The Wise (March 2023)

 

We spoke over the phone at first, but over the years the phone conversations were replaced by emails. We hadn't all been together since college and that was a long time ago. I was the first one to 65, so it was my suggestion that we have a reunion ... before it was too late. Everyone agreed, but scheduling was the problem. Always had been. We decided on Chicago. It was at the center of our various North American locations.

 

We stayed at the Silversmith. It had reasonable rates—our rooms were at the back of the hotel to avoid the street noise—and it was near all the places we wanted to visit. James and I had never been to Chicago. On the second night of our weekend together, we had dinner at one of the tony restaurants on Lakeshore—a beautiful view of Lake Michigan and the city skyscape. Over the course of the evening as we reminisced about our lives to this point with the boost of alcohol to loosen the tongues—though I didn't drink—the conversation predictably turned philosophical. Mid-February and the weather was brutal. What a different conversation we might have had in an outdoor cafe on a sunny, summer day.

 

As was the custom when we were in school, we first selected a topic. As seniors, we felt entitled to share our wisdom, and ultimately we decided to take turns rendering a story—fictional or real—about what else, wisdom itself. Since most of our generation feel as though we've attained it, it's not difficult for us to expound upon our familiarity with the subject.

 

Adam began.

 

"My story is about one of the last patients I saw.

 

"She had witnessed a grisly murder on a Greyhound bus. It had been more than 15 years earlier, but she still seemed traumatized. The first 10 minutes she stared vacantly into the distance, occasionally meeting my eyes, but it was a soulless, empty look and I could have been a brick wall and it wouldn't have mattered.

 

"As she related the details, she maintained a steady, even tone—didn't cry, didn't scream, didn't show any emotion. I wondered how many times she'd gone through the horror—the vision of blood spurting from the neck, the stickiness of fresh blood on the floor and seats of the bus, the feel of blood spattering on her face, the sound of the heavy knife plunging time after time into the flesh. She told it all as if she were in a trance.

 

I let her continue without interruption, saving my questions for when she was ready."

 

The parole board let him out. Said he was remorseful and had served out his punishment.

 

"That was my cue. I felt she wanted to talk with me now."

 

And how did that make you feel?

 

Like I was just a slab of meat.

 

What do you mean?

 

No feelings, no value.

 

You felt victimized, and you don't think anyone cared. Is that what you mean?

 

I WAS victimized, and so was everyone else on that bus that day. We all saw and heard what went on. To free a monster like that ....

 

"Her voice was more animated, and she looked at me and now saw me in front of her asking her these questions."

 

You think he's still a threat?

 

Yes. Maybe not to you, but you don't ride Greyhound buses, do you? And the judge, so smug and self-righteous, he doesn't live among the people that do these crimes. If he did, he might not be so high and mighty.

 

You don't feel that justice was done?

 

Do you? I mean if it were your brother or father or friend or just another f___in human being who was butchered like that, right in front of your very eyes.... He cut out the heart and ate it. Think about that for a minute. Let it sink in. Picture him chewing the raw meat, the sound of him chomping on it, blood dripping down his chin, his hands lobster red. And then he plucked out the eyes—just stabbed into the sockets and pulled them out—and swallowed them whole. Does that mean anything? Can you see them disappear in his mouth and then slide down his throat?

 

Do you feel unsafe now that he has been released?

 

He knows who I am.

 

Have you considered going into a witness protection program?

 

You think it's that easy?

 

Could your family join you?

You know my parents are in a nursing home, don't you?

 

I'm sorry.

 

You're sorry?

 

I mean—

 

I know what you mean. You're just like the judge, brushing it off, because for you it's not personal. It's just a job. Pays pretty good I imagine. But how do you sleep?

 

I can understand your anger, and I apologize if it seems I'm downplaying this—

 

No, I don't think you do. You can't truly understand what you don't feel. God forgive me, but you wouldn't understand me unless you were me.

 

Can we go back—

 

No, Doctor, we can't go back. We're done here. I need some time and space to get myself back together. It's not easy getting strung out like this ... over and over. For what purpose?

 

We can continue another day—

 

Maybe. But I can't say when that will be.

