As the spite and malice of the gathered crowd rose, my certainty in being there fell. What am I standing for. What does my presence say. How does this fix anything. I should go.
© Randy Heffner
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I don't question the cause...the reason I came. There my confidence is unshaken. Wrong is wrong. The world must change. It's here. Me being here, part of this increasingly raucous, pulsing, boiling, thundering crowd. What am I standing for. I should go.
This is not even my city. I came at the call for justice. I came for the unprivileged ones. To say they matter. To support the cause. To claim power for the people.
My discomfort was not fear; the police did not concern me. We were too many for them. More sounds came: smashing thuds on car hoods, piercing shatters of shop windows. The din became deafening, but it was not my ears that hurt, it was my wrenched heart; the growing pain progressively crippling me.
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This violence…are we indeed to that last resort path to justice, rightful when powers-that-be are organized, consolidated, and determined to oppress. Hitler. Stalin. Mao. Who is presently that power. To whom is such wrath justly given.
I must have been standing frozen, because Tilda grabbed my arm, turned my hand up, and filled it with a brick to announce my conscription. I looked up at her to speak. I… I… Her eyes drilled into me. What are you, a pig-lover. And she was off. I had only just met her — at the park at dusk where we made signs. Even so, I had that quickly learned to not cross her.
I was frozen for a moment more, then I turned away.
Walking, then running, hardly looking. Ducking under signs. Through thin spots in the crowd. Upstream against the flow. Cutting around a corner, close against a building, turning down the long street to the hotel, dead into riot control's front line. Running for the gap — they leave it for people like me to escape — but the gap is closing and I'm pulling up short, 15 feet from the line. Looking up, another pair of eyes drills into me. Drop it. What…oh. The brick falling from my hand, the eyes unpin me. Advancing slowly, I resume my progress.
The hotel was little comfort, and it was hours before I slept. I was glad I got out, yet half my heart was still with the crowd. I knew how not to support the cause; I didn't know how to. Action is easy…I too could throw a brick, were that the right tool and a window the root cause. We ran off the police chief; does that change a riot cop's behavior. Does the morality of the cause shine in Tilda's brick. Or her angry eyes.
I arose late. I had no answers, and neither did this city. I needn't stay on any longer.
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Before packing, to see the sun, I stepped out from the room to the railing around the atrium. Below, National Guard were gathering, and a door to my right opened. Those same eyes, again from 15 feet. I don't know if he recognized me.
I wanted to see behind those eyes. For Tilda, only evil is there and in a rioter only good. His eyes hung in my sight, alternating with hers, first one pair, then the other, back and forth, settling before long split down the middle, her eye on the left and his on the right. What would it be to see with both eyes. The brute we fight has no head, as if a dragon to be slain. It's behind the eyes. The Guardsman's, Tilda's, mine. A pernicious weed, against which blunt force cannot pull the roots and leave anything but a crater.
The desk clerk gave me my receipt, and I turned to leave the hotel. Tilda was right there, blocking my way with her intractable eyes. I saw you run. I… I…
by Randy Heffner
Randy lives at the intersection of philosophy, theology, and culture — reading, watching, walking, and sometimes creating in search of our better selves. Film and photography have a lot to do with it, but anyway, art. The tie is an anomaly.