Emmetsburg: Seventy-six

Silver. The rain picked up again, but the clouds had lightened polishing the world, redefining it in simple patterns of light and dark. The rain rustled like fine tinsel. It poured from eaves and weighted leaves. Everywhere the world seemed to shimmer and change with each passing moment.

John stopped at the top of the jailhouse steps. Louis was just ahead of him. John grabbed the back of his shirt, nearly pulling Louis off his feet. The pistol was tucked in the waist of John’s trousers. His injured hand covered it. He resolved to use it if need be, while praying to god it wouldn’t come to that. The soldiers at the corner were huddled around a single cigarette beneath a red and white striped shop awning. John spied them carefully then pushed Louis down the last steps and across to the truck. He opened the driver’s side door and motioned with a nod for Louis to get inside.

“No, John, I won’t go.”
“I ain’t asking you twice,” she said through gritted teeth, glancing over to the soldiers once more.

“What do you think you’ll accomplish?”

“Testing fate, my friend.”

Thunder rumbled distantly. It was low and hollow. Not as something apart from the world, but as if the whole earth, the trees and houses, the oceans, souls and creatures had joined together in a collective moan.

“John, this is madness!” Louis whined, crestfallen and confused.

A pistol shot exploded. A bullet slapped into the truck beside Louis’ head. Two more shots followed in quick succession. John wheeled and leveled the gun without thinking. Homer stood at the door to the jail, holding the pistol unsteadily in both hands. His face was pale, almost if he might be sick from the act of trying his damnedest to kill someone. He fired again and Louis slid to the ground with a gasp.

John fired twice. His aim was careful and calculated. He was back in the war again, and just as steady. As intended both bullets found their mark precisely. The wooden door frame to either side of Homer splintered and came apart in bits and pieces. An hour before he might have coward or fled. Instead, fearing the humiliation and shame he would face, Homer fell to one knee and took aim once more.

Hearing all this, the soldiers at the corner were already charging up the street, their rifles and bayonets at the ready. John turned to face them, scattering the men with two shots that went high. John knew he was outgunned. A sudden sinking feeling in his gut told him just how terrible a miscalculation he had made. The searing hot punch of a bullet to the side slammed him against the truck. Warm silk-red blood poured down his side. John knew instantly he probably would never see Anna again. Fighting for breath, John took aim and put a round neatly through Homer’s shooting arm. The boy spun backwards, the pistol skidding away from him.

The soldiers had taken up positions and unleashed a fusillade against the truck. Untested and inexperienced, their shots came in groups of three, each preceded by a pause as they worked the bolt of their Enfields and took fresh aim. One of the men stood, exposing himself as he moved to a better firing position. John put the last round at his feet, chasing the man back. Out of bullets John flung the pistol away and looked down at Louis.

A bullet had pierced Louis’ chest. John could tell right off it was a grievous wound. Blood soaked his shirt and spread across the pavement beneath him, spattering with the rain. With each hollow and excruciating breath the blood gurgled and bubbled from the wound. Louis’s eyes rolled back and the other-worldly expression returned to him. He gripped the leg of John’s trousers and coughed through a spray of blood.

Emmetsburg: Seventy-five

“What’s your name?” John asked. The young deputy fumbled nervously with the keys to the j ail door. His face was beet red, and it looked as if he was about to just dissolve into a flood of tears.

“Homer, M-Mister Puh-Perkins. Homer Lovett.” He found the key and pushed it into the lock. “Thuh-think your making a big mistake.”

“Think you might be right, Homer,” John replied. “But I’ll be damned if I know just what is right anymore. All I know is I gotta do this, but I am sorry. Hope you can see it in your heart one day to forgive me.”

The tumblers in the lock fell into place. Homer looked over his shoulder, past the gun barrel into John’s determined eyes. “You-you go now and I’ll forget any of this…”

“Can’t son. Open the door.”

Louis was already up and standing at the door to his cell when the door opened. His expression was resigned, as if he knew this was coming. His eyes held John’s for a moment before sinking to the cold gray concrete floor. Louis shook his head slowly. He snickered at the absurdity of it all, making John feel foolish and small.

“This is all wrong, John,” said Louis. He stepped back from the door until his back was against the wall.

“Didn’t see this, did you?” said John.