 

"With that she got up and left. She was remarkably calm given the pain and anger and fear she must have been experiencing. Her gait as she walked to the door was steady and unhurried, but it was resolute. There was no fumbling with the doorknob and she closed the door gently. I heard her say good-bye to the receptionist, and she was gone.

 

"I never saw her again, and her file was never requested.

 

"I continued my practice for another year and a half, but I couldn't go beyond that. I came to realize that the woman from the Greyhound bus had profoundly affected me. My behaviour with subsequent patients was less professional and more empathetic than I ever thought was appropriate for someone in my field. She'd been so right when she said, 'You can't truly understand what you don't feel.' The anger and frustration she felt towards the justice system I began to believe was fully justified. Who are we—judges and psychiatrists—to believe that our knowledge and wisdom is beyond scrutiny ... when we don't even feel? And if we have stopped feeling, are we really still human or even humane?"

____

 

"That's a gruesome beginning, Adam. Sounds like it's been preying on you for quite awhile though," I said.

 

"It has. I took the bus here. First time I've ever taken an inter-city bus. All the way from Thunder Bay—following the same route as in my story. I finally summoned up the courage to do what I'd meant to do years ago—have a look for myself at the other side. It turned out very differently for me. Everyone I saw seemed harmless, and most were quite pleasant. I sat in the very back to push the experience to the limit. At the back of the bus, I was among an extended Somali family on their way from Winnipeg to Toronto. What they said among themselves was unintelligible to me—English is not just my first language, it' my only one. But they were willing to speak English with me and not too badly at that. They were excited about starting over, and it was contagious. I considered myself to be the beneficiary of dumb luck, and I became sad thinking that the bus riders in my story had not been so lucky."

_____

 

"That's two stories, Adam," said James. "But we'll overlook it, because the second one made the first one easier to stomach, so to speak. Besides, your replay of the doctor-patient conversation was amazing. You agree Charlie?"

 

"I absolutely do. The conversation, the way you managed the voices, really drew me in, and trust me, I was trying to get some distance.... James, if you're ready, would you go next? I'm still a bit unnerved."

 

"Sure," answered James. "I have an old reliable story that I've pieced together and rendered in different versions over the years."

 

"It starts in a small town in the Deep South. Not only did everyone know everyone else—in their race—they also knew you back one or two generations. That tended to fix people in categories that couldn't be easily changed. Naturally, some of the younger generation never returned after the military or college, and the ones who weren't born here usually didn't last very long. It was uphill all the way for them. It wasn't the kind of town you'd run away to in order to escape ... something or someone. This was a place you'd most likely run away from.

 

"It was an era when everything 'out there' seemed upside down, at least according to what the three networks showed on TV. Some of 'out there' seeped in though. We fought integration in the schools and we fought for God and country. Some of the foreign music made it in—mostly when the parents weren't listening. Otherwise, it was high school football on Friday night, college football on Saturday, Pro football on Sunday, and church on Sunday—Sunday nights were optional. I remember hearing that on Sunday, July 20th in 1969, there weren't more than seven at the evening service.

 

"We had a new preacher, who'd just come back from Japan. He wasn't military, though he had been at Tokyo Bay with MacArthur but in one of the lesser-known vessels. This time, he and his family were returning from Japan where he'd been a foreign missionary not more than 50 miles from where the Nagasaki atomic bomb exploded. Years later in my post-grad studies, I discovered the incongruence between killing people then later trying to save them. But in our town, at that time WWII movies with Japanese bad guys were still popular, so nothing seemed wrong with sending the missionaries in after the soldiers.

 

"Actually, it was quite an education for most of us when we learned about the Japan of today (back then). Some of the ladies dressed in kimonos during foreign missions fundraising season, and many of them tried cooking some of the more common dishes. Oyako Donburi was a favorite, and soy sauce caught on like wildfire. Nori was an acquired taste—picked up by very few. We got our first in-person look at Japanese folding screens, woodblock prints and vases—all of this too delicate for young families with children like ours.

