper’s Magazine welcomes reader response. and . . . utopian worldview.” He describes
Virginia Navarro, Assistant to the Publisher Please address mail to Letters, Harper’s
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Magazine, 666 Broadway, New York, N.Y.
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2 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

 I find it ironic that the author of these
words seems to ignore the considerable
evidence that Vladimir Putin is not a
normal Russian statesman and is, in fact,
animated by a messianic vision. U.S. Independent of the pandemic and
policy has not been blameless, but Pu- war, we are beset by a range of
tin’s actions represent something far unprecedented developments that
more threatening than the justifiable together, in this century, threaten
reaction of an otherwise peaceful state. the very existence of civilization. The

Michael Friend HEADED INTO current states of just ten forces —

capitalism, technology, the internet,
Geneva THE ABYSS politics, media, education, human
nature, the environment, population,
THE STORY OF OUR TIME,
AND THE FUTURE WE’LL FACE and transportation — are driving
Schwarz and Layne argue that the
society in predominantly negative ways.
expansion of NATO offers sufficient
explanation for Russia’s invasion of
These forces are powerful and
Ukraine as an act not of “expan-
interconnected and their combined
sionist megalomania” but of “defen-
dynamics will carry us into any number
sive alarm.” This selective reading
of disasters well before 2100. We
of history leads the authors to ig-
have the knowledge and solutions to
nore Putin’s own statements on address our difficulties, but for many
Ukraine—such as when he said that reasons we will not employ them.
it was neither a state nor a nation— BRIAN T. WATSON
and Russia’s war crimes, which in- There is urgency to this story. We
clude the mass kidnapping of face many threats, but one of them
Ukrainian children and the massa- — the internet and its hegemony and
cring of civilians. imperatives — is rapidly changing nearly
The authors neglect to consider
that the United States’ provision of HEADED INTO everything about our world, including
our very capacity to recognize how
weapons has the legitimate objective
of supporting Ukraine’s self-defense, THE ABYSS profound and dangerous the changes are.

and their contortions culminate in THE STORY OF OUR TIME, Headed Into the Abyss is unique in
the complaint that “for its part, Kyiv AND THE FUTURE a number of ways. It is unusually
has indicated that it will settle for comprehensive, presenting a satisfyingly
nothing less than the return of all WE’LL FACE round story of our time. It crosses
Ukrainian territory occupied by Rus- disciplines, connects dots, and analyzes
sia, including Crimea”—as if this were Brian T. Watson how each force — in synergies with
an unreasonable demand rather than a other forces — is shaping society.
requirement of international law. Individually, we tend to see and
Brian T. Watson is an architect and
Criticizing the expansion of address things in parts, but the
cultural critic. For twenty-three years,
NATO and the United States’ wars forces shaping our lives exist now in
he has been a columnist with the Salem
of aggression is warranted, as is ana- ecologies that defy piecemeal solutions.
News in Salem, Massachusetts, focused
lyzing the broader geopolitical di-
primarily on current affairs and the
mensions of the conflict in Ukraine, Also uniquely, Watson brings human
forces that were and are shaping socie-
but to suggest that the crimes and ties both here and abroad.
nature and trauma into his assessment of
arrogance of the West somehow pro- the future. People have limitations, and
vide justification for Russia’s war of [email protected]
these are playing a large role even now.
aggression is to engage in a flawed (781) 367-2008
Taking real people and their emotions
and shameful line of reasoning. into account, and the adjustments
and the rate of change that real people
Adam Bresnahan Paper, $13.00
can make, Headed Into the Abyss is
Cleveland e-Book, $9.99
honest and frank about our present
predicaments and our likely future.
Benjamin Schwarz and Available on Amazon
Christopher Layne respond: What it all adds up to — the big
Ambassador Eric S. Rubin’s letter picture — is a sobering conclusion.
typifies what the late senator William
Fulbright called the “arrogance of

Continued on page 86

LETTERS 3
 Y«Ã“›ĕĝĜĘĪÿ›©‡þ›’››Ã£«¤©á«Ã¤ᩛ‡ÃāÔ×ɒ¼›ÂÛ
A›ÿoÉ×¹«áā£‡“›Ûĩ


RACIAL INEQUITY, HOMELESSNESS,

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, MENTAL HEALTH CARE.
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 EASY CHAIR
Street Life
By Rachel Kushner

W
hen Roxy Music was re- Hollywood. But here I have the option I should be able to walk to the opera
cording “Street Life” for of avoiding commerce by going three house, Walt Disney Concert Hall, the
the 1973 album Stranded, blocks north to the park, where I can Broad, the Bradbury Building, or City
they hung a mic out the window of walk miles of shaded trails. Or stroll Hall, to the grand old theaters on
AIR Studios above Oxford Street, but my little residential enclave, where Main Street, the jewelry district,
they didn’t like the results and they people are sitting on their stoops, a Union Station. To Philippe the Orig-
ended up mixing in the sounds of a guy is working on his ’68 Camaro, inal on Alameda, a hundred-year-old
Moroccan market instead. As “Street trees are heavy with citrus, softball- deli where undertakers from the
Life” begins, we hear traffic amid size dragon fruits shine redly through nearby mortuaries park their hearses
four haunting chords and a shim- a fence. I can walk to Echo Park Lake, and stop in for a sandwich. To the new
mering hi-hat rhythm, and then due west, entirely through an alleyway, Frank Gehry building on Grand,
Bryan Ferry belts out that he wishes where among overgrown fig trees and across from my son’s music school.
everyone would leave him alone. He sidewalk pulverized to dirt you might (Late in life, Gehry now seems to be-
goes out for a walk. “Each verse think you were in some Mississippi lieve in design that prioritizes not
seems to have its own character,” he backwater Barry Hannah was describ- postmodern showiness but plazas and
later said, “like blocks on a street.” A ing, but you’re parallel and just behind shade and places for the passerby to
fan since my youth of early Roxy Sunset. At the lakefront are picnick- sit.) But to get to the pedestrian-
Music, I still hear that song’s ethe- ers, food carts, fishermen creating friendly world downtown involves sev-
real city vibe when I, too, wish ev- what my son refers to as “pressure on eral blocks of monolithic residential
eryone would leave me alone and, the lake.” One day I watch a guy and architecture along freeways, all by the
like Bryan, hit the streets. girl furtively produce a pristine white same developer, inward-facing build-
If I go left, heading into what I think duck from a knapsack and release it. ings with dark and empty storefronts,
of as downtown Echo Park, I glimpse They’ve clearly just bought the thing bunker parking, and sky bridges. The
the green folds of the Angeles Crest as at a live-poultry shop and are trying to tenants of these places don’t have to
I pass Craftsman and Victorian houses rewild it among the mallards and ever step foot on the street. I’ve heard
and courtyard bungalows. I turn onto grebes, but the mission seems also to they are mostly USC students, but you
Sunset Boulevard, passing barber be a form of courtship. don’t see them. The only people I
shops, burger stands, bookstores, and On these walks, minutes from might encounter are unhoused indi-
botanicas. I can get my knives sharp- home, I am certain that Los Ange- viduals, and those in this particular
ened and my shoes repaired, shop for les, which I moved to from New York area often appear to be in severe men-
groceries, eat eighty different kinds of twenty years ago, is the most beauti- tal crisis, as they linger beyond build-
food. The streets are full of people of ful city in the world (and yes, I have ings that are as obdurate and closed as
all kinds, even as Echo Park comes seen the world). But that’s only if I medieval armories.
twentieth in a walkability ranking of go west or north or south. If I head Dubbed the Renaissance Collec-
L.A. neighborhoods, according to east, toward downtown, 1.5 miles tion, these buildings form a plaque
some website. MacArthur Park, which away, my booster talk ebbs. It’s free- that separates the people of Echo
is more population-dense than parts way overpasses, empty lots, and Park from downtown L.A. They
of Manhattan, ranks higher, as does fortress-like buildings, a dead zone. were built by Geoffrey Palmer, a little

EASY CHAIR 5
man who resembles a ventriloquist’s one was hurt. The Da Vinci was The Situationists first began un-
dummy and is gifted at making ene- promptly rebuilt. dertaking their d ér ives— which
mies. Palmer buys up forlorn and odd means to drift, to walk without a fixed

“W
plots alongside freeways, where he hy is Everything So Ugly?” plan—in response to a rail strike.
builds his “Italianate” developments, wondered a recent editorial Guy Debord and others tumbled
as Italian as leatherette is leather, but in n+1. The editors struc- drunkenly through the night, walk-
less charming. In 1973, the artist tured their thoughts on the subject ing or hitchhiking, and found that
Gordon Matta-Clark purchased ran- around a Situationist-style dérive they the new routes they forged promised
dom little slices of land around New take through New York City. They a change of orientation, a new out-
York City for a conceptual art proj- begin by pondering a new condomin- look. In Debord’s autobiographical
ect he titled Fake Estates. Perhaps ium tower limply called the Josh, Panegyric, at a point in his life when
the unsavory parcels that Palmer ac- which has been erected in place of a he had lost hope in the city and
quires would remain similarly con- recently demolished hundred-year-old headed for the hills, he regrets that a
ceptual were it not for the very real building. The Josh, they tell us, is made “flood of destruction, pollution, and
fake estates he builds on them. This of plastic, concrete, and “an obscure falsification had conquered the
is his own defense—that he’s build- wood-like substance”— materials whole surface of the planet, as well
ing where no one else dares—but he that have been chosen not for quality as pouring down nearly to its very
seems to take almost libidinal satis- and beauty but on the basis of global depths.” (Had Debord, too, noticed
faction in perching rows of apart- supply-chain availability, a cookie- how wet the Josh was looking?) Five
ment balconies over the 110–101 cutter design review process, and a years later he shot himself in the
freeway interchange. The off-white cost-saving preference for semi-skilled heart. It wasn’t just that everything
stucco exteriors of his buildings are labor. The Josh is already looking was ugly and the revolution stalled, if
coated with soot within days of com- shabby at five months old. When it not foreclosed. Alcohol had done
pletion. In 2003, he illegally bull- rains, its faÇade gets “conspicuously . . . him in.
dozed the last Victorian of Bunker wet.” Their dérive continues past more I decided, on a recent afternoon,
Hill while building the Orsini, a few than one Bank of America, alongside to conduct my own dérive, straight
blocks from my house. Palmer is ve- a vape shop, and into a theater, where into the morass between my street
hemently opposed to affordable a shitty franchise based on a TV show and downtown. I left the house, took
housing and has spent tens of mil- of a comic book is playing. After the a right, another right, and then a left
lions on lawsuits and ballot measures movie, there’s a run-in with blindingly over the 101 freeway. If this overpass
to ensure that he won’t have to build bright LED lights, resulting in a visit could talk, I thought. It might tell of
any. He recently settled a class- to urgent care. the many women and the many
action suit over systematically keep- Google reveals that the building nights of flinty bargains with men in
ing tenants’ security deposits. One of the editors are calling the Josh is ac- cars. By daylight, it was empty. I
Trump’s biggest donors, he has tually the Greenpoint—located, as turned left onto Temple Street, pass-
bragged that his company hasn’t paid you might guess, in Greenpoint, ing a hotel that abuts the 101, and a
federal taxes in thirty years. In the Brooklyn— but the Josh does more sun-blasted bus stop where my kid
fall of 2014, a fire was deliberately work to illustrate certain ideas than was let off in grade school, and from
started in Palmer’s half-built and the real name might. I think I know which he began conducting his own
wood-framed Da Vinci, a block down eighteen Joshes. No offense to any of dérives. This block of Temple has a
from the Orsini. Flames shot higher them; I too have a common name and bakery, a liquor store, and until re-
than many buildings downtown, would wager the Josh could have been cently, D’Bongo Party Supplies, then
stretched a city block, melted freeway called the Rachel in the blink of an falls into a post-human stretch: there
signs, and cracked one hundred and eye. Still, the Josh has a certain sound is a tow yard, a recycling center, a cul
sixty windows in the iconic John Fer- when isolated as a branding mecha- de sac against the freeway where
raro Building, headquarters of Water nism, with its soft landing into sshh, there was a tent encampment until it
and Power. The consensus among ar- whether put to service selling wine or burned, and a huge and empty bus
chitects, residents, and journalists was machines for living. I chuckled about yard. That’s all on one side of the
that almost anyone could have started the Josh. It, or he, made me think of street. On the other is the massive
the fire, given how many people hate that guy Tom from MySpace, every- retaining wall of a high school base-
Palmer. City commissioners joked, in one’s first friend. I imagined Tom liv- ball diamond. The reason there is
a planning meeting, that they sure ing at the Josh, enjoying an industrial open land here, greenery, even if it’s
hoped everyone present had an alibi. salad at a particle-board table. But chemically treated monograss be-
The city sued Palmer for the reckless names are merely symptoms. They are yond chain-link, is that this was an
conditions that allowed the blaze to not the cause of “the violence of the oil field, and it isn’t safe to put up
grow so large. The person who new ugliness” that the n+1 editors buildings. (What look like lampposts
started it was caught and sentenced ponder. Branding arises from stan- around the field are actually vents
to prison. He supposedly did it for dardization. If the things that are that allow methane gases to escape.)
Michael Brown, to protest the police made are more or less the same, differ- Beyond the baseball/methane
killings of unarmed black men. No ence itself must be manufactured. field, I pass our own version of the

6 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

Josh, but it’s called the Charlie. The on it, flashing a blue light. This is
Charlie is new. There used to be an some kind of automated security ap-
auto repair and car wash here that paratus, but I’m not sure how it
was run by a family. Now there is a works. A barefoot boy asks me for a
nar row eight-stor y building in light. I don’t have one, I tell him.
“space gray” with a gaggle of red Remember how outraged every-
real estate balloons bobbing on the one was to discover that the author
wind. I have driven past at night. JT LeRoy, supposedly an ethereal
The units are dark, while the Char- rent boy/lot lizard, was actually a
lie’s eight-story “parking podium” middle- aged woman? They acted
glows meanly, prison-bright. like this was the ultimate con, some-
From the Charlie I cross the street thing ugly and counterfeit masquer-
toward a new Palmer monstrosity on ading as something genuine and
a ten-acre site that used to be a Bank tragic and hot. Meanwhile, Elena
of America data center. Construction Ferrante is pur porting to be a
is not yet finished. The invasive middle-aged woman. What if she’s a
palms that have been chosen as teen boy turning tricks in parking lots?
Palmer’s signature “lush Mediterra- I think, as I turn out of the lot and
nean landscaping” have just been go right on Sunset.
trucked in and still have their fronds I walk toward Palmer’s O r si ni,
gathered into ponytails. Even with which lines both sides of the street,
their fronds let down, they will pro- all of its commercial space dark
vide no shade. There’s a giant piss- and empty and locked. There is no
elegant fountain but it’s dry. now one here except one man in rags
renting 2 months free + free park- setting bits of trash on fire on the
ing, a big sign says. The name of this sidewalk. Is it Palmer’s fault that
new addition to Palmer’s suite of Itali- people are setting things on fire?
anate freeway rentals is the Ferrante. It’s more complicated than that.
Maybe the name came from his wife, But with no street activity, people
a Parisian who seems a little more act out. Or, their actions are starker,
cultured than he is. Perhaps she’s a and less muted by a variety of peo-
fan of Elena Ferrante’s books. I have ple and vibrancies that a healthy
no proof. I’m guessing. street should reflect. At the end of
We’ve been told for years now that this very long, sterile block is one
Elena Ferrante is a fiction, a made-up other person, a young woman. Her
name, like Tom, or the Josh. But arms are covered with injection
someone is of course writing those scars. She seems not to notice me.
books. Whoever they are, they’re tal- She’s in a kind of Sisyphean strug-
ented, but the insistence on anonym- gle, attempting to push a n e-
ity is starting to seem a little showy, scooter that is not activated, its
even a bit tacky, if not as tacky as the wheels on lock.
Ferrante and its 1,150 units. I pass its The next day I drive back down
blank row of street-level commercial this street, heading to pick up my son
spaces. Palmer won’t even try to rent from music school. I spot the woman
them out. And apparently there’s no who tried to push the scooter. She’s
fine for leaving them empty. As an ar- still here, as if this bleak zone were
chitect explained to me, he doesn’t her proving ground. Her shirt is off
build that income into his plans. now, and she is throwing her half-
Why should a developer care if there clothed body against the brick exte-
is street life? I turn left and walk un- rior of the Orsini. But the building is Crafted in the same way for
der a highway overpass and approach constructed not to feel her, the street generations, our handmade
the rangy back edge of our neighbor- not to see her, and I barely see her
hood CVS. What does CVS stand myself, because my light is green. scissors are products for life.
for? No one seems to know. Every- While parts of the designed world
thing you might want to buy there is might be ugly at any speed, it is only
now locked up, and you have to press the slowness of traveling on foot that
what feels like a panic button to get causes true discomfiture, by forcing a
access to the shelves. walker to behold, worry over, brood
I cross through the parking lot, upon, those to whom this ugliness
past a weird machine with a tower shouts loudest. Q

EASY CHAIR 7
S TA N F O R D U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S
The Transition
Interpreting Justice from
Dear California Thurgood Marshall to
The Golden State in Diaries Clarence Thomas
and Letters Daniel Kiel
Edited by David Kipen

Dispatches from a land of extremes, by Two justices, a generation apart, confront

writers and movie stars, natives and visitors, the foundational questions of race, the
activists and pioneers, and more Constitution, and American citizenship

Remnants
Embodied Archives of the
Who Needs Gay Bars? Armenian Genocide
Bar-Hopping through America’s Elyse Semerdjian
Endangered LGBTQ+ Places
Greggor Mattson
A groundbreaking and profoundly moving
exploration of the Armenian genocide, told
A gimlet-eyed love letter to gay bars and a through the traces left in the memories and
journey to rediscover their role in America on the bodies of its women survivors
today.

The Shadow of the Empress

Fairy-Tale Opera and the End
The Kid Across the Hall of the Habsburg Monarchy
The Fight for Opportunity in Larry Wolff
Our Schools
Reid Saaris
A beguiling exploration of the last
Habsburg monarchs’ grip on Europe’s
Searching for “missing” students, Reid historical and cultural imagination
Saaris ultimately finds what else is
missing—justice, equity, complexity, and
joy—in American schools

Why? Daughter of History

The Philosophy Behind Traces of an Immigrant Girlhood
the Question Susan Rubin Suleiman
Philippe Huneman stanford studies in jewish
square one: history and culture
first-order questions
in the humanities
A compelling journey of resilience that
reconciles intimate memories with the
A philosopher asks: “why do we ask why?” violent history of the twentieth century

sup.org stanfordpress.typepad.com
 HARPER’S INDEX
Percentage of Americans who think our country should reduce “political correctness” : 64
Who think our country should foster “social justice” : 70
Percentage increase this year in the number of Americans who identify as conservative on social issues : 15
Portion of independent voters who do not know the Republicans’ or Democrats’ stance on abortion : 1/3
Who do not think either party handles the issue of abortion well : 2/5
Percentage by which foot traffic in U.S. city centers is lower today than it was in 2019 : 25
Percentage decrease since October in the number of companies requiring employees to work in person full-time : 14
Percentage by which hybrid workers are more satisfied with their organization’s culture than in-person workers : 8
Percentage of remote workers who claim to be dissatisfied with their daily commute : 25
Percentage by which remote work reduces the likelihood of securities fraud : 15
Portion of U.S. workers who use recreational drugs or alcohol while working remotely : 1/5
Portion of U.S. workers who report having been under the influence during a virtual meeting : 1/5
Percentage increase since 2021 in random workplace drug testing : 18
Percentage of employers who believe their workers have an alcohol use disorder : 26
Percentage increase since the start of the pandemic in U.S. adults with substance use disorders : 23
Portion of speech pathologists who have seen an increase in children with communication difficulties since 2019 : 4/5
Percentage of U.S. adults who say they are too tired to make changes to their diet or exercise routine : 35
Percentage of their daily calorie intake that the average American consumes in the form of ultra-processed food : 57
Portion of Americans who are unable to do five consecutive push-ups : 1/3
Who have a sleep deficit : 1/3
Portion of Americans who think the invention of the internet was bad for humanity : 1/10
Who think it was neither good nor bad : 1/5
Percentage decrease this year in worldwide sales of personal computers : 29
Minimum number of pagers still in use in the United States : 808,245
Percentage of American men who say their online lives are more engaging and rewarding than their offline lives : 48
Who have not spent time with someone outside of their home in the past week : 26
Who say that they have it harder than women : 53
Percentage by which men charge more than women for freelance work : 48
Portion of U.S. workers who do not believe that gender equality in the workplace is very important : 3/4
Who do not believe that a racially and ethnically diverse workplace is very important : 7/10
Portion of U.S. adults who approve of colleges taking race and ethnicity into account to increase diversity : 1/3
Who say they have been personally disadvantaged by efforts to increase racial and ethnic diversity : 1/4
Percentage of student loan debt held by adults 35 or older : 63
Chance that a university professor has seen a UFO or knows someone who has : 1 in 5
Portion of English professors who are interested in researching UFOs : 3/10
Of economics professors : 1/4
Number of minutes by which a day is longer on Mars than on Earth : 39
Percentage of baby boomers who believe in hell : 18
Of millennials and zoomers who do : 32

Figures cited are the latest available as of June 2023. Sources are listed on page 61.
“Harper’s Index” is a registered trademark.

HARPER’S INDEX 9
New for
summer and fall
“Every so often, a book comes along that changes
the way we see, speak, and think about the world.
Shattered is one of those books.”
—Frank B. Wilderson III on Shattered: Fragments of a
Black Life by Matthieu Chapman

“Pulses back and forth with ideas. We need more books

like this out in the world, books that give us hints for
how to be in a time of crisis.”
—David Gessner on Clear Creek: Toward a Natural
Philosophy by Erik Reece

“A harrowing memoir. . . . Readers may not want to

follow in [Shinn’s] footsteps, but they will never be bored
with her as a companion.”
—Kirkus Reviews on The Wounds That Bind Us
by Kelley Shinn

“Surprising and revelatory. . . . I love this book.”

—Stephanie Powell Watts on Mama Said: Stories
by Kristen Gentry

West Virginia
WVUPRESS.COM University Press
“A new publishing heavyweight.”
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 READINGS

[Essay] faintest chance of moving to a better place. Noth-

ing is more dangerous than confronting a world
MORAL FIXATION full of fear, arms akimbo, with a boast. Or hang-
ing on in the face of disaster to the idea that we
By Jacqueline Rose, from The Plague, which will be each, individually, are good, that our perfection,
published this month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. lamentably unmatched by an imperfect reality,
is something into which the ills of the

O
time—pandemic, climate catastrophe, and war—
unfairly encroach. According to such a mindset,
n the opening page of his famous 1981 the more insecure things appear, the more confi-
meditation, After Virtue, the philosopher Alas- dent, assertive, and controlling we need to
dair MacIntyre asks his readers to imagine become in order to master both the

T
themselves living in the aftermath of catastro- world and ourselves.
phe. A series of environmental disasters, blamed
by the public on scientists, leads to widespread here is only one step from here to what Simone
riots, with laboratories destroyed, instruments Weil would call the exertion of force, a form of
wrecked. The government that takes power power whose sole function is to impose itself. Not
abolishes science in schools and universities, and once does she waver in her conviction that force in
imprisons or executes those who practice it. By this sense, not least the belief in immutable strength
the time they realize their mistake, it is too late. which upholds it, will always be found at the op-
Only fragments of scientific knowledge remain. posite moral pole to justice. Being convinced we
MacIntyre’s startling hypothesis is that the lan- have moral ownership of the earth is the best way
guage of morality has entered “the same state of to make it uninhabitable. Perhaps the governments
grave disorder as the language of natural science of the Western world are useless on climate be-
in the imaginary world which I described.” We cause the very thought of catastrophe is so at odds
are living in a world “after virtue,” where any with the idea of earthly power.
clear moral compass has been lost. What happens, then, if we look to the places
Today it is clear that the march of so-called where moral failing and imperfection are not
progress has been tearing the world we live in to swept aside, but taken as the foundation, however
shreds, that the good of human individuals, in unsteady, for another, more accountable, way of
Western terms at least, and the good of the planet thought and of life? Even in the realm of Aristote-
are not—most likely never were—the same thing. lian virtue, to which MacIntyre makes his appeal
How do you take your moral bearings in a world against the chaos of the day, there is no guaran-
that has gone so awry? teed relationship between what passes for a virtu-
In this morass, we might do worse than to take ous action and its outcomes. Courage can sustain
MacIntyre’s apocalyptic vision, however counter- injustice; loyalty has been known to strengthen
intuitively, as a guide. Only by recognizing the murderous aggression; generosity can weaken the
frailty of our morality, the unsteady hold we have capacity to do good.
on virtue, or even our perverse capacity, our read- Virtue, we might say, is a knife that cuts
iness to embrace the worst on offer, is there the both ways, as Freud famously described the

READINGS 11
 unconscious. He was warning against the risks branded a traitor. She was also accused of col-
of invoking the hidden depths of psychic life in laborating with Vichy. No one, she insisted,
the courtroom, as if an imperfect inner life— had the right to judge Philippe Pétain since ev-
which must mean any inner life at all—could be eryone, herself included, however appalled by
summoned in law in order to establish a propen- the armistice, was to blame. Some people, Weil
sity to crime. For the same reason, he insisted continued, may have “honorable” motives
that it was not the task of analysis to pass moral “which are justified by particular situations” we
judgment on the nature of human drives which will never know about. Others may be con-
in themselves “were neither good nor bad.” strained by pressures no one could resist unless
Even in considering the Second World War, they were “heroes.” Most of those who judge
where the moral distribution of vice and virtue have never been tested or tried.
are mostly seen as crystal clear, the waters are Weil was neither indicting nor exempting
muddied. Weil was a pacifist until Hitler in- herself, but rather occupying a middle ground
vaded Prague. She refused to grant her country where people, for whatever reasons, good or bad,
the moral high ground as long as France re- equivocate. Those who accuse her of siding with
tained its colonies, and for this she was Pétain have missed the point. Her support for
the war then became unyielding—she would go
on to join the Resistance. But she laid claim to
neither heroism nor innocence. In fact, she be-
lieved herself to be worthless, spending much of
her life, in the words of the Italian philosopher
[Violations] Roberto Esposito, in “an uninterrupted battle di-
rected primarily against herself.” In Esposito’s
COFFEE AND DO-NOTS reading, Weil read history from its dark side, in
search of the “torn ‘heart’ ” beating from within
From a report published in May by the New Jersey “extreme ‘discord,’ ” a beat in which she never
Office of the Attorney General that outlines major lost faith. Amid such discord, the strongest hope
disciplinary infractions committed by law enforce- would be, in her words, “to kill as little as possi-
ment officers in 2022. ble,” although Weil knew that the very fact of
bearing arms wipes out all restraint. Violence al-
ways “obliterates anybody who feels its touch,”
Vaping in a squad car while transporting a civilian meaning victim and aggressor alike. For that
Stealing while responding to a service call very reason, the ability to recognize your own
Punching the wall of a victim’s home while re- face in the enemy was, for Weil, the purest “tri-
sponding to a service call umph of love,” the “crowning grace,” like the
Failing to fully report the escape of an inmate mutual admiration of mortal enemies, Priam and
Responding to a call regarding a woman who Achilles, in Homer’s Iliad. What the poet of the
needed medical attention at a Days Inn, be- Iliad sees and his characters do not is that
ginning a sexual relationship with her, and the fact of death equalizes everyone in war, as in
then giving her a box containing $2,000 in life. Winning is never just winning, since, by the
exchange for not reporting the relationship mere fact of being mortal, everyone is

A
Falling asleep in an inmate’s cell heading for defeat.
Storing hollow-point bullets in a child’s room
Telling a supervisor to “go fuck yourself” when lberto Moravia’s most famous novel, Two
told he would have to take a coronavirus test Women, published in 1957, is a tale of iniquity
Commenting on a subordinate’s hair color, in which no one is spared, told from the point
clothes, and body type, and asking about her of view of two women, a mother and daughter.
relationship status Set during the Second World War, the novel
Using a law enforcement database to run que- turns on the question of what happens to
ries on a woman met on OnlyFans women, as guardians of virtue, when history
Driving drunk while off duty tears up the rule book. To begin with, the
Driving drunk while on duty mother, Cesira, believes her daughter, Rosetta,
Drinking on duty while working a second job to be a saint. Convinced that they will soon be
Falling asleep drunk in a running vehicle, re- returning to their home on the outskirts of
fusing to participate in a field sobriety test, Rome when the U.S. Army arrives to liberate
and then, after being arrested, headbutting a them from Fascism, they escape to the country-
washing machine and claiming to be the vic- side, bathed in the glow of Rosetta’s goodness
tim of police brutality and their own hopes. They are trying to join
Cesira’s parents who live in the mountains.
What they find is squalor, abandoned and

12 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

COURTESY THE ARTIST AND LOOSE JOINTS

“Domesticated Palms, Amazonas,” a photograph by Richard Mosse, whose work was on view in June at Altman Siegel, in San Francisco. His mono-
graph Broken Spectre was published last year by Loose Joints.

bombed-out villages, putrefying land underfoot, the hardest reckoning takes place between
crime, and wanton death. Cesira and herself, as she discovers that she
It is not often that a story of war, whether as is capable of uncontrollable violence toward
fiction or non-fiction, is told through the eyes of the person she loves most in the world.
women. Nor for any such story to include the rape Something unknown has also entered her
of a daughter as witnessed by her mother, and flesh like fire—in her case, the desire to kill.
then to track its devastating effects. Rosetta is She had already understood that such vio-
brutally assaulted inside a disused church, while lence is not alien to human conduct but is sim-
her mother, fending off her own attackers, some- ply unleashed by the permissions of war. It is
how manages to escape. Confounding every something that erupts when laws, respect for
cliché, Rosetta is sexualized by her experience: others, and fear of God have been suspended,
“Something hitherto unknown to her had en- and men act without restraint. To that ex-
tered into her flesh like fire.” In search of pleasure, tent, war changes nothing.
she barters herself to a run of local desperadoes, Cesira is the moral barometer for a world
evacuees, one of whom she comes to love, and whose measure cannot be taken. Waking from
who abandons her, a loss to which she reacts a dream in which Nazis and Fascists were being
without lament. When Cesira realizes what is shot, she is appalled to find herself enjoying
happening, she attacks Rosetta, seizes her, throws “the destruction of other people with the same
her down on her mattress and showers her with feeling with which one enjoys the coming of
blows, while screaming, “I’m going to kill you.” spring and flowers and fine weather.” How can
In the mind of her mother, Rosetta has it be, she asks, that a “ferocious Nazi,” a man
turned from saint to a common “whore”; but they encounter by chance in the mountains,

READINGS 13
 COURTESY THE ARTIST AND MILES MCENERY, NEW YORK CITY
House of Jealous Lovers, a mixed-media artwork (acrylic, spray paint, photo transfer, and oil) by Rosson Crow, whose work will be on view
next month with Miles McEnery at the Armory Show in New York City.

“who found a special kind of enjoyment in tion for the imperfection that life and experience
burning people alive with a flamethrower,” bring with them.
could also show himself to be attuned to injus-
tice? (He challenges a lawyer to justify the ample Better to start with imperfection, which
provisions of his table when peasants are dying leaves room for growth, than with stultifying
of hunger.) How could Rosetta turn so resolutely virtue from which there is no clean exit (a
from virtue to vice, throwing herself into each point which feminism has been making for
with equal, perfectly devoted commitment? centuries). The delusion is to believe that
The hardest lesson is the danger of ever be- moral purity and perfection are possessions,
lieving in purity or perfection—your own or that imperfection is shameful, that violence is
your daughter’s, or that of anyone else— a spanner in the works, rather than part of
however closely you might hold them within the inner portion of everyone. By itself, aware-
your most fiercely guarded and intimate inner ness of this will not be enough to save us. But
space. The idea of perfection is a decoy. Cesira making space for such precisely imperfect
explains the moral of her own story: knowledge within the scope of human under-
In short, it is almost better to be born imperfect standing will surely slow things down. It
and gradually to become, if not perfect, at any might just help prevent the spread of devasta-
rate better, than to be born perfect and to be tion as it travels with such indecent haste
then forced to abandon that first transient perfec- across our futures.

14 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

[Story] Only the nanny Fidelia, who thanked first her
left nipple then her right with a big smile. Her
FIDELIA CÓRDOBA white teeth were the last thing to be

A
seen in the deep darkness.
By Amalialú Posso Figueroa, from the Spring 2023
issue of The Massachusetts Review. Translated from nother day, the River Sipí rose up. A pot
the Spanish by Jeffrey Diteman and Shanta Lee. of tapao, cooking on an improvised grill fanned
with woven pepenas, was the first thing it swept

T
away. Then some water bottles chilling in the
river. Then a washboard on which a woman
he nanny Fidelia Córdoba kept her rhythm had been scrubbing laundry after rubbing it
in her tetas. She’d been born on the banks of abundantly with a ball of soap. Then the ball
the River Sipí and she had bulging tetas, small of soap. It left everyone stranded on a tiny
and round like a pair of corozos, with retractile sliver of riverbank, their backs pressed against
nipples that also had a sense of direction. They high rocky cliffs and their fronts exposed to a
were all at once compass– sextant– weather river that was swelling and swelling by the sec-
vane–plumb line–astrolabe quadrant–point you ond, giving no time for nothing but surprise.
left point you right, or wherever you needed to They all realized at once that the river had
go but never get you lost kinda nipples. The played them dirty.
nipples on the tetas of the nanny Fidelia A compass started spinning, the nipples on
pointed north and south, east and west, up the tetas of the nanny Fidelia. The retractile left
and down, inward and outward. The nipples on nipple settled on a ford in the river, a rhythmi-
the tetas of the nanny Fidelia were the naviga- cally burbling ford which was then swiftly
tor, the pathfinder, the salvation of all those
who lost their way. The nipples on the tetas
of the nanny Fidelia moved like a

O
fish in water.

nce there was a riverboat ride, clear [Pedagogy]

throats singing, “un potro que aguabajo venga” as
the boat traveled up the River Atrato. The OH, BOTHER
river water splashed our faces, the droplets like
needles pricking the skin. The sun, which had From Stay Safe, a Winnie-the-Pooh-themed book
been scorching, scorned our embrace then hid that was distributed to Dallas public school students
behind the riverbank. “Al oscuro metí la mano,” in May.
someone sang. The boat stopped in the middle
of the night, in the middle of the River Atrato.
The motor was dead as a doornail. We didn’t If there is danger, the police will come fast to
know what to do. We didn’t know where we catch the stranger.
were. First we were enveloped in silence, then Until then, remember what Pooh and his crew
that gave way to worry, which pretty soon said to do.
erupted into despair. Everybody started talking We should RUN like Rabbit instead of stay.
at once. Fear was the only thing glowing in the If danger is near, do not fear. HIDE like Pooh
now-dark night. does until the police appear.
As usual, the downpour wasn’t long in coming. Doors should be locked and the passage
It was then that the compass–sextant–weather blocked. Turn off the light to stay out of sight.
vane–plumb line–astrolabe quadrant–point We should all hide without making a sound in
you left point you right nipples on the tetas of a place where we cannot be found.
the nanny Fidelia found their element in the If we have cell phones, make sure to turn off
water. The rosy nubs that were the nipples of all tones.
the tetas of the nanny Fidelia began pointing If danger finds us, don’t stay, run away. If we
in one direction. In the darkness, in the mid- can’t get away, we have to FIGHT with all
dle of the River Atrato, everyone who could our might.
row began rowing that way. A long time Like Kanga and Roo do, it is better to fight
passed. Nobody knew how long. The boat together.
knocked into the riverbank of a dark village. If danger comes, remember all we need to do to
The bank was called Lloró. be a member of Winnie-the-Pooh’s Stay Safe
Overwhelmed by emotion, we all surged off Crew is to: RUN, HIDE, FIGHT.
the boat. No one knew what kinda plumb line–
astrolabe–compass had brought them to land.

