A path I’m unaware of brings us to Legion Memorial Square where a sign on a lamppost reads like the top paragraph of a newspaper story; Who What When Where Why. There is no How.
Our entourage of news, police, national guard, and other personnel still move in a fifty foot perimeter around us, camera lights and floods on trucks keep us in a shadowless blue-white concrete and asphalt landscape. In the middle of the night I wear sunglasses and feel myself getting a tan from the false-front sunlight’s intensity. I wonder if warships still glide up and down the East River, training their guns between buildings in order to find us. The guarding is now in distinct shifts and I’ve made uneasy friends who leave groceries in our path or toss me soap when they’re brave enough to approach.
One tall, thin man comes by a little more often than most. His heavy beard sweeps his chest and his hair needs to be both washed and combed. I want to ask him what he wants, what can I do for him, and don’t. His skin is darkened by the sun and his eyes appear brown when they’re not obscured by the winds.
What am I to do with you and these creatures? is what I think he wants to ask inside his ratty jeans. What part in my life do you four play? is what I hear in the wet rustle of his wool socks and squeak of Knapp work shoes. What part of the ritual is you? his sweat stained red and yellow on black flannel shirt calls out. Which is me? And if I do it right, just right, oh so right, will things get better for me? And if I don’t, will things get at all?
I know he wants to ask these things because they are clearly in the miasma which surrounds him.
The question he asks by his presence, his person, his being as it comes and goes before me, is the one echoed in my own eyes, Why has this happened to me? All I want to do is make sure my son is okay.
“Still seeking your little boy?” asks Beriah.
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Previous entries in The Book of the Wounded Healers (A Study in Perception) series
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