 

"It only occurred to me later that there was never any mention of segregation in Japanese churches. Looking back it now seems so odd that segregation in our churches persisted (and persists) long after court-ordered school integration. At the time, no one gave it the least thought, but now I can't for the life of me explain it.

 

"I got to know the Reverend's family pretty well. I was interested in dating the oldest daughter, but I had to put up with Canasta, Hearts and Pit. Boy, were they competitive and particularly spirited when playing that commodity trading game. As for dates, they were always chaperoned. There were two younger kids. One of them was always our backseat minder. There were five of them in all—children. Not unusual for the times and especially for men of the (Protestant) cloth who seemed to take comfort in knowing they'd always have a congregation in the pews. Much to the Reverend's chagrin the three oldest, all girls, were not a passive audience, fairly thoroughly dishing out criticism at Sunday dinner (lunch), which I observed first hand on a couple of occasions. The old Reverend—to a 16-year-old he was old—was never perturbed by a little friendly advice from what he jokingly referred to as the 'peanut gallery,' though it wouldn't have occurred to me to share an insightful comment or two of my own. It just wasn't done.

 

"I got a different perspective from my own parents. They liked the Reverend and his family. Liked them a lot. But there was an image problem. You see the Reverend was wont to invite people from the lower class—and yes, social standing was very important in this little town. We even had our own country club, which he declined to join. To the contrary, he was known to pick people up for church service and take them home afterwards. At first, people thought it was for show, but he stuck to it. Even his daughter, my girl friend, was embarrassed to admit that the girls would insist the windows be rolled down to air out the car after Sunday morning services. Something else that she didn't like about her father's work was that he regularly visited the local jail. She told him point blank that it was dangerous. He didn't stop.

 

"I was sorry to see them leave. I think everyone knew the reason but no one spoke about it. He had heart issues and had one of the early pacemakers of the day. My parents figured that he'd been an insurance risk for the foreign mission board and that he and his family had been returned stateside for that reason. I guess our church fathers were ultimately persuaded by the same logic.

"Despite my fond memories of him and his family, I'm afraid that today he'd be written off as neo-colonial and racist."

_____

 

"That was a great story, James, but did you go 'woke' on us at end," asked Adam.

 

"Well, I'm not as uncompromising as I once was. I know that sounds peculiar, but for me the certainties of the past get a little shaky as the world changes, not that I've become 'woke,' as you call it, but just that I can appreciate the co-existence of conflicting narratives. Life's not always so simple. It seems to me that there's a perpetual dialectic in history."

 

"And you get the final word, James. Now, since we allowed Adam two stories, you deserve to have a story and a commentary," I said.

 

"Your turn Charlie," said Adam.

 

"I've got a story about someone I've known since 6th grade—all of 53 years ago. Put that way, it sounds like a different era ... and I guess it was. Just like yours, James.

 

"As a 12-year-old boy, he wasn't remarkable in any way as far as I could tell. But then we didn't have much contact. Boys were shy at that age. Also, I was in the advanced class, what they called A1 back then, and he was in the A2 class. Since we didn't have classes together, it was only because we had a couple of friends in common and our junior high school had fewer than 400 students that I knew of him at all. That sounds patronizing, I know, and as an educator I should be able to choose my words better.

 

"It was only much later when our paths crossed again and I got to know the man I'm going to talk about. He and I were among the 50 percent or so of high school graduates who stuck around or came back after finishing military service or college. The rest, well, they left in search of more than our small mid-America town could provide. We stayed behind for a variety of reasons. For example, some were very community-oriented and committed to the generations before. That was me. One of the very, very few declared white Democrats in town.

 

"Anyway, the man—let's call him Randy was a fireman when I first met him. There was a gas explosion in our neighborhood, and since it was just a two-minute walk from the high school where I taught, I was there in a flash. You see my father was a shut-in. That was a term we used to refer to folks who couldn't get out and about anymore.

 

"My father was alright—shaken but physically unharmed. It was a house two doors down where a contractor hit a gas line. No one was home, thank God, because there was literally no home after the explosion.

 

"Randy was one of the firemen putting out the fire. Afterwards, he came over to a group of us who were standing around—still in shock—and checked to make sure we and our loved ones were OK. By this point, it was known that there were no fatalities and no serious injuries; otherwise, I imagine we would have been approached individually for obvious reasons. He was just trying to reassure us.

