Retribution

he sun was just setting as I drove up the main street of my home town, looking at the familiar buildings, feeling the mixed emotions experienced whenever I returned, even if only for a short visit. However, I had vacation time coming and I wanted to see my brother before he left for his new job in the middle east. I'd been driving since early morning and my butt had just about had enough as I parked at the town square and walked around the little park to ease the stiffness.

The weather was pleasant, and when my body began feel normal again, I decided to buy a paper, have something to eat and then get a hotel room. I'd see my brother in the morning. That way, I wouldn't have to bear the awkward feeling that I always got with Jane, Richard's wife. As if she felt I was imposing. I don't know why, but we had never got along at all.

The town was quiet, and when I walked into Georgia's Restaurant it was almost empty, just two tables occupied, one by a couple with two little kids and the other a single man with his back to the door, reading a paper. I sat down and read the menu, a waste of time since I always ordered number seven, monotony being the mainstay of by culinary activity. After ordering, I opened the paper to the crossword and was taking a pen out of my pocket when the man at the table spoke.

"Hey Sam. Aren't you even going to say hi?" The voice was soft and familiar. I turned to see the face of Levi, an old college friend with whom I had spent many hours, walking and climbing the desert mountains when we should have been the studying.

"Levi. How the hell are you? You're looking really good."

"Thanks. I'm feeling good these days." There was an awkward pause, the awkwardness on my part, because of what had happened.

A few years before, Levi's wife and child had been killed by a local drug addict when they had surprised him as he was ripping off their house. Allens, a fixture of the town square park along with the other addicts, had been a perennial juvenile delinquent who had grown up and graduated to more serious crime. He was seen leaving the house and caught in short order. It took over a year to bring him to trial. They convicted him and sent him to prison for life. Life, however, turned out to be fourteen months because an appeals judge had thrown out his confession and a crucial piece of evidence due to a technicality. The state never retried him. They released him from jail and he dropped out of sight.

Levi had held up quite well after the murders, continuing to practice medicine and seemed little different, maybe just a little quieter and more reserved than before. When they let Allens go, however, Levi fell apart and in a space of a few years had lost his house, his practice, everything. I tried to talk to him several times during that time but he put me off, and I eventually left him to himself, respecting his desire just to be left alone. I felt a little guilty about not being able to help, but I was too good a friend to butt in where truly I was not wanted.

During the meal we exchanged small talk and I caught up on his current situation and the goings on of the town. He had quit drinking and had started a small house remodeling and repairing business.

"Why don't you go back into medicine," I asked.

"Well, I've thought about it, but I just don't have the desire. I enjoy what I'm doing now and am getting along fine."

I wanted to ask if he had been able to start seeing anyone, but I hesitated. During our college days, I could have asked easily, but that was a long time ago and I wasn't sure about our current status.

"Why don't we go hiking tomorrow," he asked as we walked out of the restaurant after paying the check. "I don't have anything pressing and it'd be fun. Just like old times."

I said yes and we made a date to meet. Seven the next morning at the coffee shop on the highway. I watched him walk away down the street. He had seemed ok, and I hoped that he was going to be all right now.

Since I was going with Levi in the morning, I got in the car and drove toward Richard's house. To spent the evening with my brother and do my best to ignore his wife.

Eight o'clock the next morning found us parking at the foot of the trail that led up the west end of the mountain. Donning our small backpacks and canteens, we started up the trail, Levi as usual in the lead setting a fast clip, skipping lightly over the rocks in the rough parts. An hour later, we were four miles and a thousand feet up the mountain. We stopped on a smooth rock for a small break and a drink of water. Sitting on the rock, we looked up at the slope on the other side of the small stream bed, quietly enjoying the solitude. We had never talked much when we were in the mountains but had always been comfortable with the long silences.

"Did you ever climb up there?" asked Levi, indicating the top of the ridge opposite our position. A steep walled canyon to our right separated the top of that ridge from the main part of the mountain. I knew the other side of the ridge was a five hundred foot sheer cliff face, it being visible from the highway that went around the north side of the mountain.

"Always meant to but just never got around to it." There was a short silence. "Why not."

"Start the ball, Tector," he returned as we spoke lines from one of our favorite movies, something we often did while in college.

With that, we picked our way through the brush to the other side of the stream bed and started up the steep slope. Climbing without benefit of trails was always our favorite.

The slope was steep, but the climbing was easy, with no great obstacles. Two hours later we were sitting, panting, on the small flat top, three thousand feet higher than where we had parked our car. We sat looking north across the desert.

The silence was still easy between us. It was like the old days in college. We shared a canteen and some trail mix which I had made up the night before at the local market. There were white clouds scattered in the sky to the north and the light breeze felt good as we sat in the sun leaning against a large boulder.

"Did you know my mom died last year?" he asked after a while.

"God, I'm sorry Levi. I hadn't heard."

"She had a heart attack. Just keeled over one day in the market...A good way to go I guess."

