Windows rattled as I slammed through the front door of our brownstone. The place was empty. Tuesday. One of Johnny’s tanning-booth days.
I had to get out. Get away.
I snatched the car keys from my coat hanging by the door.
Stuffed into the small cockpit of my Honda Civic, I made a sweeping reverse maneuver out onto the street, slipped into first, and peeled across the pavement. I drove toward no destination, taking side streets I’d never traveled in an attempt to lose myself. Not hard to do in Nashville. A spider web of thoroughfares radiates from downtown—Nolensville, Gallatin, and Lebanon pikes and West End Avenue. Circling the city, Old Hickory Boulevard, Harding Place, and Briley Parkway connect these threads.
Caught up in the web, I was a bug of no consequence. Racked with poison, I knew the numbness was on its way.
I know of only one way to combat this poison.
When the venom of regret seeps into your veins, when the paralysis of depression holds you in its icy grip, you need to turn your mind from your own struggles to another’s. This is no easy thing to do. Self-preservation mode is strong. Darwin recognized its power and integrated it into his theory of our species’ origins.
If good and evil do exist, we are caught in a war. Comcast Cable, the Cheesecake Factory, and MySpace.com will insulate you from it only so long. The larger struggles—conflicts in the Middle East, the fight against racism, corruption in the legal system—are reflections of the internal wrestlings of each human heart.
Murder, hate, envy, and greed.
Theft, lies, lust, and adultery.
No wonder some turn to the power of confession. Others find solace in pleasure. Even the very act of philosophizing can be an escape.
And they all work—for a while. I’ve tried them.
But there’s one thing that works more powerfully than any other—an act of selflessness. Maybe that’s because selflessness connects us with God. Didn’t he give up his rights as Creator to walk this earth, to face the same temptations, and to surrender his body in payment for our sins? At least that’s how the story reads.
He was a redeemer. A remedy. And an example to follow.
No easy thing, that. All the baggage that’s been added to the story makes me doubt. Makes me wonder what’s really true. I want to believe. I want to follow the example. But the war in my heart still rages.
To talk about it and turn away is to lose another battle. I owed a grieving woman a visit. I looked up her address.
Neely’s Bend.
Laid out between two ridges on the northeastern perimeter of Nashville, the valley is quiet, with farmland still stretching between homes and encroaching developments. The road turned darker the farther I went. Angling my car to catch the numbers on the mailboxes, I was able to locate the correct address.
“Who is it?”
In the dark, on her uneven doorstep, I swallowed hard. “My name’s Aramis Black. Is this the Michaels residence?”
The house gave a weary groan. A porch light came on.
A voice said, “You wantin’ to sell us somethin’? We don’t talk to no salesman.”
“Nothing like that, ma’am.”
“Speak your business then. Ain’t got all night.”
“Uh. I’m Aramis Black.”
“Done told me that already. You slow or just plain stupid?”
I recalled Mrs. Michaels’s face from the newscast a few nights ago, her sorrowful eyes. I couldn’t turn back now.
“I’m the owner of Black’s,” I said. “The place where your son was killed.”
Silence.
Drawn by the bare light bulb over the porch, a huge moth fluttered along the door, changed direction, and bumped into my neck.
“Mrs. Michaels, I was there when it happened, and I can’t stop thinking about it, so I can only imagine the hell you’ve been going through. I thought maybe you’d like someone to talk to about it. Or maybe I need to talk. I don’t know. I want to understand why. I wanna know who would do such a thing.”
A whisper. “You don’t even know.”
I gave her a moment to continue, but no words came. “Know what?”
Along the street, piles of leaves were coming to life, crawling along the lawn, leaping and spinning into ghostly shapes. A storm was approaching, a sorcerer using the wind to recruit dead things for the evening’s show.
“Know what?” I said again. “I want to understand.”
“You can’t … can’t even begin to know the way it rips out a mama’s heart. Mr. Black, you have no right. No right at all. You wander onto my property thinkin’ that’s gonna give you some insight? Only a mother can know what I’m talkin’ about, and I don’t need you or those television folk pokin’ them fat noses into my life. I done the best I could—that’s the Lord’s honest truth. Now. Get yourself down off my front step. And don’t you come back. Y’all took my son from me. Ain’t that enough?”
Her last words were provoked by anguish, but they were unfair. I didn’t take her son from her. I kicked at her doormat, watched dust swirl and whip away in the breeze.
“You’re right, ma’am,” I said. “I don’t know what it’s like for a mother.”
She was waiting—I could feel it.
“But you don’t know what it’s like either,” I added.
“How’s that?”
“You don’t know what it’s like to be a son and lose a mother. That’s something you’ll never go through. I watched my mom die. Shot just like your son, like Darrell. You’re not the only one feeling mad and lonely, and you’re not doing me—or yourself, for that matter—any favors by keeping the door closed.” I made a quarter turn, still hoping. “Just thought you needed to know that.”
“Now I know.”
“Can we talk? Please.”
“Get yourself gone, Mr. Black, before I give a call to the police.”
“Good-bye.”
The porch light winked off, and I heard the retreat of scuffling feet.
As I trudged to my Honda, dead leaves swirled in my path, crisp and brittle. The same wind that weeks before had enhanced their fiery glory with waving gold and red now beat them down, demanding obedience to the wishes of the night.