READINGS 15
 crossed by all the people trapped by the swelling returned. No one knew whether the sea swallowed
River Sipí, to reach the exuberance of a jungle them all up: Fidelia, her nipples, the boat, Katol.
which offered itself, overwhelming but safe. It was hard to believe, with the keen sense
The last one to reach the other side was the of direction Fidelia derived from the left nipple of
nanny Fidelia, who cast a grateful glance first at her left teta and the right nipple of her right teta,
her left nipple then at her right. that she lost her way at sea. For all its immensity
It was like having been reborn in another and depth, the sea did not have, never had, and
rhythm: the rhythm of the nipples never will have its rhythm in a pair of turgid tetas

B
on the tetas of the nanny Fidelia. the size of two corozos.

ut then the nanny Fidelia fell in love, vehe-

mently, forcefully, and uneasily. She let herself
go, get got, caught, and sprung. That was how
she lost her sense of direction.
His name was Katol Landó. He was white and [Yearly Review]
much older than Fidelia Córdoba in years, but not
only in years, also in trickery. He convinced her he LONG DAY’S
loved her. He brought her to live by the seaside,
where he collected packages that somnambulant
JOURNAL INTO NIGHT
airplanes dropped at a predetermined location deep
in the middle of the night. The right nipple, the From diary entries written by Ian Sansom and pub-
left nipple pointed directly to the location of lished in the Spring 2023 issue of The Dublin Review.
the drop. Her nimble nipples never led her astray.
He never told her what her nipples were detect- JANUARY 1, 2022
ing. Fidelia went on forever blinded by love. Her Once again—the second year, the third, the
body was brought out to find packages dropped fourth?—the Christmas cards never got sent. I
from planes into the sea, neither her nor her nip- make some calls.
ples ever knowing what was in them. One of those I call N. He is with his mum, first Christmas
dark, moonless nights, Fidelia went out, working without his dad. Call C. Her father died just over
the rhythm of her nipples for Katol, and never a week ago, brain bleed. Call W. He is with his
father, alone. I give up call-
ing people after that. Text
my cousin, whose wife
has cancer. Happy New
Year, I say to everyone.
[Verse] Happy New Year. Happy
New Year.
POEM I have decided to re-
sign from my job.
JANUARY 13
By Alice Notley, from The Speak Angel Series, which was published in
February by Fonograf Editions. Had a meeting with HR
at work. They suggested a
career break rather than
May all governments cease and no more men decide for me or resigning, to give me time
Steal from me I’ll happily kill you but you know you’ve no stren- to “arrange my affairs.” I
Gth someone says oh I’m Samson the blind and just said it might take me some
Scores of pigs run everywhere before the roof collapses time to arrange my affairs.
I’m going to live in the gully not needing electricity I have never been good at
I’m going to die there like Marie not in a rehab like my arranging my affairs. At
Mother doctorless and barely allowed after Jerry the end of the meeting, the
Brown refused hospice services to the people in my home town HR person clarified that
I don’t need him or the president with his urgent vanity this would be an unpaid
You need a structure but I don’t not in our cities of cowards career break. I talked to my
The problem is everyone’s needs dish it out to yourself and tell wife on the phone. She
Waltons Buffet and Gates you’d just as soon kill them as buy their stuff said an unpaid career
I would though I know you want to buy everything slop break would indeed be a
Eat porn and communal cream in middleclass fuckit the inter- much better idea than
Net’s not beautiful it’s nothing from nit heads incapable and credulous actually resigning.
Not sure that I can
even go through with a

16 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

career break—it would mean letting down my SEPTEMBER 2
colleagues, which I have done before. Early morning, scheduled gym induction with
MARCH 3 a man who did not turn up. It has taken me two
Some years ago, my wife came across a Bud- months to organize an induction session at the
dhist monk on YouTube, Venerable Nick. My gym. COVID, apparently. Eventually, someone
wife loves Venerable Nick. To my shame, I have called Gary turned up and reluctantly agreed to
always been slightly mocking about Venerable show me round. I explained to Gary that I had
Nick, regarding it as all a bit woo-woo. But my never been to a gym before. Gary was monosyl-
wife sends me a link to a Venerable Nick video labic and obviously depressed. He just pointed at
in which he talks about nighttime routines. He machines and said, “Lats, leg extension, pecs.”
recommends: having a shower; thinking SEPTEMBER 28
thoughts of loving kindness toward yourself and Went to the gym. Pumping music, weird pur-
others; according merit to the deceased and all ply lights, and large muscled men sort of prowl-
those that have gone before; reflecting on the ing around, staring at people. Really odd. Sinister.
good things of the day and pondering what you Absolutely hated it.
might change; and finally, wrapping yourself in OCTOBER 16
positive thoughts and thus “sleeping in a sea of Getting out of bed, moved awkwardly and it
merit.” I try having a shower before bed, to see was like something popping in my back. Ex-
if it works. treme, massive, instant pain.
MARCH 7 OCTOBER 17
The shower thing isn’t working. Daughter has started training at an MMA
APRIL 1 gym. She says she wants to know how to knock
Accustomed now to seeing Zelensky in an someone out, if she needs to. This means all the
olive green T-shirt and combat trousers. children are currently training in some kind of
Good speechmaker. combat sport: older son is training in Krav Maga
I am now officially on unpaid leave. and kickboxing; younger son is training in Bra-
APRIL 13 zilian jiu-jitsu. My wife is not happy about it.
Met X. for breakfast to talk about the possi- DECEMBER 3
bility of working with him in a new business Ready for the end of the year, I start clearing
venture. We need the money. “But what can out the back of my diary, where I keep lots of
you actually do?” he asks. cuttings and notes and pieces of paper. I find
JUNE 6
Out running this morning at 5 am. A man
was climbing over a high fence into a basement.
JUNE 18
Have decided to join a gym. Have never
ever been to a gym. Ever. Not once, in my [Evidence]
whole life. But I need to maintain muscle
mass, strength. I wish I had spent more time SEDAN OF THE CRIME
when I was younger keeping fit. My dad has
always been incredibly fit, even post-Marines.
From items reported lost to Uber in the past year.
Deaf, but fit.
JULY 5
Bought some new running socks. A poodle
JULY 6 Two turtles
Out on my bike, cycling to the park. Two An unspecified number of hamsters
men in T-shirts are striding along, and a A slab of bluefin tuna
woman in white heels and a white miniskirt is Chicken wings and some lotion
hurrying along in front of them; near the Brit- Tacos and a calculator
ish Museum, a black car with tinted windows, A fog machine
window open, is billowing clouds of super- A printer and a vibrator
strength skunk; next, on Tottenham Court A catheter insertion kit
Road, a man is running in a dark tracksuit A weight-loss surgery guide
and balaclava, yelling and screaming at peo- A stove and funeral pamphlets
ple; next, on Charlotte Street, a white van Bundles of fake hair
drives straight toward me, forcing me onto the Sixteen ounces of fake blood
pavement; then at the bandstand in the park, Fingernails
a man walks toward me, about two meters An ankle monitor
away, says nothing, pulls up a deck chair and
watches me exercise. It is 5:30 am.

READINGS 17
“Untitled #15,” from the series Swimmers, circa 1979, a photograph by Larry Sultan, whose book Swimmers was published in June by MACK.

three recipes, cut out from newspapers and mag- “Oh no,” she says.
azines: a recipe for caponata, which I never made; “Oh yes,” I say. “This is typical. This is our life.”
a recipe for apricot ricotta cake, which I will “This is everyone’s life,” says my wife.
never make; and a recipe for pasta con le sarde,
which involves a fennel bulb.
If I buy the fennel then I might make pasta
con le sarde.
I buy a bulb of fennel.
DECEMBER 7 [Fiction]
The fennel has rotted.
DECEMBER 28
HAPPINESS
My wife sends me up into the loft to find
some old albums to look at. It’ll be nice. The By Anne Carson, published in the Summer 2023
boys would love to see some of the old photos. issue of The Stinging Fly.
I am in the loft. I have been lunchtime

S
drinking. I don’t drink much at all anymore.
But it is Christmas. I am feeling good. Woozy. I
realize that there’s a leak in the roof. The suit- he can’t sleep. The interesting thing about
cases containing our photo albums are directly wind is how human it sounds, as a voice, unappeas-
underneath the leak and have gotten soaked. able. She pulls her knees up. Turns. Turns again.
And mice or rats have gotten in and eaten Not sleeping means her back will give out midway
through what remains of our other boxes and through the day. She’ll lift a pot off the shelf, hoist
bags. I consider not telling my wife. But she a sheep to the cart, and clench, spasm, bad day.
comes upstairs to check how I’m doing. Don’t clench, she says to herself. Hours yet.

© Larry Sultan. Courtesy Galerie Thomas Zander; Yancey Richardson

18 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023 Gallery; Casemore Gallery; MACK; and the Estate of Larry Sultan
Pearl isn’t her real name. No one knew (knows) So you’ve decided to speak. I shall have him cut
her real name. It was during her second year out your tongue.
of servitude that they began calling her Pearl,
because of a necklace. Before that she wasn’t Unfortunately I must be going now.
anything. She didn’t speak their language and
for a time tried pretending to be mute, prefer- Sit down, slave. He told me you’re a mute, I said
ring her own thoughts to the clotted, dark no, she’s a simpleton. Now I see you’re no sim-
sounds they made. Eventually she learned a pleton, you’re clever, you’re planning.
few phrases, which she pronounced wrong and
they laughed, unsurprised. Unsurprise, she Clever. Planning.
thought, is useful. Unsurprise is a place I can
take hold. But I decide this. You may be clever, pretty,
high-class, proud, but you won’t win.
Why did Norsemen go to Ireland for slaves? Be-
cause the ocean currents went in that direction. I am unarmed. Is there an exit?
Because they had narrow, shallow ships ideal for
raiding. Because the Irish settlements were poor, You bet there’s an exit.
the people slight and weak, the weapons laugh-
able. Because dogs lift their leg on any boundary Please can I help you?
they pass. Low and fast as eels along the coastline
slid the ships and you didn’t know, you thought it What a joker you are. Can’t believe he puts up
was an ordinary Thursday, you turned from the with that, he has no sense of humor.
window to see shadows cross the kitchen wall and
there it came, a dark red note like a bellowing deep Why are you whispering?
in your mind.
I’m not whispering!
She has a hut of her own, actually a converted
corner of the milking shed. It is a privilege not Life is difficult.
accorded other slaves; some day she’ll have a table
and chair, as promised by the man who brought her You mock me.
to this place, when there is enough driftwood. It
will be better if you avoid my wife, he had said to I want to marry you!
her on the ship coming here. It proves not hard
to avoid the wife, who hates her, except for meals That’s him on the path, you get out of here
which she eats standing up in the wife’s kitchen now, you and your jokes. Don’t come back.
when the wife isn’t there. She stands by the door
to the larder, balancing her cup on the joist of the Hungry times arrive then for the slave. I should
doorframe. If someone comes in the door, if her have stolen a few apples while I was in the
cup falls, she takes it as a sign. A cup might fall in kitchen, she thinks after. Submissive as spoiled
a variety of ways; might be full, empty, or bad tast- fish—I can control her, the wife thinks after.
ing; might clatter, splash, attract rebuke; might be But for a while together they keep the secret of
caught on the fly—that’s a good sign. The day she the slave’s voice. Conversations between them
catches the cup she decides two things. First, she’ll are tentative, hostile at first, and confused.
give up pretending she can’t speak, and second, Gradually Pearl learns more words. Gradually
kill the man who brought her to this place. No, the wife lets her back into the kitchen.
think, he is top man in the region, killing him
makes her an outlaw, she’ll not kill him, she’ll kill One night they are out riding the big black
the wife. No, actually, why kill the wife, the wife horse. It’s the man’s horse but he’s asleep. The
could be an ally, the wife is as special as a blue fox, slave rides behind. Stars move cold and ghostly
the man thin and short and aggrieved. Pearl opens at the top of the sky. Can you slow down, says
drawer after drawer in her mind. The cup cools in Pearl, gripping the wife round the waist. I decide
her hands. this, says the wife, so no. She kicks

L
the horse faster. Horse foam flies back.
She moves to the kitchen table and sits down to
wait for the wife, rehearsing silently her few phrases. et’s see what’s going on with the man. Some-
times he is silent all day. Cleaning his arrows. A
I know you, I know what you want, says the household containing both wives and slaves had
wife, emerging from the cellar door. better keep them at variance, mild variance, with
one another, had been his father’s advice. Sum-
You are very beautiful, says Pearl. mer comes in breezily and throws itself on forms,

READINGS 19
 blossoms, dawn. The man rises early and goes to of reflection on how to make a poem. When
town to buy a string of pearls. Wear it all the she demands from the man a second chair, one
time, he says to the slave, fastening the clasp. His on which she can lie full-length, he makes the
fingers are rough. He makes it too tight at first. She chair in secret. Next she will ask for cushions,
remembers suddenly the summer the soldiers came this will be harder for him. Her first poetic ef-
and took the town mule. Her father was the town fort is of the “history of my own heart” type. It
miller but how could he grind grain without a is a sonnet. How did the sonnet go? she asks
mule? Some people tried to grind by hand the the man on his return from his gentlemen’s
black grass of the fields, mule food itself. Some weekend. They said to keep trying, he says. Ha!
pulled straws out of the broom. I am always hun- she says. The gentlemen’s comments will not
gry, she says to the man. Your wife does not give prove helpful to her. She is working beyond her
me enough. Never oranges. Never oil. The man means. She is working for golden ears. Gram-
runs his finger down her throat. Yes, he says. mar faulty, vocab limited, each attempt differ-
ent in form or style but all of them poems
Night winds lash the forest. about riding in the birch trees and the smell of
horse, the love-dark heat of horse surrounding
When he is away at a drinking party, which may you like an old tree from childhood. That’s
last till dawn or all weekend, the wife and the funny, you never use that word. What word,
slave tell stories in the kitchen. Shadows flare up childhood? No, love.
the wall. Big knotty penis, the wife is saying.
They laugh. Then the slave tells how she saw her So the summer ends.
father, by now two years dead, swimming in the
sea the other day. It was the dark side of him but Everyone sleeps more as autumn moves toward
it was him, she says. You called out to him? asks winter and the dark increases, but it has a
the wife. Never occurred to me, says the slave. drained, gray feel and the difference between being
Let’s go riding, says the wife, maybe he’s out there. awake and being asleep is frail. She lies on her chair
It’s past midnight and you’re drunk and I don’t watching the dark. Soon the snow will start, soon
want to, says Pearl. But the wife is striding to the the roads will close. Before then she wants to make
door. I decide this, she says, just as the man steps one more poem. Some of them come vomiting out,
into the kitchen. some are like tying knots. The one left in her is
yellow, howling like an egg yolk, the one that will
There is a long, lost moment. But he is narrow- change everything—but she doesn’t know this yet,
ing his eyes at the slave. You went to school she just feels its little claws jump.
didn’t you, good school?
One night quite late a guest comes into the
Apparently (the story emerges) it is no longer kitchen. He is a friend of the man, who bustles
enough that he attend the drinking parties in in after him impatiently demanding fires and
silk. Next time he comes he must bring verse. supper for the two of them. The guest, pale as a
far-off planet, with silvery white skin and corn
Prominent gentlemen should, so the others felt, silk hair, has eyes of absolute transparent blue
follow drinking with original poems. Not a that search around the room, over the chairs
competition, they assured him, but of course it and the stove, over the wife and the slave.
is. When is Beauty not a competition? You When the man goes bustling out again to get
have books? the man asks the slave, who beer from the cellar, the guest sits slowly down.
laughs. I’m a slave, where do I get books? He
turns to the wife. You have books? The wife It’s one of you isn’t it, he says, his eyes moving
rises and leaves the kitchen in silence. It is one from the slave to the wife, from the wife to the
of her rules that the man not greet the slave slave. Not him, the verses, it’s one of you. The
first in any situation. The man sighs and sits man returns from the cellar with beer. Supper
and puts his face in his hands. Pearl fingers her happens. Hours pass. Pearl dozes on her hand in
pearls. Anyway, I don’t need books, she says. I a smoky corner by the door. Finally all go to bed.
can do verse. (A lie. She knows little of verse, The guest leaves his cap on the kitchen table.
never liked it. You’re smart, you could be a
teacher, her father used to tell her. She’d Long past midnight. She can’t sleep. She paces
laughed. Teacher! A sort of upper servant! Not her hut. The claws jump. That it is a poem about
me. Had she really said this?) She “happiness” is all she knows. Always, in the

M
laughs again, a different laugh. middle of the night, she sees a way to make a
poem that will lift hearts and be true but in the
ucking out the man’s privy and carrying morning—she wakes on a cliff, flung open, facing
water for his wife provide her with many hours something, which vanishes. Anyway, “happiness”

20 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

COURTESY THE ARTIST AND MONIQUE MELOCHE GALLERY, CHICAGO

It Was Said They Could See Each Other’s Memories, a painting by Maia Cruz Palileo, whose work is on view this month as part
of the exhibition Presence in the Pause: Interiority and its Radical Immanence, at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, in
Omaha, Nebraska.

in the language of this place is an obscure and on the table. It is on the head of the guest
unpronounceable word, which someone had who steps forward and covers her mouth with
described to her as a shape that walks behind you, his hand.
stepping forward every so often to fill your con-
tour. Like a bear. She imagines a bear. It’s no Night winds lash the forest.
good, she knows nothing of bears. She thinks of
the guest’s cap, left on the kitchen table when They go in among the birches of the forest and,
she cleaned up supper. She wants that cap. as if they become birches, you cannot see them.

The yard is moonlit. The big house silent. The Hours later, in the hut, while the world
kitchen deeply dark and smelling of onions. sleeps and the wind rocks the darkness and
She stands by the door listening, letting her long gleams from the lamp make the room
eyes adjust. Gradually the shape of the cap be- vast, they sit at the table and talk, and as
comes visible. It is silver. It is terrific. It is not they talk they think, and feel themselves

READINGS 21
 thinking, and seem to be talking/thinking wife, Pearl’s power grows. First the necklace, then
about more than either of them knows, which the second chair. The sonnets are an open secret,
builds up a third atmosphere all around in the at which the wife scoffs. For his part the man likes
room that they both will remember afterward chiefly the sound of them, in Pearl’s rag of a voice.
as a voyage to a place they can’t imagine how When Pearl tells him that the happiness sonnet
they got to, because the horse remained in the is to be her last, he slaps her hard upside the head
barn and the place was miles and miles off, but she does not relent. You’re hard to manage, he
with its high gates and peacocks (in her ver- says to her—or means to say but it comes out,
sion), with its sheer chalk cliffs rising from the You’re hard to please. A vagueness swims across
sea and teeming with seabirds (in his), while her eyes. Nothing is ever clear or simple anymore,
in fact they sit till dawn at the table in the hut he thinks. She wants to move into the big house.
and by the time she is back at the big house What about number one, he says, meaning his
lighting the fires for breakfast he is gone. That wife. She smiles and continues to clean her teeth
guest is no longer part of this story. with a green hazel twig.

The women persist, in their way. Love is strange. The man goes off. She sits thinking. The man
Each time the man hides something from his is a minor bother. But the wife. How can I
stand her? It could be
years. I don’t know. I
should go in and see her.
I hate the shaking. I
should go in. She’ll be
[Poem] pouring another glass. It
stops the shaking. No
THE BARD OF ARMAGH doubt. She’ll be sitting
staring at her stupid
By Timothy Donnelly, from Chariot, published in May by Wave Books. knitting, she’ll talk about
going out to shovel the
step before it freezes,
I have aspired to the ease of the drink-steadied harper maybe she’ll go out and
who lives the tune so thoroughly his fast pink hands slip on the step and kill
dance over the strings like some sharp thing made sharper herself, that will stop the
when it’s put to use—a family of thing I can’t seem to land shaking, no doubt!—Ah
but no, then I’d be the
on any member of at present, but its heraldic emblem one left, I’d have to do
pinned behind me like a charm would be the gold cat’s paw for him, do everything.
chopping cabbage for the supper I’m forever assembling No. I should go in. I’ll go
on a field of green to set before the Bard of Armagh. in. I’ll say, You are the
worst thing I know. I
How I love to drift off as I did all through boyhood can’t breathe around you.
into the daze of my birthright as a person, even if back then The world is more than
this inwardness felt like thieving liverwurst sandwiches one should this. I am more than you.
leave on the platter for the hardworking women, the men Put on your black coat,
we’re going out. And
who need all the more to be propped up on the shillelagh we’ll go out. We’ll ride
of animal protein. I myself was satisfied reclining on the straw through the birch trees.
I share a name with all afternoon, festooned in the Boyne Valley I’ll tie her hands to my
of self-tillage, grazing millennia with the Bard of Armagh. coat or she would fall.
We’ll ride and yell and
The sun hums me awake again! Life is over half over. ride and yell and that’s
Spent in deference, as ever, to those with much more than me. the best of us anymore,
One can feed their grief or one can cook up ways to cover that’s the only time we
lack over with graciousness. Neither way will set you free breathe anymore. Maybe
raiders will come. It is
but one will keep you safer put. Death won’t embrace me almost spring. Raiders
frowning, or it might—but I heard a tune today, and felt an awe always come in spring,
only we who drift far from shore can, a beauty as if meant to save me when the ice changes
in the curragh of its moment, rowed by the Bard of Armagh. and the water on the bay
begins to move its vast
killer skin.

22 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

A photograph from the series After Anahit
by Ece Gökalp, whose work is on view this
month at Foam, in Amsterdam.

© The artist. Courtesy the artist and Foam, Amsterdam READINGS 23

“This brilliant book was like taking “Bernard Harcourt’s creative and
a walk through US history with a courageous vision of a flexible
good (and smart!) friend by my cooperation democracy takes us far
side. ... I truly enjoyed reading this “[A] unique and often heart- beyond the toxic impasse between
book and recommend it to all who wrenching collaboration ... conservative deregulation and
care about our democracy and the reporting is consistently liberal administrative state policies!
where it is going.” fine-grained, evocative, and ... His marvelous book is badly
—Terri Givens, author of insightful. It’s a fitting testament needed in our decadent times!”
Radical Empathy to the value of local journalism.” —Cornel West
—Publishers Weekly

“Assignment China is an engaging “As a sophisticated observer and

way to view the changing and influential participant in urban policy
evolving relationship between the “Patrick Charles sheds light on the making, McGahey makes a powerful
United States and China ... historical origins of the gun debate, case that inequality hampers and
a real treat to read.” drawing on painstaking archival warps urban economic development
—Middle East Monitor research and challenging received and offers fruitful insights as to its
wisdom about the historical role of sources and possible remedies.”
the ‘gun lobby.’ This book is essential —John Mollenkopf, coeditor of
reading for anyone seeking to Unsettled Americans
understand the balance of gun rights
COLUMBIA and regulation in the United States.”
UNIVERSITY —Joseph Blocher, coauthor
PRESS The Positive Second Amendment CUP.COLUMBIA.EDU
 E S S A Y

DOCTOR’S ORDERS
COVID-19 and the new science wars
By Jason Blakely

A
t the height of the COVID-19 gloves stood beside others wearing had set off the fire alarm in a nation-
pandemic, it was not unusual no mask at all— or else letting their size movie theater: one half of the
to enter common spaces across mandatory face coverings slouch audience vacated their seats in
the United States—grocery stores, flaccidly beneath their chins. As muted panic while the rest defiantly
malls, office buildings—and experi- protests broke out both for and continued to eat their popcorn.
ence a kind of perceptual whiplash. against various public health mea- The pandemic laid bare the extent
People wearing N-95 masks and latex sures intended to combat the spread to which Americans occupy a split re-
of the virus, this polarization went ality. From within the credentialed
Jason Blakely is an associate professor of po- beyond policy decisions concerning classes, the demos appears increasingly
litical science at Pepperdine University and
the author of We Built Reality: How So- mandates and lockdowns to ques- and disturbingly resistant to rational
cial Science Infiltrated Culture, Politics, tions of medical fact and expert au- argument and evidence, with rowdy
and Power. thority. It was as if the authorities populist movements undermining at

Photographs from the series The Masks We Wear by Benjamin Lowy © The artist ESSAY 25
every turn the response to an un- guage animals,” dwelling in worlds of sciences, theories and ideas have the
precedented public health emergency. signification. Our linguistic capacity al- potential to radically transform soci-
But from within these populist lows for cultural change to occur far ety itself by becoming part of our
camps, it seems that many Ameri- more rapidly than the pace of natural identities, practices, and institutions.
cans have been blindly following— history. Even as the biological basis of What was first articulated as a de-
or worse, knowingly supporting—an our species remains stable, human life is scription of the social world becomes
undemocratic regime intent on im- characterized by epochal shifts in a kind of script or map for reorganiz-
posing its values under cover of sci- meaning that can render Homo sapiens ing human life.
entific neutrality. In this view, the utterly alien to one another. In popular psychology, millions
pandemic was just the latest excuse This accounts for the central dif- of individuals have been taught to
for this regime to advance its tech- ference between the natural sciences perceive aff lictions like anxiety,
nocratic agenda; often, resisting
that agenda meant rejecting technical
expertise entirely.
The result is that American de-
mocracy and scientific authority are
suffering parallel crises of credibility,
each standing accused by the other.
This twofold crisis has many causes,
among them political polarization
and the spread of misinformation on
social media, as well as long-standing
antirationalist religious traditions and
anti-intellectual strains in American
business and culture. None of these
factors should be minimized when at-
tempting to understand America’s
widespread antiscientific sentiment.
But they need to be supplemented by
another, far less widely acknowl-
edged, fount of skepticism— one that
requires contending with what the
populist view gets right: scientific ex-
pertise has encroached on domains in
which its methods are unsuited to ad-
dressing, let alone resolving, the issue
at hand.
The overextension of scientific
authority—or scientism—has become
so ubiquitous that it now hides in plain
sight, influencing every sphere of
American life from policing and eco-
nomics to dating and psychology. In-
creasingly, Americans must contend
with the confusing noise of conflicting
models and theories all claiming the
talismanic power of “science.” Like and those that analyze human be- depression, and ADHD as the result
prescientific peoples, we have grown havior. In the natural sciences, the of chemical imbalances. Political
accustomed to the existence of our object of study (say, COVID-19) ex- and religious alienation is sidelined
own shamans and wizards. ists independently of any attempt to as people begin to treat themselves as
describe it scientifically. In the social “wet computers.” In the study of

T
o identify the peculiar pattern of sciences, by contrast, where the ob- criminal justice, the “broken win-
pseudoscientific authority in jects of study involve human behav- dows” theory justified zero-tolerance
American life, a few key anthro- ior and psychology, the descriptions policies for misdemeanors, alongside
pological insights must first be estab- being offered can penetrate our self- the militarization of policing in
lished. Humans are meaning-making understanding and build new reali- American cities. The theory of
creatures, and our practices, institu- ties. A t heor y of t he pla nets “democratic peace,” meanwhile,
tions, and entire social lives are expres- (whether accurate or not) does not was used by the second Bush Ad-
sive of our beliefs. As the philosopher alter the paths or locations of those ministration to legitimize the war
Charles Taylor has put it, we are “lan- heavenly bodies, but in the social on terror.

26 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023 Photographs from the series The Detritus of Disease by Benjamin Lowy © The artist
 There are many more examples of with egalitarian and social-democratic ciency. Often this meant privatizing
such theories infiltrating and shap- aims—could be deemed unrealistic, as and contracting out public-sector ben-
ing modern societies, but one that’s demonstrated by running the data efits. Similarly, government agencies
crucial to consider in light of the cri- through the proper models. were redesigned to create incentive
sis of scientific authority during the In popular discourse, the econ- structures that matched those of the
pandemic is the governing regime omy was portrayed as a bundle of private market, as with school vouch-
that formed around the economic accountancy measures. These in- ers. In this way, economic models
“sciences.” As this system was codi- cluded indicators like the stock ushered in a new society that increas-
fied over the past fifty years, its market and consumer price indexes, ingly resembled neoclassical models
boosters often drew on the prestige gross domestic product, and the un- of economic rationality.
of neoclassical economics and its employment rate. Other indices were But by appealing to a science of
human behavior to justify their rede-
sign of American life, the free-
market economists not only ensured
a backlash to their policy ideas, they
bolstered skepticism about scientific
authority as such. Following the
2008 financial crisis, large numbers
of Americans on both the left and
the right strenuously rejected the
preexisting policy consensus even as
the political establishment insisted
that this consensus still offered the
only rational path forward. One way
to understand the force of today’s
populist movements is as an expres-
sion of the conviction that the experts
who dominated American politics at
the time of the crash did not know
what they were doing after all.
Regardless of whether such politi-
cal mobilizations are ethically desir-
able, or even coherent, they have
brought to the fore a critical question
about the way policy decisions are
made: Are they, as experts claim,
straightforward responses to the
data, dictated solely by numbers? Or
do they contain world-making proj-
ects? Too often this question has
been neglected in discussions about
governance during the pandemic.

F
rom their very emergence, the
social sciences have often been
pictured as a realm of “facts,”
highly abstract models of human so- rarely considered as part of the distinct from the realm of “values.” A
ciety, as structured by the rational economy—the number of evictions locus classicus for this idea is the Ger-
decisions of Homo economicus. and the poverty rate went ignored, as man sociologist Max Weber, who ex-
The supposed scientific basis of did measures of ecological devasta- pressed the still-widespread view that
neoclassical economics was instru- tion and quality of life for wage work- the social sciences were about descrip-
mental in the ascent of economists ers. Uncountable goods were omitted tion and explanation, disavowing any
to the highest levels of government from the scientific description of the ethical or ideological commitments.
and the private sector. These wonks economy, as were questions of justice, Weber believed that the vocation
presented their account of “the econ- exploitation, and greed. of the social scientist should be
omy” as a surefire formula for prosper- Like EKG machines in a hospital, sharply distinguished from that of
ity and efficiency. There was a these accountancy measures were said the politician. Yet the very attempt
rational way to build an economy, to capture brute data about the health to construct value-neutral scientific
and there were irrational ones. Entire of American society, which lawmakers authority over the organization of so-
policy possibilities— often associated used to enact a policy regime of effi- cial life inspired a new class of

ESSAY 27
experts—managers in both govern- not avail itself of this knowledge is tics; it moves at the speed of data.”
ment and the private sector—who choosing ignorance. Psaki and other officials who helped
claimed to offer policy prescriptions But throughout the pandemic this justify the government’s approach
grounded in empirical fact. science has been used not merely to seemed to ignore the idea that some
One of the ironies of modern life inform the public but also to legislate American communities might have
is that these self-proclaimed scien- policy from the top down. Who can goods that rivaled those heralded by
tific authorities have never spoken in forget those charts and graphs with the government in the name of
one voice. Unlike in the natural sci- color-coded levels of emergency? The “health.” For all their virtues, nei-
ences, where there exists a certain facts and figures on these charts were ther epidemiology nor social science
amount of theoretical consensus usually scientifically legitimate, but can establish what is significant or
within which to stage disagreements, public officials spoke as if the models worthy of risk and sacrifice. The sci-
there is no shared framework, con- could automatically trigger particular ences as a whole are impotent be-
ceptual language, or paradigm rec- policies. If a numerical measure fore this question.
ognized by all or even most social reached a level of emergency, “science”

I
scientists. To the contrary, there has dictated the appropriate response. In nvoking science and data to re-
been a ceaseless multiplication of ri- this way, descriptive epidemiology was solve ethical and ideological con-
val and largely incompatible sciences invoked to justify the closure of troversies obscures the values and
of human behavior: stimulus re- schools, places of worship, businesses, interests of particular groups and poli-
sponse, sociobiology, rational choice and other vital institutions. cymakers. Anyone governing in the
theory, various structuralisms, many The first thing to note about such name of data is still making judg-
attempts at socioneuroscience, and policies is that they are prone to the ments. When the Italian philosopher
so on. These human sciences present kinds of social-scientific distortions Giorgio Agamben suggested that
a patchwork of conflicting claims to discussed above, even though they emergency dictates reflected that the
epistemic supremacy. The unpleasant seem to emerge from the “hard” sci- governing ethic in Western societies
truth is that any given social scien- ence of biology. They are not acts had become “bare life, and the fear of
tific attempt to offer a predictive of description but accounts of the losing it,” thereby reflecting a politics
theory has always appeared patently way humans ought to behave under that “values nothing more than sur-
inadequate to those working in rival given circumstances. And they vival,” he was criticized for reckless-
research programs. are— like all human endeavors— ness. Yet he rightly intuited that
The inability to found any disci- fallible; it will be many years before much of the expert response to the
pline of social science akin to one of we know which of these policies pandemic was shaped by an unstated
the natural sciences is a key feature achieved their desired effects. vision of what human life was ulti-
of the spread of scientism in the But even to the extent that they mately about. The assertion made by
modern world. And the prestige of were perfectly successful on their officials that the pandemic simply dic-
the natural sciences is often bor- own terms, these policies entailed tated certain policy responses was a
rowed by those seeking to exercise balancing conflicting interests. The way of suppressing underlying ethical
authority over the organization of so- closing of a school, for example, and political disagreements.
ciety. The result is that theories pre- meant one thing to a child with In this way, “the pandemic” served
sented to the public as “scientific” are nowhere else to go during the day or a governing function not unlike “the
in fact enacting a particular social a parent whose job had been deemed economy.” There was a bid— albeit
and political agenda. Sometimes pol- “essential,” and another thing to a never fully successful—at creating a
icymakers draw on research devel- teacher living with a vulnerable fam- social object to scientifically over-
oped in the academy that they have ily member— or for that matter, to a come ideological conflict in Ameri-
distorted beyond recognition. person with no immediate contact can politics. A cost-benefit analysis
Epidemiology largely involves for- with the school system. Discerning was then presented as securing a set
mulating natural scientific claims the public good amid this array of of outcomes—namely, the reduction
about the spread of diseases. A the- individual interests is an unmistak- of viral spread and the preservation of
ory that attempts to describe a virus ably political act—it is, in fact, the life. Newspapers put COVID dash-
will not change the virus’s structure political act par excellence. boards on their home pages, with
or affect the mechanics of how it is Nonetheless, when public officials new infections, hospitalizations, and
spread. Epidemiology’s propositions were challenged on these policies, deaths replacing daily stock tickers,
are therefore often straightforwardly they routinely insisted that they monthly unemployment reports, and
(even if provisionally) descriptive, would not let “politics” dictate their quarterly GDP updates. Readers
and these descriptions are invaluable decisions. As President Joe Biden’s could check in each morning to see
in illuminating a disease’s symptoms, press secretary Jen Psaki put it in re- how the pandemic was doing. These
transmission, severity, diagnosis, and sponse to a question about the ad- charts tabulated lives and infections,
prevention, among other factors. In- ministration’s mask policy, officials but what about anxiety, depression,
deed, there is no rational alternative would simply “listen to the data, lis- learning loss, and social isolation? Or
to scientific authority in this domain, ten to the science.” Data, she said, what of those goods which are un-
and a political community that does “doesn’t move at the speed of poli- countable and not easily subject to

