“Whoa, here let me help you up young man.” he said, bending down and taking Dylan's hand, and pulling him to his feet. Dylan brushed himself off, and picked up his bag of candy. He picked up the loose pieces that had fallen out of his bag, keeping an eye on the man beside him.
“Thanks mister.”
“Lawson. Gerald Lawson. You don't have to call me Mister. I'm not a formal type of guy.” he said smiling.
“Huh.” Dylan commented, as he noticed the man's attire. Gerald was wearing a pair of dark slacks, and a buttoned shirt, with a tie.
Gerald looked down at himself and smiled. “Well, not totally formal, anyway.”
“Thanks for helping me Mist-- um...Gerald. I'm gonna be going now.”
“Oh come on son. You just got here. Besides, I haven't given you any candy yet. You can't leave without candy, can you?”
Gerald smiled and the smile put Dylan at ease. There didn't seem to be anything crazy about this guy.
“Well...”
“Oh come on,” Gerald said. “Come on in. I don't get many visitors, to be honest. I can't remember the last person I actually talked to. I mean, I won't make you stay, of course. I just thought it would be nice to talk to someone.”
Dylan sighed, and turned to look back. His friends were gone. He clenched his jaw tightly as he thought about how fast they had left him when he fell. This guy could have killed him and they wouldn't have helped at all.
He turned back and smiled. “Sure, Gerald, I have some time.”
“Thank you, young man. Come on in and get out of the cold.”
Dylan followed Gerald into the house, and shut the door behind him. His eyes widened as he looked around. Everything was like something out of a movie, he thought. A long set of stairs, with carpet up the middle, and expensive looking chandeliers were hanging from the ceiling.
He turned his head left and saw, what looked like a library. There were numerous volumes of books filling the shelves. On the floors were fancy rugs that looked like they cost more than Dylan wanted to guess.
“Come on in the study” Gerald said, leading him into the room that Dylan had thought was a libr
As he walked into the room, he noticed a desk in the corner, with a lamp, some notebook paper and a cup of pens. On the wall, across the room from the desk was an oil painting of a beautiful woman. Dylan wondered if this was his fiancée.
The chairs were large and cushioned.
“You can sit down there if you like. I have some candy in the next room. I will be back in a minute.”
Gerald disappeared through the door, and Dylan dropped his bag beside the chair. He walked around the room, looking at the various books on the shelves. Dylan had not a lot of experience with fancy books, but they all looked like first editions of some pretty famous books. Tom Sawyer, The Great Gatsby, Great Expectations.
He ran his fingers lightly over the bindings, marveling at how they seemed to feel different than most books he came across in the public library. For some reason, the books in the Library at school and downtown just didn't have the same appeal anymore.
Dylan turned his attention to the painting on the wall. He stood in front of it and his eyes wandered over every inch of this magnificent woman. Even at Dylan's young age of 15, he knew beauty when he saw it. At the bottom of the picture, along the frame, it read “DAISY RUSSELL”
“She was supposed to be my wife.”
Dylan jumped and turned around. Gerald stood behind him, seemingly oblivious of Dylan's being startled.
“I met her when I was only your age. I never thought I deserved someone like her. Women as beautiful as Daisy existed only in books or in movie houses, you know? When I was young I read everything I could get my hands on. All the great novels, all the fine works of poetry, everything. I was always an admirer of Fitzgerald's work. Some called him pretentious but not me.”
Dylan was silent as he watched Gerald's face. It was calm and serene with almost no emotion however Dylan could see the hint of a smile.
“When I met her I knew she was supposed to be with me. I mean, me being a Fitzgerald fan, and her being named Daisy? Everything fell together. Then she was taken from me.”
“I'm sorry, Gerald.”
Gerald's eyes blinked a few times and he slowly looked down at Dylan.
“Oh no, don't be sorry. Some things happen for a reason. Things move in a circle, do you know what that means?”
“Not really”
“Well, something happens, and then life moves in a circle and it comes back to get the people that did it. Kind of like 'what goes around comes around'.”
“I've heard of that.” Dylan said.
“Well, anyway.” He turned and walked back to his desk. There was a box sitting on the desk.
“I have some things for you. I don't really have candy in the house. Bad teeth, you know? But I do have some other things you might be interested in.”
Dylan walked over to the desk, and looked down inside the box. His eyes widened a bit. Inside were three books. The Great Gatsby, Lord of the Flies and Catcher in the Rye.
They were beautifully bound in what looked like real leather.
“I'm a fan of books, you see. When I was in the other room, I came back and saw you marveling at the books on my shelf. These are three books that every young man should read. There’s The Great Gatsby, of course, because it is a work of art. Lord of the Flies because it will teach you the dangers of power and excess, and Catcher...well, read it and see.”