There was more silence as we both remembered the nice lady who had often fixed us a meal when we showed up late at night, hungry and broke. I had often stopped in to say hi when I was in town, but I came home so seldom lately. Actually, I was almost completely out of touch with the town where I grew up. I didn't correspond with anyone and, even when I did come back for a visit, spent most of my time out in the desert and mountains.

"Allens came back to town a couple months ago," he said.

I looked at his face trying to read his thoughts.

"I'm surprised that the bastard would have the gall to come back here. They should have fried him in the first place." I thought about how I might feel in his place seeing the murderer of his wife and kid walking the streets.

"I was a little upset." He still had not lost his wry habit of gross understatement. "He hung around for a couple months and then disappeared." The wind had picked up a little and was a little cold, so we moved to the lee side but still in the sun.

"I was really pissed off at the courts when they let him go, and I completely lost it." It was the first time he had spoken to me about anything concerning his wife and kid. "I'd just halfway adjusted to their loss, and it was too much for me to handle. I got pretty low there for awhile, but that was where I wanted to be I guess. When my mom died, I spent some time out at her place. Her death kind of shocked me into thinking again and I was able to snap out of it. I was never a real alcoholic so it wasn't that hard to get off the stuff."

Off to our left a hawk soared lazily across the canyon.

"I did a lot of thinking about the justice system. I've decided the problem is that they have just completely lost sight of the purpose of the whole exercise: justice. It's really not a justice system anymore. It's just a complicated game that lawyers play. The criminals are the pawns, moved around to the tune of a bunch of arcane and irrelevant little rules. The judges are still lawyers themselves, part of the game, acting as referees."

I didn't say anything, and I had the feeling that he wasn't expecting, or even wanted, a response yet. He always talked more than I, although in college we had often had long arguments about politics, and philosophy. He was the socially minded one; I, the anarchist. He would argue for becoming part of society and trying to change it. I was the nihilist, arguing that it could only be changed by destroying it first. He had gone to med school and started a family. I had gone into the army for awhile, kicked around and now was teaching music part time at a small college up state, gigging on the side, and living alone.

"In the days of the old west," he continued, "at first there was no law. Since there had to be some order, men compensated for the lack of law by imposing a system of honor. When a man gave his word, it was sacred, and he was expected to keep it. This gave men a basis to deal with each other. There was also an unwritten law of conduct, the code of the west if you will. A man was expected to act honorably: keep his word, treat women with respect, always give an even break, and take the part of the weak against oppression. Loyalty was expected. A traveling cowboy could stay in a line shack when he needed to, but was expected to leave it in the same condition as when he came, cut wood for the next person, etc. This provided a basis for the western frontier society. Of course, some didn't act honorably, but there has always been outlaws.

"However, when the west became civilized enough for the lawyers to start plying their trade, a man's word was gradually replaced by the written contract, and the wording began to take precedence over intent. Now a man's word means almost nothing. Today, the importance is the "letter of the law". The dots and commas are all important, taking precedence over the intention. I believe we have made a poor trade.

"Not only is a man's word meaningless today, too many in our society have degenerated to where they make fun of any who places a value on it. The word honor is looked upon with suspicion. People without it make fun of those with it. As a result, our society has no honor."

This was a much darker outlook than what he had in our college days, but life had dealt him a darker hand to play.

We talked about the state of the courts while we watched the serenity of the mountain.

"In the failure of our system of law," I said, "there has to be some blame given to some pretty terrible interpretations by judges."

"Yes but it's part of the same thing. Zeroing in on some small detail and completely losing sight of the intent of the whole exercise: justice. They also twist and turn things around until the law says what they want, until it fits their political viewpoint. Of course, people have been doing the same thing to the Bible for centuries."

We fell quiet. Levi got up and walked over to the cliff. I followed and we sat looking down at the north face. I had the feeling there was something that he wanted to bring up, but was hesitating. Maybe the years had made him a little unsure of me also. On the whole though, I was surprised at how relaxed and at peace he seemed.

After a while, we headed west along the ridge and spent an enjoyable afternoon working our way down the mountain, taking the long way. We did not talk much during the afternoon, just short discussions about which routes to take down the mountain. In the car heading back toward town he turned and asked: "Do you remember Johnny Got His Gun ?"

"Sure," I said. "That's not exactly a book that you can forget easily."

The book was about a soldier during WWI who, caught in an explosion, loses both arms, both legs, has the bottom of his face blown away and is blinded and deafened. The doctors display their skills and save his life. He lives his life unable to hear, see, talk or move. He lies on the bed and gradually figures how to keep track of the passage of time by feeling the warmth of the sun on his skin and the actions of the nurse who attends him. When he figures how to communicate with the nurse, the doctors, not wanting to admit he is still capable of thought and therefore in a hell that they had imposed on him, transfer the nurse, leaving him alone again. It was by far the most powerful anti-war book that I had ever read.