Meantime, Homer had collected himself a bit. Enough that as John’s attention was on Louis he slipped one of the spare keys from the ring and pushed it into his pocket. Wasn’t a moment later that John patted the boy’s shoulder and motioned to the lock with the gun.

“Open it up,” said John.

Homer did as he was told and the door swung open wide. The fear was leaving him. replaced by anger at being thought a fool by John. Even more, he could already feel himself become the butt of jokes. The blood rose in his face. When John pushed him into Louis’ cell every thought, every cell in his body screamed for justice.

In the same motion John pulled Louis from the cell. He swiped the key ring from Homer’s hand and shut the door tight, locking the boy inside. John paused, tearing his own heart out for what he was doing to that boy. That he could come to no other solution offered not the slightest reprieve from guilt.

“John, you cant. It isn’t, it’s not…”

“Fate?” John cut him off quickly.

“Right, John. This isn’t right.”

John brought his face close to Louis, and shoved the gun barrel into his side. “Maybe I pull this trigger. Maybe I shoot Homer and make it look like you tried to escape. Maybe I do nothing and let them put me in jail and throw away the key so I can rot here. Where would that leave your premonitions? Truth is there are many fates, and all of them are negotiable.”

The best John could figure from all this was that fate was a storm front. There was a grander order, a boiling, tumultuous and repentant order, even if a body couldn’t see it. And those clouds were the sum of innumerable small droplets. Had they a perspective each might see its place in the storm as unique and even exalted. Not that it necessarily held a place of any greater or lesser importance.. These were the assertions of ego and the arguments of history. Truth of it was no single one of them was exalted, for history was imbued with the power of every soul, and forged under their collective weight.

Emmetsburg: Seventy-four

Blue-gray.

“Here they come!” someone cried. Above the heads of the citizens upraised bayonets gleamed brightly against storm clouds. Thunder spoke loudly, chasing lightening over the land. The storm awoke fully in sheets of rain.

Men contrive. Avery contrived to protect his own sins by sacrificing Myron, but he was as swept up in things that had grown much larger than himself and his self-serving schemes. They rejoined the crowd now surging into the road and forming a wall in the faces of the soldiers and police.

When men resolve to violence no amount of reason, no fellowship among country men and no love among brothers can steer them from that course. Both sides found that in one another. Both gambled that their spirit, that their violence would carry the day, and both swore by the righteousness of their cause. Reason and commiseration would only come long after the battle had ended, long after the physical wounds had healed and the dead buried, but only to a few.

Avery and Stan Pickett had a hold of Myron. They worked their way forward, angling towards the opposite side of the road. Avert wanted to keep out of the direct line of sight of the troops, and should it come to things, out of the direct line of fire. Near the center of the crowd he paused to survey the troops opposite. They had stopped, leveling their rifles and bayonets. It brought the citizens to an abrupt halt. Thunder roared again and fled across the fields, leaving the chorusing rain.

The soldiers were tense and frightened, Avery observed. A gunshot was likely to panic them into opening fire. He recalled Ernie’s reference to the Boston Massacre, and how the thuggery of a handful of youths and drunkards had provoked untested and frightened British lads into a stupid reprisal. Rebel leaders vaulted the moment to mythical proportions to inspire a revolution. Avery looked at Myron, looking every bit as terrified and apprehensive as the soldiers. The boy teetered at the edge of a precipice. Avery determined to push him over.

“All revolutions are started by a single brave and selfless act,” said Avery. He held Myron by the shoulder with one hand. The other hand covered the pistol Myron cradled to his gut. “be brave son. The rest of us will follow.”

Just them Ernie Vogel lunged for the pistol. Stan caught him by the color, but it was too late to keep him from getting to Myron.

“Can’t let this happen.” He and Avery and the boy struggled for the gun. “I’ll go to jail, I’ll go to the grave before I…”

Stan cut Ernie’s words short with a well placed slug to the side of Ernie’s face. He was out instantly, falling limp to the ground. Stan nodded once and watched as Myron and Avery disappeared through the crowd.

Emmetsburg: Seventy-three

John wheeled suddenly and brought the pistol up to the Deputy’s nose. The blood drained quickly from the kid’s face. It was then John found his conscience again. But he had come too far to turn back now.

“Need you inside,” he said quietly.

“Jesus H., Mister Dugan.”

