Chapter 12
The case we deal with next involves a woman who lulled herself at the age of forty and who, in her lifetime, achieved an almost legendary status. Her story begins at an Army basic training center where her husband was in charge of training a platoon of newly drafted men. In one of those freak accidents involving a jeep, her husband's life was tragically cut short. Alice was thirty-eight years old at the time and her husband was forty-two at the time of his death. He had served his country for almost twenty years.
Upon the death of her husband, something in Alice's mind snapped. Rather than returning home to her family, she rented a small cabin just outside die base and in the next two years, until her suicide, engaged in strange and perverse actions with the sons of Army people stationed at the base.
It is a frightening and almost incredible tale, pointing out the extremes which a woman can go to when her grief can never be diluted.
None of her story would have been known had she not left a diary. Written in a scrawl, it took months to piece together and the results are explosive. Because of the nature of the case, I am presenting her diary intact, with no dilutions. This is the only way to understand the depth and intensity of her illness and to understand why she became a legend in her lifetime.
Because of the shocking nature of the diary, the reader must suspend judgement on the woman and read the diary as a clinical presentation, otherwise the importance of the case will be destroyed by the reader's revulsion.
Furthermore, if the reader approaches this diary without a detached attitude, he or she will be unable to notice the subtle but relentless deterioration of a woman's mind. What follows is the complete diary.
THE LIFE, DEATH AND RESSURECTION OF AN ARMY WIFE
I have decided to use this title for my diary, which I begin this evening, the 7th of January, 1964, because it is a title which would have appealed to my husband, may his soul rest in peace.
It is now two days since his death. Two horrible days. How can I even write about it? A futile accident. One of the most glorious men in the world, and then, a second later, all that was left was some mangled twisted lump of flesh, lifeless, lying on the dusty road.
I remember the last time I saw him. His platoon was marching toward the rifle range. How wonderful they looked. How proud he was of the way he had trained them. Boys from all over the country, from all different backgrounds, each one a unique individual, and he had molded them all into a team.
January 12.
My future is set. I shall live alone and never marry again. My purpose in life is to continue what my husband started; to instill a love for the Army in as many men as possible. But how can I do that? How can I follow his footsteps? Where is the sudden insight that will show me how to proceed? I must find it or be doomed to a life of mourning, a life without purpose, a life that will not do justice to him.
March 4.
It came to me. Oh yes, I thank God for giving me the insight. There are hundreds of boys on the base, the sons of Army people. What do they have in common? Simply this: the majority of them will not follow in their father's footsteps. They will go to college and become lawyers and doctors and accountants. My purpose in life now is to make sure that the children, the beautiful, innocent children, do not leave the service of the country. My purpose in life is to give these children the same love of the Army that my husband had. My only function in life is to give these children a sense of honor, duty and country that they can only acquire in the Service. I shall not fail.
April 28.
So far my ideals have broken themselves on the brick wall of reality. When I speak to the children on the base, they are disinterested. At their age they cannot think of such noble theories; on the contrary; they are concerned with different issues, with school, and athletics and sex. There must be a way I can reach them. There must be a way I can bridge the generation gap and speak to them in their own language, in their own words. One of the children I spoke to, 14 year old Johnny, just smiled at me and told me he wanted to be a professional baseball player, not go into the Army like his father. There was a peculiar look in his eye. Perhaps people are already telling their children that the widow is crazy. I could see it in his eyes. The child listened to me like the American Indians used to listen to psychotics, with respectful fear but without acting on their words. I will find a way; I swear it.
June 2.
The answer is a cruel answer. The answer is a daring answer. All of these children are tormented by one thing; a growing awareness of sex, a growing yearning and gnawing in their souls which is the hallmark of adolescence. Can I do it? Can I use that one all-powerful means to get then-allegiance to the Service? It is a drastic undertaking. But it is no more drastic than my husband's torn body, lying smashed on a dusty road, his life given for an ideal that I am duty bound to continue. If I go this path, if I use my body, which is still nubile, to seduce these children into a love of the Army, will I be using improper means to reach a proper goal? If only I had studied philosophy as a child, I would have been able to formulate an answer. Yet, I know that the means do not justify the ends. But what I am about to do, is it wrong? I am no puritan. I realize that the needs of the body is the most beautiful and sacred part of the human experience. I realize that children, young boys, are afflicted with doubt and insecurities concerning their sexual roles. Would it not be better, for me to initiate them into the joys and wonders of the flesh, for a good purpose, than have them go to the brothels in town, where they will be abused and disgusted with all the sordid aspects of "love for pay?" I will do what I must do and let the future judge me.
August I.