"I've always thought that would be a terrible, almost unimaginable torture," he said. "The helplessness of it always made me cringe." We drove along in silence for five minutes. I wondered why the thoughts about Johnny Got His Gun.

"When Mom died," he continued, "she left me her place on the south side. The place looks just the same. It's nice to be backed up to the hills where there aren't be any neighbors close. It's still as quiet as ever. Why don't you come over, I'd like to show you something."

"Sure, but let's stop and get some Mexican food first. I'm hungry."

"Pedro's?"

"Sounds good to me," and we turned onto the wide avenue that would take us to the small restaurant which had always been our favorite.

During our meal, the conversation turned again to the courts and the basic failure of justice in our country. It began to feel like the old days, when we would spend late night hours in a cafe, drinking coffee and discussing life, the universe and everything.

"The trouble is," I was pointing out, "there is not really any punishment that can do justice to many crimes. Sending Bundy to the chair is small punishment when you consider the hours of horror and pain inflicted on each of the many women he killed. There's no possible way to extract your eye for an eye ." I had always been the believer in the Old Testament style of justice. "Turning the golden rule around, it goes: You should have done to you, that which you have done to others. How can we approach that?"

"Society can't. But maybe an individual could."

"Yes, but what can give an individual the right to judge like that?"

"Maybe when all the other systems have failed, and there is no other recourse, it is the individual who must finally step forward and assume that responsibility," he said. That led us into a long divergence about responsibility and into a familiar discussion of the tenets of existentialism. It was an hour later when we drove toward his mother's place, now his, on the edge of the town.

"When my mother died and I had cleaned up my life and moved out here, I found that Allens getting released by the courts still wouldn't let me be. I don't know if you knew, but Jan did not die an easy death. Ryan he killed outright but not Jan. It was anything but quick and painless. She was alive and abused for a long time. I kept thinking of the pain and terror she must have gone through and wished there was such a thing as hell, so he would receive his just rewards in the afterlife.

"But the trouble is, I don't believe there is a god...or an afterlife. If there were a god, one who sees every sparrow fall, he would not allow the things that happen in this world to occur. Or, if there is a god, and he lets them happen, then he is the kind of god who is immune to such things and wouldn't punish Allens anyway. I finally decided that if I wanted justice, I would have to get it on my own."

There was a silence in the car as I considered the statement.

"So when Allens disappeared," I finally said, "it was you? Jesus. How did you get rid of the body?"

"Allens isn't dead," he said as we pulled into the driveway.

"Come out to the barn." He led the way out to the barn where long ago his mother had kept horses and had taught a small boy to ride in the corral beside it. He unlocked the door and we went inside. He went to the old tack room where there was a new lock on the door. When he opened it, the tack room was not there, but instead there was another locked door set into a cement block wall which was built inside the old wood framed one.

When he opened this one, I could see a hospital bed with a body on it. The harsh flourescent light showed a body without arms or legs. An IV tube ran in and other tubes ran out. I recognized it as Allens from the pictures that were in the papers at the time of the trial.

"I removed his vocal chords," Levi continued calmly, "and he is now blind and deaf." I stared at the thing on the bed. The head turned restlessly from side to side.

"When I approached him that night, he didn't even know who I was. I told him I wanted to buy some heroin and we went over to my car. When he turned his back, I stuck him with a hypodermic filled with a strong tranquilizer and brought him back here. I operated on him, actually several times, to remove his arms and legs. I kept him doped up so that his mental state would not interfere with his physical recovery. It was only after he had healed that I brought him out from under the drugs and told him who I was. After he understood what he had done to earn what was going to happen to him, I did the final operation to take his sight and hearing. I've kept him here since."

Levi's voice was calm and matter of fact. He might have been discussing how he had remodeled a house. I stared at the thing on the bed, and the head turned silently from side to side.

I spent the rest of my vacation deep in the mountains where I could be alone and not have to see people.

I understood how Levi felt and could not find fault with his actions to achieve justice for his family. But I also understood the difficulties faced by society to mete out the justice that victims crave. Justice is a harsh mistress, which is why we cannot seem to bring ourselves to satisfy her. We could never be strong enough to mete out the punishment Allens had earned. I only hoped that Levi would be strong enough to withstand the weight of society's shirked responsibility, which he had taken upon his own shoulders.

When my vacation time was ended, I returned to my teaching and playing but everything seemed to be smaller somehow. In my mind's eye I saw that head turning endlessly from side to side, and I had to remember Jan and Ryan to balance it. Jan the pretty, cheerful girl that I had known in college. Ryan the bright little kid to whom his father taught fractions while his kindergarten class were just learning numbers.

I spent much of my time thinking of what I had seen but could find no answers to the problem posed. Levi had done what he had to do and I could not fault him. Neither did I want to turn over justice to just anyone, someone who might have a perverted view of the relative value of a wrong and exact a disproportionate price. I turned the problem repeatedly this way and that, but found no solution.

I wanted and needed a world of black and white, and damned God for his world of gray.

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