“Have to do this, son. I’m sorry”

“Please don’t pull that trigger, okay?”

“Won’t if I don’t have to,” John replied.

John motioned with the pistol and glanced back along the mostly deserted street. There were a couple of soldiers at the corner, but they were too far away to notice what was happening. The boy slid past John into the cool and quiet of the courthouse.

“Lock the door,” John said coolly.

The boy complied, fumbling nervously to wrestle a string of keys from his belt. They rattled loudly in the emptiness. He glanced back at John, feeling for the right key among the others. He pushed it into the lock and turned the key until the bolt slid into place with a resounding clunk.

Emmetsburg: Seventy-two

John swung the truck around in the street and pulled quickly to a stop in front of the courthouse. He pulled a cap tightly over his eyes against the rain, and stood in the open door contemplating the pistol that lay on the seat before him. Wasn’t so much as a decision, but a reaction that he swept it into his hand.

The wooden stock felt cool and smooth in the palm of his hand. There were no longer opportunities for recriminations or hesitation. He left the truck and strode forcefully up the long walk, the pistol held tight against his right leg. John’s expression was cut from stone, darkened beneath the brim of the cap. Lost in shadow were the unblinking pools of his eyes, their gaze distant.

Fate was as terrible an enemy as he had ever known. John was at war again, climbing from that putrid trench into the face of coughing pot-a-pop pop-pop of German guns. Fear fled from him, replaced by complete emptiness, as though he was merely a passenger in some transient shell. He was no longer a living soul but a whisper that would disintegrate at the moment of death, the billions of particles scattered again to the universe. He wasn’t any longer a future, but a moment, and end to a past. He was blind to the world, distant from its continuance, and yet he saw everything clearly, as if he could see forever for the first time.

A lone deputy stood in the door way, huddling against the rain and cold that came with it. The pudgy-faced kid was puffing on a chesterfield cupped in one hand. He was a doughy kid with dirty yellow hair, combed back tightly and held in place with copious amounts of Palm-aid. John knew him from the drugstore around the corner, slurping root cream sodas and Made-rite sandwiches. He couldn’t recall the kid’s name. It didn’t much matter.

The kid hardly noticed John at first. His attention was lost to the stormy sky through the leaves and branches of an old Maple out front. His view was partly obscured by a cloud of gray-white smoke hanging in the air before him. John was halfway through the door when the kid caught sight of the pistol at John’s side.

The boy had long been the butt of jokes in town. He had been for far so long that it boiled quietly inside of him, waiting to erupt at the proper moment.. That he had been left behind and left out of the happenings outside of town only tore at the young deputy all the more. Worse, that he had not reacted sooner when he spotted the gun in John’s hand would haunt his thoughts forever.

Emmetsburg: Seventy-one

The faces reflected a darkening sky, growing dark as night. There were 500 in all, town folk and farmers in an equal mix. There were men and women and boys. They blocked the approaches and stood across the golden dirt road, and down in the ditches in ranks 10 deep. Their hands were filled with pipes, sticks, vegetables rocks and rotten eggs. And there were those with guns, but for now they kept them out of sight.

The first rain began to fall as two ash-gray government sedans, a dozen State police cruisers and three olive green army transports appeared in the distance. A theater director could hardly have been more pleased. The vehicles pulled off the road fifty or so yards from the crowd. A Sergeant jumped from the truck and waved at the anxious looking recruits in the back.

“Come on boys!” he shouted. The men climbed down with truncheons and Enfield rifles, bayonets already affixed. Almost fifty men in all, the soldiers quickly formed neat ranks and came smartly to attention. The ranks spanning the road six deep. Behind them the State Police gathered up, looking more like a street gang bent on revenge with a rival gang. A fair number still bore the scars and wounds from the fight at Stan Pickett’s farm. The rest took it just as personal.

Off from the crowd, sort of hidden behind a tractor Avery huddled together with Stan Pickett, Ernie Vogel and Myron Himmel. It wasn’t about liberty or the Constitution or any lofty ideals. Avery could feel the circle of the law and government closing in around him and his sick cows. Moreover he found he couldn’t sell the cows off without a certificate of inspection from the government. It trapped him. In that trap was Avery’s family and future and he was damned if he’d let it go without so much as a fight.

From the pocket of his jacket Avery took a Colt pistol. It was wrapped in rag. He peeled open the rag, cradling the weapon in one hand.