“Wow, I can't take these Gerald. I mean, these must cost...”
“Don't worry about any of that. I have plenty of money, more than even I probably realize.”
“But...”
“No buts. You'll insult me if you say no. Please don't insult me.”
Dylan looked up and Gerald was smiling.
“Okay.” Dylan said.
Gerald smiled, and put a top on the box. “There, that's settled. Now, I suppose you have to go?”
Dylan looked at his watch and was amazed that it had been thirty minutes since he had come in.
“Um, yeah, I have to be home soon. Can I use the restroom before I go?”
“Sure, no problem.” He turned and pointed through the doorway he had gone earlier. “Last door on the left.”
Dylan thanked him and went down the hallway. He heard the door swing shut behind him. He looked back, and saw the swivel door swinging. He could see Gerald sitting at his desk, writing something.
Dylan got to the end of the hall, and went into the room. As soon as he walked in, he stopped and stared. His eyes widened and his jaw dropped open.
“What the hell?” he said softly.
He turned and realized that he had gone in the room on the right, not the left. He looked around the room. In the middle of the room was a gigantic pool table. However it wasn't the pool table that got his attention. On the walls, mounted above a plaque were the heads of several children in Halloween outfits. All of them were lined up and had looks of horror on their face.
There were four on the right wall. The first was a teenage boy that had white paint on his face. Below his head was a plaque with the word SKELETON.
The head beside him had hair on its face and fake sharp teeth, and below was the word WEREWOLF. And beside it was another head with sheet wraps around it. The word on the plaque was MUMMY. The next space was empty but the plaque read VAMPIRE.
Dylan's blood ran cold as he slowly looked down and saw the Dracula costume he was wearing. Suddenly he remembered the detail of the attack on Daisy that his friends didn't know. The facts that he had uncovered in the library at school one day, as he looked through old papers. Daisy had been raped and killed by four teens in Halloween costumes: a Skeleton, a Mummy a Werewolf and a Vampire. They held him down and beat him as he was forced to watch them have their way with her.
Then they left him on the side of the road with her dead body. They had never been caught and afterwards, Gerald had been committed.
“Why are you in here? I told you the left room, not the right room.”
“I’m sorry...I didn't mean to.”
“But you did. You came in here and now you found your new home.”
Dylan started backing away. “Look Gerald. I'm sorry Daisy was hurt and all. But I didn't do it. This isn't going to help anything.” His eyes stayed on Gerald's hidden hand. What did he have?
“Hurt? She wasn't hurt. She was killed!” he yelled. He followed Dylan around the pool table. “She had done nothing to them. We had done nothing. We were coming from a restaurant. I had just proposed and she had accepted.” Tears were showing in his eyes.
“I tried to save her but I couldn’t. She was violated in the most vicious of ways. And they all had me. I couldn’t do anything.”
Dylan made a run for the door, and got his hand on the doorknob when he stopped. He felt his body go warm and was aware of a sharp pain in his neck. He tightened his grip on the doorknob, as his breathing became labored and a bit erratic.
He slowly turned around to face Gerald. Gerald stood in front of him, his left arm by his side. In his hand was a scythe, dripping blood onto the carpet.
“Daisy, you are avenged.” Gerald said softly, as Dylan's head slowly slipped off his shoulders, and onto the floor.
A Hero's Guilt
This couldn’t be happening, I told myself. This wasn't real. Maybe it was a dream, perhaps it was the Matrix, but this could NOT be real, I did not just shoot that man. However, no matter what I told myself, I knew that I had just shot a man running for the cockpit door.
I had only been working as a US Marshal for six months. I had scored highly on my exam and was pegged to go far. People have asked me if 9/11 had pushed me to become a US Marshal, so that I could protect our skies. I mean, I was deeply affected by what happened, as was anyone with a heart and soul. However, I don't know personally how much that event pushed me in this direction. I just know that I come from a long line of US Marshals, and I don't suppose there were really many options for me. It was just expected.
When I was assigned to work on the airplane, I was a bit nervous as I had never flown before. Even when going to my exams and medical tests in Chicago, I took a bus or a train. I never mentioned any of this to anyone because I wanted the job, and was afraid I would be discounted. I knew I could do this job, and did not want to be passed over just because I had a little uneasiness over flying. I didn't want to be relegated to a desk job either.
I masked my nervousness by trying to sound brash and cocky. I was sure that there would be no problems, I told the guys at the party my father threw for me. There were many Marshals there, all my family and my father's friends. They all knew me since I was a baby, so I'm sure they all still saw me as such.
“There's no way anything's going to go wrong on that plane when I'm on there”, I said taking a swig of my beer. They all laughed and patted me on the back. In a moment of insecure bravado, I went on about how I wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger on some “towel head” that dared to try something. In the years since I have wondered if my comments would have raised an eyebrow before the towers fell. Before all the hatred of Arabs came front and center, and before everything went to Hell.