28 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

rational calculation, like the health tion, and friendship overriding the Pandemic- era governing involved
of democracy, ordinary camaraderie risk of physical harm. top-down decrees and little dialogue
with family and friends, or commu- with ordinary people. Town halls

T
nal spiritual practices? o cover questions of interpre- and assemblies, traditionally the
Sometimes the pandemic was spe- tation and significance with arenas of such deliberations, were
cifically linked to the older governing the curtain of data is to recruit themselves controversial from a
fiction of the economy. In California, the authority of science in a way that public-health perspective. The move
Governor Gavin Newsom ordered that ultimately undermines it. This dy- away from such forms of participatory
churches not conduct in-person wor- namic serves to explain not only the democracy has been a long-standing
ship during the 2020 lockdown, while increase in antiscience skepticism dur- feature of our technocratic age, but
various businesses, including film stu- ing the pandemic, but also the prolif- the pandemic alarmingly accelerated
dios, were permitted to reopen. These eration and resonance of dangerous it. Democracy itself was—with little
businesses, it was argued, were simply conspiracy theories—for example, debate—deemed too dangerous.
too vital to the economy. Evidently, that the COVID-19 vaccines were be- The difficult truth is that scien-
some values—in this case economic ing used by Bill Gates to inject mi- tists, doctors, and other public
productivity—superseded even that of crochips into the population. Some health experts are on the same level
bare life. What remained the same was infected Americans went to their as ordinary citizens when it comes to
the way that politicians and other deaths insisting that they couldn’t thinking through questions of politi-
authorities cloaked ethical and ideo- possibly be sick with the virus. In a cal and ethical significance. Sci-
logical aims in theories that claimed telling contradiction, these patients ence offers them no special insight
the authority of fact. entrusted themselves to the medical or authority in this domain. There
The implied message was that care and authority of the very science is no science that can determine
business of the right kind was worth they obstinately rejected, insisting what is meaningful, no way for ex-
risking illness and even life for, perts to quantify what values we
while the worship of God, or the ought to prioritize. Likewise, no
observance of funerals, weddings, one culture is simply scientific and
and baptisms, was not. “We al- POLITICIANS CLOAKED rational. Rather, a plurality of ethi-
lowed thousands of people to die ETHICAL AND IDEOLOGICAL AIMS cal and political positions can avail
alone,” the Yale sociologist and IN THEORIES THAT CLAIMED themselves of the latest science.
physician Nicholas Christakis The philosopher Hans-Georg
said. “We buried people by Zoom.” THE AUTHORITY OF FACT Gadamer observed that the chief
Yet the filming of movies and tele- tasks of a humanistic approach to
vision shows went on. That fall, it politics are, first, to guard against
was revealed that Newsom’s children from their deathbeds that their afflic- “the idolatry of scientific method,”
were attending a private school that tion must be something else— some and second, to return to ordinary
was exempt from the shutdown, at a other virus, some other illness. people “the noblest task of the
time when many Californian parents Such a rejection of science was citizen— decision-making according
were forced to juggle jobs and online both personally and politically disas- to one’s own responsibility.” Scientism
schooling. The following month, the trous, but it’s worth asking what produces a discourse of mere facts that
governor was outed for violating his lessons we can take from the fact are in no need of interpretation. Poli-
own safety guidelines to celebrate a that rich governors joined their tics and social life are supposedly cap-
birthday party at the upscale restau- friends to celebrate posh birthday tured in a single privileged, scientific
rant French Laundry. dinners while other citizens tried language, while other moral and ideo-
These facts reinforced the populist to magically think their way out of logical vocabularies are muted. It is
sense that governance in the name COVID-19. One clue emerges from revealing how many of the conspiracy
of science was an ideological sleight of anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories, theories now plaguing American life
hand—a tactic for controlling some which often argued that the virus ape a certain confused vision of sci-
groups while allowing others greater was an invention of a particular ence in which the vastly intricate,
freedom. At the very least, the ten- political elite’s will to power. This ambiguous, and confusing phenomena
sions between Newsom’s private and was a version of the argument of the world are explained by a single
public actions showed that personal Agamben made, albeit in more ab- underlying structure. Against the
notions of significance always come struse language, in his controver- overreach of experts, certain segments
into play when humans are navigat- sial dispatches: that the state had of the populous have created a dop-
ing difficult ethical and political de- been overtaken by a “medical reli- pelgänger of science, with its own hy-
cisions. Even the highest officials gion” amounting to “technological- potheses and theories.
governing on behalf of “bare life” sanitationist despotism.” Where scientism reinforces hierar-
seemed to experience a complex Conspiracy theories have their chies, a more humanistic and sensitive
conf lict of meanings— the plea- unsound, foolish, and even wicked approach instead sees that all humans
sures of affirming ordinary life, dimensions, but they may also con- are in the same existential predica-
companionship, education, celebra- tain seeds of political resistance. ment. We are all trying to achieve

ESSAY 29
clarity on which sources offer our lives cult questions posed by a pandemic scientists agree that mask mandates
meaning. These meanings cannot be require an exchange of ideas in a com- were an appropriate response to the
empirically verified, and they are always munity local enough to give all citi- pandemic, retrospective data offers a
contested. There is no set of facts that zens an opportunity to participate. decidedly mixed picture of the bene-
determines the course of political life. The turn away from scientism would fits of these mandates. This is not a
mean a return to such dialogue. failure on science’s part. As a society

C
onsider the mass protests that Given the heterogeneity of Ameri- we were dealing with difficult choices
followed the murder of George can cities and states, it seems unlikely that needed to be made in real time
Floyd during the first wave of that such a process would yield a one- with limited information. But when
the pandemic. After months of social size-fits-all policy narrative about pan- the authority of science is misused to
distancing and restrictive lockdown demics and other emergencies. Different make such choices seem easy, sci-
policies, millions of people took to the communities, allowed to debate what ence’s credibility inevitably suffers.
street, marching shoulder to shoulder. they wish to balance against risks of

U
Soon after the protests began, hundreds health, life, and prosperity, might come nable to reach any kind of dem-
of medical experts and public-health to different conclusions. In a compara- ocratic consensus, Americans
officials signed a letter expressing con- tively young community with many largely faked their way through
tinued opposition to “protests against families, children, and teenagers, men- the early stages of the pandemic. Some
stay-home orders” while citing the tal health or education might be given fraudulently claimed conspiratorial
“lethal” threat that white supremacy greater consideration. In another com- knowledge in order to challenge scien-
posed to the “health specifically of munity, with a disproportionate num- tific expertise. Others disguised their
Black people” as justification for these ber of elderly residents, precautions preference for the preservation of bare
particular protests. against viral spread might receive life or for economic growth as the con-
But the protests were not a public- more emphasis. A community with sequence of inarguable scientific find-
health action. They were a public many religious members might allow ings, and denounced all dissenters as
expression of an urgently felt moral a wider range of risks in the name of irrational and immoral.
outrage. The need for such expression worship, while another whose identity Many have seen the pandemic as a
in that moment may well have stems from entrepreneurialism or ac- forerunner to a much darker and
trumped the need for social distanc- tivism might aspire to accommodate more devastating global crisis. The
ing; regardless, it wasn’t for those those interests instead. All Americans next catastrophe—very possibly eco-
health authorities to determine. Their would need to wrestle with what de- logical in nature—may be far more
effort to reconcile a political action of mocracy demands in the face of a destructive. Averting such a crisis
which they approved and the pan- plague. Whatever their answers, they will require listening with careful
demic regime they took it as their job would not be decided independently humility to scientists and scientific
to enforce sent a simple message: the by scientific experts. authority. Science’s role as adviser
rules apply when we want them to. Presumably, this kind of delibera- and counselor, keeping the demos in
“You are entitled to your own opin- tion would also weigh questions of contact with reality, is irreplaceable.
ion,” goes the saying often attributed infrastructure, stress on regional hos- At the same time, American soci-
to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, one of pitals, and the density of popula- ety long ago allowed major institu-
the past century’s most notorious tions. Once again, science would tions to be governed by scientism. If
technocrats, “but not your own facts.” play an essential advisory role but the wonks and data evangelists do
It is a common— and justified— would enjoy no special status. To the not have their power curbed, the
complaint that today’s populist move- contrary, what is needed to conduct country could descend into a battle
ments deal in “alternative facts.” But such policy discussions is what inter- over whose values trump whose.
it must also be said that today’s scien- pretive social scientists call “local Such a turn would signal not only
tistic administrators seem less and less knowledge” and “thick description.” the end of democracy in America,
inclined to allow people even their The only way to understand the pri- but also the imposition of an alien
own opinions. Instead, they treat “the orities of a given community is to notion of life on those who no longer
facts” as largely determining what become fluent in the stories its mem- recognize themselves in the govern-
counts as acceptable opinion. bers tell—through both their words ment that presides over them.
One of the gravest errors of gover- and their actions— about how they Prioritizing democratic dialogue
nance during the pandemic was that live and wish to continue living. and shifting away from top-down
ordinary people were not heard. In- Finally, this dialogue would allow policymaking will not be easy. In a
stead, they were informed of the scien- for the possibility that at any given society as large and as varied as ours,
tifically rational policy and, if they moment scientific consensus may be there will always be the temptation
protested, lectured into compliance. wrong, even within those spheres to outsource contentious decisions to
Total confinement of the sort practiced where it rightly claims authority. supposedly neutral authorities. But if
in the first months of the pandemic is This is a truth that scientists them- we want to stand a chance of weath-
not an option in a real democracy. selves embrace, though it will not fit ering the next crisis better than we
Even if meetings need to take place on an in this house we believe have this one, we’ll need to learn to
outdoors, deliberations over the diffi- lawn sign. For example, while most trust ourselves. Q

30 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

 F R O M T H E A R C H I V E

1 9 8 0

THE MOURNFUL OBSERVER

%\(UZLQ&KDUJDɲ

I t is my impression that the modern

phase of science and of scholarship
began with the rise of the bourgeoisie.
be reduced; a galloping expertitis,
degree- and prestige-drunk; the general
persuasion that anything new auto-
think tanks around, our politicians
need do nothing but meet the press.
Meanwhile we are being told that
Here exploring and exploiting became matically depose anything old—these for this nation to stay on top, it must
synonymous, and the collection of agents have caused scholarship nearly have the newest knowledge, the best
knowledge another form of the accu- to vanish after having been in a decline science—that this would make it re-
mulation of capital; experts became for what must amount to the past one spected and even loved. Maybe so,
Consols, through which knowledge hundred years. although I always thought that he
was invested in order to bear high and who declared he wanted to be loved
perpetual interest. Just as bonds were
deposited with bankers, knowledge
could be stored in special brains, to
I n our times, all intellectual activi-
ties, all sciences, have become spec-
tator sports, and the interest of the
was unlovely, and he who wanted to
dominate was mediocre.
In truth, the low quality of our writ-
be called upon, when needed, by the public is limited to knowing which ing and of our art cannot be redeemed
entrepreneur. Now knowledge by courses in art appreciation or
was not just power—but power in the interpretation of poetry.
infinitely augmentable. Dr. Dryasdust will not become
Universities began to function more imaginative when sprin-
as knowledge factories and to ne- kled with small amounts of pub-
glect their real task, the education lic money. Academic chaff of all
of the young; they became mere sorts—cultural, scientific—is be-
bureaus for the issuance of profes- ing ground to powder day and
sional licenses. The faded aureole night. Blake spoke of the “dark
of the scholar may still encircle the Satanic Mills,” but now that we
hapless heads of the searchers for have unlimited nuclear energy,
scientific truth, but the real sub- they are illuminated brightly and
stance vanished long ago. Thus the are doubly satanic. To say it in
old dispute about the relative value Diabolese, If the old knowledge
of a Madonna and a cabbage as the has failed, new knowledge will
painter’s subject does not pose itself to fighter will slay which bull, and to make us happy. Let us make it by the
the scientist: he finds what he finds. hoping secretly that it will be the ton, for wisdom is cheaper wholesale.
His rise and his institutionalization other way around. Had we been told In this connection I must make a
as specialist, expert, professional has in the newspapers that relativity had horrible confession. I have been a scien-
driven out and made impossible what revealed Dr. Einstein, we should have tist all my life. But in my waking hours
used to be considered scholarship, and been satisfied equally. I still live under the Ptolemaic system;
mankind has thereby been made all the For ours is about the most ignorant Copernicus leaves me cold; the sun rises
poorer. I should find it difficult to define age that can be imagined. I should like every morning. Of course I know that
the period in which this process of to see our leading statesmen subjected the earth rotates around the sun and
encapsulation—the scholar making to a simple placement exam like the one that the Darwinian scheme of evolution
way for the specialist—began. The cap- given to the witless applicants for the is correct; but my scientific work would
ture and circumscription of all intel- New York police force. Even the most not in the least have been affected had
lectual activities; a misunderstood and disillusioned of ancients would shud- it been performed on a flat and station-
misapplied scientism; a crude reduc- der at the result, for he would hardly ary earth and with organisms produced
tionism applied to what in fact cannot accept the excuse that with so many according to the gospel of Lamarck. Q

From “Knowledge Without Wisdom,” which appeared in the May 1980 issue of Harper’s Magazine. The complete article—along with the maga-
zine’s entire 173-year archive—is available online at harpers.org/archive.

ARCHIVE 31
F O L I O

WHO WALKS
ALWAYS BESIDE YOU?
A disappearance in Arkansas
By Benjamin Hale

T wenty-two years ago, a six-year-old girl—my

cousin— got lost in the Arkansas Ozarks,
famous Arkansas landmark, continue on to
another vista, atop a small waterfall, head back
prompting what was at the time the largest to the cabin, eat lunch, then drive a short
search and rescue mission in the state’s his- distance down the mountain to meet up with
tory. Her disappearance would eventually a larger group at the Upper Buffalo Wilder-
connect my family to another story, a dark ness trailhead for an easy guided hike, hosted
and bizarre one involving kidnapping, brain- by the Newton County Wildlife Association,
washing, murder, and a cult that believed in to see the mountain wildflowers then in full
the imminent end of the world, laced with the springtime bloom. They left the cabin for the
k i nd of eer ie coi ncidences or ne a r- first hike around ten-thirty in the morning.
coincidences that cause perfectly rational The wildflower hike was set to begin at one in
people to question what they think they the afternoon.
know about reality. I should tell you a few things about these
On Sunday, April 29, 2001, Jay and Joyce people, and about Arkansas. I grew up in
Hale, my father’s older brother and his wife, Colorado, but both sides of my family are from
took their granddaughter, Haley Zega— the Arkansas. My parents met in the Seventies at
only child of their only child— on a day trip the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. My
to the Buffalo National River Wilderness in father grew up in a tiny town in the Ozarks
Newton County, Arkansas, in the heart of the called Horseshoe Bend; my mother’s parents
Ozark Mountains. Jay was sixty-two years old, were from Paris, Arkansas, where her father
Joyce fifty-seven, and Haley six. That morn- was a coal miner for a time, and they retired in
ing, Jay and Joyce had driven from their home Rogers, just north of Fayetteville. Jay and Joyce
in Pea Ridge to that of their daughter, Kelly, lived about twenty minutes from Rogers on
and her husband, Steve Zega, in Fayetteville, twenty-five acres of wooded land near Pea
picked up Haley, and continued for about an Ridge that the family nicknamed Hale Holler,
hour and a half to a cabin on Cave Mountain, where they had the office and machine shop
where a few others joined them: a lifelong that they ran their engineering business out of,
friend of Jay’s named Claibourne Bass, and their house, and another house they built for
another couple. The plan for the day was to Jay and my father’s mother. Usually when
take a short hike down to Hawksbill Crag, a people say they built a house they mean they
had it built, but the verb is literal in their case.
Benjamin Hale is the author of a novel, The Evo- Jay also built motorcycles and guns, and got
lution of Bruno Littlemore, and a story collec- started on an airplane, and he invented the
tion, The Fat Artist and Other Stories. This paintball gun (originally intended as an agri-
essay is the first in a series supported by the John
Templeton Foundation. cultural tool for marking trees and cattle), but

Collages by Jen Renninger. Source images: Cave Mountain Church © Tim Ernst; map of
Haley’s route © Tim and Pam Ernst; map of Hawksbill Crag Trail © Danny Hale; Haley
on the Hawksbill Crag Trail, April 29, 2001. Courtesy Kelly Hale Syer; Hawksbill Crag
trailhead © Danny Hale; clipping from The Madison County Record, May 4, 1978 FOLIO 33
never saw any profit from it—a good story in it- informed the government would be building a
self. The house he and Joyce built for my grand- lake on top of their houses, and then the great
mother had a pneumatic elevator in it; in fact solution the conservationists came up with was
the elevator was the only way of moving be- to make it all government land, which meant
tween the first and second floors, and I was a they had to move anyway. There are longstand-
little heartsick when, after my grandmother ing tensions between local residents and the
died, they had to replace it with stairs to get the government, which they regard as meddlesome,
building up to code to rent it. untrustworthy, and incompetent. Keep that in
Most of my fond childhood memories of Arkan- mind for later.

T
sas happened in Hale Holler: walking in the woods
with Jay and Joyce, walking in the woods by my-
self, catching crawdads in the creek that ran his story begins on top of Cave Mountain,
through the property with my brother James and which is traversable by one narrow dirt road:
our cousin Ike. Anything else you need to know? Cave Mountain Road, which turns off of Ar-
That my grandmother taught me how to play kansas Highway 21 just north of a bridge over
poker, and my Uncle Jay taught me how to shoot the Buffalo River, and winds southwest up the
a gun? That Joyce baked the cake for the wedding mountain and back down the other side to
(well, one of them) of Alice Walton, the princess Arkansas State Highway 16. The Hawksbill
of Nor t hwe st Crag trailhead
Arkansas’s local sits at about the
royal family? I highest poi nt
should probably on the road, and
also mention that the trail leads
my father was HALEY SAT DOWN ON A from the road
born when my into the woods
grandmother was ROCK AND REFUSED TO MOVE. down the moun-
in her forties, by tain a little way
far the baby of SHE WAS BEING CHILDISH. to a fork. I f
the family—Jay you’re coming
is nearly twenty SHE WAS A CHILD from the trail-
years older than head, the right
him. I think it tine of the fork
also helps to leads a short dis-
know that Jay tance to a creek
and Joyce have been politically engaged and civic- and a small waterfall, where the creek you just
minded people all their lives; Jay served as a vol- hopscotched across spills over the shelf of the
unteer firefighter in Benton County and even ran bluff, and you can stand at the top of the wa-
for office a few times. Kelly’s husband, Steve—who terfall and take in a magnificent view of the
a few years after all this happened was one of many Buffalo River valley. The tine on the left
National Guardsmen sent to Iraq—served as a leads along the bluff overlooking the valley,
justice of the peace for nine years.1 and from there it’s about half a mile to
I should also emphasize the extreme rusticity Hawksbill Crag: a dramatic arrow of rock jut-
of the area where Jay and Joyce went hiking with ting into the air a hundred feet above the for-
their friends and granddaughter that day. The est below. This is the thing you have probably
entire population of Newton County is about come to see, or rather the majestic view of
seven thousand. There used to be more people the valley visible while standing on it, as your
living in the Buffalo River valley; in the Sixties friend takes a picture of you. The path con-
the Army Corps of Engineers drew up plans to tinues on, hugging the crest of the bluff, get-
dam the river for a hydroelectric plant that would ting narrower, rockier, and scarier. When I
displace much of the populace, but local conser- hiked it in mid-December, there were points
vationists rallied against it, instead allowing the along the way that looked so precarious —in a
National Park Service to acquire the land in 1972 few places you have to walk through small
and convert it into the Buffalo National River streams over slippery rocks at the very edge
Wilderness, now a protected area. Basically: at of the cliff—that I thought it safer to bush-
first the few people who lived in that valley were whack a little farther up the mountain, cross
the stream at a less deathly place, and bush-
1
Steve and Kelly remained together for more than a de- whack back down to the trail. I was glad
cade after these events, but they have since divorced
and married other people. For coherence’s sake I refer none of the friends I grew up hiking Colora-
to them as husband and wife throughout, with my apol- do’s mountains with were there to see me,
ogies to them and to their current spouses. but I felt like less of a coward for detouring

34 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

around the diciest-looking spots when I later Everyone started back up the trail the way they’d
learned of the local notoriety of this trail’s come, but Haley was steaming with jealousy.
treacherousness—google “Hawksbill Crag + fall + Child and grownups were at an impasse: Haley
death” and you’ll get a sense: a death every few wanted to see the waterfall, but it was time to go.
years, most recently in 2019 and 2016. As it She sat down on a rock at the top of the waterfall
winds north and east along the bluff, the trail and refused to move. She said she wanted to be
gets thinner and thinner, less and less there, un- carried. She was being difficult. She was being
til it comes to a tree stump with a metal private childish. She was a child.
property—no trespassing sign fixed to it, and Joyce told the others to go on ahead back to
a muddy laminated piece of paper I found lying the cabin and fix lunch—she would stay behind
facedown in the leaf litter beside it that reads and deal with the kid problem. The others headed
back up the trail, though Clay stayed behind to
NOTICE TO HIKERS: keep Joyce company. Now it was three: Joyce,
This trail DEAD ENDS
Clay, and Haley on the rock, unbudging.
at Private Property ahead. After many minutes of Joyce’s exhortations had
failed, Joyce and Clay resorted to the nuclear op-
It DOES NOT loop back to the trailhead! tion of getting a child to do something she doesn’t
In order to return to the trailhead you need to
want to do: play upon the fear of abandonment.
turn around and hike back out the same way “She was sitting there and pouting,” Joyce says,
that you came in. “and I said, You sit right there so I can tell your
mother where you are when she comes to get you.
If you proceed in this direction you will get We’re going. Huff, huff.”
lost, and will hike farther than you need to. Then: walk out of sight and wait. You have to
Thanks! wait kind of a while, because if this trick is going
to work, it has to work the first time. If you go
I picked up the laminated paper, wiped some mud back too soon, she’ll know you’re bluffing. And
off of it, pinned it to the metal sign, and that’s as eventually, Haley came—begrudgingly, defeated,
far as I went. saddest, angriest little girl in the world, her mood
On that April morning in 2001, Jay and Joyce probably spoiled for the rest of the day, lunch and
and their friends did not come to Hawksbill Crag beautiful meadow full of wildflowers tainted with
as most hikers do, from the direction of the trail- a petulant drop of poison. But she came.
head; they came the back way from the cabin, Good—we have movement. Clay and Joyce
beside the private property that sign is warning continued up the trail until they were again out
you not to trespass on. They set out from the of sight, stopped, and waited. Haley, again, daw-
cabin—owned by a retired anesthesiologist called dling, eyes downcast, face leaden with despair,
Doc Chester—hiked south and west on the scrag- emerged. Clay and Joyce continued up the trail
gly footpath that becomes the Hawksbill Crag around the next bend, stopped, and waited.
Trail, oohed and aahed atop Hawskbill Crag, then A long time passed.
continued along the bluff to the fork and reached Joyce told Clay to go ahead and join the others.
their terminus at the top of the waterfall. She was going to have to go down there and drag
Now, a waterfall is majestic to behold, but only Haley back by a rope or something. Clay left.
if you’re standing at the bottom of it. Apparently Joyce went back.
there is a way of scrambling down the rocks on Haley was gone.

H
the other side of the creek to see the waterfall,
and another way that involves climbing down a
certain tree on the lower shelf that you can get aving seen the place, I am still a bit baffled
to from the upper one (that’s the way Jay got as to how Haley got so lost so fast. At the fork in
down that day), either of which is for the the trail, one way goes to the waterfall, one leads
advanced-level hiker only, which Jay certainly along the top of the bluff to Hawksbill Crag, and
was, and six-year-old Haley certainly was not. one leads across the creek and up the mountain
Jay made it down to the lower shelf to the bot- to the trailhead on the road. Granted, I saw it in
tom of the waterfall, saw it, and climbed back winter, when the nakedness of the trees affords
up, while everyone else stayed on top, resting much more visibility. They were there at the
and taking in the view. It was about a quarter height of spring, when the leaf cover makes
to noon. Hiking to the crag and the waterfall dark, narrow corridors of the trails, and a shout
had taken a bit more time than they’d expected, only carries perhaps ten or fifteen feet.
and if they wanted to get back to the cabin, eat Joyce went back down the trail to the waterfall:
lunch, and make it to the group hike to see the no Haley. She did not even begin to tingle with
wildflowers, they had to get going ASAP, and panic until she hiked back up from the water-
make a little hay while the sun shined, too. fall and saw the fork. Was this fork in the trail

FOLIO 35
in-between the last place Haley had shown herself biometrics —six-year- old, forty-nine-pound
and the last place they had stopped to wait for female—along with a topographical map of the
her? She had thought they’d passed it, but now area, which the program somehow crunched to
she wasn’t sure. She turned left and went up arrive at the statistically optimal places to look.
the trail that leads to the trailhead, shouting By dusk two helicopters were thudding across the
her granddaughter’s name. From this moment valley. They would take off and land in an open
on, Haley’s name would be shouted in the field not far from the church, adjacent to the
woods by ever more and more mouths. Haley did private road that leads to the cabins from which
not appear to be on that part of the trail. Even- the hikers had set out for the bluff that morning.
tually Joyce ran into two hikers coming down At the end of that private road, Tim Ernst
from the trailhead. They had not seen a little lived in a house perched on the crest of the bluff.
girl on the trail. Ernst is a photographer, nature writer, and
Soon Joyce and those two hikers and, in a blogger—his blog and the house shared a name:
short while, Jay, Clay, and the other couple were Cloudland—and he opened his home to Steve
all spread out along the trail looking for Haley, and Kelly and others close to them for the next
wildflower plans now definitely scrapped, shouting two nights and days. Cloudland became the
her name into the thick, muffling foliage. second hub of the rescue mission, and Tim later

J
wrote and self-published a book about the ordeal,
The Search for Haley, which you should check out
oyce called 9-1-1 from Doc Chester’s cabin, if you want a much more detailed account of this
and before long, Cave Mountain Road —a part of the story.
rocky, muddy, badly rutted dirt track so narrow The following night, day, night, and day
that for most of its length, when two cars pass passed as you can probably imagine: sleeplessly—
each other, one driver has to stop and let the especially for Steve, Kelly, Jay, and Joyce—and
other carefully squeeze around —was clotted sick with terror; in logistical clusterfuck and gen-
with emergency vehicles rumbling up and down eral chaos; authorities scrambling to organize
the mountain. Haley’s parents, Steve and Kelly, everything; more and more volunteers showing
got there as fast as they could, joining the New- up to help and getting pissed off that they
ton County sheriff’s officers, police, other emer- weren’t allowed to do anything. Every civilian
gency workers, locals with no connection to my volunteer I talked to told me a version of the
family, and friends and relatives who had come same story: rushing up the mountain as soon as
from all over. I was a senior in high school at they could—many camping in tents or trailers,
the time, out in Lafayette, Colorado; after a as accommodations in the handful of cabins
sleepless Sunday night and a useless Monday quickly filled to capacity—and then “checking
with still no sign of her, my parents told me to in” with the authorities, who told them to wait.
take care of my brothers—five and fifteen years Many volunteers didn’t know my family; they
younger than me—while they took off in the were just locals who’d heard the news and had
car for Arkansas. Not far from the Hawksbill come to help. One of these was a sixty-four-year-
Crag trailhead is a cemetery and a tiny old man named Lytle James, who’d lived in the
church —and I mean tiny: Cave Mountain area all his life and frequently tracked and hunted
Church is basically a one-room box smaller in the Buffalo National River Wilderness. Lytle
than some wealthy people’s bathrooms I’ve seen, James was about as local a yokel as you could get.
with windows, a door, a pulpit, and two rows of (He has since died.) Sometime on Sunday after-
five pews. This church and its dirt parking lot noon, James went to the command center, offered
the authorities—there were so many organiza- his services, and was basically told to either go
tions and agencies present (sheriff, local police, away and let the professionals handle this or sit
state troopers, park rangers, the National and wait for the professionals to tell him what to
Guard—the full list runs two pages long) that I do. He hung around feeling useless for a while,
get them confused, so I have settled on the until he got frustrated and left.
catch-all “authorities”—turned into the “com- It so happened that Lytle James’s son, Vixen
mand center” where the many volunteers were James, served alongside Haley’s father in the
told to report. Arkansas National Guard. Steve and Vixen had
“As far as I can remember,” said Arthur Evans, been at their annual training at Fort Chaffee
a family friend who helped with the search, “the near Greenwood, Arkansas, when Steve learned
official searchers had all kinds of fancy stuff to that Haley was missing. Steve of course left right
find somebody in the woods, including a helicop- away. Soon after, Vixen and Wes Hilliard, a
ter with heat sensors that would, of course, mostly Guard chaplain, drove out to Cave Mountain,
be useful at night.” There were other “gizmos,” as arriving at Cloudland before nightfall. They
Art called them, including a computer program helped with the search on Monday, and that night
into which authorities plugged Haley’s they drove out to Vixen’s father’s house near

36 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

Mt. Sherman to shower. Lytle James told his son which “provides a support network to Arkansas
about trying to volunteer and almost as good as parents and families of missing children.” The
being told to go home. Vixen urged his father— Nick case had briefly blossomed into a media
who’d spent his life in that wilderness and knew obsession, especially in Northwest Arkansas.
it better than just about anyone, and besides was Kelly happened to be home on maternity leave
an expert hunter and tracker—to look for Haley that summer, and she spent much of it watching
on his own. The next morning, Wes and Vixen TV while nursing her newborn daughter, Haley;
returned to the main search area on top of Cave she’d followed the story closely and knew all
Mountain, and Lytle James, along with his neigh- about Colleen Nick. But her first reaction to
bor and frequent hunting buddy, fifty-one-year- hearing that Colleen had called was anger. “I’m
old William Jeff Villines, saddled a couple of like, Haley has not been abducted, so why are
mules and set off for the low ground along the you calling me?” Kelly told me. “I felt like by her
banks of the Buffalo River. calling, she was somehow implying that Haley

T
was truly disappearing.”
But she sat in the sheriff’s car, which had a
he authorities —many of whom were not mobile radio phone in it—definitely no cell ser-
on the clock, all of whom were doing their vice on Cave Mountain, then or now—and
best to find and rescue my cousin, and none talked with Colleen Nick, and was surprised by
of whom I am in any way trying to cast as the what a calming and comforting voice hers was
inept and blindly-arrogant-in-their-trust-in- amid the panic and chaos of that first night.
technology-and-especially-in-their-own-authority Colleen Nick drove up to Tim’s house and
villains in this story—were pretty well con- spent the next two days by Kelly’s side. On the
vinced that Haley was either still on the bluff morning of the third day, Colleen Nick accom-
or somewhere above it, or else was a corpse at panied a law-enforcement official who took
the bottom of it. On all sides, the bluff is a Steve and Kelly aside and, Kelly says, told them
steep, rocky, nearly vertical wall of boulders; that “they were shifting from a search and res-
they did not think she would have ever even cue to potentially a criminal investigation at
tried getting down it, and she certainly could this point.” Colleen and the officer furthermore
not have gotten down it any way but falling recommended that Steve and Kelly speak at a
off. So they’d decided from the beginning that press conference.
looking for her below the bluff was mostly a Colleen prepped Kelly for it, telling her
waste of time. Almost all of their search ef- (again, per Kelly) that she’d been “too tough
forts were concentrated along the bluff, inside and too strong and too stoic for too long in this
the roughly three hundred acres of woods be- situation. There is nothing stronger and more
tween it and the road, and on the mountain understood by people than a bond between a
above. The Sheriff’s Office also searched for mother and child.” She needed to show emo-
her with K-9 units: dogs were given a scent tion. “I now see exactly what she was telling
from Haley’s clothing and her security blan- me,” Kelly says, “and why she was telling me to
ket, which had been sitting in the cab of Jay lose it and cry on camera, and stop being so
and Joyce’s F-150 since Sunday morning. Some strong and stoic and upbeat about everything:
of the dogs picked up the scent—maybe—and, Because people are not going to believe you.
starting from the place she’d last been seen, They’re gonna think you had something to do
led their humans on a winding path through with this.”
the woods right to the edge of Cave Mountain So she did “lose it and cry on camera.” Col-
Road, where they lost it. leen introduced them, then Steve spoke, and
That was the moment when things turned a then Kelly, who ended the press conference in
lot darker, as some began to fear that the reason tears, holding Haley’s security blanket, making
they had not found Haley was that she was not this plea:
there. That a driver on that road had picked her
up and taken her. And so, if anyone knows where this baby is—I
don’t care how you know, how you find her, why

O n the night of Haley’s disappearance, a sher-

iff’s deputy approached Kelly to say that Col-
you have her, where she is—it doesn’t matter to
us. We just want her back. She is the most impor-
tant thing to us in our entire lives, and we would
give up everything that we have to have this baby
leen Nick had called and asked to speak with back in our arms, and to put this back in her
her. Colleen Nick’s daughter, Morgan Nick, dis- hands. And I would just plead that you would put
appeared near a Little League game in Alma, her back with us.
Arkansas, in 1995 and has never been found. In
the aftermath of her daughter’s disappearance, Earlier that morning, Lytle James and William
Colleen founded the Morgan Nick Foundation, Jeff Villines had packed a bunch of snacks they

FOLIO 37
thought a six-year-old girl might like—little that they found me, because nobody was
plastic tubs of chocolate pudding and, weirdly, looking for me there except for them.”
some bottles of Diet Coke—plus a camera to Stopping periodically to alternate which mule
document it in case they found her. Riding they put Haley on so as not to overburden either
mules named Copper and Big Mama, they went animal for too long, Lytle James, William Jeff
looking for Haley along the bank of the Buf- Villines, Copper, and Big Mama carried Haley
falo River. Some months after this happened, another three hours beside the river and up the
Dateline NBC aired an episode about it, which mountain to Cave Mountain Road, where they
includes this exchange between James, Vil- handed her off to the authorities.