 

"I liked his manner. He was good with people and he'd clearly had some experience speaking with victims and witnesses of traumatic events. He recognized me first, but when he introduced himself, I remembered. He'd been much different back in junior high school—kind of scrawny and easy to miss. He wasn't particularly good-looking—not what some girls today would call 'eye candy.' I recalled that by high school he had bulked up and though still small had become a pretty good football player. I think he was a corner safety or ... well, it was one of those defensive backfield positions. I never really cared for the sport. It seemed like pointless aggression, and I don't buy the idea that it's a safety valve.

 

"From that point on we called each other by name when we met at the grocery store, bank or gas station. We never dated though. I don't think he went to church. At least, I never saw him in ours. Several years later I had his daughter in my class, and I got to know the family a little better. And, of course, the grapevine was a prolific source of information—some true, some not—confirming that small town stereotype.

 

"It was from gossip that I learned of Randy's own tragic past. I vaguely remembered some of it, but since much of what I'd learned could be fact-checked against historical news reports, I researched the stories about what had happened twenty years before.

 

"A 15-year-old girl was burned to death in an abandoned house on the outskirts of a rural community 20 miles to the northeast. There were never any charges laid and no motive was ever discovered. From the rumors I heard, wild stories were cooked up about Satanic ritual sacrifices, drug dealing-prostitution rings, and even the old standby, a simple-minded Black man who didn't perform well when interrogated by law enforcement.

 

"This young girl had been Randy's girl friend, and by all accounts—here based entirely on the grapevine—they were quite an item, a Romeo and Juliet whose families didn't circulate in the same social set. Yes, even small towns have social worlds, some quite exclusive. She was white, and he wasn't. Let's call her 'Juliet.'

 

"I tried to imagine how a 15- or 16-year-old, with all the usual emotional adjustments going on during adolescence, would have handled such a horrific happening. I taught young people this age and felt I was still in touch with the difficulties of growing up, and I remembered quite well how I had felt growing up in a small town aware of a much bigger more exciting world out there.

 

"The connection between Randy's past and present came to me immediately. It was as if he was still trying to do everything he could to save his girlfriend, 'Juliet.' But that was pure speculation and I'm sure I wasn't the first to think it. I didn't encourage the rumor.

 

"Years later Randy suffered severe burns over his entire body while working the scene of a chemical explosion at one of the fertilizer plants. He was in the hospital for weeks, and I visited him several times. His wife was always there beside him. She told me how much their daughter had enjoyed my classes, and it was my pleasure to be able to tell them what a determined and resourceful student she was. His wife, let's call her Betty, nodded in agreement and said, 'Just like her father.' Through the bandages, you couldn't see his face, but his eyes lit up.

 

"At the end of that visit, Betty invited me for coffee in the cafeteria. We chatted for a few minutes, and I wasn't sure why she had wanted to speak to me privately. Then, it came. She told me what she'd learned from 25 years of marriage. Randy was in an eternal battle with fire. He'd become a fireman in the first place because of what happened to "Juliet," and that dedication never wavered. It wasn't that he was fixated on losing his teenage love; it was more. He saw his own daughter in every fire he fought. It was his passion—really an obsession she believed—that drove him to protect the vulnerable. He never put it in quite the same words, but she knew. The recurrent nightmares, never fully divulged, of a quarter century had told her.

"Randy recovered and was promoted to Fire Chief—the youngest on record. It was the only way to keep him out of the fires, and by this time, as Betty added, he realized that he could still fight the fires by protecting the men and women firefighters who had taken over from him."

_____

 

"You've gone sentimental on us, Charlie," said Adam with a big wink.

 

"Well, I thought this one was the better one for tonight."

 

"Fair enough," said James. "Six o'clock is gonna come early tomorrow. I need some shut-eye. The intensity of these stories and the feelings they've brought out have exhausted me."

 

"Let's adjourn, then," I added. "Whose turn is to pick up the bill?"

 

Silence.

 

"Mine I guess."