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.