"Jesus Coyote" by Harold Jaffe,
Raw Dog Screaming Press, April 2008, 150 pages, paperback, $13.95
ISBN 978-1-933293-63-5
“Look down at me and you see a fool;
look up at me and you see a god;
look straight at me and you see yourself.”
—Charles Manson
—Charles Manson
One of the true architects behind the “docufiction” genre, Harold Jaffe again injects and paralyzes his readers with infectious prose in his most recent novel Jesus Coyote. Though the novel is of course fiction, readers are artistically placed in the middle of a tightly interwoven story that appears all too salient and real. Jesus Coyote is rich in destructive malice, relentless truth, and well-sought-after justice. Jaffe presents to his readers a fascinating look into the horrible atrocities surrounding the barbaric escapades of the Charles Manson cult from the late 1960s in and around Los Angeles, California.
Rather than use the direct name of Charles Manson, Jaffe births the fervently fanatical antagonist, yet wannabe righteous hero, Jesus Coyote. This exceedingly disturbed cult agitator is a perplexed man in his mid-thirties who is considered a god and possibly the Second Coming of Christ by his cult followers. Fondly, his tribe of free-spirited acolytes refers to him as “Soul”. This warm title may allude to a decent and pure “soul” of a man, but readers quickly become exposed to the self-destructive and power-seeking side of Jesus Coyote. His cult rhetoric, devious mannerisms and explicit actions are shocking. Soul has visions of robbing desert towns on dune buggies. Soul greatly encourages dangerous amounts of illegal drug use. When a cult member gives birth in Death Valley, Soul bites off the umbilical cord, binds it with his guitar string, and then encourages his tribe women to continue to have babies in order to build their cult numbers. Soul promotes a disturbed form of sexual liberation many liberal, free-thinking minds of today would deem insane. During some of the police interrogation scenes in Jesus Coyote, readers learn very quickly of Soul allegedly inviting his tribe to engage in repulsive and disconcerting acts of sexual perversion: Soul binding himself to a makeshift cross while his cult followers connected in an orgy beneath him; Soul later entices the cult to bring the babies of the cult women into their orgies to promote sexual freedom; Soul performing oral sex on a young girl; Soul sodomizing all cult members, particularly the men in order to show his dominance over them. This horrific and unsettling list of assumed sexual deviances goes on . . . and on . . . and on . . . When interrogated by officials, many of Soul’s tribe members never deny these allegations. Moreover and more disturbing, one tribe member named Hedda, an attractive twenty-year-old ex-lingerie model, calmly and methodically tells a detective that Soul “never did anything against anyone’s will.”
The Coyote tribe then enters into one of the darkest levels of human dealings—the brutal cult murders of many innocents. If readers don’t cringe while learning of the cult’s involvement with grotesque sexual experimentations, they’ll surely wish to spew once they read the horrors of the savage murders committed by the tribe members.
Thankfully, Soul eventually gets taken into custody, along with some of his acolytes. But he still manages to create havoc when he convinces some his female tribe members to protest even while they’re imprisoned. And those not imprisoned protest directly in the public’s eye. These devout believers get swastikas tattooed on their foreheads. They protest Soul’s incarceration by lifting their all-black dresses and howling like coyotes while urinating on the concrete sidewalk. TV news cameras catch it all, cars pass and honk, and the madness continues in the usual Coyote fashion.
Chapter by chapter and moment by moment, Jaffe unthreads his tightly interwoven story, and soon the greater truth surfaces for all—even for some of Soul’s ex-cult members. One in particular is Roxanne Bakramp, also known as “Roxi”, the ex-porn actress and prostitute. Roxi gets convicted of murder, and nineteen years later while serving her sentence in the California Institute for Women, she very openly wishes she had been more aware of the dangerous path she was on while she was with Soul. Here, Jaffe quite poetically opens up to readers through Roxi’s reflection on her barbaric escapades of the past. Being a convert to Christianity, Roxi candidly states:
“How could I know then that what I needed to fill the black hole was total submission to the true Jesus? How much torment would I have to go through to know it? How much torment would I have to inflict on others before I learned to love Him?” (Jesus Coyote, page 65)
Like Roxi, other once-cult members find their own personal salvation and worldly peace. They liberate themselves and find their own truth through their many reflections on the agony of their past choices. Here we see Jesus Coyote in its finest literary moments. Only a craftsman like Harold Jaffe can pull off such provocative and enlightening narration in the “docufiction” approach to story-telling.
