Wrapped in the Flag (41 page)

While many people were scratching their heads trying to grasp that the Oklahoma terrorists were born in the USA, I was unnerved. I felt like I knew these men. They were duplicates of Thomas Stockheimer, the local
gun-loving, government-hating loudmouth who’d called me names twenty-three years earlier.

After Stockheimer lost his 1972 race for the Wisconsin legislature, he gave up on electoral politics. He embraced the Posse Comitatus, a radical underground movement that urged resistance against the federal government and encouraged massive tax protests. According to its organizing guide,
The Posse Blue Book
—yes, the same title given to the Birch bible—the plan was to get a Posse up and running in every county in the United States.
³³

The Posse specialized in fire and brimstone directed toward its most hated enemy, the IRS. “Get ready for a declaration of war!” Posse leader Bill Gale said. “And if you don’t have a gun, bring some rope! Because there’s going to be one tax collector removed from office!”
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Tom Stockheimer took Gale literally. In 1974, he and several friends lured the local IRS agent, Fred Chicken, out to a farm, tied him up, punched, and threatened him. When Stockheimer was sentenced to prison, he jumped bail and fled the state. Before he ran, Stockheimer recruited one of his friends to assume Posse leadership.
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The new leader, a nasty fellow named James Wickstrom, used Posse members to disrupt meetings of the state legislature and harass local law-enforcement officers. One of their tactics was posting handbills in grocery stores, on public bulletin boards, and on light posts and fences all around Central Wisconsin. One of these posters carried the headline “It’s time for old-fashioned American Justice” and a sketch of a corpse swinging from the tree. The text read: “The White Anglo/Saxon Posse’s [
sic
] across this Christian Republic await for the opportunity to clear up America of which the Jews and their ‘lackey’ jerks called politicians have made a
GARBAGE DUMP
.”
³⁶

While Wickstrom encouraged the haters, Thomas Stockheimer spent the late 1980s and early 1990s expanding his criminal activities. As Daniel Levitas explained in
The Terrorist Next Door
, “[Stockheimer] and eight associates were charged with mail fraud and conspiracy for selling bogus Posse money orders.” One of Stockheimer’s customers was the second Oklahoma City bomber, Terry Nichols.”
³⁷

By Sunday, I was beginning to grasp that Oklahoma City was a revenge killing. Timothy McVeigh and many other radical right-wingers had nursed a deep grudge against the federal government since the attacks on the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, on April 19, 1993.
³⁸

Like most Americans, I knew that the federal government had evidence of sexual
abuse, child abuse, and the stockpiling of illegal weapons on the isolated compound ruled by David Koresh. When he refused to allow authorities to search the place, the feds and the cult members became locked in a fifty-one-day standoff.
³⁹

Then in April, fire had engulfed the compound, killing seventy-four people. Twenty-four were children.
⁴⁰
I was heartsick. I couldn’t understand how the situation had reached such a violent conclusion.

For right-wingers, Waco proved that the federal government had gone to war against its own citizens. They tried to justify Oklahoma City as an appropriate response to the Waco attack. I tried to make sense of the senseless, but I didn’t have forever to ponder. My mother was coming for dinner, and I had a chicken to roast and the table to set.

For several months, I had avoided confrontations with my mother by focusing on safe subjects like her grandchildren, the weather, and family gossip about cousins, aunts, and uncles. Anytime she started a rant about politics, I tried to bite my tongue and say nothing. Sometimes I actually succeeded.

That evening I was about to congratulate myself on a trouble-free visit when Mother brought up the Oklahoma City bombing. “It’s a tragedy,” she said.

“I totally agree,” I offered. “It is hard to believe an American, an Army vet—”

Mother interrupted me in mid-sentence. “He had his reasons.”

“What are you talking about? What reasons?”

Mother put down her cup and looked right at me. “Waco,” she said.

“Waco? The Branch Davidians two years ago?”

“Yes,” Mother said. “The government killed lots of innocent women and children in that attack.”

“So, McVeigh blows up a building in Oklahoma City and kills babies in the day-care center. Are you crazy?”

“I’m not crazy at all. Timothy McVeigh was defending the rest of us from the government,” Mother said.

“Nineteen babies died,” I reminded her.

“That happens in war,” she said.

I stared at my mother. Her chin was set; her eyes, steely; her lips, stretched thin. She was determined, fierce, and unmovable. I realized that no amount of arguing would change her mind. She’d decided that the federal government was the enemy and terrorists like Timothy McVeigh were the good guys.

When Mother finished her tea and her lemon meringue pie, I brought her trench coat from the closet and helped her slip it on. She knotted the belt
and wrapped a silk scarf around her head. My husband took her arm, helped her into the car, and drove her home. He returned a few minutes later while I was in the kitchen loading the dishwasher. He dropped his arm around my shoulder and hugged me.

“She doesn’t know what she’s saying,” he said.

“Yes, she really does,” I answered.

That day I gave up on my mother.

The knock on the door surprised me, but I was more surprised to see my mother on the porch, a white box in her arms. For the last few months, we had not seen each other very often, except for the must-do family things like Mother’s Day and my youngest son’s high school graduation. Otherwise, we confined our communication to weekly phone calls. By unspoken agreement, we skirted every topic even remotely controversial, which left us with the weather and the weather.

