The Three Christs of Ypsilanti by Milton Rokeach

had to cool him down. Then he starts talking straight. He talks better then.”
    Other violent encounters took place outside the group meetings. One morning, for example, Joseph and Leon were each pushing a cart, Joseph in the lead. As Joseph rounded a turn in the tunnel at a fairly fast clip, he let go of the cart, which slammed against the wall and careened wildly.

    â€œWatch your cart!” Leon shouted. “You … Bless you! You with the unsound mind!”
    A few moments later the foreman, a hospital employee, came up and asked Joseph what had happened. “I just stopped my cart against the wall, that’s all.”
    â€œSir,” said Leon, “I believe what happened was—”
    â€œDon’t listen to him!” Joseph interrupted. “He’s crazy!”
    â€œYou’re the crazy one!”
    â€œYou’re crazy,” Joseph yelled. “You’re a shit-ass! That’s what you are, a shit-ass!” Then he grabbed Leon by the coat lapels with both hands and slammed him hard against the laundry cart.
    The men were immediately separated. Leon, his left hand drawn back in a loose fist, glared angrily at Joseph. Joseph was quickly removed by an aide, Leon shouting after him: “Begone, sir, or you’ll be dropped!” Joseph shouted back: “You’ve got the unsound mind!”
    When interviewed later concerning the incident, Leon once again described it accurately. I asked him if he had felt like hitting back, and he replied, as he did before, that hitting back is not his department but his uncle’s. When I asked him why Joseph had hit him, he was able to explain that too. “It was two-thirds imposition and one-third bullheadedness,” Leon replied.
    Joseph was interviewed next and he gave his version: “Rex started raising hell with me that I had no business to leave the truck there, so I jumped on him. I didn’t hit him. I just shook him. That man is sick. No joke! He says everything contrary. Nobody can talk to him.”
    â€”
You’re not getting along too well with Rex?
—
    â€œNegativism exasperates you. Clyde is better than Leon; he has stopped claiming he’s God so much. And you, Dr. Rokeach, give me a hand too. After Clyde talks, you ask me to say something and it gives me a chance for correction.”
    â€”
Are you getting stronger or weaker?
—
    â€œStronger. That Rex, you gotta be careful with him. He says he’s God. I take it away from him. Why, a mind like this could turn the world upside down in no time!”

    â€”
Are you still laughing it off, or not?
—
    â€œI do something else. I stood up there and told him I was God.”
    â€”
Changing your tactics?
—
    â€œIn a way, yeah.”
    The final physical altercation occurred on August 17; this time the participants were Joseph and Clyde. It was initiated by a verbal exchange, concerning “false Jesus Christs and false gods,” which consisted mainly of childish threats, name-calling, and obscenities, such as: “You’re the biggest liar,” “You’re not going to burn me, you keep talking like that and I’m going to knock the shit out of you,” “I’m the boss,” “You never were,” etc. At one point Clyde lunged at Joseph and the two went into a clinch until they were separated. Leon took the scuffle in, sitting in his usual chair, not moving a muscle, his face and body immobile and passive, as if he were watching something from far away. Before long the quarrel flared up again.
    â€œYou’re just a lot of shit to me, that’s all!” Joseph shouted.
    â€œYou can’t say that word to me!” Clyde answered.
    â€œI have my rights,” Joseph insisted.
    â€œI own the hospital,” Clyde said.
    â€œJust because you don’t want to work for the English cause.”
    â€œDoggone right I don’t want to work for England,” Clyde asserted.