Facing the Sky. Roy F. Fox
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the voted road system voted out . . . I had to let a former saloonkeeper and murderer, a friend of the Boss’s, steal about $10,000 from the general revenues of the county to satisfy my ideal associate and keep the crooks from getting a million or more out of the bond issue. Was I right or did I commit a felony? I don’t know. . . . I’ve got the $6,500,000 worth of roads on the Ground and at a figure that makes the crooks tear their hair. The hospital is up at less cost than any similar institution in spite of my drunken brother-in-law, whom I had to employ on the job to keep peace in the family. I’ve had to run the hospital job myself and pay him for it. . . . Am I an administrator or not? Or am I just a crook to compromise in order to get the job done? You judge it, I can’t. (McCullough 1993, 499)
While Truman’s language here is far less poetic than Jefferson’s or Lincoln’s, I admire it more than theirs. First, Truman was a plainspoken man, with more than a trace of a now-disappearing rural Missouri accent. These facts led many people to dismiss Truman as a “hick,” similar to the way Lyndon Johnson was often perceived, due to his Texas drawl. This is far from true for both men. Truman was more literate and cultured than most of his peers; he just never took pains to show this side of himself. He constantly read history and loved Shakespeare. He was an intense student of classical music, who wanted to be a concert pianist. When traveling, Truman took his own record player and LPs, or long-play albums, of classical music with him. The second reason that I admire Truman’s habit of writing through trauma is that he chose to write in common, everyday language—expressive language. It’s not pretty or stuffy or preachy. It’s direct and honest. It doesn’t hold back.
Expressive language is the “matrix” from which all other forms of language are born—from academic and scientific reports to business contracts and poems (e.g., Britton 1975, 11–18). The main reason is this: Before you can write in language that is manipulated and cast in specific ways for a specific audience (e.g., a lab report aimed at molecular biologists), you have to be able to explain it first to yourself or to a close, trusted friend (explaining specialized vocabulary when needed). If you can’t clearly explain it to yourself, then you’ll have a helluva hard time explaining it to a specialized reader. In short, expressive language is the kind in which we think. Its uncensored, trusting, and informal qualities are what make it malleable, flexible. This, in turn, allows us to generate more and different thinking.
Expressive language and writing about trauma share many characteristics, which you’ll find in this excerpt from Truman’s writing. For example, he begins with concrete, observable details, sticking close to his reality (“6,500,000 worth of roads”). While he emphasizes the personal, he keeps the larger context in his view (accomplishing projects for the public good). Truman also connects feelings to specific events, as a kind of evidence, and he connects one incident to another. He asks questions of himself and twice expresses frustration at not answering them directly, though here he suggests his answer merely by posing the question.
He later answers an implied question by explaining why he had to hire his inept brother-in-law. Truman is also flexible with time, including observations of the past and present; he also implies his concern for the future, in his satisfaction with the new roads and hospital. Truman describes some tension by including positive and negative observations and events. He also uses ironic, direct, and colorful names for people (“sweet associate”; “crooks”; and “saloonkeeper and murderer”); he uses fragments or incomplete sentences, contractions, lists, and the first-person pronoun “I” and second–person pronoun “you” for addressing the reader. All of these are common characteristics of expressive language and writing about trauma.
As far as I know, Truman never explained how or why he engaged in such writing. His label of “Longhand Spasms” suggests a certain dismissal of such writing. On the other hand, he must have believed in its value because he practiced it throughout his life. Historian David McCullough’s (1993, 499–500) description of one instance leaves little doubt about Truman’s purpose:
Truman had had all he could take. Alone at his desk upstairs at the White House, on a small, cheap ruled tablet of the kind schoolchildren use, he began to write. It was the draft of a speech, a speech that he had no intention of giving, but that he needed to get off his chest.
I don’t know if anyone ever praised Truman for his literate and insightful habit of writing through trauma, but I do. I’ll just chalk it up as another quality for which this modest man never received credit. The major difference between today and the times of Jefferson, Lincoln, and even Truman is that writing is no longer the province of the elite or educated few. Composing about trauma is now simply more available to everyone, including Claire, whom you met at the opening of this chapter.
Our Storied Present
Throughout that semester, Claire had insisted that she had no real traumas to explore in writing, until a couple of months after the course ended, when she sent me a thirty-six-page paper describing and analyzing her repeated sexual abuse inflicted by her older brother, whom she revered:
I adored Kent growing up. I wanted to be just like him. I didn’t want him to join a gang or get arrested. I simply admired his independence and toughness. I felt safe when he was around. (Course Document 2003)
The following excerpt recounts the first episode when Claire was about seven years old. She and her sisters were “playing house” with Kent. With Claire’s younger sisters sent out of the living room by their make-believe father, they laid under a blanket stretched between the living room couch and a coffee table to form their bedroom. Claire describes how they talked to each other as pretend parents:
“So honey,” I began to say, “How was your day at work?”
“Fine,” he said with his back facing me, “I had a long day and I’m tired.”
“Okay honey, go to sleep,” I replied in a motherly way.
I turned on my side and pretended to go to sleep when I heard Kent moving around. I could tell at that point he was looking at me, and it felt like he was closer to me than before. I was always cautious when Kent was silent and near me. He was always trying to pull some kind of prank. I quickly turned toward him, to see what he was doing. He was laying on his side, raised on his left elbow, facing me.
“You didn’t give me a good night kiss,” he said playfully.
“Ugh,” I replied automatically, “That’s nasty.”
“Well, that’s what mamas and daddies do and you said you wanted to play house.” I stared at him suspiciously, but he had a point.
“Not a real kiss, just a little one. We’re just playing,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Okay,” I said cheerfully, “just a little one.” I kissed him on the cheek. It didn’t hurt and it didn’t feel too weird. I had kissed Kent on the cheek before and plus I had kissed DeShawn Perry last year in 1st grade under the jungle gym. At that moment, Darla started complaining about Trish messing with her in the other room. Without thinking, I jumped up and reprimanded Trish. I walked slowly back to my pretend bedroom. I was hoping that Kent was asleep. He wasn’t. He was lying on his back with his head resting on the pillow and watching me as I crawled in. At that moment, I realized how small the room was. I didn’t say anything to Kent and laid down with my back facing him. He broke the silence.
“We didn’t finish,” he said quietly. He was practically whispering, “Mamas and daddies do other things.” I knew he was talking about sex. Mama had the birds and the bees talk with me seven months ago. I looked at him and then the light blue ceiling. It was semi-transparent so I could faintly see the white tile of our real house. I guess my silence signaled him to go ahead. He climbed on top of me. He started moving his body up and down, just like the people on TV before mama turns the channel. My clothes were on and so were his, but for the first time I realized he had a penis. I knew that boys had different genitalia from me, but I had never thought of that in terms of my brother. It seemed like forever he rocked on top of me. The weight of his body caused my chest to hurt and I wanted him to get off. I didn’t say anything. He rolled off of me and put my hand on his penis and held it steady. I held my breath; I was scared to breathe and more scared to move. He began