Читать книгу The Lyncher In Me - Warren Read - Страница 17

CHAPTER 9

Deception can be a perceived or literal means of survival. People create lies to further their own agendas or simply to keep out of trouble. I’d grown accustomed to lies and deception in my family, and over time I’d grown equally used to the reassuring outcome when the truth eventually emerged. It never really took much effort, finding the real story. No one in my family has ever really been good at keeping secrets. For my sister Karen, the truth rests just behind her lips, like the air inside an overly inflated balloon. The slightest hint of suspicion is a pinprick that bursts the truth forward, the relief of confession the reward she’s been wanting so badly.

My mother will often weave her inventions like a fine tapestry; the term “lie like a rug” describes it most appropriately. I inherited this talent from her. We prefer to avoid complication by covering with a white lie, a minor story to explain our forgetfulness or our lack of efforts. Rather than simply say, “I couldn’t make it,” or “I just wasn’t feeling up to it,” we feel compelled to spin a tale that will explain, without a doubt, that we had no other option but to make the choice we did. My tooth broke on an ice cube. I had to wait an hour to get it fixed. The car broke down on the way back. We pack our stories with impossible detail, choosing to embellish an untruth rather than say nothing, thinking that we are doing our listener an unselfish service by not requiring him to fill in his own details. I’ve made great progress in overcoming this tendency, I’m happy to say. I think both my mother and I have. We’ve learned over time most people don’t need detailed reasons for the trivial choices we’ve made that may have affected them. A simple apology will suffice and if they need more, it’s not our problem.

My father builds lies like an apartment building might be built in haste and desperation, thrown together with no real foresight or skill. The foundation is weak, crudely constructed. Each story added places greater strain on that initial foundation until the weight of that last lie is simply too much. The entire structure gives way, crashes down around him and he is exposed. The greater problem is that too often my father continues to build, unaware or refusing to acknowledge that there is nothing left on which to construct his world. His credibility is laid to waste and only the most desperately needy who still surround him continue to live within his created fantasy.

I think it’s human nature to lie, to use our imagination to create a scenario that will serve as an escape hatch from a misdeed, or perhaps create the dream of a truth that we wish might have been. My son tells me that he didn’t take a cookie, yet crumbs adorn his face like a beard. He wants to avoid getting punished. A student of mine claims he left his homework at home. He’s hoping for another day to complete it. No real harm done by those actions or the lies, other than a small lack of trust from the recipient. It’s not like someone died.

But sometimes a lie can lead to the worst of consequences. A lie can hit a nerve in the sharpest of ways, inciting an insatiable hunger for revenge and retribution, deafening the listener to any sense of reason. A lie can divide and cripple an entire population: laws can be passed, a culture can be altered, an entire community can be destroyed by a single false accusation. It happened that night in June of 1920. Two teenagers created a lie that would result in the deaths of three men. No official reason for them having told this story has ever been given. And that lie would remain dormant, festering and poisoning generations to come.

Years after the night I discovered this story, I would have the opportunity to speak with many people who from their own perspectives helped give me insight into why it had all happened. At this point, though, I could only try to formulate my own understanding. Not only did these two individuals concoct a story of rape, not once did they waver in their account. Why? What was it about Irene Tusken and Jimmie Sullivan that, even as their own stories collapsed around them, crushing others in the scattered debris, caused them to hold firm?

For me, the greatest irony of all is that in spite of literally hundreds of pages of recorded documents—court transcripts, detectives’ reports, newspaper articles, interviews, Michael Fedo’s meticulously researched book, The Lynchings in Duluth—that question has never been answered. I dove completely into the mountains of paperwork, broke down the details point by point, and reconstructed them into a narrative that came alive for me. And in this quest I was able to place myself as closely beside my great-grandfather—as close to the lynchings—as I possibly could.