In the Midst of Life

I’d just double up and die. My old heart would stop – if I’ve got one, an’ a lot of people have said I ain’t got no heart.’
    The press loved it, and the newspapers lapped it up, printing rows of dots when the language became too obscene. The public bought the papers and magazines in their millions. Truman was a star. The American people like to think of themselves as robustly independent, like the first settlers, and here was a grand old American backwoodsman, showing them all that the ‘spirit of America’ was alive and well.
    Meanwhile, in the courts and committee rooms of Washington State, debate was raging about Truman’s status as the only person remaining inside the Red Zone. Was it lawful? Was he trespassing? Could the evacuation order be enforced? Should he be forcibly removed for his own safety?
    The land still belonged to the Northern Pacific Railroad Company, so they enquired if the lease could be revoked in exceptional circumstances; the reply was so long in coming that it wasn’t worth waiting for. The Sheriff checked with local prosecutors about Truman’s legal rights. The lawyers conferred and came up with the conclusion that an independent court would have to decide, and that, in view of the publicity, it was doubtful they could find an impartial jury to hear the case. Therefore, they could not prosecute. Besides, there was no way of avoiding bad publicity, and the lawyer doubted if there was a law-enforcement official inthe county who would arrest Truman, even if he was breaking the law.
    But was he? He was in his own home, doing no harm to anyone, except perhaps himself. Some bright spark came up with the question, was he sane? If not, he could be certified and removed. But the idea of getting in a couple of psychiatrists to examine him, which would undoubtedly reach the ears of the press, leading to a stream of derisive articles, was too much for the poor Sheriff and the idea was abandoned.
    The fact is, Truman was saner and a great deal more intelligent than anyone debating his case. He had always been a cute customer when he wanted something. He said once that ‘the press is more powerful than the law’. Had he foreseen what was likely to happen to him? It would have been no trouble for two hefty young forest rangers to manhandle an old-timer out of his home, into a car or a helicopter. But with the press reporting every move this would have caused a public outcry. Civil liberties, the rights of man, assault – all would have been evoked. Truman knew what he was doing all along. Not from altruism had he exhausted his stock of whisky and rotgut on the press boys. With public opinion on his side, he was safe.
    ‘Safe’ is an odd word to use if you live in the path of an erupting volcano, but his logic was impeccable. We all have to die, and, whatever the circumstances, it is better to die in your own home than in an unfamiliar place surrounded by strangers. He had said, ‘If I lost my home I wouldn’t last a week at my age. My old heart would stop.’ He was probably wrong, there. In modern America old hearts don’t just stop, and if they do, life will be forced back into them. For Truman, it would have been a nursing home, confined, confused, drugged and defeated. From that, he was ‘safe’.
    Truman stayed, and on 18th May, 1980, at 8.45 a.m. Mount St Helens blew and he went with it. A blast of hundreds of millions of tons of rock, ash and magma hurtled into the air at a speed of 900 miles per hour and a temperature of 700 degrees Celsius, thenpoured down the mountainside. Spirit Lake and the surrounding woodland vanished for ever.
    A memorial service was held for Truman a month later at the American Baptist Church in Longview, Washington State. The President of American Baptists took the service. In his commemorative speech he said these words: ‘No one lives his life amid the awesome beauty of Spirit Lake and Mount St Helens without a deep theism we could not readily define. Truman was a man of the seasons – he didn’t resist nature, he respected it – and he was a creature of the cycles nature brings. Wherever he is now, if he can see what is going on here today, he’s saying “don’t you dare cry for me! I did just what I wanted. Go have a good time.”’
    I am indebted to Shirley Rosen’s book ‘Truman of St Helens’, published by Madrona Publishers, Seattle, Washington State, 1981, for the information for this chapter.

 
     
    ‘I’m not afraid of