T
lines, and the Dateline anchor Rob Stafford:

LYTLE JAMES: When the government gets in- im Ernst spent that summer doing a lot of
volved, and the news media gets involved— sylvan detective work, trying to figure out
you know, we didn’t want to go gettin where exactly Haley went. He thinks he
mixed up in that. We didn’t know what more or less figured it out, and I defer to him.
they was plottin out, but we knew what we If you come up Hawksbill Crag Trail from
could do. the waterfall heading north, you will see the
ROB STAFFORD: You’re saying you have more fork—the path on the left goes to the trail-
trust in yourselves than you do in the me- head, and the one on the right leads along the
dia and the government? edge of the bluff, passes the crag, and contin-
WILLIAM JEFF VILLINES: Well, for one thing, ues on from there until it veers left away from
they was tellin you where to hunt. the cliffs and basically disappears into the for-
est floor to the untrained eye (Haley’s eye was
The two men on mules clopped alongside the not trained). But right after that fork, there
river from early in the morning until 1:30 PM, are several places where the trail splits briefly
when they stopped briefly to eat lunch, and and then rejoins itself. These slight deviations
then continued on for another half hour, at run so close together that people hiking on the
that point growing doubtful they would find two briefly parallel trails would clearly see each
her. But around 2 PM, when they came near an other. But again, it was spring, the vegetation
alcove of the Buffalo River valley about 830 was thick, and Haley was a very short person.
feet below and two miles north of the main Tim thinks Haley might have taken one of
search area, they saw the six-year-old girl sit- these side trails and somehow walked right past
ting on a rock beside an inlet of the river Clay Bass without either seeing the other. Or
with her shoes and one wadded pink sock perhaps Joyce and Haley passed each other this
next to her and her bare feet in the water. way, and Clay, with his adult legs, was ahead of
The plastic tubs of chocolate pudding and a her, and she never caught up to him. He believes
bottle of Diet Coke were the first sustenance that while Joyce was searching for her on the
she had taken in since before she went miss- part of the trail that leads to the trailhead,
ing. She wasn’t quite fifty pounds when she Haley kept following the other part of the trail
got lost, and she’d lost seven of them by the along the bluff, passing the crag, and then con-
time she was found. tinued on, missing the place where the others
“I remember sitting on a ledge, by the had turned left and headed up to the cabin. She
river,” Haley told me recently. “And then I kept on going, following the trail past that no
see the mules, the people on the mules, Wil- trespassing sign and onto Tim’s property, and
liam Jeff Villines and Lytle James, and they must have passed very close to his cabin. At
came up to me. People ask me all the time, some point she started following a tiny game
How did you know that they were okay? How trail that led her to a part of the bluff a good
did you know you could go with them? I ways north of Tim’s cabin where the angle of
didn’t have a choice. It was people.” Villines the slope becomes obtuse enough to climb down
and James approached and said, “We’ve been into the valley. Haley is certain she climbed
looking for you—you’re that little girl, and down the bluff that first day, blindly pushing
your name is Haley Zega.” Then they gave through dense wilderness until she reached the
her chocolate pudding and Diet Coke. “I re- Buffalo River.
member he carved a spoon for me to use out “I didn’t know that there was a river,” Haley
of a little sapling. A little makeshift spoon. told me. “But I got down the incline, I walked
They brought me snacks, because they knew a couple of yards, and all of the sudden through
they were going to find me. Even though they the trees I remember seeing—I probably heard
were not looking in the area that the official it first—I could hear the water, and then I re-
search party had deemed where they should member seeing it through the trees, and seeing
be looking. So, honestly, it’s such a miracle the light shine off the water, and I was like,

38 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

Okay, river. So I went to the river.” If Tim’s de- the rocks, enough of a ceiling to keep the rain
tective work is right, the route she walked from off. The sun rose again. “And then the third day
the waterfall to the river on that first day is only it was more of the same. Just kept walking.” At
about two miles, but the last half mile of it in- some point she began to hallucinate. “When
volved climbing down a precariously steep and you start to starve, when you start to dehydrate,
rocky slope. Hearing the river immediately after people hallucinate all the time. I hallucinated
determining she had reached the bottom of the people in the trees. I hallucinated family mem-
slope maps onto the terrain pretty well: Cave bers. I hallucinated a valley full of flamingoes.
Mountain shoots upward directly out of the west I just remember coming around a bend in the
bank of the Buffalo. river, and the flamingoes were everywhere.”
Down in the valley, she noticed helicopters Lytle James and William Jeff Villines found
flying overhead. “I didn’t know if it was normal her at around 2 pm on that third day—about
for helicopters to be flying over the forest. I the same time that Kelly was up on top of the
didn’t know they mountain, plead-
were looking for i n g i nt o T V
me. I just thought, cameras with an
okay, well, if there imagined child
are helicopters, it abductor. Haley
would probably DURING THE DRIVE UP w a s r eu n ite d
be good if they with her par-
could see me.” TO ST. LOUIS, HALEY TOLD THEM ents at around
She shouted her 5:15 pm. An am-
name, threw sand FOR THE FIRST TIME ABOUT HER bulance took the
in the air, but no three of them to
one spotted her. “IMAGINARY FRIEND,” ALECIA the North Ar-
“My plan was: riv- kansas Regional
ers always eventu- Medical Center
ally lead to a i n H a r r i s o n,
bridge, or civiliza- where Haley was
tion. So follow the river, it’ll lead to a bridge, it’ll treated for dehydration. There was nothing
lead to a road, the road will lead to a gas station, else wrong with her, and the hospital released
and I will call my parents. That was my plan as her the next morning.
soon as I found the river: follow the water.” The waterfall where the trouble began is now
She started walking along the river. Incredibly, named Haley Falls (Tim Ernst made that happen),
she swim-waded across it several times—in April, and Haley has climbed down that tree to
when the water is at its deepest and the current at see it many times since.

T
its fastest. She believes she was walking in the same
direction the whole time, but it’s possible —
especially considering she did not eat or drink he scene of Steve and Kelly taking their
anything for nearly three days—she got turned daughter home to Fayetteville on the morning of
around in a delirium and doubled back over the Wednesday, May 2, 2001, is a TV cliché you can
same ground more than once. Most of the ground well imagine: crowd of reporters on the lawn,
she covered was on that first day: the place where news vans jamming the ordinarily quiet subur-
James and Villines found her is less than two ban street. Mailbox overflowing with cards and
miles north of the spot where Tim thinks she letters from well-wishers, many from people the
reached the river. She spent the first night lying family knew and many not, including one from
on a flat-topped boulder in the middle of the Robin Williams, who had been following the
river. She wanted to be in the most visible place story. Haley said no to appearing on Oprah be-
possible for the helicopters to see her. The cause she didn’t know who Oprah was. It’s a
helicopters—equipped with heat sensors—were testament to Steve and Kelly’s judgment that
indeed flying back and forth over the valley all this decision was apparently Haley’s call. They
night, but they never spotted her. When the did say yes to some media coverage—including
sun rose, she climbed down from the rock and that episode of Dateline NBC —but they
kept walking beside the river. When night fell wanted more than anything to get back to their
on the second day, and there was a hazy ring ordinary lives.
around the moon, she remembered her mother They thought it best to leave town for a bit, and
telling her that was an indication of rain. So she they asked Haley where she wanted to go. Her fa-
climbed a little way up the mountain on the east vorite thing she had ever seen in her short life was
bank of the Buffalo and took shelter in a small the Gateway Arch, which they’d visited on a family
cave—not even a cave, really, more of a divot in vacation, so they decided to take a short trip to

40 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

St. Louis. During the drive up, Haley told them for softcore Christmas-and-Easter Christians are the
the first time—told anyone for the first time—about most pious among them. Although Jay and Joyce
her “imaginary friend,” Alecia. both grew up regularly attending church, per

F
Joyce, “We both drifted away on our own in col-
lege and became uninterested in organized reli-
rom the moment Alecia first appeared in the gion.” Steve and Kelly took Haley to Methodist
story, Haley insisted on that slightly unortho- services sometimes, but they were not really regu-
dox spelling, although she did not yet perfectly lar churchgoers either. Religion has just never been
know how to read. She also insisted on other a big part of the lives of the people on that side of
specific details. Alecia was four years old. She my family, and I’ve long thought of them as admi-
had long, dark hair tied in pigtails. She wore a rably sane, skeptical, rational thinkers.
red shirt with purple sleeves, bell-bottom pants, Before reading Tim Ernst’s book about Haley’s
and white sneakers. She had a flashlight. She rescue, I did not know that Kelly called a psychic
guided Haley to the river. from the landline in his cabin on the first night
“I never had imaginary friends before this ex- after Haley went missing. Here’s Tim:
perience,” Haley told me, “and I never had any
after. And I never saw this particular imaginary Then Kelly got an idea to call a psychic and
wanted to know if I had a phone book. She must
friend again.” She did not think at any time that
have detected a slight hint of skepticism in my
Alecia was a real child. “I was fully aware that this face because she looked right at me and said, “At
was a non-corporeal being that was with me. And this point I am willing to try anything!”
she was a little girl, and we had conversations, we
told stories, we played patty-cake, and she was just No atheists in foxholes. Tim continues:
a very comforting presence. But I knew I was
alone.” The hallucinations started later, after she’d At 11:08 pm she placed a call and spoke briefly
with a psychic. . . . “She is lying down next to a
already made it to the river. Alecia was not a vi- stream and is unhurt,” the psychic said. . . . As it
sion of this sort. “I one hundred percent did not turns out, this information was exactly correct.
think there was another child with me. I knew,
physically, I was alone.” But she also says that I disagree with Tim that what the psychic said
Alecia guided her to the river, which she didn’t could be called “information,” but it’s true she hap-
know was there. pened to be right. At that moment, Haley was lying
There is a phenomenon called third man syn- on a rock in the middle of the Buffalo hoping the
drome, or third man factor: when some sort of helicopters would spot her. Perhaps that psychic
unseen or incorporeal conscious presence seems simply possessed the same thing Lytle James and
to accompany people—often a person alone— William Jeff Villines had: intuition. As Villines told
going through a long, difficult, and frightening the Dateline reporter whom it apparently took
experience they do not know they will survive. It mighty persuasion to get them to talk to on camera,
is not well understood. It may be some sort of “We got to thinking that, well, if anything’s lost,
emergency coping mechanism. It was most fa- most all the time they’ll go down to the river.”
mously experienced by Sir Ernest Shackleton The next day, Crow Johnson (Crow is a folk
during one of his expeditions to the Antarctic; the singer and textile artist who favors flowy scarves
mountaineer Reinhold Messner has also reported and Navajo jewelry, a crunchy über-hippie in ad-
experiencing the phenomenon, as have the explor- dition to being a dyed-in-the-wool Arkie, and of
ers Peter Hillary and Ann Bancroft. “During that my family’s friends it is thoroughly unsurprising
long and racking march of thirty-six hours over that she would be the one to have this idea)
the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South mentioned that a convention of dowsers, or “wa-
Georgia,” Shackleton wrote in his 1919 memoir, ter witches” as they’re sometimes called in the
South, “it seemed to me often that we were four, not Ozarks, was being held at the Crescent Hotel in
three.” T. S. Eliot read that book, and with charac- Eureka Springs, and she faxed them topographical
teristic pedantry tells us in his own commentary on maps of the area, which they faxed back with
The Waste Land that it inspired these lines: their divined suggestions for where to search.
I distinctly remember first learning about water
Who is the third who walks always beside you? divination from Jay and Joyce when I was a kid,
When I count, there are only you and I together walking in the woods with them on their property
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
in Pea Ridge. Although they were deeply mistrust-
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded ful of organized religion, and of Christianity in
I do not know whether a man or a woman. particular, which comes out of the radio on about
—But who is that on the other side of you? half the stations you can pick up in Northwest
Arkansas (the other half are country stations;
Before moving on, I should tell you that my there is one NPR station for the liberals, which
father’s family is not particularly religious. A few Jay usually had on in his machine shop), and

FOLIO 41
though they did not exactly believe in water Tim knew the murder had happened about
divination, they had a strange sort of respect for twenty years earlier, but did not know the exact
it, as they did a lot of the old Ozark folk wisdom. date. Jay and Joyce had been living in North-
It’s as deep a part of the landscape’s human psy- west Arkansas at the time but did not remem-
chology as the folk songs. Plus, it works some- ber the story. A few days later, after doing some
times. Those instances are almost certainly just research, Tim wrote Joyce another email:
lucky accidents, the coincidences of confirmation
It turns out that this cult had just moved to the
bias that give magical thinking its power over our woods from Rogers, and had charges pending in
pattern-hungry minds. But you’d have to have the Benton County, and were first taken to the jail there
heart of a robot not to feel at least a little tingle (I’m sure there was plenty of news coverage, al-
in your spine when it does. though we still can’t find out what year it happened).
I think all the business with psychics and water
witches all but vanished from Kelly’s mind as soon Joyce took it from there: She went to the Benton
as Haley had been found alive and safe. Joyce, on County Sheriff’s Department and asked whether
the other hand, in a way had an even worse ex- they had any records having to do with this inci-
perience of the trauma than Kelly, in that she was dent, or knew anything about it. They didn’t. But
not only terrified for Haley during those three someone in the office did vaguely recall that Judge
days, but also devastated with guilt. And still is. Tom Keith had somehow been involved with the
A part of her soul never got out of the foxhole. case. And it just so happened that Jay and Joyce
When Kelly stepped out of the car in the park- knew Tom Keith pretty well. Jay and Tom had
ing lot of Cave Mountain Church on the day served together as justices of the peace on the
Haley went missing, Joyce was there to meet her. Benton County Quorum Court. Joyce called up
The first thing Joyce said was, “Will you ever for- Tom Keith. And yes, he had been involved with
give me?” And Kelly said, “There’s nothing to that case. Before he was a judge, Keith had worked
forgive. I’m not angry at all.” She was afraid that as a public defender for Benton County, and he had
Steve would be furious with her parents, but he been one of the two lawyers on the defense coun-
was not angry, either. Everyone involved with sel of one of the cult members charged with the
this story told me the same thing: no one ever murder, the only defendant whose case went to
blamed Joyce, or was ever angry at her. Despite all trial: the murdered girl’s mother.
this, Joyce could not forgive herself. By many ac- “When I called him,” Joyce wrote in an email,
counts, Joyce remained rattled and uneasy for a
long time after Haley was found. One friend used I remember a long pause before he spoke. I was
the phrase “emotionally brittle.” It is a ridiculous afraid that client privilege was still an issue and
that he wouldn’t feel he could help. After a while,
understatement to say that she could not stop think- all he said was that I needed to research the news-
ing about it. And now there was a new element papers for April, 1978. After that I should make an
thrown in: in the aftermath of Haley’s rescue, her appointment with his secretary.
“imaginary friend” made the rounds among the
grownups, making everyone’s hair stand on end. Joyce hit the microfiches at the local library and
On August 24, 2001, four months after the or- filled herself in on the broad outline of the story.
deal, Tim Ernst—now a firm friend of the family— Then, late that summer, she brought Kelly along,
sent Joyce an email: and met with Judge Keith in his office. Tom Keith
told them that defending the mother of the mur-
Just a tiny bit of bizarre lore that we thought dered girl had not been just any job for him: he
about last night. Pam and I were sitting around believed in her innocence, and he still believed
talking about Haley’s Alecia, and Pam asked me
if any little girls had ever been lost or died in the
that her conviction was a shameful and tragic
wilderness near here. A huge chill ran down my miscarriage of justice. He considered losing that
spine. You may recall this too. It was twenty years case the worst failure of his career, and it had
ago when a little girl from Springfield of all haunted him ever since.

E
places, was tortured, murdered, and stuffed in a
pickle bucket and buried by a small group of cult
members. The cult members were told to “go to arly in the morning on Tuesday, April 25,
the wilderness and exercise the demons” from 1978, Newton County game warden Fred Bell
this little girl. That location was just off of the was out with a friend in the woods about a mile
Kapark road, which is about three or four miles southeast of Cave Mountain Church and Kapark
from here as the crow flies. I have not decided yet
if I am going to dig up the specifics of this case—
Cemetery on Cave Mountain Road, above the
wouldn’t it just be CRAZY if that little girl’s bluff on the east side of Cave Mountain that
name was Alecia, or was anything like Haley’s overlooks the Buffalo River valley, hunting tur-
Alecia!!! I have not told Kelly about this, and it keys. He was not on duty. While heading back to
probably is just meaningless anyway, but just the the road, they came across a campsite: a truck
thought of the possibilities . . . with a camper-trailer hitched to the tow, a couple

42 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

of tents, and the remains of a firepit. It was an they went to court and they entered pleas. I be-
odd place to be camping: pretty far from the road, lieve they got life, and some a little less. And the
not on a trail, not very close to any water. They mother she—the prosecuting attorney gave her im-
were six people, all white: a man in his fifties, munity because he was gonna have her testify. But
a man and a woman in their early thirties, a we really didn’t need her, we had enough evidence
woman in her early twenties, a teenage boy, and to hang em all, but she got off, did the deal, and the
other three went to penitentiary, and I don’t know
a girl of about nine. Fred talked with them for a what happened to em after they went down there.
while, and showed them his game warden’s badge. They were all charged except for that Clark lady,
They did not appear to be doing anything illegal, and the sheriff was pretty upset that the prosecutor
but—according to Ray Watkins, who was a New- gave her immunity, because she was just as guilty
ton County deputy sheriff at the time, has long as they were—lettin em kill her daughter.
since retired, and now works at Bob’s Do It Best
Hardware and Lumber in Jasper—Fred thought Later, Watkins added this:
they were “acting kinda funny.” Fred wrote down
the license plate numbers and he and his friend I was the one that took em out of that camper-
hiked back to Cave Mountain Road, where they trailer. After the others had come out, the prophet,
saw another car parked there that they didn’t he was still settin in the trailer, he didn’t want to
get out. And I finally told him, if he didn’t get out
recognize, which they correctly guessed was an-
of there, I was gonna pull him out of there. I said
other vehicle belonging to the group, and he took there’s a warrant out for you. When I got him out
its plate number too. They walked up the road to of there, he was settin on a .44 Magnum. And if he
where Fred’s truck was parked —his official had got his hands on that, it would’ve—I wouldn’t
vehicle—and he radioed the sheriff’s office, got be here. I guarantee you. Not with his mindset.
Ray, and read off the plate numbers. Ray ran Havin that little girl killed—helpless.
them and got back to him a few minutes later:
the vehicles were linked to several people who Watkins was right to say they were “armed to
had an active warrant out for their arrest in the hilt.” This is from the Blytheville Courier
Benton County on suspicion of child abuse. They News coverage of one of the court dates, from
also supposedly had another young child with September 5, 1978:
them, a little girl probably not older than five.
Ray Watkins and three other officers met up at Newton County Sheriff E.H. Fowler said in April
the house of Newton County sheriff Hershel Fowler, authorities confiscated 15 to 20 weapons and
which happened to be three miles from Cave “something like 2,000 rounds of ammunition”
from a van belonging to the sect. The weapons in-
Mountain Road—it was still early in the morning
cluded seven or eight rifles and pistols of assorted
and the sheriff hadn’t come to work yet—and then calibers, he said.
they all drove up to the top of the mountain to meet
Fred Bell and his hunting buddy on the road. Fred The van also contained food, clothing and several
and his friend led them to the campsite, and this is copies of a book entitled “The Third Step to Joy-
Ray’s memory of what happened next: ful Living, or How to Stop Worrying” by Royal
and Edith Harris.
Well what happened was that these four people
that were the mother of the child, Clark was I be-
lieve her name, and then the Harrises and this A few details of Ray’s account are not synoptic
other lady were tied into bein a religious deal, I with other records of what happened—
guess. The younger one, he was leadin them and understandably, as it happened forty-five years
tellin em what to do, and this Clark lady had a lit- ago —but in a telling way that has to do with
tle girl, bout five I believe, and she was small for another part of this story.
her age. . . . We found out that they were wanted While the cult members were sitting in
for child abuse, and so we—three other guys, the handcuffs in the cruisers, Hershel Fowler dis-
sheriff and myself and the game warden and an- covered the hastily buried remains of three-
other guy—went in there and found em and asked year-old Bethany Allana Clark. The coroner
em to step out of the trailer. And we got em out, would estimate her time of death to be either
and they was armed to the hilt, and the little girl late Sunday night or early Monday morning.
was gone—she wasn’t there. And so while I was The coroner also noted bruises and burn inju-
fixin to take em to jail the sheriff was checkin the
area and he found a place that looked like
ries. She had been shot eight times with a .22
somebody’d dug a hole and buried somethin, so he and stuffed in a plastic mesh bag, which was
dug it up and he found that five-gallon bucket with stuffed in a five-gallon plastic bucket and bur-
her in it, the little girl. She had been shot about ied about two feet deep, and then someone
fifteen-sixteen times, and it was that religious deal, dragged a few logs over the spot. Ray describes
because the prophet had ordered her killed be- the cult members they arrested as “four people
cause she had the devil in her. So that’s what hap- that were the mother of the child . . . and then
pened, we brought em out and took em to jail and the Harrises and this other lady.” I think he

FOLIO 43
misremembered them as four because there Walker, Louisiana. At eighteen she married her
were four people who were charged for Betha- high school sweetheart, Allen Clark, who soon
ny’s murder: Royal Harris, 50; his stepson, began beating and otherwise abusing her. “I
Winston Van Harris, 31; Mark Harris, 17; and was not allowed to see my family even though
Bethany’s mother, Lucy Clark, 22.2 But officers they only lived three miles from me,” Lucy
arrested five people that day: the fifth was Su- recalled. “Many times my Dad would come by
zette Freeman, 31. It was Suzette Freeman, not my house and I would pretend I was not at
Lucy Clark, whom the prosecutor offered im- home because I did not want him to see my
munity in exchange for testifying. face black and blue and eyes swollen shut. I was
In 1972, Royal Harris—a World War II Air not raised in a family that was abusive like
Force veteran—founded the Church of God in that. At that time, I was pregnant with Beth-
Christ Through the Holy Spirit, Inc. (it was a any.” Allen left Lucy for another woman when
corporation, for tax purposes) in Florida with Bethany was a few months old. “So here I was
his wife (and co-author of the self-published a child with a child devastated and just didn’t
book The Third Step to Joyful Living, or How to know where to go.”
Stop Worrying, which is listed in the Library of A few months later, in 1976, Lucy went to the
Congress), Edith, who had been a Methodist employment agency in Baton Rouge where
minister. (I had expected to find they had been Suzette Freeman and June Harris worked.
con nected to Abused, heart-
some crazy span- broken, taking
drel of Christi- care of her in-
anity involving fant daughter,
snake handling nineteen years
or speaking in LUCY BECAME MORE AND MORE old and desper-
tongues; but no, ate for money,
that this cult ap- INVOLVED WITH THE CULT OVER she wa s i n a
parently grew dangerously vul-
out of Method- THE NEXT TWO YEARS, GROWING nerable and
i sm, wh ich I emotionally
think of as the ISOLATED FROM HER FAMILY fragile state —
vanilla ice cream i.e., she fit the
of Protestant de- profile of exactly
nominations, is the sort of per-
one of this story’s son cults prey
many bizarre details.) Winston Van Harris was upon. (An employment agency is a good place
Edith’s son from a previous relationship, and to meet desperate people.) “They sent me on a
Mark Harris was Royal and Edith’s son, whom couple of interviews,” Lucy told me recently,
his mother—who seems to have been the real “and I think I got a job. I can’t even remember
founder and main driving force behind the cult where the hell it was at now. But then they
before she died—had declared to be a prophet. would start wanting to know how I was doing,
Winston —called Van —was married to a because they knew the relationship I was in, and
woman named June who also joined the cult, they knew that I had a baby—and they kind of
and they had a young son named Matthew drew me in, and I went to Suzette’s house, and
David. Larry and Suzette Freeman became early they were talking about their church and I. . . .
members of the cult, and Suzette seems to have At the time I was so beaten down by my hus-
grown to occupy a central role in its power band and then you have this little light. That’s
structure (at its largest, the cult consisted of how they kind of put me in there. How I got
nine adults and several children): she was “the involved with them. . . . I was young, stupid, and in
Interpreter,” believed to have the power to act a beating relationship, and just so far down that I
as a sort of intermediary for the mystical pro- didn’t even hardly know my own damn name. And
nouncements of the teenage Mark Harris, be- so it was like, they just kind of sucked me in.”
lieved in turn to have direct access to God. At Lucy became more and more involved with the
some point in the mid-Seventies the group cult over the next two years, growing isolated
moved from Florida to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, from her friends and family: “It was days that I
which is where Lucy Clark met them. sat in the chair and it was like that toward right
Lucy Clark was born in Baton Rouge in 1956 before we left, ‘Your parents don’t love you and
and grew up near there on her family’s farm in they’re bad for you and you can’t talk to them,
2
I have changed the first and last names of Lucy and her and you can’t go around them and you can’t see
daughter, but for reasons that will become clear later, them.’ ” After these two years in Louisiana, “all of
her daughter’s middle name, Allana, remains unaltered. a sudden we were supposed to be going to Arkan-

44 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

sas, because of such and such tribulation and this She said Winston Van Harris took the child’s
kind of stuff. All the bad stuff didn’t happen until hand and placed it into the flames. Mrs. [Clark]
we got to Arkansas.” did not try to stop them; she only called out,
The Church of Christ in God through the “Van,” Mrs. Harris testified.
Holy Spirit, Inc. moved from the Baton Rouge Mrs. Freeman then held [Bethany] over the fire,
Mrs. Harris recalled. She said that afterward
area to Northwest Arkansas. They bought a [Bethany’s] hand was black and blistered.
trailer and rented another next to it in the Mid- The hand was placed in ice water, then
way Trailer Park in Springdale, and rented an wrapped in gauze, but no other medical attention
apartment not far away in Rogers. For a time, was given, she testified.
Royal and Mark were living in one trailer, Win-
ston Van and June lived with their young son in Lucy says a lot of what Suzette and June said is
the other, Lucy and Bethany slept in a small not true; but the coroner confirmed there was
camper-trailer parked in the driveway, and every- evidence of burn injuries on Bethany’s hand
one else—the Freemans and Johnny Stablier— and other parts of her body.
lived in the apartment in Rogers. At some point, Everyone seemed to live in terror of Mark Har-
Suzette ordered Lucy and Bethany to move in ris and Suzette Freeman—the Prophet and the
with them in the apartment. Interpreter. The founding member of the cult,
The chronology leading up to Bethany Allana Royal Harris, appears to have taken on a second-
Clark’s murder in the Buffalo National River ary role: his job was not to make decisions, but
Wilderness is muddy and confusing, but there to enforce Mark and Suzette’s rule. At one point
was definitely a period of time in which Lucy was in one of the court transcripts, Richard Parker,
working three different jobs —she worked at a the public defender appointed to Mark Harris,
Tyson poultry plant, a Long John Silver’s, and arguing for a lighter sentence for his client, says,
a café—and turning all her earnings over to the “We would ask you to consider that if a seventeen-
cult. (Winton Van Harris also worked at the Tyson year-old boy orders or tells his father and his
plant; none of the other members worked.) Beth- brother who is almost twice his age to go out and
any Allana was often left in the care of the oth- shoot a child, and they actually go do it, who should
ers. Initially, Lucy drove herself to and from her owe the greater responsibility or draw the greater
various jobs, but eventually someone else in the penalty, the boy for telling them to do so, or the
cult began to escort her. “I was scared of these father and the brother for actually going out and
people,” Lucy told me. “You couldn’t go nowhere. doing it?” It is disturbing to imagine how Mark
You couldn’t call your family. My family did not Harris acquired this seemingly absolute —
know where I was at. And I had wrote letters. divine—power over the others; his mother, Edith,
Even after all this happened, I know I told my declared that her son would be a prophet in 1972,
sister, I wrote you letters. And she said, I never when he was thirteen years old, and died not long
got them. So I wrote the letters, but they wouldn’t afterward. The boy seems to have been in control
send them. They would destroy them. They took of everyone else, including his father, since then.
all my stuff. I come home from work one day and The lion shall lie down with the lamb, and a
Suzette had sold my wedding rings and my grad- little child will lead them. “At that time, my fear
uation ring.” Her clothes also went missing. of those people and God was so great it was as
Some of the more horrific anecdotes about like I was nobody,” Lucy recalled. “I honestly
things that happened during this time surfaced believed that they were getting these messages
in Lucy’s trial, and are mentioned in the news- and if I did anything, they would know about it
paper coverage of it—for example this, from the because God would tell them. I was doomed any
September 13, 1978, Blytheville Courier News, way I went.”
describing June Harris’s testimony: The sequence of events that led to their arrest
Mrs. Harris said sometime in late March, a in the woods began sometime in mid-April,
meeting was called concerning [Bethany]. when the cult declared June Harris—Winston
At that meeting, Mark Harris placed a pot on Van Harris’s wife, who might have been in the
the coffee table in one of the members’ homes in cult even longer than Suzette had—anathema,
Rogers and started a fire in it. He ordered accused her of having an affair with a woman
Mrs. [Clark] to get some pictures and [Bethany’s] who lived nearby, and of worshipping the devil,
doll and threw them into the fire, she said. and cast her out of the church, while keeping
Mrs. [Clark] tore the clothes off the doll and her son, Matthew David, who may have been
threw them and pieces of the pictures into the
fire, Mrs. Harris testified.
suffering from routine physical abuse on Mark
When flames shot up out of the pot, Mrs. Har- and Suzette’s orders, as Bethany had. Her hus-
ris recalled that Mrs. Freeman said, “That’s what band gave her some money and let her take
it’s going to be like, [Bethany], in hell.” their car. Distraught and panicked, June drove
She then screamed to [Bethany], “Put your all night to Baton Rouge, but when she got
hand in the fire,” Mrs. Harris testified. there she had second thoughts, turned around,

FOLIO 45
and drove all the way back to Rogers to try to get Tribulation.” Mark had prophesied, and Suzette
her son back. (That’s about a ten-hour drive each had confirmed through interpretation, a period
way.) She met with a family law attorney in Rog- of apocalyptic chaos, which would commence
ers and explained at least some part of the situa- with a nuclear war and end with the second
tion to him. coming of Christ. Larry Freeman and Johnny
The lawyer’s name got lost in the shuffle, Stablier tied up Larry’s ex-wife and kidnapped
and it’s not clear what exactly happened after the two kids, but were arrested on the road an
that, but basically, his reaction to June’s story hour later.
was: This is not a hire-a-lawyer problem you While the others were camping, Mark Harris
have, this is a call-the-cops problem. The law- declared, and Suzette verified, that Bethany Al-
yer called the police and told them he was al- lana Clark was anathema and had to die. We
most certain that something dark and crazy know this because Mark said as much in court
and deeply fucked-up and involving young chil- during his sentencing. One particularly dis-
dren was happening in that trailer park—and turbing thing about the court transcripts is
that there was a woman who needed to get her that Royal and Winston Van Harris seem
son out of there right now. Before they had the aware that the jig is definitely up—they under-
arrest warrant, cops escorted June Harris to stand they’re about to be sentenced for murder,
the Springdale trailer park, where they took and are no longer in make-believe land—whereas
Matthew David and returned him to June. Mark Harris does not. He is still the Prophet. He
Lucy and Bethany were inside the trailer. “And goes off on irrelevant flights of quasi-Christian
they would not let me go outside because I mystical gobbledygook that the judge frequently
would’ve left them,” Lucy told me. “I said, ‘Just interrupts with things like, “Mr. Harris, at this
let me go home, just let me go home. . . .’ But time I do not want to get into the philosophy of
when the cops came to get Matthew, they re- the church.” Mark is still, so to speak, drinking the
fused to let me go out of the room. And the Kool-Aid—his own. (Of course, that wasn’t a
cops never came in the trailer. So it was like, popular idiom yet; the Jonestown massacre would
Oh my God, that was my chance.” happen a little less than two months after the
When the police retrieved Matthew David end of Lucy’s trial.)
from Royal’s trailer, they also wrote down the li- That is the why of the murder. The how of it
cense plate numbers of the cars parked outside. is a matter of some dispute. “Each one of em had
The cult’s bubble had burst: the outside world was shot her,” Ray Watkins said. “That’s what the
paying attention to them for the first time. Benton Prophet wanted to do, have each one of em
County issued a warrant for their arrest for sus- shoot that little girl. That’s what the others told
pected child abuse. By the time the police re- me.” But the narrative solidified into this: On
turned to Midway Trailer Park later that day to Monday morning, Royal Harris and Winston
arrest them, they had fled, and one of the trailers Van Harris took Bethany Allana out of sight
was on fire. That night, the cult sent Lucy and her about fifty feet away from the campsite, and about
daughter to a hotel somewhere outside Fayetteville an hour later came back without her. Lucy
under an alias, while, according to Lucy, “they got maintains that she never heard the gunshots.
all their stuff together, I guess with the guns and Though they were not very far away, this isn’t
the trailer, the U-Haul and all that stuff.” implausible —we have already discussed how
Lucy knows now this night alone with her sound does not travel very far in the Buffalo Na-
daughter was another lost opportunity to escape: tional River Wilderness in late April, with full
“I’ve had many people ask me, Why didn’t you foliage on the trees (the area where they were
leave, why didn’t you leave? I don’t know why. I camped was exactly the place where Haley
didn’t leave ’cause I was scared. ’Cause they would be when she first got lost, before she
watched me all the time.” And the next day, climbed down the bluff—much closer than Tim
“they come got me.” Then Royal, Van, Mark, Ernst initially remembered). Plus, a .22 is a
Suzette, Suzette’s daughter Desha (whom Ray small-bore weapon that doesn’t make much
Watkins did not remember), Lucy, and Bethany, noise. That may have even been precisely why
in several different vehicles including a rented they used it—as Ray Watkins duly noted, they
U-Haul, drove to the Buffalo National River had plenty more powerful firearms with them. It
Wilderness and bivouacked in the woods south may have also been the reason it took eight
of Cave Mountain Church. Meanwhile, Suzette’s shots to kill her. (When I was a kid learning to
husband, Larry Freeman, and Johnny Stablier shoot with Jay and my dad, they started me with
drove—also on Mark and Suzette’s orders—up to a .22 rifle—a “pea shooter”—because a kid can
Columbia, Missouri, where Larry’s ex-wife lived fire it fairly safely—very little recoil. I remember,
with their two children, to kidnap the children picking up the Coke cans I’d just shot off a log,
and bring them to the place where the others were that the bullets were still rattling around inside
camped in order to await what they called “the them: it was powerful enough to blow through

46 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

one side but not the other; the aluminum cans put it down to the very facts that make it seem,
had no “exit wounds.”) In court, Royal insisted in retrospect, like the opposite outcome might
he was the only one who pulled the trigger— have been more just: Suzette was much older and
eight times —but that may have been a story more experienced, and by most accounts a ter-
they’d agreed upon in hopes that the much rifyingly forceful and manipulative person; Lucy,
older man would get the longer prison sentence on the other hand, was a twenty-two-year-old
rather than his thirty-one-year-old stepson or single mother, a woman who had been badly
his seventeen-year-old son. abused and then abandoned by her husband
Forty-five years later, Lucy’s memory may be before she joined a cult, a person who had been
muddled, and when we spoke she contradicted terrified of disobeying Mark and Suzette because
what she had said in court about not hearing the she seriously believed that if she did God would
gunshots. She told me that she and Bethany spent tell them. That is to say, Suzette was probably a
the first night in the woods in a tent with Suzette lot better than Lucy at talking people into things.
and Desha, and the next morning “Suzette said At any rate, when it was all over, Royal and
Van and Royal were going to get some water and Mark Harris (the latter of whom had turned eigh-
they wanted Bethany to go with them. . . . He took teen in jail awaiting sentencing) were both given
her by the hand and said, ‘We’ll be right back.’ life in prison. Winston Van Harris was given fifty
And then I’m sit- years plus an-
tin on this log, other fifteen for
and that’s when illegal possession
I heard the of a firearm. Lucy
shots. . . . They Clark was found
came back, they THE LAWYER CALLED THE POLICE guilty and sen-
didn’t have her. tenced to five
And I wanted to AND TOLD THEM THAT SOMETHING years; she was re-
know where they leased after two.
were, and Suzette DARK AND CRAZY WAS HAPPENING Royal Harris died
kept telling me, in prison in 1998.
‘You sit down and IN THE MIDWAY TRAILER PARK Wi n ston Va n
hu sh, ju st sit Harris was re-
down and hush. leased in 2003.
It’s okay. It’s Mark Harris was
okay.’ ” Lucy does released in 2009.
not remember what happened that night, but the Both were model inmates, and were transferred to
next morning Fred Bell and his friend showed up, low-security prisons decades ago. Suzette Harris
and then came the arrests; she does remember that served no time, and she died in Baton Rouge in
they were all holed up in the camper-trailer when 2019 at the age of seventy-two.
the police got there, and that Van had a .357 After her release, Lucy Clark moved back to
Magnum. “They knocked on the door and Van the family farm near Baton Rouge, where she
said, ‘Shut up, don’t say nothing.’ And they opened remarried and had another daughter, who grew
the door and they went outside. And that’s when up and had her own children. She still lives on
all they got us.” Lucy told me that if the sheriffs that farm today. A few of the people closest to
hadn’t arrested them all when they did, she was sure her —like her husband —know about her past,
“they would’ve killed me, too.” but most within her general social orbit do not.
Initially, all pleaded not guilty, but in the com- In April 2004, Lucy received an email from my
ing months, Royal, Mark, and Winston Van Har- Aunt Joyce.