“Jesus, Avery!” Ernie gasped, looking wildly around. Stan Pickett took a deep breath, his jaw tightening. Myron was silent, his gazed fixed on the revolver. It sent a shiver down his spine. He looked quizzically up at Avery

“You handled yourself pretty good with that shotgun the other day,” said Avery.

“I don’t know, Mister Lysander. That was the Sherriff. These fellas are soldiers.”

“They’re gonna come in here, to our town and our homes with guns and the long arm of the federal government. “We’re gonna let them know we mean business. You,” Avery said with emphasis, “are gonna let them know.”

Avery looked at each man. He could count fully on Stan Pickett. The inspections had devastated him, bad enough that Stan was of a mind to up and abandon the farm and leave to the bank, worthless as it was to him now. Stan was less filled with hate than betrayal and a sense that a great injustice had been done him and his family. That sense of individual injustice demanded revenge in damn near every thought Stan had since that day. He’d been along with Avery and Myron and Ernie when they’d set fire to C.W.s house. When revenge was the measure no amount of pain exacted was ever enough.

Ernie Vogel remained the biggest question for Avery and the others to consi8der. He’d just seem to sort of get swept along in all this, as if he was a leaf stuck to a boot. He was sort of there, but not entirely. Moreover, he wasn’t as easily swayed, but was more easily pressured. Given all that, Avery wasn’t about to make enemies or burn any bridges. Ernie was the sort one kept very close at times like this.

“All you have to do is fire one bullet over their heads,” said Avery, holding the pistol out to Myron. The Boy didn’t take it at first, but looked to the others for some clue for what to do next. “One shot, boy. That’ll show them we mean to take this farther than they are willing to go.”

“And if these boys shoot back, Avery?” Ernie interjected.

Avery shot him a cold stare. Stan pursed his lips and shook his head. He didn’t much like Ernie, and trusted him even less. Avery shoved the gun at Myron until the boy took it, cradling the weapon awkwardly.

“Got newspaper people here,” Avery said. “They’d be fools to fire on American citizens, and they sure as hell won’t shoot a boy.”

“Seem pretty confident, Mister Lysander.” Myron studied the gun in his arms.

“Damned Boston Massacre,” Ernie grumbled.

“If you ain’t got the stomach for this Vogel.”

“I had the stomach when we put the torch to C.W.s place.”

“You stood and watched!”

Enough bickering!” Avery exclaimed. “We’re all in this up to our eyeballs. And if one hangs we all hang. Bear that in mind boys.”

Emmetsburg: Seventy

About ten minutes out of town John passed a line of army trucks and State Police cruisers. He slowed to a crawl, the lines of uniformed and sullen faces like fence posts. John absorbed each one, and could feel time, the moment and the future bending back to meet one another. He would be back here, John knew now. This was his fate, whatever shape that was about to take.

The storm was nearly upon the town, the sky fully reflecting the mood of the men. Upon the road, maybe a quarter mile or so further a fair size crowd had gathered in a farm yard. The men stood up front in ragged and tense ranks. Their hands were filled with clubs and stones. John had seen their expressions upon the faces of men resigned to battle in France. They were cold, stony, empty faces, with dark distant eyes that drew in everything but saw nothing.

There were more soldiers in town. Not a lot. Not enough to make the town seem occupied, but enough gathered near the town hall and at the train station to give John the cold impending sense of approaching doom. Sandbags and a machine gun nest looked out along main Street. Time suddenly seemed compressed, betraying its intimate relationship with fate. He felt pulled and transported from one moment to the next. Life became more and more out of his control, as if he was hardly more than a passenger, an unwilling victim, a leaf whipped by a storm.

The first fat drops of rain were falling as John whipped the truck around the corner and skidded to a stop in front of the house. He threw himself from the truck towards the front door as orange fingers of lightening charged across the sky over head. Thunder shook the world as he tore open the front door and went inside.

John stood in the dining room. There was a Bible, a bottle of brandy and a single glass on the table. The house was silent, the light as murky as a dungeon, What light remained was sluggish and jaundiced, giving the place a forgotten, abandoned sense that made the place seem totally unfamiliar. That light declined steadily with the encroaching storm, the darkness punctuated by glimpses of lightening. In the next room the bed was still made, as if it hadn’t been slept in. a pillow was crumpled on the floor beside the bed. John groaned without realizing, a consequence of his shameful heart.