Jaffe composes his narration in a matchless style that allows readers to fully experience the research one would do when investigating such barbaric atrocities. Jesus Coyote is a fast, one-sitting read. It is broken into three sections: (1) the Massacres, where readers learn of the crimes (2) the Transcripts, which would include the detailed confessionals and perspectives of what happened and (3) the Tribe of Coyote, an account of the aftermath of the Jesus Coyote cult murders told from various viewpoints. The novel closes with the most intriguing aftermath story, the account of Jesus Coyote himself. Here we find Soul shackled thirty-one years after the events in Pelican State Prison. And it’s here that Soul opens himself up to the reader in the most alarming of ways. The last sentence of the novel alone will make readers cringe and shake their heads in sorrowful shame.
Rather than use the direct name of Charles Manson, Jaffe births the fervently fanatical antagonist, yet wannabe righteous hero, Jesus Coyote. This exceedingly disturbed cult agitator is a perplexed man in his mid-thirties who is considered a god and possibly the Second Coming of Christ by his cult followers. Fondly, his tribe of free-spirited acolytes refers to him as “Soul”. This warm title may allude to a decent and pure “soul” of a man, but readers quickly become exposed to the self-destructive and power-seeking side of Jesus Coyote. His cult rhetoric, devious mannerisms and explicit actions are shocking. Soul has visions of robbing desert towns on dune buggies. Soul greatly encourages dangerous amounts of illegal drug use. When a cult member gives birth in Death Valley, Soul bites off the umbilical cord, binds it with his guitar string, and then encourages his tribe women to continue to have babies in order to build their cult numbers. Soul promotes a disturbed form of sexual liberation many liberal, free-thinking minds of today would deem insane. During some of the police interrogation scenes in Jesus Coyote, readers learn very quickly of Soul allegedly inviting his tribe to engage in repulsive and disconcerting acts of sexual perversion: Soul binding himself to a makeshift cross while his cult followers connected in an orgy beneath him; Soul later entices the cult to bring the babies of the cult women into their orgies to promote sexual freedom; Soul performing oral sex on a young girl; Soul sodomizing all cult members, particularly the men in order to show his dominance over them. This horrific and unsettling list of assumed sexual deviances goes on . . . and on . . . and on . . . When interrogated by officials, many of Soul’s tribe members never deny these allegations. Moreover and more disturbing, one tribe member named Hedda, an attractive twenty-year-old ex-lingerie model, calmly and methodically tells a detective that Soul “never did anything against anyone’s will.”
The Coyote tribe then enters into one of the darkest levels of human dealings—the brutal cult murders of many innocents. If readers don’t cringe while learning of the cult’s involvement with grotesque sexual experimentations, they’ll surely wish to spew once they read the horrors of the savage murders committed by the tribe members.
Thankfully, Soul eventually gets taken into custody, along with some of his acolytes. But he still manages to create havoc when he convinces some his female tribe members to protest even while they’re imprisoned. And those not imprisoned protest directly in the public’s eye. These devout believers get swastikas tattooed on their foreheads. They protest Soul’s incarceration by lifting their all-black dresses and howling like coyotes while urinating on the concrete sidewalk. TV news cameras catch it all, cars pass and honk, and the madness continues in the usual Coyote fashion.
Chapter by chapter and moment by moment, Jaffe unthreads his tightly interwoven story, and soon the greater truth surfaces for all—even for some of Soul’s ex-cult members. One in particular is Roxanne Bakramp, also known as “Roxi”, the ex-porn actress and prostitute. Roxi gets convicted of murder, and nineteen years later while serving her sentence in the California Institute for Women, she very openly wishes she had been more aware of the dangerous path she was on while she was with Soul. Here, Jaffe quite poetically opens up to readers through Roxi’s reflection on her barbaric escapades of the past. Being a convert to Christianity, Roxi candidly states:
“How could I know then that what I needed to fill the black hole was total submission to the true Jesus? How much torment would I have to go through to know it? How much torment would I have to inflict on others before I learned to love Him?” (Jesus Coyote, page 65)
Like Roxi, other once-cult members find their own personal salvation and worldly peace. They liberate themselves and find their own truth through their many reflections on the agony of their past choices. Here we see Jesus Coyote in its finest literary moments. Only a craftsman like Harold Jaffe can pull off such provocative and enlightening narration in the “docufiction” approach to story-telling.
Jaffe composes his narration in a matchless style that allows readers to fully experience the research one would do when investigating such barbaric atrocities. Jesus Coyote is a fast, one-sitting read. It is broken into three sections: (1) the Massacres, where readers learn of the crimes (2) the Transcripts, which would include the detailed confessionals and perspectives of what happened and (3) the Tribe of Coyote, an account of the aftermath of the Jesus Coyote cult murders told from various viewpoints. The novel closes with the most intriguing aftermath story, the account of Jesus Coyote himself. Here we find Soul shackled thirty-one years after the events in Pelican State Prison. And it’s here that Soul opens himself up to the reader in the most alarming of ways. The last sentence of the novel alone will make readers cringe and shake their heads in sorrowful shame.