S
ris switched their pleas to nolo contendere, nolo
contendere, and guilty, respectively, while Lucy
Clark maintained her plea of not guilty—thus hers itting in his office in Benton County at the
was the only case that went to trial. Suzette Free- end of August 2001, Judge Tom Keith told Joyce
man was offered immunity in exchange for testify- and Kelly of his deep and painful regrets about
ing against Lucy. Ray Watkins misremembered it Lucy’s case. He thought she was innocent, and
being Lucy who was offered immunity rather than never should have served any prison time. Keith
Suzette, but I do believe him that the sheriff was had first been assigned to Lucy’s defense when
pissed off at the prosecuting attorney for offering she and the others were taken to Benton
any of them immunity, because he thought they County (where the warrant for their arrest had
were all equally guilty and furthermore they didn’t been issued); she established an early rapport
need the additional evidence to convict. with him there, and she had to write a letter
Why Suzette was allowed to walk and Lucy to the judge presiding over her trial for murder
was put on trial is unclear, but it’s tempting to in Newton County to allow him to continue

FOLIO 47
representing her. “He was my rock,” Lucy now so horrible that they perversely want it to be
says of Keith. true. It’s the nightmare on the other side of what
Lucy had been brutally abused, brainwashed, Colleen Nick told Kelly, advising her to emote
and terrorized by the Harrises and Suzette be- like hell for the cameras: “There is nothing
fore they murdered her daughter, and after a stronger and more understood by people than a
short life that had been nothing but brutal bond between a mother and child.”
abuse and terror for four years —first at the Tom Keith remained outraged and bitter about
hands of her husband, and then by the cult— Lucy’s conviction and subsequent prison sentence
furthermore had to endure the humiliating or- until the day he died, but when I spoke with Lucy
deal of the trial and the local press’s callous I found her attitude about it contemplative and
and often incorrect sensationalizing of it. “Ev- penitent. She is still angry about Suzette being
eryone has his ‘own’ idea about my case which given immunity, but she seems at peace with her
was sensationalized by the newspapers and TV own conviction.
media,” Lucy wrote in an email to Joyce. “They Lucy was convicted of murder in September
know nothing of the horror, nothing. I never 1978. The day after the trial ended, the foreman
knew who killed my daughter until the trial of the jury, a woman named Catherine Nance,
was almost over.” The years of terror and abuse visited her in Boone County Jail. Lucy: “She
continued while Lucy was in jail. She was the wasn’t mean, she was nice. She was compassionate.
only woman being held in Benton County Jail, But she said, ‘We didn’t find you guilty of murder.
and she told me that one of the deputies un- We found you guilty because you couldn’t tell the
locked her cell and let in one of the male in- future.’ . . . I should have known what they were
mates, who “basically raped” her: “The deputy doing. I should have foretold, should have seen
let him in there in my cell one morning. I better than what I did. . . . And she brought me
know the deputy got fired, but hey, you didn’t some books. I kept those books for a long time.
hear about that in the paper, did you? Nope.” And then one day I just threw them all away.”
That summer, an inmate started a fire in the Lucy spent two years in a women’s correctional
jail in an attempt at escape, and while it was being facility in Pine Bluff, a place she speaks of in a
extinguished and the damage repaired, Lucy was tone almost of serenity and gratitude. Her time
kept in a cell with all the male inmates. “These in prison was the first time in more than five
guys pissed on me and they spit at me,” she says, years—her husband, the cult, the jail—that she
“and there was piss all over the floor and they just had been in a relatively safe place. “You would
left me there all day.” And she recalls the hu- think it’s a college campus,” she said about arriv-
miliation she was subjected to in the Boone ing at the women’s prison. “There’s no bars,
County Jail lavatories: “At the end of the hall- there’s all glass. Everybody wore their clothes. So
way was the shower, which had no curtain on it wasn’t like one of these dark places you see on
it. And I would ask [the sheriff’s officer] for a TV with the bars and all that. It was none of
shower and he would stand at that door and watch that. And I got an education. I had graduated
me while I took a shower with just a washcloth.” from high school but I did another course there,
Lucy Clark suffered all this while one of the it was a two-year course. I finished it in a year. So
ringleaders of the cult walked free in exchange for that place wasn’t all bad. You had bad people
testifying against her. “Suzette was whiz at this there, but basically it was okay. It looked basically
stuff,” Lucy says. “The very person who gave them like a college dorm. The only thing is that they
the order to kill that baby and to kill me was the lock you in at night.”
one who got immunity and got off scot-free.” After meeting with Joyce and Kelly in late
Tom Keith believed that if all this had hap- August, Judge Keith—who had stayed in touch
pened after the Jonestown massacre—which did with Lucy ever since the trial—wrote to ask if she
more than any other event to change the pub- minded him giving her email to Joyce; Keith was
lic’s understanding of cult psychology—the jury one of the very few people Lucy trusted, and Keith
and the press might have better understood the told her she could trust Joyce. It took her a while
power of brainwashing and the impossibly weak to decide, but eventually Lucy said yes. Joyce
position Lucy was in, and would have had more emailed Lucy. Lucy emailed her back. And thus
sympathy. Of course that’s possible —but as began an extremely unlikely long- distance
we’ve seen recently with a tabloid fixation from friendship between the two women.

T
a few years ago, Casey Anthony, there is abso-
lutely nothing that incites the rabble to misog-
ynistic wrath more than the story of a mother heir friendship was built on the apparent con-
who somehow causes or permits the death of nections between Haley’s disappearance and
her own child. It scratches at some instinctual Bethany Allana’s murder—and between them,
horror lodged deep in our mammalian middle- Alecia. Several astounding coincidences line up,
brain. There is something about it people find starting with the fact that the two incidents both

48 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

happened in late April, and they happened (or slight extra half-syllable, a diphthong it’s called
in Haley’s case, began) in damn near exactly in linguistics. Stretched out phonetically:
the same place. A lot of things happen in a lot all ah see-ah.

O
of same places, but that particular place happens
to be an extraordinarily remote, very sparsely
populated area. As Ray Watkins put it, “A wilder- ne of the things Joyce and Lucy have in com-
ness area really, there ain’t nothin in there.” mon is that they are both people who every day
Then there was the fact that Haley said her for many years—probably still, for both of them—
imaginary friend had dark hair she wore in pig- felt eaten alive with guilt. One thing I know I
tails, as Bethany Allana had and often did, and believe is that neither of them should be: Lucy was
that she was four years old (Bethany Allana was an abused, conditioned, and brainwashed cult
almost four when she was killed). As Joyce and member earnestly awaiting the end of the world,
Lucy emailed back and forth about it, other con- and Joyce did something that absolutely anyone
nections inevitably surfaced: Haley said Alecia could have done. But I also know it’s impossible
had a flashlight with her—which would have for them not to be. Joyce’s whole quest to contact
been useful in those dark woods if Haley had Lucy, and her correspondence with her, may in an
actually had one; Lucy and Bethany Allana liked indirect way be a product of that guilt. And like-
to pass the time playing patty-cake, which Alecia wise, Lucy needs to believe that Bethany Allana’s
did with Haley; one time, Lucy says, Suzette took spirit comforted and guided Haley through her
away one of Bethany Allana’s only cherished and days and nights lost alone in the wilderness be-
comforting possessions, a Raggedy Ann doll cause it gives her some small “peace of mind,” as
(possibly the same doll June Harris mentioned in Joyce put it. “She had come to the idea that
her testimony) because it was demonic idolatry Bethany had actually had a meaningful life if she
or something, and the best thing Lucy could re- had existed in some form to help Haley.” As Lucy
place it with was a flashlight, which the child wrote to Joyce in one of her emails: “To know she
thereafter always held on to and clutched under the saved someone else is beyond happiness and I am
covers in bed at night as she had done her doll: so thankful she was there for Haley. Being in the
“[Suzette] would just turn the lights off,” Lucy Buffalo Wilderness myself, there was no way Haley
says, “and I had to give Bethany a flashlight. So could have survived her ordeal alone. I suppose
she wouldn’t be so scared.” There were other fe- one aspect of all this is that Bethany was destined
licitous connections like that, but in my opinion to die to save Haley and Haley had to live to save
everything that travels further afield from objec- me in some sort of way.” And Lucy told me: “I don’t
tive recorded facts—such as the time and place believe in psychics, I don’t believe in mediums,
where these events happened —feels more and ’cause that’s not of God, that’s not God at all.
more to me like people finding new bread- People like to rely on things like that, but this was
crumbs leading to an answer they’ve already an angel that was sent. And maybe it was for me
decided upon. to heal,” she continued. “I don’t know, maybe it
I, myself, am a skeptic —in this, and in was for the both of us. I’m not sure. But it helps to
most things. I do not believe —as Lucy be- know that her life, it didn’t end in vain, that she
lieves, and as I think Joyce sort- of-maybe- was able to help somebody else, and to help me,
kind-of believes—that Haley’s imaginary friend too.” She said she believes that “Bethany’s alive
was the ghost or spirit or something of Bethany today, she’s in heaven, and that’s good.”
Allana Clark come to comfort and guide Haley And why not? It’s definitely not the craziest
when she was lost. (For one thing, “guide”? thing she’s ever believed, and if it gives some salva-
Guide her where? Really far away from almost tion to an aging woman who suffered unimagi-
all of the hundreds of people who were out nable horror, loss, and humiliation very early in
looking for her?) Haley does not believe this ei- her life—and then had to carry an onerous burden
ther. As Haley with admirable wisdom and ma- of guilt, and carry it almost entirely alone, for the
turity said to me, “There are things that I will rest of her life—I’d say that’s a good thing. I’d say
never know, and that’s okay.” But one of the it’s a good thing even if it’s true, as Ray Watkins
emails Lucy wrote to Joyce contains something believes, as did many others at the time, that “she
that gives even me the willies: was just as guilty as they were.” Although Tom
Keith did not believe she was guilty at all, Lucy
Bethany’s middle name is Allana. Sometimes she herself said something to me that is strikingly
would say her name is Alasee (al a see). I would tell
similar to what Ray Watkins said: “But I was just
her no it’s Allana. She would laugh. I would think
how funny she even came up with that name as it as guilty, because I was there, and I’ve had to live
was a little different than her own. with that.” And if this belief makes it easier for her
to live with that, I think it’s a good thing, because
Imagine a toddler with a Southern accent say- the most Christian thing I know I believe is the
ing the words “all I see,” giving the last word a possibility of redemption from sin. Q

FOLIO 49
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 L E T T E R F R O M L A G O S

LOVE IN THE
TIME OF SICKLE
CELL DISEASE
What’s the cost of rolling the genetic dice?
By Krithika Varagur

S
ubomi Mabo- “You’re too good for
gunje fell for this kind of work, ehe?”
Nkechi Egonu Nkechi teased, furrow-
within hours of meeting ing her brows. “Locals’
her in 2004, in his home- discount,” he joked, and
town of Ijebu-Ode, a trading she laughed. With his hollow
hub in southwest Nigeria. cheekbones, frail body, and
They worked at a state-run broad- elongated fingers, he was clearly
cast TV station, thrown together by what some uncharitable onlookers
the National Youth Service Corps. would call a “sickler”— one of up to
He was speechless on the day Nkechi six million people in Nigeria with
first walked into work. While Subomi tion’s weekly news meeting, and top sickle cell disease, a group of inher-
was thin and bespectacled, she was brass quickly promoted her to pro- ited blood disorders that turn red
petite and zaftig, with her hair in a gram presenter. She was the most blood cells from soft discs into rigid
ballerina bun, and coldly immune to exciting person, Subomi felt, who crescents, frequently leading to blood
the stares that trailed her across the had ever walked into his hometown. clots that can cause pain episodes,
office. Her swaggering personality He found the courage to speak to called “crises,” and serious complica-
was also the opposite of his reserved Nkechi one weekend when they tions in most major organs. But Nke-
one; she was outspoken in the sta- were assigned to do community ser- chi never shied away from him. A
vice, clearing overgrown grasses near few days later, the office’s radio trans-
Krithika Varagur is the author of The Call:
Inside the Global Saudi Religious Project a government building. Subomi mitter stopped working, so Nkechi
and an editor at The Drift. Her work on this went, despite his habitual avoidance and Subomi had nothing to do ex-
article was supported by the Pulitzer Center. of strenuous physical activity. cept talk. After work, they made a

Illustrations by Katherine Lam LETTER FROM LAGOS 51

beeline for a local dive bar housed broke up with him again in January chi’s mouth went dry. At dawn, she
in a car wash. Within a few weeks, 2008, sitting in his parked car. That began a long bus journey to the
they were inseparable. separation lasted a month. hospital, where she ran into Subo-
From the beginning, Nkechi knew Nkechi was just shy of thirty when mi’s mother. They found Subomi in
that she and Subomi had “no business she initiated their third breakup in the ICU, in a coma.
dating.” His genotype was SS: he had late July 2009. She met him on a Fri- Nkechi held his mother’s hand as
two abnormal S genes for hemoglobin, day evening at home and calmly told the doctor explained Subomi’s progno-
the oxygen-carrying protein in his him that they had to find other peo- sis. It could be hours, days, weeks, or
blood. Nkechi’s genotype was AS: she ple to marry before it was too late. months before he woke up, if he woke
had one abnormal S gene and one nor- As the oldest of six, she was starting up at all. Nkechi had to work on Mon-
mal A gene. Like an estimated quarter to feel uneasy that neither she nor day, but she returned to Ibadan on
of all Nigerians, she was a silent carrier. her siblings had married or started Friday afternoon, inaugurating a regu-
There was a 50 percent chance that any families, unusual for Nigerians of lar weekend pilgrimage. She sat by
child they had would suffer from sickle their generation. She had even Subomi’s bed all day, napping at a nurs-
cell disease like their father. This was talked to a genetic counselor at the ing students’ dorm nearby. Perhaps, his
no light prospect. Subomi’s own child- Sickle Cell Foundation Nigeria doctor offered, playing Subomi’s favor-
hood had been marred by secrecy and (SCFN), in Lagos, who had advised ite songs or movies could help. Nkechi
shame over his condition. Nkechi, her to end the relationship. (Though made him a mixtape with his favorite
meanwhile, had lost four cousins to a representative from the foundation songs by Kenny G, Enya, and the Nige-
the disease. Those deaths might be rian gospel singer Tim Godfrey,
understood as products of an earlier, which she had played on a loop day
benighted time, when the average in and day out. His mother started
Nigerian knew far less about genetic FROM THE BEGINNING, to visibly relax whenever Nkechi
testing and disease management. NKECHI KNEW THAT walked through the hospital doors.
Today, however, there was a growing Nkechi, for her part, put their
consensus— particularly in their SHE AND SUBOMI HAD breakup out of her mind.
college-educated, upper-middle-class On Saturday, September 5, she
milieu—when it came to passing on “NO BUSINESS DATING” showed up as usual and was stunned
two sickle cell genes: don’t risk it. to find Subomi awake. She screamed
But how, and when, do you with joy and clasped his hands.
weigh risk against attachment? Nke- told me that this is against their pol- “Happy birthday, Nkechi,” he
chi revealed her genotype just days icies.) There were too many obsta- told her.
after meeting Subomi, and he didn’t cles. “A marriage is not just between Everyone near his bed turned to
stop loving her. He liked that she two people,” Nkechi reminded her and paused. Was he crazy? But it
held her ground, didn’t worry about Subomi. They talked and cried for was, in fact, her thirtieth birthday;
the future, and could make even his three hours as the sun set, and she Subomi had glanced at the date on
stolid father laugh. She also had a kept crying all the way home on the some paperwork. Nkechi started to
quick temper, but he preferred her lurching bus. They were tears of laugh. Everyone then agreed that he
foot-stomping, door-slamming out- grief, but also relief. She had finally, could go home soon, and he was dis-
bursts to his quieter family life, and responsibly, severed this un- charged a few weeks later.
shuttling between two parents who wieldiest of attachments. Subomi still faced a long road to
often lived apart. “But why, dude?” Subomi didn’t sleep much that recovery, and he was intermittently
Nkechi asked him in those early night. Early the next morning, he bedridden. Nkechi substituted her
months, in her broad, Americanized started driving to his father’s house weekend trips to Ibadan with visits
diphthongs. He wasn’t sure, he said. in Ijebu-Ode. That afternoon, some- to his mother’s house in Lagos. She
She was something that had hap- thing told Nkechi to call him to guided him through complicated
pened to him, like a coconut drop- make sure he had arrived safely. stretches, gave him sponge baths,
ping on your head while you’re Subomi’s boss picked up the phone. and crawled on the floor beside him
walking down the street. “Is Subi there?” she asked, confused. as he learned how to walk again. Re-
By the end of her service year, “Oh, it’s you, Nkechi. I was actually markably, he was on his feet within
Nkechi had fallen in love with just about to call you,” Nkechi recalls six months—and, despite everyone’s
Subomi, too, but she thought it him saying over a crackling connec- concern, didn’t suffer any sickle cell
shouldn’t last. In March 2005, she tion. “Subomi’s had an accident.” crises during his convalescence.
moved back to Lagos alone. Subomi Less than an hour outside Lagos, When Nkechi got up to leave, he
simply followed her. In April 2006, Subomi’s sedan had been rear- started to ask her when they were
she broke up with him at a fried ended, hit a truck, and flipped over. getting married.
chicken restaurant, screaming about Paramedics had taken him to the “We are broken up,” she would
how stupid, how uneducated, it hospital and dialed the last re- remind him.
would be for them to stay together. ceived call on the phone they “I have no recollection of that,” he
They reconciled a week later. She fished from Subomi’s pocket. Nke- would say. “Or did you forget I was in

52 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

a monthlong coma?” It was hard
for her to gauge his sincerity.
In the new year, Subomi could
not only walk but drive again,
and as he regained strength, the
flame of Nkechi’s attraction flick-
ered. She didn’t try to put it out.
For once, none of their family
members were asking probing
questions about the future. One
afternoon in August, when
Nkechi was making sure Subo-
mi’s bed was comfortable, he
pulled a pink tourmaline ring
from his pocket.
Later, Nkechi’s mind would
cycle through the past six
years—their chance meeting in
Ijebu-Ode, those afternoons at
the car-wash bar, breaking and
making up in Lagos, the acci-
dent, his convalescence— and
she would wonder if they were
making the right choice. But in
that moment, and without hesi-
tation, she said yes.

N
igeria is the sickle cell
capital of the world. Its
residents account for
about half of all new annual cases of The heritability of sickle cell ane- Sickle Cell Foundation Nigeria in
severe hemoglobin disorders world- mia, the most common and severe Lagos, now one of the region’s pre-
wide. Sickle cell disease is one of the form of SCD, is about as straightfor- eminent treatment and diagnosis
world’s most prevalent autosomal re- ward as a Punnett square from a mid- centers. His generation of doctors
cessive genetic disorders; the sickle cell dle school biology textbook: if both helped SCD testing take root in Ni-
trait is over six times more common in parents are carriers (AS/AS), their geria. The most common blood test
Nigerians than the cystic fibrosis gene children have a 25 percent chance of is hemoglobin electrophoresis, in
is among people of Northern Euro- having the disease. If one parent has which electrical currents are passed
pean descent, or the Tay-Sachs gene the disease (SS) and the other has no through a blood sample, separating
among Ashkenazi Jews. sickle cell genes (AA), there’s a different types of hemoglobin into
In the Fifties, a number of scientists 100 percent chance their kids will be discrete bands. The test is now com-
speculated that the sickle cell trait carriers (AS) and a 0 percent chance monplace in urban centers like Lagos
confers some resistance to malaria— they will have the disease. A couple and Abuja. Testing in a high-end fa-
now a widely accepted theory—which like Nkechi and Subomi, where one cility can cost up to forty dollars, but
would account for the prevalence of parent has the disease and one is a there are also free and cheap clinics,
the gene in sub-Saharan Africa, carrier, has a 50 percent chance of which can provide results in as little
home to over 90 percent of all ma- giving birth to an SS child and a as thirty minutes.
laria cases in the world. Over millen- 50 percent chance of an AS child. More and more Nigerians are
nia, per this hypothesis, as more AS Every year, a growing number of peo- now being encouraged to test at an
than AA children survived acute ma- ple in Nigeria consider breaking up early age. Nkechi, who was born in
laria infections and reached repro- because of this calculation. 1979, has known her genotype since
ductive age, they passed on their Dr. Olufemi Akinyanju, an eighty- she was seven. Testing is less acces-
single S genes, too. But for those with six-year-old Nigerian hematologist, sible outside major cities, especially
two such genes, the potential compli- started identifying sickle cell patients in the country’s poorer northern
cations include acute pain episodes, as a young doctor in Lagos in the states. And in lower-end clinics, re-
acute chest syndrome, strokes, pria- Sixties, fresh out of medical school sults are often inaccurate. Ezekiel
pism, jaundice, numb chin syndrome, in London. The patients had often Ogbu, a thirty- six- year- old bus
an enlarged spleen, leg ulcers, and never heard of the disease, and he driver with SCD in Lagos, found
damaged blood cells in the retina, went on to spend most of his career this out the hard way in 2018, when
which can lead to blindness. studying it. In 1994, he founded the he discovered that his fiancée was

LETTER FROM LAGOS 53

not AA, as she had long believed, break up or get married. They are also feels that the world’s discards, the
but AS. They broke up two weeks considering what makes a good life, detritus of the constantly surging
before their wedding, following her both for themselves and for their pro- ocean, eventually come to rest on
third blood test, and he informed spective children. SCD is not a death the beaches of Lagos.”
more than five hundred guests that sentence— especially in a city like Last year, I made several trips to
the ceremony was off. Many Nige- Lagos— but it is usually a life sen- this amphibious megacity to meet
rian sickle cell activists now recom- tence. Its two most effective treat- Nigerians who have navigated dat-
mend two or three different blood ments, bone marrow transplants and ing, love, and marriage under the
tests to be sure. gene editing, are out of reach for or- star of their sickle cell genotype.
Determining your genotype is dinary people. Most Nigerians with It’s one of the likeliest places in Ni-
one thing, but puzzling out its impli- SCD must deal with painful crises, geria to have a few partners before
cations is another. Absent strict or procure expensive medications,
uniform laws, decisions about dat- seek out specialists, and con-
ing often fall to individuals. Geno- front stigma, including obstacles
type screening is now a requirement to someday starting a family of
to get married in many Nigerian their own. Should such people
churches and mosques, but some come into existence at all? The
young people are starting higher question sounds crude or even
upstream—as early as the first date. amoral, but when Nigerian car-
Given Nigeria’s emphasis on mar- rier couples split up, their im-
riage, combined with its relatively plicit answer is no.
low incidence of prenatal testing Their concerns are broadly
and the illegality of abortion in relevant to the rest of us who
most cases, a social norm is rapidly live in the age of genetic testing
consolidating to dissuade two people a nd it s novel t heater s of
with sickle cell genes from marry- decision-making. Prospective
ing, or even dating. But not every- parents find themselves asking:
one makes this choice. A 2015 Which diseases should we test
study found that one in five people for? How risky is it to pass on a
who realized they were in AS-AS certain trait? Which conditions
relationships from their premarital truly compromise a child’s fu-
screenings got married anyway. ture, and which are ultimately
Some lawmakers have tried to in- manageable? How much can you
tervene in this gray area. States in really control? And what is
both the north and the south have worth sacrificing to be with the
passed measures to mandate premari- person you love? As genetic test-
tal testing; in 2020, the Nigerian ing continues to spread, many
Senate debated an SCD manage- more people, in many more
ment bill that, among other things, places, will try to answer these
would also encourage premarital questions. In Nigeria, they are
tests. During these discussions, already part of daily life.
Chukwuka Utazi, a senator from

P
Enugu State, implied that he had erched on the Bight of
suffered a genotype-related breakup Benin, Lagos is home to
of his own. He understood what a some fifteen million people
painful choice it could be. But in and is the center of Africa’s largest marriage; it is also where the great-
Africa, he maintained, “we marry economy. The stretch marks of the est number of Nigerians go to work.
for children, we don’t marry for developing world are visible every- Like all cities, it’s filled with strivers
love.” (Nigeria already polices the where: cheap cell phone data sold at trying to make rational decisions
intimate sphere: public displays of hand-painted stalls, piles of refuse, about their future; a 2021 study of
same-sex affection are illegal, for ex- strip malls that pop up overnight over 1,300 city-dwelling Nigerians
ample, and punishment for same-sex like mushrooms, awe-inspiring traf- found that 29 percent of respon-
intercourse can range from prison fic, and unflinching sales-children dents had ended a relationship due
time to execution by stoning.) An- who dash through it. The city abuts to “genotype incompatibility.” In
other senator chimed in: “We will the Lagos Lagoon, where a vast this city rife with choice and its dis-
not allow love to take away the best slum is held up on stilts and fisher- contents, there may be more than
part of our marriages.” men still use dugout canoes to catch 3.5 million people with the sickle
Heterosexual Nigerian couples who red snapper and mackerel. “Some- cell trait.
come to these genetic crossroads are times,” as the Nigerian playwright Among the Lagosia ns I met
not merely grappling with whether to Wole Soyinka once wrote, “one were: several individuals who had

54 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

broken up with their carrier boy- romance, or a child with surprise break up. Blessing saw severe SCD
friend or girlfriend in their twenties; SCD, had, to some degree, been at work, and three of Samson’s fam-
a forty-something couple who, upon willed by God. ily members have died of the dis-
discovering their daughter was SS, It’s not that young Lagosians are ease. They don’t want to risk it. “I
belatedly realized they both had AS pure fatalists or cold-blooded opti- need to wake up from my dream-
genotypes; a single mother of three mizers; some do allow themselves world,” she told me over lunch. She
whose husband left her after two of genetically risky attachments, even made a noose gesture and cocked
their SS children started having se- if they’re not meant to last. I met her head to one side.
vere crises; several older single Blessing Assam, a twenty-five-year- Other Lagosians who have SCD
women with the sickle cell trait who old pastor’s daughter and account- themselves dream of a relationship
had given up on marriage altogether; ing student with dreams of running as an escape to a better life. Princess

and a woman in her seventies with a large business, who has an AS Samuel, a thirty-year-old with cut-
SCD who had been happily married genotype. Blessing has worked a se- glass cheekbones and a silver y
for over fifty years. I heard about ries of tough jobs to put herself voice, grew up sharing her church’s
people who had forged their geno- through university, including serv- spare room with her mother and
type test results, people who hid ing as a live-in care worker for a younger siblings after her father’s
their status from their spouses, and woman with severe SCD. She has death. Her family could barely afford
couples who lied to get married in been dating Samson, a handsome mild painkillers, but she stoically
their house of worship. People ex- twenty-nine-year-old entrepreneur, endured frequent vaso-occlusive cri-
plained their weighty decisions to me who also has an AS genotype, for ses, which happen when sickled red
straightforwardly, as if recalling what two years. They video chat every blood cells congeal and deprive tis-
they had for lunch. Everyone I spoke night; he speaks to her in a soft sues of oxygen. At university, she
to was religious—either Christian or voice and lets her order anything met and fell in love with a medical
Muslim, Nigeria’s two major faiths— she wants whenever they go out student who promised he didn’t care
and expressed the belief that any without glancing at the price. But about her genotype. For three years,
outcome, be it heartbreak, late-in-life both told me they will have to they kept her status a secret from

LETTER FROM LAGOS 55

his less tolerant parents. Then, in husband too,” she said. “I’m praying Both families were in high spirits
2017, she had an acute crisis and seriously toward it.” through Christmas, including Nke-
was rushed to the hospital. Her chi’s one-hundred-year- old grand-

N
boyfriend feared for her life and kechi and Subomi got married mother, who was overjoyed that
called in favors to fast-track her twice: first in an Igbo wedding her grandchild was finally embark-
treatment— including with his in her family’s village in ing on her adult life. Nkechi and
mom, who was a nurse at the hospi- Mbaise, in the same house where her Subomi didn’t tell her, or anyone
tal where Princess was admitted. parents married, and then in a Yoruba else, that they had decided, as a
She helped Princess get priority ceremony in Ijebu- Ode. The Igbo condition of staying together, not
treatment, and then promptly de- wedding was on December 3, 2010, to have children.
manded that they break up. They and Nkechi turned out, against ex- As newlyweds, they could finally
did, and he married someone else pectations, to be a calm and happy live together, and they loved their
last October. bride. She wore a lilac crepe wrapper, city. They spent weekends at Lagos’s
Princess has had a few flirtations tied like a skirt, and a coral-bead head- nightclubs and urban beaches, and
since then, but all have faded when dress. Subomi wore a shirt printed went to separate churches on Sun-
she has been sick or hospitalized. with roaring lions, a traditional Igbo day mornings. Sometimes, they col-
Last spring, she quit her job and motif. A week later, in Ijebu-Ode, laborated on graphic design work.
moved back in with her mother, Subomi’s cousin washed Nkechi’s feet They were modern, unconventional,
who lives in a cinder-block house as she stepped in, as a bride, to a house independent; colleagues, freelanc-
on the city’s outskirts. Every ers, best friends. But things
Sunday, Princess wakes up as started to change around their
early as 4:30 am to commute to first anniversary. More nights
T he Elevation Chu rch i n NKECHI AND SUBOMI were spent staying home to watch
Ikorodu, which has a dedicated DIDN’T TELL ANYONE THAT T V t ha n out on t he tow n.
service for unmarried congre- Subomi, who had g row n up
gants. Last year, she had three THEY HAD DECIDED NOT lonely, started to feel lonely
more vaso-occlusive crises. The again, like there weren’t enough
most serious one, in March, left TO HAVE CHILDREN people at home. He began twist-
her with a hospital bill that cost ing Nkechi’s arm: What if they
nearly as much as her mother’s tried for a baby? “There’s got to
yearly rent. SCD is expensive, both that she already knew so well. They be more to life than this,” he told
acutely and chronically: prevention skipped a third church wedding, which her. “Please? Just one?”
regimens of vitamins, painkillers, also let them sidestep premarital geno- They found themselves attending
and antibiotics (up to $30 a month, type testing requirements. their friends’ babies’ naming cere-
for Princess), hospital admissions Nkechi’s sister Uche met Subomi monies and birthdays, and then
(sometimes $150 per day at a private several times when they dated, and Nkechi’s younger brothers started
hospital), blood transfusions (often found him strikingly thoughtful. having children, too. Her resolve to
over $100). These all hit harder Once, when he couldn’t make it to remain child-free gradually waned.
given Nigeria’s flailing economy and a lunch they had planned in La- She struck up tentative conversa-
rapidly weakening currency. That’s gos, he mailed her a check so she tions with doctors, who told her
not just for patients, but also for could take herself out on her in- that the science of SCD manage-
their prospective partners and in- tern’s salary. “My entire family’s ment had advanced in leaps and
laws. “People think the cheapest is only concern, really, was the geno- bounds, and that babies born with
just to walk away, really,” Timi Ed- type,” Uche told me. “I asked her an SS genotype could live to old
win, a thirty-five-year-old SCD ad- several times, are you ready— really age. At thirty-two, Nkechi decided
vocate who has the disease, told me. ready— if you have an SS child?” to stop taking her birth control pill.
She speaks from experience: Timi’s And was she very sure his family Looking back, she thinks she was
fiancé left her six years ago because knew she was a carrier too? “But inviting fate to intervene in a battle
of her condition. then she did a fantastic job taking of the wills between two awfully
Princess’s mother is still optimis- care of him after the accident,” stubborn people.
tic. Sure, she says, it’s a little harder Uche said. It felt silly to keep prob- Nothing happened for four years.
for people with SCD to marry—but ing. “Whereas an accident like that, Nkechi knew she was on the older
maybe Princess should also try a lit- for me, would have been a time to side for pregnancy, but she started
tle harder to meet single men. reevaluate things,” said Chijioke to avoid the subject with Subomi,
“They are marrying,” she mused, Nwamara, a childhood friend, “for who could slip into a dark mood
about sickle cell patients she’s met Nkechi it just strengthened her re- when he ruminated on his unful-
through her church. “Some even to solve to press ahead.” filled dreams of fatherhood. But in
wealthy people who are able to take As a wedding present, Subomi’s early 2016, after days of a sore
care of them.” She went on: “I be- parents gave them a two-bedroom throat and nausea, a pharmacist
lieve God will give her a wealthy house in their Lagos compound. forced Nkechi to take a pregnancy

56 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

test. It was positive. When she told uba phrases well before Momo could
Subomi, he burst into tears. talk, so he’d become worthy of his
But they had to think of the big florid name. He took to calling him
question in the same breath. Test- his “mini me.” But Subomi was also
ing the fetus’s sickle cell genotype on edge until they brought three-
would require an invasive test at the month-old Momo for a sickle cell
Sickle Cell Foundation Nigeria, and screening. When it indicated that
Subomi begged her not to do it, he was just a carrier, they were
both because the procedure posed a walking on air.
small risk of miscarriage and be- Seven months later, Momo woke Darwin Panama
cause it had taken them so long to up sobbing, with swollen hands. It A warm weather hat with Australian
conceive. Nkechi called family was, as Nkechi’s mother quickly styling, handwoven in Ecuador from
members on both sides for advice, recognized, dactylitis: swelling of
toquilla fiber. Water resistant coating,
and she remembers many of them the fingers or toes due to blocked
saying the same thing: there had blood vessels— it’s a classic early braided kangaroo leather band.
been vast improvements in SCD symptom of SCD. But what about Reinforced 4½" crown, 3" brim.
management, and anyway, a 50 per- the genotype test? His fetal hemo- Finished in USA.
cent chance was far from a guaran- globin, which lingers for months, S (6¾-6⅞) M (7-7⅛) L (7¼-7⅜)
tee. A week passed as Nkechi may have confused the results. His XL (7½-7⅝) XXL (7¾)
mulled it over, during which time parents had been advised to bring #1649 Darwin Panama $140 ..................