“Anna!” he shouted, but the storm had come up so that his cry was lost to the fury. The fury paled in comparison to fate screaming in his ear. It spun him around, calling his attention to miniscule details; the curtains pressed flat to the screen, Anna’s hand print in the quilt upon the bed, the Iris’ in the yard dancing wildly in the storm. It was as if fate was attempting to confuse him, to fool him with the delusion of other trails than the one already chosen for him.

John found tears in his eyes. He swept them from his cheeks and looked quizzically at his glistening finger tips, as if they were someone else’s tears. They came from someplace unknown and apart from John. Like a perfect moment of beauty, true innocence, the sudden epiphany that all things are bound intimately together, or the emotive harmony of a symphony, it was the power of fate and the moment that carried him to tears..

In a bright flash of lightening John spotted the revolver on the kitchen counter, where he’d left it a few nights earlier. He considered it a moment. Louis words called to him, even as he lifted the gun in his hands. It was compelling, the gun. The cold steel was alluring, connecting with something as deep and primitive as his sex. John carried it back through the house, then abandoned it on the table, backing away from it as if the gun were the devil incarnate.

Outside the gray-blue storm clouds rolled and tumbled like a muddy puddle agitated by a child’s stick. That first assaulting torrent had abated somewhat. It was replaced now by a stinging rain, driven hard by bludgeoning gusts of wind.

There was a light on at Misses Conlon’s next door. John was soaked to the bone before he reached the house. He burst through the door, fighting to collect himself. A favorite book was open in the Widow’s lap, a yellow and green shawl covering her shoulders. She looked up, squinting through thick eyeglasses, not particularly shocked by John’s sudden appearance.

“Forgive me,” he said. “Have you seen Anna?”

“She was here, John,” he voice was weak and low, trembling a bit. “Poor thing was just worried sick…”

“I know, Misses Conlon,” he cut her off quickly. “Where has she gone to?”

“Why out to find you.”

“Me? How would she know where I was going?”

“She said she had some feeling you got mixed up with those fellers going out to meet the Governor’s men.”

“Obliged,” said John. He told himself to move, but something kept him there, like his feet were welded to the floor. He couldn’t take his eyes from Widow Conlon’s vibrant auburn eyes. He could feel them rooting around in his soul. Widow Conlon pulled the eyeglasses from her nose and pointed them at John.

“You love that girl,” she said sternly. “You love that girl all the days of your life.”

“Trying to,” John felt like a boy being admonished.

“It’s all you got. All any of us got. That girl loves you more than life, enough to overlook your foolish heart and enough to scold your stupid one. Ain’t no amount of riches or fame will ever compare.”

John hung his head and nodded. Widow Conlon’s voice softened, becoming more sympathetic. “Go find her. Those fellas out there mean to start a war. You save her from that.”

“What about tomorrow?” asked John. The Widow slid the glasses back onto her nose and pushed them up with the tip of her frail forefinger. She lifted the book and went back to reading.

Emmetsburg: Sixty-nine

John helped J.L. with the dishes. Only took a couple of minutes. Both men were quiet the whole time. John was lost to all that had happened, and all that was to come. The latter spun in his mind as a thousand different scenarios. Not enough, however, that he failed to note the smile painted on J.L.’s face.

J.L. was swimming in the moment. For those few minutes the loneliness and heartache that had been his constant companion since the passing of his wife retreated. It was a surprise of warm sunlight in a blizzard, or a drink of cool water in the desert. He granted himself the fantasy of a world much different than the one he lived. In that world his son had grown to a handsome man. It was he and not John standing beside him at that sink. And he believed it! He believed it all just as sure as he stood there. And he believed that any moment Bea would come in to lovingly admonish them for wasting the whole day inside. J.L.'s heart broke beautifully at the thought, and for just an instant he held a glimpse of how a body passes from this life, running through love and regrets like a child through tall grass. J.L. cleared his throat staving off a wave of emotion he would indulge later, and took the last plate from John.

“Didn't need to do that,” he told John, putting the plates up in the cupboard. John only nodded and patted him gently on the shoulder.

“Suppose I should be going. Much obliged for the food.”