So there I was, on my first flight by myself, hands gripping the armrests and trying not to seem like I was full of anxiety. I kept getting an image of that old kid's magazine that had the four pictures and the caption “which one does not belong?”
I closed my eyes and started counting to ten to calm myself. I had gotten to four when I heard screaming. My eyes snapped open and I saw an angry man standing in the aisles waving a stick of some type. Everyone was crying out, and the man kept screaming something in another language. And I froze.
My gun was right there on my hip, under my jacket and I couldn't move. I was cursing under my breath trying to get my ass in gear. I took a deep breath and finally got my hand to move. I unhooked the gun from my holster and slid it out. He turned around and I got up quickly and stood in the middle of the aisle.
“Drop the weapon!” I yelled, probably a bit too loud.
The man turned around and started screaming at me, and pointing the stick in my direction, waving it for effect. He started running towards me, and I took a step back and my foot got tangled in some woman's purse and I fell back, the armrest digging into my side causing me to grimace.
I fumbled with my gun and the man suddenly stopped, turned around and started rushing towards the cockpit. I yelled for him to stop but he kept going. Suddenly there was a loud noise and the man dropped to the ground. My hands were trembling as I held the gun. I sat there and stared at the man slumped, face against the wall, blood spreading across his back. What the hell had I gotten myself into, I wondered.
Afterwards the people on the plane told the airline officials that I had saved their lives, and that I was a hero. They said that I took control and assured everyone that things would be okay. They said that I cracked a few jokes as a way to lighten the mood and get people to calm down. I remember none of that, however. All I remember is his screaming and me shooting him in the back.
It's weird, but all the things from that day that I want to remember, I can't, yet all the things I do remember, I wish to God I could forget.
I found out later that the man wasn’t a terrorist after all. Turns out he was a schizophrenic French man who it was thought had run out of his medicine. The only reason anyone knew that much was because he had an empty pill bottle in his carry-on that had his name on it along with the words “Chlorpromazine” on it. No one knew how he got the stick onboard, but it wasn’t a real surprise. People managed to get much more dangerous things on board than a stick.
I figured that at some point, someone called the doctor whose name was on the bottle and was filled in on the man’s history. He had no family to claim him, and so would probably get a pauper’s burial somewhere in a field with a plain marker on his grave.
Of course the media would not report any of this. It was a much sexier story to report that a terrorist attack had been foiled, than a story about some random person that no one knew and who had no crying family to put in front of their cameras. I disagreed with the decision to frame him as a suspected terrorist, however I wasn’t in a position to really dictate anything. Not only was I new, but I’m the one who shot the guy, so they assured me it was in my best interest that it go down the way they said.
I quit the Marshal’s service six months later, much to the chagrin of my father. No one said anything, but I could tell that many people felt I was soft. I didn't care, though. My father wouldn't talk to me, despite my mother's constant attempts at negotiating a sit down.
I moved back to my hometown and into the dilapidated run-down apartment building I had lived in when I first moved out of my parent's house. The town was still dead with nothing to really do after six o’clock in the evening. I felt a deep feeling of guilt and as clichéd as it may sound it was as if a 500lb gorilla was perched right atop my shoulders.
I reconnected with some friends of mine and through an old acquaintance I became involved with a local soup kitchen. Funny how growing up I thumbed my nose at the homeless and liked to think that I was above all that. How I could never end up in the type of place I now found myself in. It's amazing what a year will do.
As the months go by, I get used to my surroundings. I no longer feel a sense of guilt over the fact that my life is better than those I attempt to help. No longer do I look away when a woman with her three children smile at me and thank me for the bland soup that I hand her. I have become one of them.
Occasionally someone will recognize me from all the news coverage of the shooting. They will want to know what happened. I don't know what to tell them, though. They tell me I'm a hero, and I just smile and nod. I can't tell them what is going on inside me. I can't tell them how I wake up screa
ming at night as that man's face stares at me with silent condemnation. I can’t tell them that the entire thing is a sham and I’m the farthest thing from a hero there can be.
How do I explain that I don't consider myself a hero, even though everyone seems to think I helped save our country from a disaster? How can I possibly put into words the guilt that I feel, the tears I shed every single day and all the second guessing that I have done? How do I ruin for them, this moment? And why is it their moment?
When did my shooting a “terrorist” become everyone's feel good story? And if it is truly a feel good story, as I am constantly told, then why the hell don't I feel good?
Someday I’ll get past this. At least that's what I tell myself. During counseling with the pastor of my church, I have told him the real story. I was ordered not to ever speak of it, but I had to tell someone. It had been eating away at me for years.
Through The Soul's Window Page 4