the fetus started to kick, and she re- him in for another test on his first
alized she could not go through birthday, but they had hoped it
with an illicit abortion, whatever would be perfunctory. Nkechi bun-
the genotype was. “Well,” she told dled Momo into their car and drove
Subomi, “here we go. What’s the to the hospital where he’d been
worst that could happen?” born. A new blood test confirmed
Nkechi went into labor the night that he was SS. That night, he
of Donald Trump and Hillary Clin- started his daily program of antibi-
ton’s last presidential debate, which otics and antimalarial pills.
she and Subomi watched in their liv- Subomi was too distressed to be
ing room. When the sun came up on of much help. Part of his grief, Nke- Panama Fedora
October 20, he drove her to the chi knew, came from the painful Classic sun protection handwoven in
hospital. By noon, she was admit- memories of his own childhood,
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two nurses. Nkechi woke up from avoid mentioning his disease. He Finished in USA.
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given the complicated birth, he de- can do better for Momo than your
cided to revise his son’s name to Mo- parents did for you,” she told
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LETTER FROM LAGOS 57
Maybe the worst that could happen earlier in the process of family for- primarily with families who already
wasn’t that bad. mation, and often more commu- had SS children, but, by the Nineties,
nally. That was precisely the case they started to see far more “prospec-

T
he age of relatively cheap ge- with beta-thalassemia, another re- tive couples,” according to Ayo
netic testing has created a new cessive genetic blood disorder, in Otaigbe, who was among Nigeria’s
term for those in Nkechi and Cyprus. In the Sixties, up to eighty first class of trained genetic counsel-
Subomi’s situation: “genetically at babies with the condition were born ors. Over five hundred SCFN-trained
risk.” “Genetic risk does not imply res- there each year, and in the Seven- counselors now work in a number of
ignation in the face of an implacable ties, local physicians began to African countries where SCD is prev-
biological destiny,” wrote the sociolo- strongly encourage carrier screening, alent, from Ghana to Tanzania, and
gists Carlos Novas and Nikolas Rose counseling, and prenatal testing, they are the most professionalized tip
in 2000; “it induces new and active eventually pressuring the Cypriot of an iceberg that includes public
relations to oneself and one’s future.” Orthodox Church to request premar- health campaigns, widespread testing,
Such thought also “reshapes prudence ital screening certificates. In 1986, and rising awareness of SCD in popu-
and obligation,” because those who are the number of babies born with lar culture. (“Sickle cell been show me
genetically at risk must make the right beta-thalassemia dropped to zero. crises,” the Afropop singer Adekunle
choices, both for their own sakes and Tay-Sachs disease is another example. Gold sang in last year’s single “5 Star,”
for those of their families. These ac- In 1983, an ultra-Orthodox Brook- which he has remixed with Rick Ross.
tors try to exercise “genetic responsi- lyn rabbi who lost four young chil- “I will never forget the Nineties / Many
bility,” a concept coined in 1974 by the dren to Tay-Sachs— which causes nights I go dey beg for mercy.”) The
medical researchers Peter T. Rowley damage to nerve cells and leads watchword of SCFN-trained counsel-
and Mack Lipkin Jr. They argued ors is “non-directive”: they provide
that the nascent field of genetics information but do not compel spe-
would compel more and more indi- cific action, and they especially
viduals to act responsibly, especially IN THE AGE OF GENETIC avoid discouraging marriage or pro-
by avoiding the spread of genetic TESTING, MORE INFORMATION creation. This fits with the global
diseases. While the science may be rise of non-directive genetic coun-
new, they wrote, the problem is not. DOES NOT ALWAYS MEAN seling in the Fifties, which empha-
Whether to suffer or to not live at sized voluntary measures in the
all “has been debated since Job.” FEWER OBSTACLES shadow of Nazi atrocities. The
There are not yet universal manual used by SCFN to train
standards for genetic testing, but a counselors advises them to avoid
narrow consensus has emerged most patients to die before age five— phrases like “if I were you” and “I’m
around specific conditions. The first started Dor Yeshorim. The organi- terribly sorry for you.”
prenatal diagnosis for Down syn- zation, whose name is Hebrew for Sickle cell counseling never took
drome was made in 1968. Since “upright generation,” is a premarital off in the same way in the United
then, screenings have become rou- screening service that has rapidly be- States, even though about one in
tine for pregnant women in many come central to matchmaking in thirteen black babies are born with
parts of the world. In Iceland, for in- many ultra-Orthodox communities. the sickle cell trait. In 1972, Con-
stance, the vast majority of women Today, Dor Yeshorim representatives gress passed an act that encouraged
choose to be screened, and up to draw blood samples from Orthodox voluntary sickle cell genotype testing
85 percent of those who learn of an students, test them for several ge- among black Americans, and sickle
increased likelihood of the disorder netic diseases, and store the results cell screening was even a part of the
choose to terminate the pregnancy. in a confidential database. Early in a Black Panther Party’s public health
This shared idea of genetic respon- prospective match, the couple can initiatives. But “people started hol-
sibility has resulted, locally, in the call Dor Yeshorim, and if the indi- lering ‘genocide’ pretty fast,” recalls
condition’s virtual disappearance, viduals are both carriers for the same Dr. Wally Smith, who now directs
though a few babies with Down syn- disease, they are simply told that the Virginia Commonwealth Universi-
drome are still born there each year. match is not advisable. ty’s SCD program. He says the idea
But the polarized debates around the Both of these examples were en- of a public health program directed
practice show that genetic responsi- acted in relatively small, homoge- at black Americans was hampered by
bility is far from a neutral, or stan- nous communities. But it’s hard to widespread distrust of the govern-
dardized, concept. The situation in closely follow either playbook in a ment and medical authorities. Smith
Iceland has drawn global ire, and massive, multiethnic democracy like believes they might have given up
some have argued that these abor- Nigeria. Instead, over the past half- too soon, lamenting a 2017 poll in
tions offer a “backdoor to eugenics.” century, Nigerians have forged their which only 36 percent of the black
But people in societies where own notions of genetic responsibility. Americans surveyed even knew that
abortion has been illegal or dis- In 1986, Dr. Akinyanju led the first they had an elevated risk of SCD.
couraged have also created local trainings of genetic counselors in La- Nigerian experts are split on the
norms, in which decisions are made gos. In the beginning, they worked future of SCD in their country. In

58 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

just a couple generations, awareness Prospective parents can quickly de-
has skyrocketed and free clinics termine their carrier status for hun-
have proliferated. Though statistics dreds of disorders, from primary
are scarce, those working in the congenital glaucoma to maple syrup
field believe the number of cases has urine disease to a bone disease that
fallen, especially in urban centers. increases the likelihood of fractures.
But the uptake of testing and shift People with no thoughts of parent-
in social norms has been polarized hood, too, can get a basic genetic
along socioeconomic lines. Fewer profile in a matter of weeks; for about
children in middle- and upper-class two hundred dollars, 23andMe can
homes seem to be born SS, ob- detect one’s carrier status for over
served Toyin Adesola, the executive
director of an SCD advocacy orga-
two dozen conditions—and also esti-
mate the likelihood of someday de- Not sure where
nization. That means the disease is
slowly concentrating in poorer com-
veloping breast cancer or Alzheimer’s.
Without public health initiatives, it’s to start with 173
munities. In Kano State, part of the
less- developed, Muslim-majority
unlikely that these advancements
will dramatically reduce the preva-
years of archives?
north, prevalence of the sickle cell lence of any particular condition.
trait has been reported to be as high They will, however, put more people SUBSCRIBE TO
as 41 percent, compared with about in positions like that of Nkechi and
25 percent nationwide. Subomi: having genetic information Our “From the
“We don’t see eradication as the in the back of their minds while dat- Archive” newsletter
goal, at least for now,” said Dr. An- ing, falling in love, and starting a
nette Akinsete, the national director family— a nd deciding whet her
of the Sickle Cell Foundation. And they’re willing to intervene on the It’s a curated selection of
she does not think laws to stop car- basis of that information. excellent writing that helps
rier unions will ever find a foothold. “When science moves faster than put the week’s events
Instead, she hopes to see more wide- moral understanding, as it does today, into greater context,
spread newborn screening so that pa- men and women struggle to articulate delivered to your inbox.
tients can get a head start managing their unease,” the political philoso-
the condition, as well as free or sub- pher Michael J. Sandel has written on
sidized antibiotics and supplements. parenting after the genomic revolu- SIGN UP AT
In high-income countries, the
median survival age for a patient
tion. “In liberal societies, they reach
first for the language of autonomy,
HARPERS.ORG/
with SCD has risen to between fairness, and individual rights.” But NEWSLETTERS
forty and sixty—more than double this framework quickly reveals its lim-
what it was in the Seventies. In its. In developing and developed coun-
such places, SCD has evolved from a tries alike, many families, engaging in
life-threatening pediatric condition the most optimistic of enterprises,
to a chronic disease among adults. eventually reach a point where mean-
The average survival age in Nigeria ingful choices evaporate, confronting
is much lower— likely under five, all manner of shortcomings both be-
though statistics are not widely fore and after birth—those stemming
available— because of the high in- from health outcomes, but also those
fant mortality rates in poor regions. of resources, community, and chance.
But a middle-class Nigerian patient In the age of genetic testing, more
with access to resources, especially in information does not always mean
Lagos, has a “very good chance” of fewer obstacles; conversely, it may en-
managing their condition into adult- trench parents’ struggle for control.
hood, says Dr. Akinsete. Most Nige- Discrete decisions tend to give way,
rian medical professionals don’t see as Sandel puts it, to “questions about
their goal as zero future SCD cases, the moral status of nature, and about the
but somewhat fewer of them, and a proper stance of human beings toward
much higher quality of life for those the given world.”
born with the condition.

M
In the United States today, preg- omo grew the same whorled
nant women can find out whether hair on his head that Nkechi
their unborn child has cystic fibrosis, has on her arms, but he had
fragile X syndrome, spinal muscular Subomi’s dark complexion, slim feet,
atrophy, or many other conditions. dark lashes, and occasional indignant

LETTER FROM LAGOS 59

frown. He refused to walk until he She called Subomi’s nurse, and then bacterial infection of unknown prov-
was two, and then quickly proceeded his doctor, but neither picked up. She enance, and he spent ten days in the
to somersaults. And he refused to eat felt a surge of adrenaline. As if on au- hospital on antibiotics. Nkechi’s
solid food unless Nkechi took off her topilot, she put on a T-shirt and qui- mother-in-law dropped in for a brief
shirt, as if she were about to breast- etly drove to the hospital. When she visit on the fifth day.
feed him; only then could she shovel got there, the doctor told her that When Nkechi had married Subomi
forkfuls of rice into his mouth, draw- Subomi had suffered a sudden embo- a decade prior, the bride price his
ing peals of laughter from Subomi. lism in his intestine. He was dead. family paid made her, on paper, a
Momo cheerfully moved from lap to Nkechi’s ears started to ring. daughter of Ijebu-Ode. But few ar-
lap at church and was sanguine when “It can happen to anyone,” the rangements are permanent, and today,
Nkechi left him with his aunt, who doctor continued. The direct cause, raising Momo is largely Nkechi’s
disciplined him alongside her own in Subomi’s case, remains impossi- solo undertaking. In 2021, she with-
children. He turned two without an- ble to ascertain. Blood disorders like drew Momo f rom his pater nal
other crisis. Nkechi decided to bring SCD are straightforward risk factors grandmother’s school and enrolled
him to Mbaise for Christmas in 2018. for blood clots, which are the pri- him in a different one two miles
Subomi stayed in Lagos to celebrate mary cause of embolisms—but so away. Nkechi and Momo now go to
with his mom and sister. are factors like age, certain medica- Mbaise for holidays. They rarely
When Nkechi got home, she no- tions, and high cholesterol. It’s not find occasion to test their status, by
ticed something on Subomi’s leg as the kind of thing that can be marriage and by birth, as daughter
they got ready for bed: a yellowing proved conclusively; someone with and son of Ijebu-Ode.
ulcer, the size of a grape, over his left an AA genotype could have suf-

B
ankle. “Come on, man,” she said. “I fered the same fate. y the time I met Momo, shortly
leave you for a week and this hap- The details didn’t interest Nke- before his sixth birthday, the
pens?” It was nothing to worry chi. Her husband was dead. The acute dramas of his diagnosis
about, he protested. It didn’t even doctor started expressing his sym- had subsided. Nkechi has told her son
hurt. Leg ulcers are relatively com- pathy, but she cut him off. She told that he has “special blood.” Momo is
mon in adults with SCD. Subomi re- her family, who wailed at the news, about a meter tall—a little small for
sisted going to a doctor, and Nkechi and then returned home to tell his age, but not by much—and his
hoped it would resolve itself. Instead, Momo, who, like his mother, was slightly distended stomach is visible
it expanded to the width of a lime. stoic. Her heart was racing and her under his butter-yellow school uni-
Then Subomi’s feet started to swell, internal monologue ran on an ob- form. Nkechi lectures all his teachers
and in February, a pinprick-size ulcer sessive loop: “Nkechi, what’s your about keeping him hydrated and
opened up over his right ankle. It next move?” She was now a single avoiding intense sports. Momo isn’t
grew into an equally large crater by mother, with a son who needed in- shy about his condition, even if he
Valentine’s Day, when they could not tensive medical supervision. Would doesn’t fully comprehend it. “I’ve
make it out of the house for dinner. she relocate somewhere— maybe been to the hospital like a hundred
On February 21, Subomi woke up Califor nia, where her brot her times!” he told me cheerfully. (Nke-
at around a quarter to six, screaming lived? Would she stay where she chi brings him to a government pedi-
in pain. A friend drove him to the was? Would she continue their atric hospital every three months.)
hospital, where he was immediately business? There had to be a funeral He and Nkechi have settled into
admitted to the emergency ward. next week. their new equilibrium. I asked him
Nkechi was relieved; she had won Subomi was buried in Ijebu-Ode, about his last crisis, when he was on
the battle of convincing Subomi to in front of friends who came from as intravenous antibiotics. “I was on the
see a doctor at all. Momo was in far as Canada. Nkechi sleepwalked drrrip!” he exclaimed, trilling his r’s.
high spirits when he waved goodbye through it. None of her friends or Sometimes, Momo is the one to re-
to his dad. family remember her crying. mind his mom to give him his pills,
When Nkechi arrived an hour Three months after his father which he crunches like candy. Money
later, doctors had started Subomi died, Momo had a crisis: splenic se- can be tight, so Nkechi prioritizes
on antibiotics and dressed his questration. Nkechi noticed that he Momo’s medications and economizes
wounds. He told her that he would had suddenly become very quiet, and elsewhere. As far as she knows, Momo
be discharged in a few days. It could his stomach was unusually bloated. is the only student in his kindergar-
have been much worse, said the He stayed in the hospital overnight ten class with the disease. “But some
doctor, and they had brought him and received a blood transfusion. parents are weird about this,” she ad-
in at the right time. “Why didn’t Some time later, Subomi’s father mitted. “So who knows.”
you bring me strawberry yogurt?” called Nkechi to ask about the house Momo has a sunny temperament
Subomi ribbed Nkechi. “You better he had given the couple as a wed- and speaks with the diction of some-
get home soon,” she warned him. ding present; he was considering one who interacts mainly with adults.
“Momo is waiting for you.” renting the place out, though he “I miss the old days,” he said one day,
The next morning, Nkechi woke never did. In 2021, Momo had an- out of the blue, “with my dad!” Nke-
up earlier than usual, around 5 am. other crisis: sepsis. Its trigger was a chi raised an eyebrow. She’s not con-

60 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

 THE
vinced he actually remembers Subomi.
Momo is an in-demand playmate at
church and the ringleader of his
many maternal cousins. When home
what everyone would really prefer: a
world in which genetically-at-risk
Nkechi had made the supposedly
responsible choice to break up with
SIXTIES
RECOLLECTIONS OF THE DECADE
FROM HARPER’S MAGAZINE
alone, he’s resourceful: a paper fan is Subomi, or this one, in which she
a baseball bat, crumpled paper a soc- took a chance.
cer ball. One of his plastic toy soldiers Someday, Momo might be a candi-
is named Subomi. date for a bone-marrow transplant.
The goal of SCD management, The Sickle Cell Foundation Nigeria
Dr. Akinyanju has written, is ex- has just started evaluating patients for
tending the “steady-state” period be- its first ever in-house transplant pro-
tween crises. Momo has cleared the gram, but so far, only a handful of
early-life danger zone for infections. well-to-do Nigerians have received the
But children with fewer resources treatment, usually abroad, paying up
can be far less lucky. In Lagos, I also to $500,000. Nkechi isn’t counting on
met Tawakalitu Ayinde, a poor, un- this. Throughout her life, her great
employed single mother of four strength, and great flaw, has been her
daughters, the last of whom has laser focus on the present. She never
SCD. Nine-year-old Oluwaseyifunmi wants Momo to feel the shame that
had seven strokes between 2017 and
2022; the last one, in January 2022,
racked her husband. Just three months
after Subomi died, Nkechi started do-
MCGINNISS
left one of her legs paralyzed and her ing outreach again for the Sickle Cell
speech garbled. She is still not on Advocacy and Management Initiative.
any regular medications. “I know he would have supported me
As Momo gets older, malaria may speaking out,” she said. “Though maybe
trigger crises, but it’s unlikely to be that’s a low bar, because he supported
fatal. Viral hepatitis will remain a life- everything I did.”
long risk. He might reach puberty later As Nkechi and Momo left church
than his peers. Recent research has one Sunday, a male friend in the
suggested a genetic component to leg parking lot warned her about the ef-
ulcers, which means Momo may be at fects of single motherhood on a
higher risk for them, so he may start young boy like Momo. “Don’t bring
wearing compression bandages. And him up as a woman!” he joked.
someday, he will have to accommo- Momo stood up in the back seat
date the fact that stress, like the kind and screamed, “I am strong!”
that comes from relationships or work, Nkechi snorted, and stepped on
may trigger crises too. It all seemed far the gas. “What do they know?” Q
away, until I noticed Momo kissing a
T. rex puppet over Christmas in
August Index Sources
Mbaise. “Hold on,” he told me, “I’m 1,2 Hart Research Associates (Washington)/
doing something romantic.” Public Opinion Strategies (Alexandria, Va.);
Even to d ay, while Nkechi’s 3 Gallup (Washington); 4 Navigator Research
friends and family almost univer- (Washington); 5 Marist/PBS/NPR Poll
(Poughkeepsie, N.Y.); 6 MRI Springboard
sally disapprove of carrier mar- (Cleveland); 7 Flex Index by Scoop (San
riages, they concede that Momo Francisco); 8,9 The Conference Board (NYC); 10
“doesn’t really look like a sickler.” Douglas J. Cumming, Florida Atlantic University
During Nkechi’s sister’s wedding in (Boca Raton, Fla.); 11,12 Sierra Tucson (Tucson,
Mbaise, a family friend, Sunny Ariz.); 13,14 Current Consulting Group (Coral
Springs, Fla.); 15 Federal Reserve Bank of
Opara, explained why he thought
that “educated people” shouldn’t
risk having SS children while
Momo and his cousin streaked by. I
Atlanta; 16 American Speech-Language-Hearing
Association (Rockville, Md.); 17 World Cancer
Research Fund/YouGov (London); 18 Filippa Juul,
New York University; 19 Gymless.org (Toronto);
LOMAX
20 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
poi nted out t hat Momo’s li fe (Atlanta); 21,22 YouGov (NYC); 23 International
chances were vastly better than Data Corporation (Needham, Mass.); 24
those of previous generations with Spok (Alexandria, Va.); 25–27 Equimundo
the disease, but Opara insisted that (Washington); 28 ZenBusiness (Austin, Tex.);
29–32 Pew Research Center (Washington); 33 U.S.
ORDER TODAY FROM
“prevention is better than the cure.”
As Momo tore through the house,
Department of Education (Washington); 34–36
Marissa E. Yingling, University of Louisville
STORE.HARPERS.ORG
filled with four generations of peo- (Ky.); 37 NASA (Mountain View, Calif.); 38,39
ple who loved him, I wondered David Voas, King’s College London.

LETTER FROM LAGOS 61

 P O E T R Y

TO THE CUCKOO
PAPER WASP
By Robyn Schiff

The first crisp tool in a small set of

perfect lockpicks this slick
wasp learns how to twist
is time. A solitary operative
whose name honors
the bird famous for its

home invasions; obligate brood and

kleptoparasitic
crafter without craft,
not a papermaker like her makerspace-
industrious
hostess who 3-D prints

a many-chambered paper shelter

with her drooling mouthparts,
cuckoo paper wasp
whose patience is a weapon whetted slowly
just waits as the
real paper wasp foundress

spit-forges her nest, killing time late-

lying in her bed of
winter mind-humming
“Helter Skelter” to the cuckoo paper wasp
eggs depth-charging
within her. Then, prepared

by visions shared by the most poised of

athletes, practitioners
of mental training
who feel their achievements before achieving
them because they
know imagination

Robyn Schiff is the author, most recently, of Information Desk: An Epic, which will be published this month by Penguin.

62 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023 Illustrations by Fumi Nakamura

is muscle equal to the heart, she
emerges from her long
overwintering
already on the hot prowl; malware’s mascot,
she creepy-crawls
the spring wind with her six-

jointed forelegs, watches paper wasp

complete and provision
her nest from a short
distance whence, as if out of swift nowhere, so
oblivious
is the paper wasp and

consequently not en garde against

what she can’t imagine,
serves herself as both
eviction notice and quick enforcer, a
conspicuous
example of how those

POETRY 63
 me to sweep it down, and even then
who knows what’s what, who’s who,
can tell a fatal
cradle from a throne? By now the new queen has
assumed the scent
of the host she killed by

of us who don’t know how to make our rubbing herself against the nest to
homes make the ones we find take on the essence of
ours, story lines I’ve the paper chewed in
followed alone too many times on hotel that murdered wasp’s small mouth, like dry-bathing in
television the parched jaw of
scaled back for anodyne death, a sacred lake bed

apocalypse programming that the whose dust consecrates her in what’s called
entire history of “chemical camouflage”
civilization by those of us who
is the slow-motion dress rehearsal for: she think we have the distance not to become the
murders her and subjects of this
usurps her nest. How? In queen. But who knows? To the

place of skill, paper wasp 2.0 queen the queen is the queen. Deception
honed her face to use as and Self-Deception was
a club. Pronouns hung a popular course
a scrim behind which wasp double-crossed wasp and at the college I attended long ago
her nest became that was one of
hers; then she lays further those mansions before that

claim to it by laying her own wasp built on other people’s loss on farm-
eggs there among those the land secured by slaughter.
authentic paper Of the spirit of
wasp placed first, each forthcoming life a secret the bald eagle, observed more easily in
froth brimming its situ than the
neat wasp-paper cell, the real estate dealings of

weirdest cupcake batter aquiver

in thin paper liners.
What a terrible
birthday party planned in resentment and guilt
and love. Hard to
grasp in pictures, I climb

a step stool with a flashlight and peer

into the rafters to
see this nest myself
resisting my sister-in-law’s demands to
use the broom she’s
trying to hand up to

64 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

wasps, Benjamin Franklin is said to
have said he wished it not
the chosen emblem
of this land. That bald eagle’s dishonesty
is bald-faced. You
must have seen one perched high

upon a dead spruce, his visage in

serious profile so
iconic it’s like
beholding a living coin transacting the
wild air. There
is an eagle somewhere

on our money, isn’t there? I could

swear it but what a long long-range gaze on an osprey fishing
time since studying two miles downriver. When
a quarter. Remember the satisfaction that bird has made his
letting go of catch and is bearing it back to the nest to
one into a slit cut feed his young our
bird pursues and steals it.
for it exactly, utterly in
sync with spending power You have seen one perched on a spruce and
departing the loud known the score. But here in
arcade with one coin left over to phone your this paper nest I
mom? The heft of can’t stop looking at there’s no seeing what con
the cold receiver and the cuckoo wasp
larvae are pulling to
delve of the coin into a Delphic
cleft in metal where that move the worker paper wasps, emerged
eagle descended now with no suspicion
to fish—if he fished. Too lazy to hunt for that their queen is dead
himself, he trains or that spring said long live the queen, to feed them
his aristocratic first, before they
feed their own. That subtle

incompetence a cuckoo paper

wasp is born wielding that
a real paper wasp
responds to with its wasted love is what makes
a cuckoo wasp,
not a papermaker

but maker of the law, a better

choice. Q

POETRY 65
 Joyce “Few writers
better illuminate

Carol the mind’s most

disturbing corners.”

Oates —SEATTLE TIMES

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 S T O R Y

THE RETURN
By Joyce Carol Oates

M
y friend was a was a much-revered poet
widow, not re- who died three years ago,
ally old but al- at seventy-eight; no one in
ready a widow twice. my life has replaced him.
You think of Oscar So, I’d lost the habit of
Wilde’s wisecrack. To using a phone for per-
lose one husband may sonal calls. An adolescent
be regarded as a misfor- sort of shyness for one
tune, to lose two looks who’d used the phone of-
like carelessness. ten, decades ago. Cer-
But really, it wasn’t tainly it was awkward to
funny. Nothing about it call Audra, after so long.
was funny. Audra had Half-expect a widow to
told (women) friends say to you in a pert sarcas-
that Thad, the second tic voice, You? W hy
husband, had saved her bother, now? It’s too late.
life, virtually—she’d met At the time Thad died,
him within a year of losing her first So I’d been avoiding Audra. Even I had called Audra. I’d called, left a
husband, to whom she’d been married the thought of her. Some subjects are message, Audra had never called
for thirty-six years. Which was why I’d just too sad. back—of course she’d been distraught
been avoiding my widow- friend But then, the other morning I woke with grief, no one expects a widow to
through the entire pandemic. thinking about Audra. How selfish it call back. I’d sent a sympathy card, I’d
Audra had to know that the pan- was of me, to be avoiding her. How sent flowers. I’d seen Audra in the com-
demic wasn’t the reason for my cowardly. Felt a sudden need to hear pany of mutual friends. I had certainly
avoidance. Thad had died in early Audra’s voice. No idea why, I wanted meant to see her again, to spend time
2020, before COVID, from an un- badly to call her, to speak with her. with her. But soon COVID rolled over
speakably virulent and swift-acting Not speak at her, coolly detached us like a poison gas, and I had not seen
cancer, the kind where no sooner are as in an email. Audra again.
you asked, Have you heard? than it’s, Problem is, no one calls anyone So, I called at last, and made ar-
Oh God. Thad’s—gone. anymore. The last friend who called rangements to visit her. Audra was
Joyce Carol Oates’s story “Detour” me frequently, as if he took pleasure in warmly welcoming as if I had not
appeared in the March 2021 issue of hearing my voice, and took pleasure avoided seeing her for two years;
Harper’s Magazine. in knowing that I was hearing his voice, which made me wonder, maybe she’d

Gravity, by Nancy Friedland © The artist. Courtesy smoke the moon, Santa Fe, New Mexico STORY 67
been avoiding me. Several times in
the past twenty years, Audra and I
had been on the brink of becoming
best friends. Yet, it had not happened.
Once you are an adult, you tend to
avoid such emotional connections.
Falling in love can be risky, arduous,
foolish, wonderful; but it is mandated,
there are perimeters, expectations.
But once you are past adolescence,
the phenomenon of best friends is em-
barrassing, to be avoided.
Or maybe I imagined it, I am likely
to imagine things that don’t exist for
others. You must guard against that, I
cautioned myself.

I
am so, so sorry to have lost touch . . .
I am so, so sorry to have lost
contact . . .
. . . so, so sorry. Forgive me!
Driving to Audra’s house halfway
across the state of New Jersey. The
first time in two years I have driven
such a distance. Feeling gay, giddy.
Feeling apprehensive. COVID had
kept me indoors and warm like El-
iot’s Waste Land winter keeping us
warm, benumbed as root vegetables.
If you don’t sicken and die, there can
be solace in what sociologists call
“social isolation.”
It had been years since I’d visited
Audra and Thad Klein in their hand-
some old stone house on a hill above
the Delaware River, purchased after
Thad’s retirement from the university.
(Though, as it turned out, Thad had
continued to teach graduate courses drove up this five-hundred-foot drive- thistles, Queen Anne’s lace. Occa-
in the department, and to introduce way, I would have a difficult time sional litter, what appeared to be news-
distinguished speakers. Since everyone turning around, should I have to paper pages, rain-sodden, rotted,
who came to the university wanted to leave the house in a hurry. caught in brambles beside the drive-
meet one of its legendary faculty mem- Such peculiar thoughts come to me way, were an eyesore, but a minor one.
bers, his retirement had been some- in weak moments, like arrows shot at As I approached the stone house, I
thing of a joke.) random. I can sense that the veil be- thought I saw movement at one of the
As I had recalled, the Kleins’ house tween myself and something adver- first-floor windows, as if a curtain were
was set back from the road, only just sarial on the other side—something being pulled aside.
visible through a stand of tall decidu- responsible for these thoughts—has I lifted my hand in greeting.
ous trees. A farmhouse dating from grown perilously thin. Wondered then if I should have
the late eighteenth century, many I parked my car at the end of the done this? Indicated that I’d seen Au-
times expanded, renovated, refur- driveway, in a grassy area beside dra at the window? I had the impres-
bished; originally one of the largest the road, and hiked up the long drive. sion that she’d quickly shrunk back
farms in the Delaware Valley, reduced It was a beautiful day in late sum- out of sight.
in recent decades to just three or four mer. It was not oppressively humid, as She has forgotten you are coming. She
uncultivated acres. it usually is in New Jersey at this time has no idea who you are.
A long driveway!—made up im- of year. Cicadas thrummed gaily, The front door was made of old, solid
practicably of gravel. fields shimmered with bird and insect wood, painted a tasteful shade of dark
I discovered that I was reluctant to life. The gravel drive was rutted and red that had begun just perceptibly to
drive up Audra’s driveway. The palms uneven and stippled with weeds, but peel; the knocker was a tarnished brass
of my hands had grown damp. If I weeds of an attractive sort, flowering eagle. I tried not to peer through the

68 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023 Mine is the Morning, by Nancy Friedland © The artist. Courtesy Tyger Tyger Gallery, Asheville, North Carolina
vertical windows beside the door as a about, as our eyes invariably do in such Mexican, a shelf of teapots brought
shadowy figure approached to let me in. circumstances, seeking out familiar ti- back by Thad from his travels to the
“Why, hello!—wonderful to see tles, familiar jacket covers—on a coffee Middle East.
you . . . ” table, a short stack of books containing Yet, conspicuously, on a rattan table
“Wonderful to see you . . . ” a familiar cover, familiar font, a familiar by the front window, what appeared to
Audra greeted me warmly, and author’s name: my own. be a rifle.
tears shone in her eyes. There was a I felt a stab of something like plea- “Oh, is that a—gun?”
smell in the air of something airy, sure. But maybe chagrin. For it seemed Gun, not rifle, to suggest how foreign
wonderful as baking bread. to me that this book of mine had been to me, how distasteful, such an object
I was astonished, I was crying, I in exactly that place years ago when I’d was, I didn’t even know its truer name.
never cry— how strange it was that last visited; if I detached the book from Audra glanced at the table as if she’d
I should cry now. the stack, and opened it to the title forgotten the rifle and was annoyed at
I was light-headed too. My heart page, I would discover an inscription in me for calling our attention to it.
beat rapidly. That fluttery sensation my unmistakable handwriting: A neighbor had insisted she take it
when you realize you are out of con- from him, Audra said, “In case I might
to Audra & Thad with love,
trol. Another trip of the heart, the Maude
need it sometime.”
heart will be fibrillating. Oxygen “Because you live alone here, and it’s
won’t reach your brain. You will faint. Had neither of them read the book? isolated?”
For it seemed I was missing Thad Was Audra aware that my book was on “Yes. Because I live alone here, and
Klein badly. I had not anticipated display, sure to attract my eye, as soon it’s isolated.”
this, exactly. That I was here in as I stepped into the room? Out of a morbid sort of curiosity,
Thad’s house, in this particular Audra had prepared fruit drinks for because I had rarely seen a rifle close
place, where Thad Klein should have us: apricot, banana, yogurt, wheat germ. up, because I am a person who abhors
been, but was not; that I was here, A circular glass-topped table was set at and fears guns and would outlaw all
but Thad was not—this seemed to the other end of the living room; two guns if I had the power, I went to ex-
me preposterous. citrus-colored place mats facing each amine the rifle, without touching it.
But there was Audra drawing back, other across the table as in a chess game. “Is this a .22 rifle?” (I had never
wiping at her eyes, ever sensible, ever Chatter about blending machines, heard of any other kind, this seemed
in charge—“Well, come inside, pureed foods, smoothies. Chatter like a plausible query.)
Maude! I’ve made lunch. How was about mutual friends, acquaintances. “Yes, it’s a .22. Hunters use them for
the drive?” Colleagues of Thad who had tried to bird hunting, I think. Not that my
The sound of my name in Audra’s organize a memorial, postponed in- neighbor is a hunter, he isn’t. He’s re-
mouth was a rough sort of caress. definitely. Chatter rapid and pitiless as tired like us, he and his wife live in the
During the pandemic I could go for Ping-Pong. Neither side wishes to let the next house over.”
days without hearing anyone’s voice, ball fly past to clatter onto the floor. The “But—do you know how to use it?”
in person. Not hearing my name ut- pace quickens, the breath quickens. “He’s shown me. I’ve actually fired
tered, in a human voice. As Audra spoke I was nodding it.” Audra spoke with an air of patience,
Seeing Maude on a computer brightly. I was still aware of my (unread, like one humoring a small child. Add-
screen, in an email or text message, unopened) book on the nearby table. I ing, embarrassed: “I hope never to use
had no ring of intimacy. Rather, was still aware of the wrongness of be- it, of course . . . ”
Maude seemed like a kind of mockery ing in this place, in which Thad Klein A flush came into her face. Clearly,
of intimacy. was absent. she wanted to change the topic.
No one to call me on the phone. Too much here to distract me. As I A .22 rifle in the Kleins’ house!
How are you, Maude? have lived alone for a long time now, With a smooth-polished dark wooden
Audra led me into a living room I am accustomed to steering my own stock. Surely it would be heavy to
with a low, beamed ceiling, stone fire- thoughts along a narrow, fairly straight lift; when you dared to pull the trig-
place, well-worn leather sofa, chairs, road. In the company of others, I feel ger there would be a kick to your
tables stacked with books, smooth the steering wheel being tugged away. shoulder like a rebuke.
plank floors upon which handwoven And how strange, the blunt real- I would tell no one, when I re-
carpets were laid; from this, a step ity of this room. For reality is inev- turned home. I knew that such infor-
down into a screened-in porch over- itably banality. mation would be misinterpreted by
looking what appeared to be a ruin Yet there is nothing banal about mutual friends—it would not be to
of a pear orchard, like something death. Absence. the widow’s credit.
out of a Tarkovsky film. The beauty of the setting distracted What would Thad think? A .22 rifle
me, for it was, if closely examined, an in his house . . .