J.L. nodded, wiping his hands clean on a rag. “Mind if I walk you out for a smoke? After all this time I still respect her rule about smoking in the house.”

Out in the yard both men found that the wind had turned. It came up strong across the fields, chasing away a mugginess that had amplified the morning sun. It smelled of rain and wet soil. Lightening flung itself at the freshly plowed fields. Took a few seconds for the adjoining thunder to shake the world with a low roar.

It isn’t fair to say that John felt like a condemned man. Better to say that he felt infinitesimally small. His steps weren't weighted and apprehensive, nor were his thoughts tortured. Better to say that they were insignificant, but then, with the simple-ness of a breath it was all lifted from him. He dug at a stone with the tip of his boot.

“Yep, best I get moving.”

“Where would that be exactly?” asked J.L.

He rubbed the man’s small shoulder. “We’ll see.”

Emmetsburg: Sixty-eight

J.L. sat down across from John. Their eyes met, and for an odd moment John was certain he knew the old farmer. As if there was something deeper that connected all things. John looked away first.

“Say Grace?” he asked.

“Good Lord’s tired of listening to my prayers,” J.L. replied. “Never seems to get’ round to them anyway. Reckon a lot other folks need prayers answered more than me.”

“Offended if I don’t?’

“More offended if you made a lot of promises you had no intention of keeping.”

John winked and smiled so hard he almost screamed, so hard that tears nearly came to him. He felt suddenly filled with light, and almost felt it would burst from his chest “Maybe I ought to quit while I’m ahead.”

J.L. smiled just as hard. “Maybe we both ought to.”

John pulled apart another biscuit and pressed the corner into the warm yellow yoke. He hadn’t realized quite how starved he was before that first bite. John washed it down with a bit of bitter black coffee.

“Hell of a thing,” John lamented.

“What’s that, son?’

“Hardest thing about loving someone that much. Brings a mighty burden on which one goes first.”

“Yep,” J.L. nodded slowly, chewing a bit of slightly over-salted pork. He lifted his cup and stared into the mirror-black liquid as if he was staring down a dark well. He almost took a sip, then set it back down.

“Wasn’t my choice,” he said.

John mulled the answer over a bit of egg and biscuit. He touched the handle of his cup with one finger and turned the cup slowly.

“What if you’d gone before her?”

“Think there was a time when we were young,” J.L. began. “I was pretty selfish about that. Those long empty hours in the fields I’d start wondering if I dropped dead that moment if she’d remain true to me. I ab-so-lute-ly hated the idea that she’d find another fella to fall in love with.”

John mopped up the last of the egg with a biscuit and chased it down with another sip of coffee. He leaned back in the chair a bit and patted the table with his hand in approval. J.L. winked proudly.

“Not too bad, eh?” he boasted.

“Fit for a king.”

“That it is,” J.L. Smirked, snapping his fingers below the table, like he was calling a dog, “Here, King. Come on, boy!”
John genuinely liked the old guy. He was a rare soul, a mile post on the treacherous journey through the world. John said a silent prayer for having had the blessing to know him, if only for a moment. Likewise, he felt lucky for the all too brief wisdom that made him appreciate that knowing.

J.L.’s bad hip had stiffened a bit. He stood with a groan and hobbled with the dishes over to the sink. He almost fell towards the counter, as if those few steps were a terrific distance to overcome.

“All right there, J.L.?”
“Bum hip acting up again. Time to time. Don’t get old, friend. The body starts failing about the time you start realizing what a damn fool you were when you were young!” He forced a pained laugh.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said John.

He stood and rubbed his belly. John looked off through the window, in the direction of Emmetsburg, still a good hour or so away. Sunlight still held the yard, in stark contrast to the ever darkening clouds besieging it. A flock of black birds raced through the yard for shelter. They tumbled through the open door, losing themselves to the shadows, appearing as chunks of black coal thrown there.

At that moment John came to a quiet decision. Or maybe it had come to him. He came to this thought concerning his fate, and that was he’d just be running from one fate into the arms(or teeth) of another. As for this one, and any other fate he might have wished for, there was always Anna. Furthermore, could he rightly dismiss Louis’s predictions as coincidence, or was it rather his own flawed understanding of just what Louis had said? Maybe it was John who was crazy or delusional?. Perhaps he was dreaming or that all this was some quirk of conscience.