Today, I crossed the river. It was that child, Johnny, who wanted to be a baseball player. Perhaps, now, he will think twice. I drove past his house early in the morning, when I knew he would be leaving, with his glove and bat over his shoulder. I let him walk for a few blocks and I trailed in the car. Then, pulling up to him, I opened the door. Unsuspecting, he came in. His features were beautiful to look at, well-defined and exuding a certain kind of innocence that only the young can have. He saw that I was not driving him to the ball field but at first he did not protest. Then, finally, his curiosity overwhelmed him and he asked me where I was taking him. My answer was when I pulled the car off the road and into a secluded glade of trees. Then he saw something in my eyes which frightened him. The child put his hand on the door to leave. I slipped my hand over his to prevent him from doing that. He froze. I moved closer. My lips were against his face, telling him not to be frightened, trying to show him the glories that awaited him when he vowed to give his future years to the Army. My hands moved down his body, moving the clothes away until I was faced with his maleness, lying there, between his slim athletic legs.
He fought a little but my hands were too swift and too passionate and soon I brought his flesh into that quick crescendo of stiffening maleness. Johnny could not think. His mind and fear had been dissolved by that phenomenon between his legs which was making his whole body move in a manner over which he had no control.
It was mine. That brilliant flesh, in my grasp, was mine to persuade. I could not stop. My hands and then my salivating organs were its mistress. There, on the front seat of an automobile, I felt that somehow my husband had been ressurrected in the twisting weapon which I tasted. I felt that my mission in life was beginning. The child was now on a plateau of lust beyond anything he had ever experienced. His hands turned on me, like greedy little suction cups, trying to find the most hidden area.
Moving under him, on the seat, I let him enter me. The sudden penetration shattered his adolescent arrogance and the child wept as the flesh controlled him. Deeper and deeper his maleness plunged until it had scoured the depths of womanhood, until it had reached the point where it could go no further.
Fastening my arms about him, slowly I led him into that rocking motion. The child was entering his most fertile period and my pride had no bounds. As the maleness plunged between my thighs, the thoughts which raced through my inflamed mind were on my beloved husband. If only he could know what I was doing for him and for the institution which he had dedicated his life to and had died for.
The car windows steamed as both of us moved our bodies against each other, trying to obtain the most exquisite feelings that our joined flesh could produce. He began to make small whining sounds and I knew his maleness was reaching that height of movement and excitement. Then, with one great shudder, the child's lance thrust deep and the hot, melting liquid of his manhood purged my body. He lay gasping and weeping on me and I stroked his head and told him about my husband and the beautiful comradship which is obtainable only in the service of his country and his fellow men. I drove him home. Neither of us spoke. The child was overwhelmed by his experience and the unused glove and equipment was mute testimony to the effectiveness of my method.
October 12.
Many children have now been the beneficiary of my love. The base is filled with stories. But few believe them and the young boys who are the future do not speak much. They look upon me as their entry to the adult world. I am making progress. It will take years before the results are in but I think that many of these children will believe the truths I tell them while they are lying in my arms. That, I cannot doubt.
January 20.
Today, it was Larry. Short, dark, sensitive, his nostrils quivering with the unexpected. That was Larry. I chose him. He was ripe for the plucking because he is a brilliant child and his officer-father plans a great future for him, a future that is outside of the Army.
We met in a movie. It was late afternoon and the movie was empty. Even the ushers seemed to remove themselves as if all the fates were with me. During these months, a great change has taken place in my method. I am becoming hysterical. Yes, there can be no doubt of that. I am becoming more and more open to their caresses and there is danger that I will lose sight of my goal and just dissolve in a welter of passion.
Larry felt my breast, his head down even in that dark movie out of shame. I spoke to him:
'Yes, Larry. Touch it, fondle it, feel the love it bears you. Bend over and take my nipple in your mouth. Taste it, feel the heat that will eventually join us."
The child was hot and frantic. He grabbed my darkened point in his virgin lips.
They were adult lips in spite of their age. In that darkened movie, in the solitude of the afternoon, before those strange images that were before us on the screen, I opened my blouse and dress to him.
Larry could not withstand the feast of flesh before him. Perhaps he had dreamed of my body for many months. Perhaps his dreams were filled with a mature woman such as I. But the child, whatever his dreams, had reached the threshold. His lips began to travel down my body. His lips became the focal point of his burning intelligence. I thanked fortune for my body at that moment, hoping that while his lips were pressing against my belly and thighs, he would know that I represented the sacred honor of fighting men; the honor of my husband's division.
Then the child reached that point which all children must reach sooner or later. Nestled between my glistening thighs, it called to him. The child kissed me there. He kissed the central part of me and the central part of our specie. His lips and the lips of the future joined. I wept as that child's face went out of my view to be confronted by that other eye in my body, the eye which, as the sensual mystics say, the body is perceived.
Suddenly, I was lifted almost halfway out of the seat as a terrible truth entered me. Like the most poisonous cobra, a pointed, wriggling organ, crude in its thrust but sophisticated in its goal, sent me back against the seat, back and up. He would be, I knew, a great man someday, for only a great man could be so daring as to reverse the tables and attempt to bring me pleasure even though he knew nothing of such things.
That tongue, his tongue, oh that tongue of youth, darting, terrifying, bringing home the truth to my feverish thighs. My stomach began to boil and shafts of light seemed to split my eyes and brain.