M
emories of the setting re- overabundance of beautiful unrelated Oh, that is—disturbing. Poor Audra,
turned, in waves, ripples. things, crowded and colliding. Pale- what has happened to her!
Books in stacks, lying hori- yellow floral wallpaper in the style of It was touching, that Audra had pre-
zontally; books in shelves, standing William Morris, intricately woven pared such an elaborate lunch. Very
vertically. Rapidly my eyes darted wall hangings that might have been likely neither of us even ate lunch most

STORY 69
days; it isn’t a meal with much appeal, carpenter ants, a half-dozen hornet’s stand lying in bed so I come down-
if one lives alone. nests under the eaves; township stairs into the kitchen, barefoot, in
Cold carrot curry soup, salade taxes, ash trees dying and in danger my nightgown. It’s the identical flan-
niçoise, multigrain bread of the hue of of being blown onto the house in the nel nightgown I owned when Thad
rich mahogany, which Audra had next windstorm. and I were first married—just thir-
baked herself just that morning. “And the driveway!—that is a seri- teen years ago.”
“Really! That is amazing, Audra.” ous nuisance, especially in the winter.” Thirteen years! I would have thought
I am at a loss as to what to say “In the winter, yes—I can imagine. no more than eight, nine years.
about home-baked bread. Usually the It’s so—long.” T he entire lifetime of their
loaf is presented as a work of art, a “It’s long, and it’s gravel. Not prac- marriage—so brief!
quirky-gnarly artisanal art, often tical, like asphalt.” But time is accelerated now, like
beautiful to the eye, and mouthwater- “But much more attractive.” an arrow approaching its target.
ingly aromatic; it is meant to inspire “That’s what everyone says. Thad “ . . . I prepare tea, herbal tea.
envy, I would guess, beyond simple thought it was ridiculous, because Thad used to laugh at ‘herbal tea.’ ‘It
admiration. When one can so readily each winter there’s a problem with isn’t tea,’ he said, ‘it’s herbal infu-
purchase novelty breads in local snow removal, and in the spring thaw sion.’ I come out here, I sit at the ta-
stores and farmers markets, what is half the gravel is washed away in the ble, I stare out the window and up
the purpose of such labor? I felt ditch. Maybe you noticed, the drive- the driveway. My brain is just blank.
obliged to ask Audra what sort of way slopes uphill, the house is at the I’m waiting for light to return. Col-
bread it was, what sort of ingredients top of an incline, so naturally rain ors. How colors emerge out of things,
went into it, and where she purchased rushes down.” with light. It’s fascinating to me. I
them—with such earnestness, you I wondered why we were talking at can’t say why. I’m staring at objects
would think that I intended to take such length about the driveway. that have no color—those tree
up bread baking tomorrow; even as a Gravel! Was there some covert mean- trunks, that fence post. Deer—there
vise seemed to be tightening around ing here, one that I was not decoding? are often deer in the driveway. Not
my chest, the revelation that came to It seemed strange to me, that Au- bucks, rarely bucks, usually a doe
me another time, more forcibly, that dra hadn’t commented on the fact with two fawns. Colors emerge with
Thad really wasn’t in this house. that I had parked at the road. That the sun. You see something dappled
I’d hiked up the driveway. That she’d moving—it’s a fawn. At this time of

T
hough I could wait—and wait— (evidently) seen me, watched me ap- year the fawns are just a few months
and wait—I would not hear the proach. Was that not an eccentric old. When we had a cat, I fed the cat
man’s footsteps approaching, gesture, to park five hundred feet of course—Rusty. Rusty has died, I
feel the vibration of his tread in the old away? Was that not an eccentric re- haven’t replaced him. People tell
plank floorboards, as he bounded into action on Audra’s part, not to speak me— adopt a kitten! A puppy. But I
the room, having heard our voices— of it? don’t have time. I can’t be responsi-
Hey! Hello! Is that Maude? What the hell I feared the embarrassment of ble for another life. I mean—a liv-
brings you here, Maudie? having to back up and maneuver ing thing, that has to be fed. I need
Audra was explaining how bread the car around, as my frowning to sit alone here staring out at those
baking had become an integral part hostess, standing on the front stoop, trees. I’ll see someone in the drive-
of her life since the lockdown. The watched. Perhaps something like way, or something, and if it isn’t
word integral seemed to me particu- this had happened in the past, at this deer it turns out to be Thad return-
larly poignant, piteous. house. I would be hesitant, for in- ing to the house, exactly as he al-
I was laughing, but then I was stance, to back over a corner of the ways had. You can see, the way
coughing, lifting a linen napkin to my lawn, especially if the homeowner Thad is walking, the clothes he’s
mouth, appalled. was watching. wearing, the fact that he’s carrying
“Are you all right, Maude?”— (Though the Kleins’ lawn was the New York Times—you can tell,
Audra was concerned, staring at me. overgrown, lush with wildflowers and he doesn’t seem to know, yet.
Wiping at my eyes. Waiting for the thistles, hadn’t been mowed in

“E
spell to pass. weeks; you would not really call it a very morning Thad would hike
In a bemused voice Audra was say- lawn any longer.) out to the mailbox to get the
ing how annoying it is, everyone asks Audra was saying, in a curiously newspaper. The Times is deliv-
a widow if she intends to sell her flat, detached voice, as if she were re- ered at about 6:30 am, so he’d get out
house, of course it’s a reasonable porting something she supposed of bed to retrieve it. God help us if the
question, and this house in particular might be of interest to me, but was of delivery was late or never arrived. He
is so remote . . . minimal interest to her: “ . . . in the only read the print edition, of course—
You can gauge a homeowner’s early morning I’m awake before dawn. he’d been reading it, he said, since
pride by the degree to which they Usually it’s pitch-black outside. I have 1959, at Harvard. All the undergradu-
complain of their property. A fretful no idea what time it is. Nothing more ates at Harvard read the New York
sort of affection: roof needs repair, depressing than waking so early un- Times in those days. Hard to believe,
furnace needs replacing, termites, less it’s raining as well as dark. Can’t isn’t it? Many of them listened to Met-

70 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

ropolitan Opera broadcasts too. On “Did I tell you, Rusty died of old “It’s hurtful, I remember how hurt
Saturday afternoons, Thad said, you’d age? At least, I think he did. He wan- I’d been, at Thad’s thoughtlessness,
hear identical music, voices, wafting dered off into the woods back in the over the years. Of course, he hadn’t
through the Yard. From one corner to spring, never returned. Days I searched always known he was thoughtless. It
the other. for him in the woods. Calling his was more that he was oblivious. Un-
“The New York Times, you’d have to name. Bawling like a baby. Maybe it’s aware of how he could injure others.
be careful no one in the residence better that way, animals wandering off “Covered in scar tissue, someone
stole your copy. It was valuable. It was to die alone, not wanting us to distract said. The price of living with a cer-
cherished. Some boys read it first thing them with our tears. tain kind of man.
in the morning, others saved it for the “So, I look up and there’s Thad “So—I’m standing there. Staring
night. Thad saved it for the night, walking slowly up the driveway trying out the window. In my nightgown,
after a day of classes and work. That to read the newspaper at the same still. I will put on a sweater or a
was his reward. He and his suitemates time. Sometimes I’d watch him from jacket, kick my feet into boots, run
outside to Thad in the driveway.
“Suddenly desperate to get to him.
“I’m crying to him, shouting—
‘Thad! My God—Thad . . . ’
“Thad looks up from the newspa-
per in that way he has, squinting, isn’t
sure what he has heard, doesn’t ex-
pect to be seeing me like this, the
sight of me is a shock to him too.
“Whatever is in my face, I can’t
fathom.
“I should be terrified of seeing him,
and of him—but I am not, I am over-
whelmed with relief.
“(It’s that simple, evidently. When
they return, some of them, who can
return, like slipping through a crack
in a cavern wall, the emotions in
their face are plain as a child’s, plain
as day, nothing subtle or obscure.)
“(We’ve come to think that the
profound truths of our lives are
complicated or elliptical as in po-
etry but in fact they are not. Plain
and simple as a hammer striking
you on the head.)
“We’re together now. Clutching at
in Weld Hall actually discussed the this window, he’d be so lost in con- each other. Thad tries to comfort me,
news, can you believe it? 1959? Of centration he didn’t know where he he’s stunned and confused but trying
course, they were smart kids from New was. Once or twice, I tapped at the to remain level-headed, that was his
York City. Stuyvesant, Erasmus Hall. window—that annoyed him! Not role in our marriage, I will be in
Competitive kids. So Thad never lost worth it, to risk annoying your hus- charge. You know Thad, any kind of
his obsession with the New York band over a trifle. emotional display embarrasses him.
Times, and it had to be the print edi- “But this time, it’s different. He’s He isn’t sure where he has been all
tion. The online edition, Thad said, been gone. We haven’t seen each this time, what has happened, he’s
made him slightly sick—on a screen, other in a long time. Longer than any watching me to gauge how I am feel-
nothing looks profound. But the print of his trips, when he’d slip off the grid, ing, which will tell him how to feel: it
edition was pure pleasure. He would no way to contact him. And no way was like that in the hospital, when
read through the entire newspaper, to explain this absence. Where has the oncologist spoke to us, those care-
or nearly. It would take him an hour or Thad been? I’d tried to call him doz- fully chosen words. Trying to deter-
more, at breakfast. That was the point ens of times. There was never any mine whether (somehow) this has
of Thad’s breakfast, to provide a frame ringing, it always went directly to been a mistake. But whose mistake? If
for the New York Times. So intent voicemail. I am stunned, that Thad whatever went wrong was his fault.
upon the damned paper, one time he has been here all along, evidently—at He’d never been comfortable with
hadn’t noticed that Rusty had jumped least, somewhere. And now he’s walk- anyone criticizing him, however circu-
up on the table and had come over to ing up the driveway as if he’d never itously; he’d listen to unmitigated
lap milk from his cereal bowl. been gone at all! praise with a strained face, like one

Blue Monday, by Nancy Friedland © The artist. Courtesy The Lyceum Gallery, Toronto STORY 71
 waiting for the axe to fall even if it been without him, how lonely. And no
wasn’t going to fall. Since his illness point to the loneliness, no end to it.
he has become hypersensitive, I can How anxious I have been for him,
see that. wherever he is. How I have tried to call
“His hair seems a little thinner on him but he never answers his cell
top, silvery-gray, grown a little long phone. Never returns his messages.
on the sides, curling over his ears. I used “Trying not to sound reproachful.
to comb his hair when it was shoulder- Or hysterical. Nothing will alienate
length, no other woman had ever done Thad more.
that, he’d said; he humored me, though “Thad seems to know that he has
possibly he’d enjoyed it. He has lost been away. Somewhere. Trying to re-
weight, his cheeks are almost gaunt. member, but it eludes him.
You know, Thad always boasted that “It wasn’t his fault!—unless maybe it
he’d inherited the genes of serfs, peas- was his fault. A man is mortified, in
ant stock. His grandparents were from such circumstances. Dying is—is not a
the Pale. Thick wrists and ankles, solid manly thing. A man feels weak, emas-
build, if he lost weight with illness it culated. Thad Klein had been a
wouldn’t show for some time, that was mensch, nothing had flattered him
a blessing. more than hearing himself described as
“We are incredulous seeing each a mensch. He’d said to me, in the hos-
other. Our eyes are just staring. Because pital, on what we didn’t know would be
this can’t be, and yet—here we are. the next-to-last day, that is, the last day
“We understand, we must act Thad was clear-minded: Oh Christ. I
quickly. Maybe there has been some failed you by dying. That’s what this is,
mistake, that is why Thad has re- isn’t it? Our final days.
turned. Sobbing and laughing, tears “He’d spoken with reproach—it had
running down our cheeks. been bitter reproach—of himself.
“Thad is so dazed, part of the news- “This was heartbreaking to me,
paper falls from his fingers, and he to hear. I protested: No! Don’t say
scarcely notices as it blows skittering such a thing.
along the ground. “I told him, he had not failed any-
“Every few feet we stop, out of one. He had not died.
breath. We’re panting! We kiss and “All this comes back to me now. I
hug, kind of crazy behavior, desperate see the opportunity to make things
behavior. We’re not kids. We are right. We are gripping hands, hurrying
level-headed adults. Both of us, to the house. I’ve forgotten how large
frankly stunned. his hand is, how warm, such strong
“Where the hell, Thad is wonder- fingers. It seems to have taken us a
ing, has he been?—all these months? very long time to get to the house. The
Was it years? No contact? gravel driveway is much longer than I
“Where the hell had I been, that I remember. And it seems to be later
hadn’t come to pick him up?—Thad now, midmorning, the sun has risen
wants to know. I had the damned car, above the trees. Maybe the day will be
all along. bright and brazen after all. Too hot.
“But Thad isn’t accusing me! No. There is some urgency, to get Thad
He’s just—bamboozled. Just no idea safely inside the house.
where the hell he has been. “But Thad stops dead in his tracks
“He’s wearing his old gray cordu- seeing the condition of the driveway
If you find yourself in a situation roys, that denim jacket that’s been near the house, where gravel has been
you never thought you’d be hanging in the closet, the grimy visibly washed away. God damn! All
in, we’re here to help. No matter baseball cap he couldn’t bear to part he’d paid for this fancy gravel and the
what you and your family are with, a pair of water-stained Nike driveway still looks like hell.
going through, we can help you running shoes. This is exasperating, “And that ash tree by the house,
take on your child’s drug or he has a dozen pairs of running shoes Thad sees that it’s dead. Totally dead.
alcohol problem. in a jumble on his closet floor, can’t Skeletal. Not a leaf remaining.
bring himself to throw out an old pair “In fact, Thad discovers several other
Connect with a Parent Specialist when he purchases a new pair, and he ash trees, dead or dying. Since when? Is
for free. Call 1-855-DRUGFREE has newer shoes than these, I’m sure. it the ash borer, killing ash trees across
or Text 55753 “All this while I’m telling Thad how New Jersey? Each tree will cost us a
I’ve missed him, how terrible it has thousand dollars to cut down.
© Center on Addiction /
Partnership for Drug-Free Kids
72 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023
 “I am trying to calm Thad who has about himself, the mysterious things books they sell, priced at a dollar in a
become overexcited. Such household that have happened to him recently, bin like something at Walgreens.
expenses always excite him, he isn’t like a landscape glimpsed from a

“S
accustomed to country living, he’d lived speeding vehicle. Each terminal ill- till I am trying to grasp what has
the first eighteen years of his life in ness is a story beginning slowly but happened, what this is: that Thad
Brooklyn, in a crowded immigrant accelerating; you intend to memorize is returned, at last. Who cares
neighborhood. I call his attention to all that happens because it is so ex- about his books, who cares about any-
the house, he’s squinting at the house. traordinary, because nothing like this thing in this house? The fact is Thad
Now tears are streaking down his has ever happened before, you need to has returned.
cheeks. He’s deeply moved to be home. retain each detail in chronological “Saying, hardly able to speak, ‘I
“His beard is slightly scruffy, he order, each incident has the horrific have missed you so. Where have you
has not trimmed it in some time profundity of a fingernail torn out, been!’ Thad tries to comfort me with
with his prim little beard scissors. never would you forget such a shock; faint jocosity: ‘Well, I’m back now. I’m
This is unusual, in a man of such yet soon there are too many shocks to here, right?’
vanity. He has not showered in some remember, a blur, a buzzing blur, the “Repeating how we’d missed the
time, he smells of his body. The pu- landscape is left behind as the vehi- other. For what is there to say? We
pils of his eyes have shrunken as if cle’s speed accelerates. have stammered our astonishment,
he’s staring into a blinding light. “Naturally Thad wants to see his our relief. As in life we have been shy
“Asking if we still have the same study, his things. Anxious to see if to say, Oh I love you! I love you so.
lawn crew from Lambertville that anyone (that would be his wife) has Without you, my life is worthless to me.
mowed the grass, kept the bushes and dared to disturb his desk, his enor- “My throat is dry, I am swallowing
trees trimmed, where the hell have they mous console computer (blank dark compulsively. I am frightened that
been?—Thad is exasperated with me. screen), his folders and files, his now that Thad is back, he will be dis-
“I have no defense, I am to blame. I books; but I have left everything in appointed in me, he will be angry
have let things go. Thad’s study as it was, anticipating with me, for since his departure I
“The one clear sign of depression, such a return, such a scene, no reason have done some things of which he
despair—letting things go. to change anything, though often I would disapprove.
“Quickly I tell him that now that come into this large room at the rear “His tone can change in an in-
he’s back, the lawn will be mowed of the house, just to sit at the antique stant. If I am overemotional, Thad
again, things will return to normal, desk, marvel at its size, weight; enjoy will draw back. Well, I missed you too,
he can make calls this afternoon the springy cushion of the swivel darling. I hadn’t any idea where the hell
when he’s rested. He can hire a new chair, that had cost so much at the you were and why—why didn’t you
lawn crew. time. Thad had laughed at my shock. call me?
“But now he’s distrustful of me. All of Thad’s valuable books remain “Why’d you just abandon me there?
He has no idea where I’ve been all exactly as he’d left them. Thad’s own In the hospital . . .
this time. books, eight books written over a ca- “How to stammer, But I didn’t! I
“Inside the house he’s squinting reer of more than four decades, over didn’t abandon you?
and staring to see if things are as he three hundred articles published in “In the kitchen Thad is sharp-
remembers. Something has changed, prestigious academic journals. Floor- eyed, seeing the calendar at once:
he can sense this, but what is it? to-ceiling built-in bookshelves, three august 2022. Looks quickly away,
He’s suspicious. walls of the study. I have not asked this is a preposterous date, someone
“ ‘What did you do with my chair, Thad’s friends and younger colleagues is out to trick him, he isn’t going to
why did you move it?’ This is a hefty, if they would like to select books from fall for it. One of those stupid vi-
taffy-colored leather chair facing the Thad’s collection, out of dread that sual puzzles, those neuroscience
fireplace, with Thad’s stack of (mostly they would not; but also that, if they tests, how our perceptions are shaped
unread) books beside it. Of course I did, the precious books might end up by our expectations—or is it the
haven’t touched the chair or the on eBay, and if I discovered this, or reverse?—not going to get suckered
books as I haven’t touched most somehow Thad did, how hurt we into trying to figure it out.
things in Thad’s study, his closets. would be! Libraries no longer want “In the cupboard, in the refrigera-
Even Thad’s frayed old leather belt such special collections, eighteenth- tor, there are foods that confuse
hanging from a hook in the upstairs and nineteenth-century first editions, Thad, and the foods that Thad likes
bathroom, I haven’t had the heart to classics of science, the complete works best seem to be missing: no low-fat
throw away. of Darwin, his Life and Letters, vol- milk, for his cereal; no carton of
“Thad has many questions to ask umes on his rival Wallace. Can’t give jumbo eggs, for his poached eggs.
about the house, the positioning of away scholarly books, the only uni- Where are those Scandinavian crack-
things in the rooms and certain art- versity libraries that might be inter- ers he likes, that to the rest of us taste
works on the walls, including the nu- ested in such titles already own them, like caramelized sawdust? Where is
merous photographs he’d taken on his kept under lock and key. The local li- the jar of peanut butter? (He would
travels. But he has no questions about brary is always downsizing, selling surreptitiously devour peanut butter
himself. There is a curious reticence books, it’s shocking to me to see the from the jar, midafternoon.) There in

STORY 73
plain sight is a bottle of low-calorie “As the second wife, I’ve learned not hadn’t listened to the oncologist, his
Italian salad dressing, shocking to to ask. When I have asked, Thad says eyes glazed over in boredom, but he’d
Thad, this is unacceptable in our coldly, That’s private. listened later to the palliative care
kitchen for Thad has nothing but “As I knew he would, and had been doctor—a woman, soft wavy hair, soft
contempt for vulgar diet foods. He’d dreading, Thad asks about our accoun- sympathetic eyes—of course he’d lis-
been in charge of preparing our tant Doug Murphy, another source of tened to her.
nightly salad dressing: extra-virgin ol- irritation to Thad over the years, since “Quickly changes the subject, which
ive oil, red wine vinegar, basil, mus- Doug Murphy often doesn’t return calls is like Thad: ‘What’s for supper tonight?’
tard; what pride Thad had taken in promptly and there is just something “Opening the refrigerator again, pe-
these rituals, established long ago about him, the twitch in his eyelid that rusing the freezer, I am hoping that
in the verdant days of his first mar- Thad doesn’t trust. Thad doesn’t see how little remains
riage; a latecomer-wife had no grasp “Not that Thad cares about money. that might be of interest to him—
on how crucial these (seemingly triv- He does not. Keeping our checkbooks mainly frozen bread, frozen corn, peas,
ial) rituals were, how offended Thad up to date has been my responsibility, green beans. No meat, not even
would become if they were violated. as has paying property taxes, the mort- chicken. Suddenly he has grown weary
“I am desperate to hide from gage, the electricity bills, so of course if of the effort. He says, I’m tired.
Thad how slovenly I have become something goes amiss it would be my “The light is draining from his
in grief, how indifferent to my own fault, I would be harshly scolded. face. His skin had acquired a kind of
well-being, feeding myself from cans, “True, Thad doesn’t care about ruddy vehemence when he was angry
frozen food, rarely fresh vegetables or money but he does care about being but now it is fading, returning to its
green salads, too much energy is re- cheated. original pallor. Thad turns to make
quired to give a damn about oneself. “This is a sort of obsession with him. his way— swaying, reaching out to
“Next, he examines his photographs Beginning as an undergraduate at Har- touch the walls, to maintain his
on the walls, in several rooms and in vard, a lifetime ago, he’d lie awake at balance—to a back bedroom, where
the hallways. Carefully framed, fastidi- night calculating who had likely he can lie down.
ously matted in white, starkly beautiful cheated him, who was taking advantage “Just very—very tired . . .
compositions—sand dunes, mountain of him, his good nature, his naïveté, his “At this, I am overcome with fear. It’s
peaks, sunrises, coastlines shrouded in willingness to believe the best of people; a familiar fear, panic. The injunction
mist. Too late I see that two or three of in recent years, he had worked himself is—Don’t let your husband sleep, he will
the photographs have loosened inside into a fury calculating what the total never wake up again.
their frames. Of course Thad’s sharp sum might be, of all he’d been cheated “I’m running after Thad, into the
eye alights upon them, too. Damn! of over the course of his lifetime. bedroom— I’m pulling at his arm,
Look at this. You need to pay more “But when I try to explain that Doug clutching at him—No no no you can’t
attention, Audra. Murphy is retiring, that Doug Murphy lie down, you can’t sleep. Wait!
“Quickly, I apologize. Try to explain, has had open-heart surgery this sum- “Thad throws off my arm. He’s dis-
but Thad interrupts. He has never been mer, Thad loses his temper and tells me dainful of being touched just now, my
interested in excuses! to shut up!—with a look of such hatred desperation means nothing to him, he
“Only now in this prickly mood does that I am rooted to the spot. mutters, I’m tired. So tired.
Thad remember to ask about his chil- “In life, I would flee from Thad when “I try to stop him but he lies down
dren, my stepchildren, middle-aged he’s in such moods. Such a sudden flare heavily on the bed, with a deep sigh, a
sons with whom I am on good terms of hatred for me, his wife, like a struck sigh to rend the heart, smudging dirt
but whom I scarcely know. With Thad match in his glistening eyes, but now I on the comforter, from the water-
absent between us we’re drifting apart stand paralyzed, dry-mouthed, there is stained running shoes. In an instant,
like rudderless boats in an affable cur- no longer anywhere for me to flee, this his eyes are closed.”
rent, almost too far apart now to wave is our house, the final house of our lives.

A
at one another. This is the life we have been allotted. udra is suddenly silent. She
“So far as I know there is no bad “Thad, why do you hate me? You’ve hides her face in her hands, in
news of them, no exceptional news. I only just come back to me, I am your wife, a gesture of misery, shame.
suggest that Thad telephone them that I have been your widow, how can you All these minutes she has been
evening, they will be thrilled to hear hate me? speaking in a kind of trance. As I
from him. “These plaintive words, this plea, have never heard Audra, or indeed
“Will they! Let’s see. seizes Thad’s attention. Instead of anyone, speak to me before.
“Thad’s face settles into an inevita- squinting and glaring, he looks at me. I have been staring at Audra, in a
ble scowl when the subject of his sons “Such frankness is embarrassing to trance myself. I stare at her, fright-
arises. He is disappointed in them— him. Unnerving. ened for her.
though both have earned PhDs, some- “He’s relenting, thank God. He isn’t In a lowered voice I ask, “Is he—?
how they have let him down, maybe an unreasonable man if you can just get Did he—? Fall asleep—?”
they’ve just never lived up to their fa- through to him. (As his friends assured My heart is beating rapidly. I have
ther’s high expectations, he’s never me many times in the early years of our a strong compulsion to run to the
explained to me. marriage.) In the hospital too Thad back bedroom, to peer inside.

74 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

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Eager to be free of the house with its SOLUTION TO THE
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into the fresh air, where I can breathe. L I A E A P I E T A S R
Half-falling down the stone steps I D I O T S T T A M P A
that are beginning to crumble. NOTES FOR
An overgrown lawn, going to seed. “PLUS FOURS”: P E R P E T U I T I E S
Crazy-loud with cicadas. Gravel drive- Note: * indicates an anagram. A R P E G E L A I T C H
way, partly washed away and looking L E O N O R A I C U T E
derelict, shameful.
Wildflowers, brambles. Newspaper A H R D R E R R A N D S
pages, blown into the underbrush. R E T R Y G A S H E A T
Hiking hurriedly down the driveway.
For the driveway is on an incline. M A L E F A C T I O N S
In the Delaware Valley, as you ap- I D E A L T O R T U G A
proach the river, the land turns down S E N M I T Y I T T S S
ever more steeply.
Resisting the impulse to run to my T R O T C A R P O R T S
car, which I can barely see, hidden at
the end of the driveway. FOUR-LETTER WORDS: a. a-IRS; b. a-lar[GE]; c. bras[s]; d. carp, two mngs.; e. [dupli]Cate; f. city,
Resisting the impulse, for if Audra is first letters; g. etui, first letters; h. F-act; i. flic, hidden; j. go[d’s-count]ry; k. he’s-t[ake]; l. i’(on)s;
watching at the window, she will see, m. male, hidden; n. mist, homophone; o. orts*; p. perp, rev.; q. sass, hidden; r. scar[f]; s. slip, two
and she will know why I am running. mngs.; t. stab, rev.; u. t(i.e.)s; v. trip, two mngs.; w. trot, rev.; x. yet-1.
Why I am panting, desperate to get to
ACROSS: 7. *; 8. 1-diotic*; 9. T(A.M.)pa (rev.); 10. pun; 11. a-itch; 13. Leo-nor-a; 17. err(and)s;
my car. 18. re[en]try; 19. gash-eat; 22. I-deal; 23. T[eams]-or-tug-a (rev.); 24. *.
Realizing only now, the purpose of
the .22 rifle. Whom it is the rifle is in- DOWN: 1. *; 2. re-0-pen; 3. *; 4. *; 5. two mngs.; 6. air-port; 12. tune-out; 14. r-e.g.-at-ta; 15. hidden;
tended to protect the widow against. Q 16. *; 20. *; 21. *.

STORY 75
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 R E V I E W S

Freud regarded Wilson as a neurotic

self-saboteur whose contradictions, es-
pecially during the 1919 Paris Peace
Conference, imperiled millions of lives
and pushed Europe toward fascism. “As

NEW BOOKS far as a single individual can be respon-

sible for the misery of this part of the
world, he surely is,” Freud wrote. Wil-
By Dan Piepenbring son, in his ambition to found the
League of Nations and assure his place
on the international stage, had com-
pletely watered down his ideals, making
one concession after another and be-
could no longer marshal evidence traying his ignorance of Europe’s clash-
from actual MDs. ing cultures. Such a peace, brokered to
Fortunately, psychoanalysis within an inch of its life, had no chance
gives us a loophole. The Ameri- of enduring without the participation of
can Psychoanalytic Association the United States. But when the Treaty
has said that it “does not consider of Versailles faced objections primarily
political commentary by its indi- from his Republican opponents in Con-
vidual members an ethical mat- gress, Wilson brooked no compromise,
ter.” Nor should it. The father of and the ratification failed. “Peace and
psychoanalysis himself, in an oft- goodwill among all nations abroad,”
ignored divagation, co-wrote an Winston Churchill later wrote, “but no
entire volume about our twenty- truck with the Republican Party at
eighth president, whom he de- home. That was . . . [Wilson’s] ruin and
tested from afar. Patrick Weil, a the ruin of much else as well.” John
political scientist, tells the story Maynard Keynes called the president a
in T HE M A DM A N IN T HE “blind and deaf Don Quixote.”
W HIT E HOUSE: SIGMUND William Bullitt, one of Wilson’s dip-
FR EUD, A MBA SSA DOR BUL- lomats, had watched the president choke
LITT, AND THE LOST PSYCHO- at home and abroad, and became con-
BIOGR APHY OF WOODROW vinced that the global order was “far too
WILSON (Harvard University reliant on the caprices of one person,”

I
n 1968, Barry Goldwater sued Press, $35), and better yet, he’s ferreted Weil writes. He hoped to abolish the
Fact magazine for publishing a out the original, unredacted manu- presidency. This conviction was still
series of psychiatrists’ statements script. This is the hottest gossip about in the back of his mind in 1926, when
claiming he was “grossly psychotic” Freud or Wilson in decades. Long- he arrived in Vienna to stretch out
and “a mass-murderer at heart.” His dead celebs seldom spill the tea. on the good doctor’s couch. Analysis
victory prompted the American
Psychiatric Association to adopt
the so-called Goldwater Rule,
which declared it unethical for
doctors to offer diagnoses without
an examination—as if any self-
respecting office-seeker would
consent to such. (“I have never
talked to a psychiatrist in my
life,” Goldwater said in his de-
fense.) Thus was one of our na-
tion’s great pastimes hobbled.
From that day on, those of us who
like to mouth off with the occa-
sional “Bush II’s well-publicized
penchant for clearing brush from
his Texas ranch is proof of his
narcissistic personality disorder”

Left: A cartoon of Woodrow Wilson from Punch, March 26, 1919. Right: The Celebrated
Couch of Sigmund Freud, by Helen Frank © The artist. Courtesy Fine Leaf, South Hero, Vermont REVIEWS 77
electrified him. “I wrote you a very Bullitt kept the manuscript under able, either. But its contention that Wil-
depressed letter three hours ago and lock for decades, fearing it might derail son’s daddy issues had a white-knuckle
now everything is gay again,” he told his career. Only toward the end of his grip on the fate of Europe—that it was
his wife. “All because I thought a life did he entertain its publication. By his idealism, vanity, obstinacy, and ser-
thought!!!!” Freud became a friend; then, Freud was dead and Wilson’s vility that scuttled the Treaty of Ver-
when they realized their mutual dis- reputation had been considerably reha- sailles, qualities that grew like tentacles
dain for Wilson, Bullitt suggested they bilitated. Delusionally, Bullitt imagined from his father’s long shadow—is per-
write a book together, as analyst and that the book would fetch a half- suasive enough, and more than a little
analysand so often do. million-dollar advance and become a timely. After all, Wilson had only a
The pair collated information from movie. Instead, upon its release in late fraction of the derangement that’s
Wilson’s biographers and confidants, 1966, it met with scathing reviews now a fixture of the executive branch,
and a psychomosaic emerged. Wilson (“Freudulence”) and a complete dis- where power is ever more concentrated.
had been excessively fond of his father, avowal from Freud’s daughter Anna.

F
a stern but affectionate minister; the Consulting the original manuscript, reud would’ve made short work
son, Weil writes, believed that God Weil found that Bullitt had ex- of the sixteenth-century as-
had “chosen him as an instrument to punged much of the good stuff: any tronomer Tycho Brahe, what
carry His designs” and dreamed of fol- mention of a castration complex, with his prosthetic nose (the real one
lowing his old man to the pulpit. He and also some theorizing about Wil- was disfigured in a duel; hello, castra-
loved public speaking—the sure sign of son’s masturbation —a habit dimly tion complex) and his fixation on his
a loose screw—and craved, twin brother, who died in
nay, required the adulation the womb, unblemished
of his male friends, yearning by sin. If it’s prima facie
to crush anyone who op- crazy to seek the highest
posed him. Women he kept office in the land, it’s even
under his thumb and other- crazier to make one’s liv-
wise ignored. He felt he was ing by the stars. How frus-
“too intense” and some- trating it must’ve been to
times enjoyed “outbursts of survey the night sky be-
high spirits when he fore the telescope came
would dance a hornpipe,” along. The moon is the
but he often succumbed oldest TV, as Nam June
to anhedonia. In sum, Paik put it, and binge-
Bullitt argued, Wilson watching it feels just as
empty as binge-watching
wished at the same time to anything else. It takes a
be the supreme male, all certain fortitude to focus
powerful, all commanding, on this emptiness, as the
all inflicting, and the com-
Danish writer Harald
plete female, all loving, all
submissive, all suffering. Voetmann has in his
Only one individual in novel SUBLUNAR (New
history has successfully re- Directions, $15.95), some-
solved that conflict. thing of a psychobiogra-
phy in its own right: a
Wilson wa nted to be wonderfully acrid study of
Christ. Brahe, his cohort of as-
“You and I know that tronomers manqués, and
Wilson was a passive homo- all the negative space that
sexual,” Freud told Bullitt, surrounds discovery.
“but we won’t dare say it.” As its title suggests,
They did, though. Much Sublunar is more con-
was made of a “handsome cerned with terrestrial
young blond man” with bodies than celestial ones;
whom the president had what Dane needs brave
shared a bed on a speaking o’erhanging firmament
tour. “Had he recognized when there are foul and
this dimension of his inner pestilent vapors to be had?
life,” Weil writes, “he might have been responsible, in Freud’s estimation, for Voetmann peoples the book with the
able to sublimate it and thereby avoid the president’s style of statesmanship. Renaissance riffraff who fell out with
the damage he inflicted on himself Weil is right to call the psychobiography posterity. Jesters, bellfounders, a mas-
and the world by repressing it.” “vindictive,” and it’s not terribly read- turbating dwarf. Much of the novel

Details from pages 22, 26, 24, and 34 of Astronomiæ instauratæ mechanica,
78 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023 1598, by Tycho Brahe. Courtesy the Royal Danish Library, LN 432 2°
 and frozen excrement only halfway Yepoka Yeebo isn’t exaggerating in
expelled from his bowels.” The assis- ANANSI’S GOLD: THE M AN WHO
tants bring an armless, legless man to LOOTED THE WEST, OUTFOXED
a prostitute for sport. And they clear WASHINGTON, AND SWINDLED
phlegm from their passages constantly, THE WORLD (Bloomsbury, $29.99)
eagerly, as if hoping to be applauded. when she calls him “one of the greatest
Voetmann is deft enough to make con artists of all time.” Blay-Miezah
this comical, eerie, and affecting. His claimed that Kwame Nkrumah, Gha-
vision of foreboding soars while his na’s first prime minister and president,
characters remain inexorably earth- had socked away millions (or was it
bound. In a sense, Sublunar reads like billions?) of dollars in Switzerland,
an office novel. The stultifying work- and, on his deathbed, made Blay-
place fuels the fears and yearnings of Miezah their sole custodian. But the
men who understand themselves as money was wrapped in red tape. If
mere employees. One of them dreams investors sent him the capital he
of “the vitrifying flame” that will, come needed to fulfill a set of nebulous, ever-
Judgment Day, turn everyone into “col- evolving “conditions,” they would
orless, melted glass figures, eyes and share in his reward. This inheritance
mouths sealed shut. . . . Their souls like scam, implausible on its face, netted
takes the form of meteorological jour- mist sequestered in the glass.” him eight figures in less than fifteen
nals written by Brahe’s assistants, but “History is fascinating and we do years, ensnaring destitute widows,
they dispense with their meteorology in need it to understand ourselves,” Voet- captains of industry, and ostentatious
a few brisk lines (“Southwest rather mann said in an interview last year, career criminals; no FBI sting, scan-
calm, sunshine at times”) and turn in- “but looking back is inevitably also dalized headline, or urgent diplomatic
stead toward ennui, despair, and the looking into a pit of pointless suffering.” cable could pluck the cigar from his
pleasures of the flesh: “I would rather Like Auden, he draws our attention to mouth. Here was a man who—in a
watch her globes tonight than icy stars.” the banal part of the pit, “some untidy prison cell, hours after having been
Cooped up in a shambling island spot / Where the dogs go on with their arrested at gunpoint—talked his way
observatory—“an institute for botched dog g y li fe a nd t he tor t u rer’s into receiving lunch on an actual
and bungled learning,” as one visitor horse / Scratches its innocent behind silver platter.
describes it—Brahe and company spend on a tree.” In 1959, still a teenager, Blay-Miezah
their nights making tedious measure- Voetmann has struck a minor had hopped a boat to the United States,
ments at the sextant and trying to turn chord between brooding mysticism telling his family he’d won a scholarship
stuff into gold. This leaves their days free and coarse, deadpan humor that to the University of Pennsylvania when
for drinking, whoring, and slopping brings out all the dimensions of star- he was actually working as a busboy.
around Denmark, a place so oversexed gazing: the awe, the superstition, But he learned the school’s fight song,
that even the ripening apples blush “as and, finally, the dread. “Do we really which passed as a diploma. For Ameri-
though ashamed of their swell.” For believe that it is ever not dark?” two of cans, any knowledge of the Gold Coast
these scholars, as for generations before his characters say in a kind of refrain. began and ended with the gold, and
and after them, there’s little to do other “The Lord has lit a Blay-Miezah found that,
than be horny, relieve one’s horniness, lamp which orbits us, as a transplant with an
and forswear all future acknowledgment but around it there is Ivy League sheen, he
of said horniness, for you are a crea- only darkness.” It re- could sell it without
ture of God, etc. Then rinse and repeat. sembles a haunting line having it. He sketched a
Actually, don’t rinse. No one in this from Thelonious Monk, seductive, alien Africa
novel does. It’s all soiled ruffs, greasy used by Thomas Pyn- that whetted Western
mustaches, blood and foam, bile and chon as the epigraph for appetites: part of his for-
slime. At one point a guy cleans his Against the Day: “It’s al- tune, he said, derived
nails with a dagger—probably the most ways night, or we from railroad ties “made
hygienic act in the book. Voetmann wouldn’t need light.” of heavy African woods
has an eye for filth, a disquieting way of that blunt the teeth of
finding the life and death thrumming
in it, and his translator, Johanne Sor-
genfri Ottosen, has ably brought across
every last effluvium from the Danish.
J ohn Ackah Blay-
Miezah promised to
light a lamp for
Ghana— growing up in a village
American termites.” By
the Seventies, having
proclaimed himself a
doctor and a diplomat, he’d blustered
Hence we encounter the “glistening with no electricity, his nickname his way into Philadelphia’s luxe
marbled innards” of a pheasant tossed was Kerosene Boy—but its rays never Bellevue-Stratford Hotel. The unpaid
to the dogs, and a frosty corpse “squat- shone on the many investors in his bills landed him in prison, where he
ting against the garden wall with Oman Ghana Trust Fund. Reader, learned about Nkrumah’s death and
breeches and hose around his ankles, he fleeced them. hatched his inheritance plot.

