[joe-frank-list] 'Night', part 2

[rbell at alumni.caltech.edu]

	Donna goes to Los Angeles.  She works at the Circus of Love,
where she meets Kevin.
	Kevin, still cleaning pools, talks to Dave about Beth El.
Dave tells him it's a scam, that Matthew, Beth El's leader, has 'a
safe in that house, like a pirate's treasure chest.'
	2:00: Turner joins the Army as a buck private, rises to become
a pilot, is a captain when he goes to Vietnam.  He flies Birddogs
(Cessna O-1, a small single-engine prop plane
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_O-1_Bird_Dog) to spot the enemy,
particularly to help artillery aim at them.
        7:50: After discharge Turner visits an Army buddy in Red Bank,
New Jersey, who deals drugs.  Turner sells a pound of marijuana for
him; they get busted.  Turner spends 2 months in county jail.  He has
to fight a would-be rapist, Jenkins.
        13:30: Turner gets out in March, drives to Sonora, California,
where his widowed mother lives.  He moves to the Stanislaus river,
lives in a tent, shops in town every 2 weeks.  He walks around the
forest, swims, gets to know the animals.  After 6 months he rents a
cabin and enrolls in Columbia Junior College (now Columbia Community
College), takes jobs as a bartender and dealing cards.  He sees all
the players as losers.  One, Hardy, sings 'Jesus blood never failed me
yet' (Gavin Bryars, whose music Joe used in a few shows, captured this
from an actual homeless person.  It's an interesting story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus%27_Blood_Never_Failed_Me_Yet)
	Turner visits his older sister Carmen and her
mentally-retarded son, Roy, who live in destitution in a run-down
house.
	23:10: Dissatisfied with his life, Turner drives to Fullerton
to visit his cousin Andrea, whom he respects.  She tells him Beth El
and Matthew have turned her life around.  She takes Turner to a
meeting, which moves him.  He becomes a follower,
	38:20: The county condemns Carmen's house.  She and Roy move
to an even more run-down motel cottage.  Carmen gets sick, and,
terminally ill, moves in with her mother.  Carmen had joined the
Marines out of high school, had an affair with a superior, then a
child.  He became a drunk, died driving.
	44:40: Turner moves into Beth El's cultural center north of
Santa Barbara.  He works to maintain the place with the others who
live there.  Matthew purchases a DC-3, asks Turner to pilot it.  It
flies monthly to Zurich, apparently to move money.  (A DC-3 is a large
twin-engine plane, last made in 1942.  In the Army it was called a
C-47.  It cannot fly from California to Switzerland.  Being qualified
to fly an O-1 is not qualification to fly a DC-3.)
	49:40: There's discord among the followers at the center.
Matthew has been having affairs with female members.  
	53:00: As Matthew is speaking to his followers, Kevin and Dave
come to service the pool.  They find a dead woman, a follower with
whom Matthew had had an affair, floating in it.
	'A few nights later, at 3 a.m., when Kevin is told the DC-3 is
to be prepared for immediate departure' so Kevin gets the gun and,
after preparing the plane, hides in a closet.  Matthew, Turner, and
others drag a heavy trunk onto the plane.  Turner whispers to himself,
"What the hell am I doing?"  and thinks, "The easiest way to blow it
would be to arrive in Baja on target, radio in for landing
instructions, and come in too slow, stall out at 100 feet, fall flat
out of the sky, and crash in a ball of flames."
	'Kevin knows that stalls on landings happen all the time to
inexperienced pilots because they're afraid to come in too slow, and
there isn't enough lift on the wings, and the plane noses over and
dies.  He tells himself he will not make this mistake, and thinks of
Donna, wondering what she's doing at this moment, at the Circus of
Love.'
	'It occurs to him [Turner] that he's slowly withdrawing from
life, that the death he wanted in the cabin at the end of the road in
Sonora is in him, and he doesn't care.  It doesn't matter.'

	http://jfwiki.org/index.php?title=Night_(Part_2)

	You have been listening to Joe Frank, 'Work in Progress'.
This program was called 'Night, Part Two.'  It was written and
narrated by Joe Frank.  Support for the national distribution of Joe
Frank 'Work in Progress' is provided by National Public Radio member
stations and the NPR Arts and Performance Fund.  Contributors include
the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Herman
Goldman Foundation of New York City.  This program was also funded by
a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.  This is NPR,
National Public Radio.


russell bell