An instant later I was swept up, off my seat, as my innermost essences exploded and I was left a weak, feeble creature in his arms, my thighs wrapped around his hand, my breasts against his face, watching the images on the moving screen.
March 2.
The threatening letters are beginning to come. Mothers and fathers are calling me vile names. Let them call me what they will, I am fulfilling my destiny.
March 20.
A vision came to me. Am I going insane? Am I falling apart under the pressure of too many bodies and too many children? It was my husband. In the vision, his maleness had gone and in its place a gaping wound. He could not speak. He only looked at me and his face was twisted into a mask of despair.
Aprils.
Again that vision. I can no longer speak. I can no longer sleep. I can no longer continue my mission. Where will it end?
April 10.
It was only temporary. I have recovered. Now I must continue even though the loss of weight during my hallucinatory period has made me unattractive. But strength of will can overcome physical beauty. Of that, I will stake my life.
July 15.
Today was Harold. Twelve years old, his skin silken and burning under my touch. His body the form of a young god, nourished and formed on a foreign isle. Was his beauty a figment of my imagination. I think not. As I am writing this, hours after the event, I can only record my feelings. What actually transpired is beyond my pen, perhaps beyond anyone's pen.
A hot day. The heat lay in cascades upon the base making the ground swell and move like the floor of the ocean. I took Harold into the woods. There were birds and small mammals and the ever present trees, heavy now with their summer frock. Hand in hand, woman and child, we wandered.
I spoke to him of my husband and the Army. I spoke to him of the strange brotherhood which he must join, which he must pledge his life to when he is a man. The child was silent but I could tell my words were going beyond his intelligence, they were seeping into his very bones. Yes, I knew.
Then, under the heat and the solitude and the pregnant trees, we could not stand to be together and clothed. As we walked we deposited our clothes until we stopped beside a small brook. The water of the brook broke with the dives of insects and the fish feeding just beneath the surface. We swam and waded and then moved to the pines. I could not help it. I ran. The child followed. Soon we were racing through the woods. I fell. He was on top of me. I spread my legs for him and in one great swoop the child poured out his agony in the entry of his maleness. Joined like two stags, we rolled on the soft floor of the forest, digging out the scents and feels of our bodies. To feel the twisting churning flesh within me, to lay beneath the child was an emotion that was beyond mortals. Then, just when he was at his most excited plane, I rushed away, and he followed. Turning on him, I tasted him and that slight touch made the seed pour over the forest floor, giving sustenance to the roots of the earth.
We rested. And then again we flew through the forest, moving our legs with great speed and shouting with laughter as the vines and branches cut and bit into our naked bodies. Again, I flung myself beneath him and again the child was magnificent. This time, my womanhood pulsed as it bit into me and drove me deep into the moss. Oh, how I loved that moment, my teeth tasting the salt sweat of his face and my arms and nails digging into the driving buttocks which were sending me back to the realm of nature in the person of that green glade.
All day we continued. The sense of time was lost, the sense of destiny. My buttocks called to his maleness again and again, and after that, my tongue and cheeks. Who can know what we experienced, I and that child-nymph in that glade.
But will he know what my body was trying to say to him? Will he know that my body was speaking only for my husband whose soul had left all of us?
Fatigue is on me. I cannot write anymore. What is Harold doing now? What is the child doing? Do I have a right to be so happy while I am pursuing my mission?
October 7.
It is all falling apart. I know what is happening. I know that I have lost sight of my vision. Where did it go?
November 11.
The truth comes like a sword. Like a sword it can cut through all of my pretensions. Like a sword it can remove the poison of my illusions. They laugh at me and curse me and hold their children to their bosoms as I pass. Are they right? Have I found the truth? Am I nothing but a pervert who pollutes my husband's memory?
November 18.
The world is too backwards and too reasonable for my actions. The world wishes me to die for I have ignored their most sacred wishes. The world will dissolve me.
November 19
Do the children care? Will all the boys whose flesh I have moulded, whose incredible innocence I have exploited, will they want me? Am I a fraud to them?
December 8.
Bless you my husband. I shall join you.
December 18.
I must die. I must leap into the future. All I have accomplished is futile. Death, I long for you!
The morning after the last notation in her journal, her body was found. She died from loss of blood brought about by the cutting of her own wrists with her late husband's straight razor; one of the few items she had preserved.
After her death, many people talked about her. Most of them considered her insane. Undoubtably, we can tell from her diary that she had passed beyond the border of sanity during that last months.
But during those months when she was a vital force on the base, she can only be characterized as a female Don Quixote, bringing a new dimension to the age old trait of honoring the dead.
No doubt her husband would have been aghast at the way she honored his memory. But before the reader judges this unfortunate woman, it must be remembered that her goal was the preservation and furtherance of that which her husband had died for; the Army.
There is much to learn from this woman. Though her passions went beserk, her motives were pure. What more can we ask of a human being?