Left: Untitled (Tycho-Brahe), by Dr. Lakra © The artist. Courtesy kurimanzutto

Right: Shoes, by Taylor Simmons © The artist. Courtesy Public Gallery, London REVIEWS 79
 Ghana had seen such endemic cor-
ruption, instability, and unrest that
men who might’ve known better—
FROM CHURN TO BURN
nightclub and brewery owners, law- Colson Whitehead’s half-true Harlem
yers, insurance men, Episcopal
priests—thought it more than likely
that a couple million had slipped
By Lawrence Jackson
through the cracks. They forked over
their savings to a man in loafers and
a white leisure suit who guaranteed a Discussed in this essay:
hundredfold return. Before long, Blay- Crook Manifesto, by Colson Whitehead. Doubleday. 336 pages. $29.
Miezah was prevaricating among the
jet set on several continents, leaving a
trail of forged signatures on fake let- Carney’s problem is
terhead. He a nd his shadow y not so much that
partners—including John Mitchell, he is an anonymous
Nixon’s onetime campaign manager schlub, but that his
and certified dirty trickster—assured status as a trader in
black investors that the money would ill-gotten gains—
rocket Ghana into the developed occasionally fencing
world. “To Black people, they were stolen goods through
selling liberation: a chance to repair his store—hinders
the wounds of colonialism,” Yeebo his path to the bour-
writes. “To everyone else, they were geoisie. He is always
selling the chance to loot an African trying to separate
country’s ancestral wealth—which is himself from his
to say, they were selling colonialism.” outlaw father and
In the end, it was Shirley Temple the tainted inheri-
Black, the child star turned U.S. am- tance that founded
bassador to Ghana, who knew the his business, even as
score. She called Blay-Miezah a “bad he finds himself
penny, less, of course, 186 million dol- struggling to stay on
lars.” At home, some who recognized the straight and
his deceit may well have admired it. narrow. A ghetto
“Ghanaians delight in the kind of realist sometimes up
man who can talk himself out of a against the pam-
bind or into a fortune,” Yeebo writes. pered bougie ro-
They have a word, kalabule, for the mantics, he’s stuck
artful con. and rubbed raw. He
Reading Anansi’s Gold is like embodies the black
watching a heist movie in agonizing American contra-
slow motion. It’s all about improvisa- diction of building

R
tion, unforced error, unlikely escape. ay Carney, the protagonist of a foundation on a surface that holds
(Blay-Miezah once eluded police by Colson Whitehead’s new novel but also gives way.
dropping into a latrine-style toilet Crook Manifesto, is a Harlem Carney is ambivalent about his as-
and shimmying through the small furniture-store owner and family man. similationist journey from the noisy
door used to empt y it.) Yeebo He wants to keep his head down and apartment by the elevated train at
compares his marks, aptly, to the thrive, but finds it “impossible to play 127th Street to better digs on Riverside
members of a millenarian cult; ev- along like everyone else. To pretend Drive, until he finally ends up where
ery deferred payday, like every false that what they meant by freedom was his hincty wife began: on Strivers’ Row.
apocaly pse, strengthened their the same thing he meant. As ever, he Toward the book’s close, he agrees to
faith. More perplexing than the in- didn’t fit the templates.” In the words of reconcile his crooked and straight
vestors’ psychology is Blay-Miezah’s the narrator, Carney is “just another parts, like Harlem’s musical tribute to
own. He took himself in: he be- schlubby shopkeeper getting leaned the bicentennial—“folly, fortitude, and
lieved he could deliver all he’d lied on.” Or in the even less generous that brand of determination that comes
about and more. A prison psychia- words of a corrupt police detective, from ignoring reality.” At the end, Car-
trist wrote, “I feel this man cannot “the most famous nobody in Harlem.” ney’s furniture store is a bit worse for
distinguish reality from fantasy.” wear, but we sense a rebuild.
You won’t be surprised to learn, Lawrence Jackson is a professor of English As Whitehead returns to the
then, that he ran for president. Q and history at Johns Hopkins University. criminal-as-detective thriller genre

Collages by Dakarai Akil. Source photographs: Colson Whitehead © Basso

80 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023 Cannarsa/Agence Opale/Alamy; Harlem, 1978 © Alain Le Garsmeur/Alamy
with this sequel to Harlem Shuffle, it tional earners— Grisham, King, take Harlem Week mass fled the Seventh
may be time to start asking whether your pick. Of course, one could argue Avenue gunmen. The next summer
he’s shorting his considerable skill to that these books are examples of what there was that riot on the crowded bus
appeal to a wide audience. Nearly a the critic Mark McGurl describes as with the lady from Trinidad before the
quarter of a century ago, Whitehead “meta–genre fiction,” in which boy got stabbed at the Biz Markie and
published his first novel, The Intuition- BDP concert.
ist, a book committed to high art and a popular genre— romance, western, During the eulogy, Mission told the
high style, the politics of race and the science fiction, fantasy and detective unvarnished truth about the people we
fiction— is both instantiated and
character flaws of the nation. That ironized to the point of becoming dys-
were and had been and the streets and
novel—an ascension story conveyed functional in the production of its neighborhoods and institutions that
through a mystery plot—had genre ele- conventional pleasures. gave us our names, chorusing every
ments of its own, but it was also dense, sentence, “On there.” I thought they
difficult, funny, and ambitious. Set in The easy appeal is that they seem edi- must have said it that way in Santiago.
an indeterminate era of integration fying and entertaining in equal mea- After two semesters—pregnancies,
and northern migration, the book sure. But are they? Reading Crook guns, dope—my old friends said I was
starred the first black woman to be- Manifesto, I found myself wondering, talking like New York. On there and
come a member of the Intuitionists was this black culture, “keeping it get down. How to tear and fill the cigar.
Guild, a group of elevator inspectors real,” earned in the only way that The finger discounts. Umpteen kinds
who sense the conditions of their units matters, which is to say sweating it of crook shit. It goes away and comes
through meditation. The novel turns out with other downtrodden blacks, back. On there and get down.
on Lila Mae Watson’s investigation into unmindful of reward? Or was it The crook piece was street knowl-
an elevator that collapsed in an episode something else? edge and it had another facet.
of “total freefall,” an inquiry that pits L Boogie and me meshed with some

I
her against the racists and the rival guess it was my KAPsi line broth- of the older cats and he had mad
Empiricists, who rely on rational proof er’s final death and my own pri- deep uncles and the fertile seed be-
to complete their inspections. Gradu- vate Harlem that interposed. gan to pop open. He was Showtime
ally, her detective work uncovers dan- The uptown funeral pulled the frag- and I was the Prophet. Malik Sha-
gerous secrets about the founder of the ments back together. Harrison the bazz. Metu Neter. The Cartouche.
Intuitionist school, and along the way, Harlem Knight on catafalque; Mis- Red Black and Green. Poor Righ-
Whitehead lampoons the idea of racial sion from the South Bronx; Big Boy teous Teacher. Clarence 13X. Two
uplift and black assimilation alike. from the Rox; Vark of the Queens kufis returned from the Land. Libera-
A parody of uplift working alongside Zulus; me from B’More. tion Bookstore. Deeper and deeper
a satire of discrimination—as Anatole Laurie had a bunch of names in his into soul music in its modern form,
Broyard might have said, how quat- time: he was Harlem Knight before from out of the barrel of a House.
trocento is that? But it is Whitehead’s Camp Lo cut wax. He went by Show- L Boogie was a special cat.
more recent novels—particularly The time among us Nupes, to the point To reach Greater Central Baptist
Underground Railroad and The Nickel where even some of his family called we feathered the car between vans
Boys—that have won him prizes and him that. His fledgling rap star tag was on 129th Street. Before we hit the
celebrity. These are topical, accessible, Kato the Kingpin, groovy to the Jersey 132nd Street church across from
driven on by plot, and come with a Shore crowd he had started to spend the Lincoln Homes, I overstressed the
veneer of progressive race politics. In time with. His rhymes never got be- Easy Mark story to my high-school-
Crook Manifesto, he’s alert to the misery yond the cassette-tape age. To me he age sons. What else is a father to do?
of the Twin Towers “looming over the was L Boogie, but his old boy name to A generation earlier I had parked my
city like two cops trying to figure out his line brothers was Mandingo Crack, car in the West Village for a snack,
what they can bust you for,” as well as which we used to heckle him when his and I hadn’t even noticed that my
the “racist face, more Southern Cracker antics went too far. He had something luggage was stolen until I opened the
racist than New England Plymouth for everybody—like Paul Robeson, an trunk back in B’More. Specialty
Rock racist.” Everything Man. crooks went straight to the caboose
He takes the “burn, baby, burn” an- I hear that era in a metronome of of out-of-town trains. How hefty
them of the black militant and tweaks Scott La Rock electronic pulses and were Harlem crooks now? When we
it so that it becomes, in Carney’s words, tones. I was from Baltimore so I could got out of the car I slipped the laptop
“churn, baby, churn.” It is, among other never understand what anybody was into the wheel well, stymied in my
things, a reference to the city’s relent- saying, but I was from Baltimore so it clandestine approach because I had
less ebb and flow, buildings torn down wasn’t like it didn’t make sense. Run no idea how to operate the electric
and new ones raised up, people com- ’em. Run yours. Get ill. Buggin’. Air it hatch. Too black for the computer
ing and going. But it also brings to out. Eight ball. Wildin’. Butter. And age. Was Harlem the same? The fun-
mind Whitehead’s ever-expanding oeu- sometimes the words didn’t even mat- niest thing Whitehead’s book made
vre: churning the batter, writing a new ter. My first time, eighteen on 125th me remember about Laurie was the
book every eighteen months, toeing Street and Lenox, it came natural to way he would become solemn when
the territory of the market’s conven- squat behind the mailbox as the human he measured things with the space

REVIEWS 81
between his hands, declaring some- firms . . . politicians on the take.” The more Ball, running and gunning up
thing “about yea big.” two outlaws form an aristocracy of and down the road from stadium to
crooks, and it’s obvious why Pepper, “a nightclub and fleshy beyond.

I
n 1974, there were three thousand six-foot frown molded by black magic” We took a picture that night at
fires in Harlem and the Bronx. who ran with Carney’s hoodlum dad, is Club Fantasy and now most every-
More than a few destroyed build- evoked more deliberately than Carney, body is dead.
ings and killed residents. The way these the liminal figure between worlds. Pep-

T
fires redesigned America’s signature per is a kind of amalgam of Bigger he Jackson 5 notwithstand-
city, the ties that urban design had to Thomas and Sonny’s crew from Man- ing, Whitehead’s is essentially
insurance bounties and real estate child in the Promised Land. But he’s also a pop affair, denuded of “The
speculation, are the commanding from Newark, so he’s a unique combi- Sound of Philadelphia,” the Salsoul
themes of Crook Manifesto. The nation of hungry, modest, and shrewd, Orchestra, or post-Gordy-leash Mo-
novel offers three linked movements and in this era of Wakanda-the-sequel, town. His sonic world does not lead
to unpack Harlem of the Seventies: the he gets to live. Ray Carney is motile to the commanding female vocalists
Jackson 5 moment of Michael’s beatifi- and plastic, a self-conscious journey- in the bottom of the Seventies, the
cation; the acme of low-budget black man who pins his rival, Alexander sounds of “Funkin’ for Jamaica,”
revolutionary filmmaking distributed Oakes, a purer member of the hoity- “Any Love,” or “Got to Be Real.” Per-
by Hollywood and consigned to schlub- toity Dumas Club. Oakes, the golden haps this is part of the goal, the
dom by the NAACP-generated moni- boy who claims a proprietary right to crook shot, the pop music is the base
ker “blaxploitation”; and the decade’s everything that Carney has had to scuf- that fakes us all together. Crook
peak at the ambivalently hopeful bicen- fle to get, snubs him in the words of the Manifesto has no granular reveries to
tennial. The three roughly one- cigarette ad: “You’ve come a long way.” soul food delicacies or ritual encoun-
hundred-page novellas—each narrated A comeuppance assured. ters with bookish black nationalists
in sparse staccato clips—take the form But this is part of the meta-joshing. of the Elder Michaux variety. No
of adult Encyclopedia Brown mysteries, One character satirizes himself when John Henrik Clarke or Ms. Sybil.
systematically resolved and feeding on he thinks with nostalgia, “Harlem No Mary Lou Patterson checking in
the marrow from their progenitor. 1971: wasn’t the same. Crooks these days had on her parents between Cuba and
Carney takes a ride with Detective no code and less class.” A bit later, the Soviet Union, or Keith Gilyard
Munson, a bagman for crooked gang- Carney decides that “in the old days, and Jean Blackwell Hutson amused
sters, to snag J5 concert tickets for his people looked out for each other in by Baraka’s flight to Marx.
daughter. 1973: Lucinda Cole (shout- Harlem.” But these sentimental homi- He does silently affirm Albert Mur-
out to Baltimore’s own Tamara Dob- lies are insincere threads that string ray, that proud humanist philosopher
son), the star of a pyromaniac director’s into nothing. It’s a nostalgia without an of the blues, who perched for so many
black liberation film, disappears during anchor in the past. years on 132nd Street. Murray decided
a shoot, and Carney’s partner in crime in his 1976 colossus Stomping the Blues

O
Pepper, a brainy manhandler with a ur Harlem Knight had all of that the blues idiom reflects
heart, comes to the rescue. 1976: A the urban skills that make a
black blue blood runs for high office, marvel of a black man. He a disposition to encounter obstacle after
and the heartful slumlord Carney in- could run ball, deejay, extemporane- obstacle as a matter of course. . . . Indeed
the improvisation on the break, which
vestigates the injury of a child and in ously rap or preach, hit a beat, and is required of blues-idiom musicians and
the process purifies the temple. lead dancers to the floor. Debonair, dancers alike, is precisely what epic her-
No academic himself, Carney learns he called his children home. He was oism is based on.
the blues of the universe from one of never at a loss for words, no matter
his social betters at the all-black Dumas the audience, black or white, rich or Break improvisers. Ray Carney and
Club on 120th Street. An attorney poor, urban or country. Town or pas- Pepper, blues steppers to a T.
named Pierce explains the secret sauce ture, it was impossible for him to get

M
of the RAND Corporation’s deliber- lost. Down to the terrain, he always y grandmother and her sister,
ately sidelined urban renewal program: knew the road home. Only a few redbone country girls, lived
times did he lapse into “his feelings.” in Harlem in the Twenties,
Moynihan’s “benign neglect.” In ’68, He once jail-learned me to step in and Aunt Daisy married a mysterious
Lindsay’s planning commission says it time. An intuitionist, he could glean Dominican who drowned. The sisters
outright—if East Harlem and Browns-
weighty information reading the returned briefly to the tobacco farm,
ville burn up, think of how much
money we can save on slum clearance eyes or scenting the pheromones. He then scooted up to Baltimore. My par-
before we redevelop it. Cheaper to let it could act a part, cajole and impor- ents first saw New York as Morgan
burn and they can rebuild. tune, play the heavy to settle ac- College students ushered to Broadway
counts, and Romeo his belle. Even by their drama teacher. They took me
Ray Carney and Pepper put on their though he liked to front rank the to see the Rockettes around 1973, and
capes to target the real bad guys, “the apartheid protest, he knew cut from my Dad probably didn’t once think of
shit,” “prominent lawyers, judges, pros- uncut. He came home with me one a ride uptown in one of those cabs
ecutors, the heads of insurance Thanksgiving and we had a Balti- with the nifty folding seats in the

82 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

middle of the floor. Everything smelled about what might lie ahead. Dress up briefly at the custodian’s discretion.
like roasting chestnuts. down. Fit in. Closed-toe shoes. I wore He was my age, and I talked to him
Last year, I took a few students a red Ivory Coast shirt so I would be about a neighborhood legend who
from Baltimore to Harlem to see the visible on a crowded subway. One stu- had meant something to Laurie:
sights in the wake of our Malcolm dent, hair like Shaun Cassidy in the Alpo, the Harlem kingpin who was
and Martin seminar. The Audubon Seventies, appeared in a T-shirt with also credited with kicking off that fa-
Ballroom, Edgecombe Avenue, Striv- the school name emblazoned on the mous Virginia Beach civil-rights
ers’ Row, the Schomburg Center, Syl- front and carried a heavy duffel bag march of 1989. I slipped him a
via’s, the Apollo. First-class tourist by its hand straps so that all the world twenty-dollar spot of thanks, then
play. Only three students came, since would know. trooped down Eighth Avenue, head-
the class was unpopular (three hun- We surprised ourselves by getting ing east at 155th Street.
dred pages of reading a week). In an inside the Audubon Ballroom, closed As we approached Laurie’s build-
avuncular way, I tried to coach them on account of the virus, but opened ings, the Polo Grounds, I was telling
All source photographs © Alamy. Harlem, 1978 © Alain Le Garsmeur; Cleopatra Jones © Ronald Grant/Warner Bros; Apollo
Theater © Erik Pendzich; Jackson 5 © Gijsbert Hanekroot; Audubon Ballroom © Richard Levine; Malcolm X stamp © Alexander
Mitrofanov; South Bronx fire, 1977 © Alain Le Garsmeur; Strivers’ Row © Wendy Connett; 125th Street station © Richard Levine REVIEWS 83
AN EARLY HISTORY OF
THE WYOMING VALLEY
the students about Jackie Robinson In Crook he plays with schist, the platy
The Yankee-Pennamite Wars
and Timothy Pickering and the Dodgers. We halted at the rock that wedges up from the earth and
light for the dash through the inter- serves as a foundation. In essence, the
by Kathleen A. Earle PhD section to 409 Edgecombe. And it slow process of the plates cooling to
Little known was at that moment that two old bedrock, like the evolution of biological
history of Pennsyl- boys from down the hill materialized life itself, responds to an activity of un-
vania’s Wyoming
Valley and the on scooters. settlingly imponderable and cataclysmic
1788 abduction of Decades ago, Mission and I had scale. From burn to churn.
Timothy Pickering come to L Boogie’s tower by the via-
E\¿IWHHQ³:LOG duct on the north side. Laurie and I Churn, baby, churn. Atop the un-
Yankees.” The boys changing schist, the people replaced
used to get lifted and fight each other
were indicted, but each other, the ethnic tribes from
several escaped to in college, sometimes breaking stuff,
all over trading places in the tene-
upstate New York. the last time over a young Puerto Ri- ments and townhouses, which in
can woman. L Boogie was Mandingo- turn fell and were replaced by the
9781467149594 • $21.99
Colonial History • Available through
strong but had played basketball. I next buildings.
The History Press, Charleston, SC. was slim but had wrestled. We mea-
sured each other. I gave up a shoulder A crook with a heart of gold, Ray
trying to keep up with him on the Carney gets outside of himself, beyond
WEALTH rugby field. Laurie’s homeboy Shaun the buildings, and sees the horizon.
was killed in summer of ’89. My What are the forces that make
MANAGEMENT homeboy Donald was killed in sum- sense of the churning sequences, and
A Novel mer of ’89. We carried our city scars to what place does the writer of note
by Edward Zuckerman back to campus. deliver his audience? What’s the juice
Whatever, on there, I associated of this squeeze? By its nature the
some heart with hustlers from the genre convention delivers lovable
“A well- Polo Grounds. punch lines. His coke-fueled comic
plotted, As I inserted myself between my survives to star in a movie called
intricate, students and Harlem’s Angels, I got a Chimp Cop. The acetylcholine
and diverting full view of their team. The boys looked buildup in my brain had my mouth
thriller” like characters from a Chester Himes watering for a tinny pop song, the one
tale. Without benefit of soap or sleep that as a child you had no defense for
— Library Journal for days. Ski-masked, all rusty black and would just seep into you, and, on
gear, creepy facial and hand tattoos. cue, Whitehead thumped out with
One boy thick, the other tall and wiry. Starland Vocal Band’s “Afternoon
978-1956763058 • $26.99 • Thriller
Available online and in bookstores.
The lanky boy had a lot of sleep in his Delight.” The niche historical refer-
Audio edition available from Audible. lined eyes, and at the hillcrest they said ence to the 1943 riots and giving
something to each other. This pair “the Blitz”—rocks, bricks, bottles,
didn’t seem prone to waiting at the and shots—to cops who richly de-
THE ULTIMATE light. In fact, they looked like a crook served it. Nice. And the weighty al-
GUIDE TO POWER duo hitting licks, if they could get their lusions to the schist, the foundation
dingy bikes to jet away. The tall boy for the Manhattan he adores and the
& INFLUENCE went into his dip and I did think, money-grubbers who move there to
Everything You Need to Know Good God is it really going down? The worship at its shrines. And there’s a
by Robert L. Dilenschneider glue set around my toes in the same didactic peak, a lot like a lyric inked
The Ultimate Guide way it always does when I am about to by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Michelle Alex-
WR3RZHU ,QÀXHQFH get ran. ander, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and
arms its readers with He sparked a blunt. On to Du Bois Richard Rothstein:
intellectual, techni- and the plaque at 409.
cal, and moral weap- Down the hill from Edgecombe I The white people take advantage of
ons—tools needed to reward the students with frappés at those new highways out to the suburbs
get and stay ahead in a café that has, seemingly, only and flee the city into homes subsidized
an increasingly com- by federal mortgage programs. Mort-
white patrons.
petitive and dynamic gages that black people won’t get. And

W
business world. the blacks and Puerto Ricans are
hitehead has always shown
9781637742938 • $28.00 • Business squeezed into smaller and smaller ghet-
a meticulous interest in the tos that were once thriving neighbor-
Available 7/25 at BenBella Books, Penguin
forces underneath, the un- hoods. But now those good blue-collar
Random House, Amazon, Barnes & Noble.
dertow, the chthonic subterranean, as jobs are gone. Can’t buy a house be-
a way of getting at the terra firma, the cause the lenders have designated the
For classified rates and information,
three-billion-year-old plates strong neighborhood as high-risk—the redlin-
please contact 1FSSJ
4NJUI,
Ad Operations Coordinator,
enough to bear the weight of the city. ing actually creates the conditions it’s
at (212) 420-5773 or
email [email protected]
84 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023
 (G
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warning against. Unemployment, sponded to the noise complaints at
overcrowded tenements, and you get our house I would give them his   
 
 
   

overwhelmed social services. name. He was a student trustee and 

 
would go to the diplomatic councils
It just goes from bad to worse. in the weeks before the president’s of-
What had seemed a defiant burning is fice was firebombed. Then he would
really a finance-insurance-real-estate go out on the lam with his roscoe.
neoliberal transmogrification. The Donald and my dad had just passed 3RHWU\IURP$WR=
crooked pols and wags unleash the ar- away so I took myself to another
sonists to churn dollars to develop- place. Damn sad about revolutionary
DPD]RQ]RPELHFRP
ment. It’s difficult to imagine the Nick Haddad.
Whitehead of The Intuitionist writ- But who knew what to do with all
ing so earnestly about a condition that marvel? Mission would put on ZZZIXWXUHYLHZVFR
obvious since—1976! Give the peo- the 5-0 blue and Big Boy climbed %UHDNGDQFH%UH[LW
3ULQFHVV'LDQD3ROOXWLRQ
ple what they want, true. But know- up the ladder. L Boogie channeled his 6ROXWLRQWKHODPSSRVWWKDW
ing what we know, laughing when we energy first into the art, then the VDYHGWKHZRUOGDQGWKH
are primed to and nodding our heads weight room and bringing up his PLVWDNHWKDWKDVVWDUHGXV
LQWKHIDFHIRUFHQWXULHV
in unison corresponds tidily to the nephews, the way his uncles had done (QMR\WKHPDJD]LQH
blown-out brownstone with the Eliza- with him. Not too many ways to
beth Roberts glass wall: We are enter- make moves and it started to shake
tained and informed and still bent on both of us apart a little. Later it shook
making it in New York. That’s the L Boogie a lot, the stance between
Crooklyn that makes us all a crook. burn and churn. The corrupt poli-
Whitehead’s book does have glim- ticians, the rigged prison system,
mers of promise, of something irre- and the hard streets. The frame-
ducible to the social, the reason you work of housing and urban plan-
read a novel instead of a pamphlet on ning and bank loans that held us
segregation. But the resolution, con- down and that we read about in How
nected to a gauzy nostalgia, is yet an- Capitalism Underdeveloped Black
other aspect of the inevitable limit, America. Every cat who said they
the containment of genre fiction. The wanted to go to law school or earn an
book’s wisdom operates in hindsight. MBA seemed like a fat sellout. Every-
Twenty-four years ago, we might one who said they wanted to be a
have claimed to have been discom- teacher or a social worker seemed like
fited from habit or pricked into a sucker. It all takes a toll. I know $2
2
thoughtfulness by The Intuitionist. Laurie wearied of playing cock diesel
The best that can be hoped for now that night he dipped on my man and
is that we’ll laugh and sneer at being let him get banked. So he would
entertained with the history we shout on the subway and shout in the
should have known. police precinct. He shouted whenever
it felt good, whenever it seemed like

L
Boogie took it pretty far. After the right thing to do.
we stepped with the Jungle Forty or fifty of us sang our hymn. HARPER’S MAGAZINE
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REVIEWS 85
 INCREASE AFFECTION LETTERS ish conspiracy that drove them to
Created by Continued from page 3 wage an apocalyptic racial war of anni-
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86 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

 PUZZLE
1 ACROSS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13
By Richard E. Maltby Jr.
14 15

16

F
17 18 19

our notables, at 16, 21, 31, and 40 Across, 20

have been subjected to a 1 Across. In no par-
ticular order, they are: 21 22

a. A movie star who’s available 23 24 25 26 27 28

b. An author on life support
c. A dancing comedienne 29 30
d. A veteran actor—a keeper
31 32 33 34 35
Clue answers include five capitalized words,
one of which is an acronym. As always, mental
36 37 38
repunctuation of a clue is the key to its solution.
The solution to last month’s puzzle appears on
39
page 75.
40

across
1. (See instructions) (5, 8) 4. Card of a sort announces where cards
11. Not one is heartless, not one (4) are found (5)
14. Took up, took down, reportedly (6) 5. Nation gives up its heart for money. Some nerve! (6)
15. U.S. embraces Navy sailors—take your caps off (7) 6. Love, look out! Enabler travels in August (9)
16. (See instructions) (6, 7) 7. Ball caps for those who help animals (4)
18. Learn all about a completely manufactured yarn (5) 8. Big number that gets you into the can? (6)
20. I’m biased but isn’t that a curious serving 9. Account for new settler left having to move (10)
for tea: onion dip (11) 10. Old dance for a female on a military mission (5)
21. (See instructions) (7, 6) 12. Movie barker noodles with the piano—
23. One likely to crack when, for example, out of sight! (4)
gravity’s agony (8) 13. Blinders fitted for some cats (8)
27. Seven minus five—the answer is apparent (4) 17. Take time off from work—it’s flattering (3)
29. Communist’s back condition? I am so off-track! (10) 19. Finishes off our time till the indictment is released! (5)
30. Spy for the Vatican, for one (3) 22. Steer heading off for wood (3)
31. (See instructions) (5, 7) 24. It gets a leg up but can produce a chill in Little Italy (6)
36. Hot flower, ranging from coast to coast? (4) 25. Sober long after a bit of a rocky road (6)
38. Retiled, restored—the house wants to 26. Eisenhower Republican follows the lead
get better to do this! (3, 4) of Herschel Walker (5)
39. They tell who’s there yelling: “Hamlet! 27. Nick’s ungodly chants (6)
Romeo! Medea!” (4, 5) 28. Harry’s needless Social Security write-off (6)
40. (See instructions) (5, 8) 31. I’m horny and grasping but primarily can’t act (4)
32. Sound off-track (4)
down 33. In uprising, everyone starting to enter, scatter! (4)
1. Hip song, first edition: “Like a Pie 34. Bare rocky hillside (4)
on a Windowsill” (3, 6) 35. Have a little temperature? Get a happy tune (4)
2. I laid off one hundred after an epic struggle (7) 37. Bones on the Enterprise is to join a starship,
3. Follow-up type put to bad use (5) they say (3)

Contest Rules: Send completed diagram with name and address to “1 Across,” Harper’s Magazine, 666 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10012. If you
already subscribe to Harper’s, please include a copy of your latest mailing label. Entries must be received by August 8. The sender of the first correct
solution opened at random will receive a one-year subscription to Harper’s Magazine (limit one winner per household per year). The winner’s name
will be printed in the October issue. The winner of the June puzzle, “Foursomes,” is Jon Rudzinski, Roslindale, Mass.
PUZZLE 87
 FINDINGS
A ustralian scientists from the Whales and Climate
Research Program asserted that whales cannot, after
moon of Saturn. Gravitational waves may be emitted by
the debris fields around dying stars. Astronomers de-
all, significantly mitigate atmospheric carbon. Orcas tected a non-thermal emission from a classical nova with
were teaching one another how to sink boats, and the a dwarf companion and reported no young binary stars
population decline of Dungeness crabs may be due near the Milky Way’s central black hole.
partly to ocean acidification worsening their sense of
smell. The first instance of virgin birth was recorded
in a crocodile. Whitespotted eagle rays and cow-
Q ueer adolescents’ odds of vaping are not affected
by their family’s affluence, Colorado researchers failed
nosed rays loiter at clam leases. Phosphorus deficiency to detect the recency of marijuana consumption in
turns Triphyophyllum peltatum plants carnivorous, and breathalyzer tests administered in a white van decorated
the sensation of hunger may slow aging in fruit flies. with a tie-dyed tapestry, self-reported ethnoracial dis-
Snow flies amputate their legs to keep their vital or- crimination was correlated with increased suspicious-
gans from freezing, scalloped hammerhead sharks ness and a higher risk of psychosis, chemists made
hold their breath to keep warm on deep excursions, progress toward a melanin-based sunscreen, and Florida
and California two-spot octopuses edit their RNA to researchers attempted to identify the genes that pre-
acclimate their nervous systems to temperature dispose horses to being spooked by umbrellas. A
changes. Neuroscientists speculated that Costello, a methodology for evaluating wild animals’ emotional
traumatized Brazilian reef octopus, was having vivid well-being in a study on free-roaming horses was ex-
nightmares. Pigeons may dream of flight. tended to kangaroos, koalas, and dingoes. Oklahoma

A letter to the Journal of Investigative Dermatology de-

tailed the genetic loci of Europeans’ eyebrow shapes, a
police responding to a cry for help found an upset
goat. The number of farms worldwide will likely fall
by more than half by 2100. Animal hoarding by rural
consortium of researchers released a draft of the human Mississippians damages the health of cats and dogs.
pangenome, and an initial survey found high-quality hu- Male masturbation without ejaculation among pri-
man DNA nearly everywhere they looked. Biodiversity mates may be advantageous in reducing the duration
loss can be tracked through the incidental environ- of intercourse (and thus the risk of interruption by a
mental DNA collection already performed by air- competing male); with ejaculation, the advantage
quality monitors. Engineers developed a material made may be in clearing pathogens from the urethra follow-
of protein nanowires that harvests electricity from hu- ing intercourse. Sexually frustrated mass shooters kill
midity in the air. Self-driving cars lack social intelligence more female victims. The first documented human
and could improve through encounters with simulations kiss moved back by a thousand years. Archaeologists
of bad drivers. Growing demand for animal-fat jet fuel discovered the earliest scaled building diagrams, from
may cause a corresponding increase in the use of 8,000 years ago at Jebel az-Zilliyat and from 9,000
carbon-intensive palm oil. Sequestered carbon can be years ago at Jibal al-Khasabiyeh, for the construction
mineralized in dead undersea volcanoes. A plume of wa- of desert dragons. Boss Tweed was not responsible for
ter six thousand miles long is escaping the sixth largest the destruction of Central Park’s dinosaur statues. Q

Strata-25E, Strata-26B, and Strata-25C, watercolors by Mikael Hallstrøm © The artist

88 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2023

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