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Thursday, Jul. 25, 2002 / 3:27 p.m. ~A Little Story~ He came home alone with blood on his clothes. He appeared and she saw him in that state, like that, and she felt what had happened. She didn�t need words for that situation, but she asked anyway. And he was taken away, he was a child too, only fifteen years old, but he�d participated in a horrible crime, hadn�t he? One could say he deserved everything he would get, but did anyone know the truth about what had happened? Conflicting reports surfaced, files were lost, lawyers performed their rituals, their own magic, and details were never clear. How she suffered to lose her daughter and son at once. The son was gone, but might as well have died that night too. He held the axe in his hands, he brought it down on her dead body, the blows equally measured, counted. Nine of them. Axe blows to the head. She died on the first, so the experts said. He is remorseless. He was traumatized, so the experts said. It wasn�t his idea, he merely heard the first sound, the thwack, or was it a thump, or how does one describe the sound an axe makes when it hits a human skull, one still alive, with heart still beating in the body? Turn away for just a moment and hear that sound, turn back around and there�s trauma, there�s adrenaline, perhaps, and perhaps there is confusion, perhaps one no longer knows his own name. Perhaps the details are fuzzy in his mind after the fact, but he finds his way home, he says she made him do it, she handed the axe to him, and what did she say exactly? They all defended him, the one who bore him was his staunch supporter, everyone knew he could not have done what they all said he had. Phone numbers were changed, homes were relocated, and he spent time �away�, with weekly visits from loved ones. Long conversations in hushed tones, minimum security, lunches at chain restaurants, swimming in hotel pools, pretending to be normal, and they captured those moments on film, so they could take a piece of him with them when they left him behind. Memory loss, they said, traumatic events led to the loss, there is no point, the hypnosis does not work, nothing works, he has shut it all away deep inside, as he was overwhelmed. But his friends stand by him, his family supports him, to a point. Inside themselves they question everything. Inside themselves is loathing and fear. And tremendous loss from which they never fully recover. He lives his life as best he can, which might be said to be not very well. He doesn�t function in society, yet he is not a sociopath. He is neurotic, but who isn�t? He has baggage, but who hasn�t? His weighs more, his is a heavy load, but no one needs to know what he�s carrying. And he finds a woman who supports him and the load, who knows as much as he knows, who accepts the block, the walls his subconscious mind built for his own protection. She loses her own family in time because they disapprove. After many years no one knows anymore. No one tells anyone anymore. It�s left in the past because it belongs there. But it�s left inside of those who knew. And the one who did it. The one who dealt the first literal blow. Where is she now? He�s seen her, at a party, and maybe elsewhere, they�ve come face to face. He cowered, he says. He fears her. This makes one believe everything he�s said. Who wouldn�t want to believe him? It�s easier that way. He is living happily ever after, even with secrets buried deep inside, and anyone who knows, anyone who knew, is gone from his life, but the woman who supported him, and it has always been known they cannot exist independently. They are two halves, misshapen, frayed at the edges, but together they form one whole unit, however damaged. And those who know? Sometimes it�s hard for the bystanders as well, the ones left with scars and holes that never filled in. Their load is also heavy, especially because of secrets, and details that are never meant to be known. Others ask them when they hear the story, which is a rare event indeed, �Don�t you want to know? Why don�t you just ask him?�, and the answer is always the same, �That was a long time ago, it�s over, you must see that it would do no good.� Cost of the War in Iraq
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