These chats never took long. Mother usually begged off after a few minutes. She always had some big project pulling her back to the desk. I didn’t ask for details; short conversations suited me too. I just assumed she was writing something to do with Catholicism, most likely full of reverence for the Pope, who’d captured Mother’s heart in 1978 when he appeared in a window in St. Peter’s Basilica and called out his chosen name: John Paul II.
¹
Mother believed that this Polish prelate was God’s own anti-Communist, who would smash the last remnants of the Soviet empire, renew the Catholic Church, and bring millions of fallen-away Catholics back to their faith. She prayed that I would be one of those millions.

My mother would never grasp my profound disappointment with this Pope, who had claimed to love children while he denied reality: thousands of Catholic priests had sexually abused children. For me, no amount of piety or charisma could square that circle.

“Are you ever coming back to the Church?” Mother had asked me shortly after Dad’s funeral. “I saw you didn’t take Communion.”

“Let’s not fuss about this,” I told her.

“If you die outside of the Church,” she warned me, “you’ll burn in hell.”

In late June of 1995, while Mother stood in the open doorway, I flashed back to that “burn in hell” moment. “Stick to the weather,” I reminded myself as I invited her in for tea.

“I have no time. I just wanted to drop this off.”

“Thanks,” I said. “What is it?”

“The Conner genealogy. Someday you might be interested.” With that, she handed me the box and turned toward her car.

“Wait,” I called. “Just a minute.”

Mother stopped in the driveway and looked at me. “Now you can join the DAR,” she said, adding, “Not that you care.”

A few minutes later, I settled myself at the kitchen table and opened the box. Inside, on a carefully folded nest of tissue paper, sat a green-leather scrapbook and several manila folders. I pushed the folders aside and opened the book. The first page, titled “The Conner Family,” featured a quote from Pope John Paul II about the family as a “community of generations.”
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On the next pages, Mother had recorded the earliest known branches of the Conner family, documenting the names and birth and death dates of everyone she found. She outlined the line from Philippe du Trieux and his wife, Susanna, who married in Holland in 1621 and came to America in 1624. Five generations later, Jacob Truax married Rebecca Stillwell. That couple had a son, Stillwell Truax, who grew up to be an officer in the Continental army.

My mother had spent hundreds of hours piecing together my father’s family tree. She had verified her findings with pages of old documents that she’d unearthed—birth certificates, death certificates, land grants, and Sons of the American Revolution applications. Her painstaking work proved the lineal, bloodline descent from a Revolutionary War patriot required to join the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Ironically, Mother—descended from German and Irish families who came to America a hundred years after the revolution—could not win entrance to that storied organization of arch-Americans. Her family had stayed too long in Europe.

As I put the book back in its box, I noticed one of the folders I had set aside. In a white envelope were old newspaper clippings, worn and yellowed. I carefully unfolded pages of “War-time Easter Parade” from the April 5, 1942, issue of the
Rocky Mountain News
.
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At first glance, I couldn’t understand why Mother had saved this clipping; certainly she could have cared less about the “well-dressed matrons” photographed in their spring ensembles.

I started to refold the brittle paper when I noticed a photo of a beautiful, young woman seated at the end of a sofa. The caption described the smiling woman as someone who “prefers a sophisticated type of frock for those
little dinners
.”

“Holy crap,” I thought. “Sexy frocks and intimate dinners . . . Hello, Mother.”

I promised myself that I’d find out about those days—before babies and rabid right-wingery. Unfortunately, by the time I started asking, my mother had no idea what I was talking about.

In February of 1996, I slathered myself with sunscreen, pulled on a cover-up and hat, and headed to the beach. It was early, but it was Cancun, so I ordered a golden margarita and settled down for a day of doing nothing and resting afterward.

Three thousand miles north, my frail eighty-two-year-old mother pulled on her winter coat, tied a wool scarf around her head, and headed out for her weekly hair appointment. She parked her Oldsmobile in the lot behind the beauty salon and inched her way along the slick black-top toward the door. Suddenly, a gust of wind picked up all 115 pounds of her and dropped her on the ground. Unable to get up, she lay in the cold, praying for someone to find her.

By the time I got home from Mexico, Mother’s hip had been pinned back into place and she was recovering at St. Joseph’s Hospital. She had enough spunk to complain about the food and the proposals for her care when she was discharged. Every day she said the same thing, “I am not going to the nursing home, period. I’ll take care of myself in my own house.”

Her doctor patiently explained, several times, how critical the next phase of recovery was for her. Sensing that he was not getting through, he took a more direct approach. “You will never walk again without physical therapy,” he told her. “You’ll be a crippled old lady, and the next fall will kill you.”

Mother paled at this prediction. “I’ll go for the therapy,” she conceded. “But don’t expect me to stay long.”

Four months later, after a lot of hard work on the part of the rehab staff and Mother herself, she was cleared to go home, with the caveat that she have some help. “My daughter is available,” she told the nurses. “I won’t need anyone else.”

It took me only a day or so to realize what “being available” meant. On Mother’s command, I was expected to tie her shoes, run errands, pick up groceries, and get her to the clinic for seemingly endless appointments. I was her go-to-gal for all her needs, and not unexpectedly, I also became her political punching bag. I kept reminding myself to “shut up and talk about the weather,” while Mother wanted to talk about President Clinton.