Another Visit From Darkness

It was when I saw the little girl in an alley when coming back from the Bronx Courthouse that it hit me. The little girl was dirty and alone when her mother appeared, it seemed out of nowhere, and snatched the girl up.

The girl’s mother was obviously high and when she looked in my direction she ran. Not that I could follow after her in a car in the Bronx. I saw this before in the Philippines, in Korea and in other places I would choose to forget. It hit me and dragged me back into the darkness of my own mind.

When I got home I found myself in the darkness of my makeshift office, clutching a near empty bottle of Hennessy. I was in lament for the hopeless, the hurting and the lost remembering a day I was empowered to change a situation, a power I thought used judiciously, only to make matters worse.

The knot in my soul had me clutching my chest, now shooting through my insides with all kinds of pain. I looked at my mostly empty bottle, my lament was even deeper and contempt for myself made me laugh.

The still black of the room gave way to shifting shadows. The draft through the cracks of the old house kept me cold, me and darkness where communing again. I thought about the suffering children, the mothers who lost their kids to war, idiocy or accidents, I thought about the hungry and the pain filled open eyes of a little girl. I poured myself a little of the Hennessy into the dirty snifter on my desk as pain shot through my chest, a little liquor could settle that down.

The shadows began to shift, but there was no light, no doors had opened but I was being visited. At first I felt apprehension. Then I felt relief. If it was the reaper I couldn’t do a damn thing about it except offer him a drink and face the music.

I fell into a foggy haze but I was relaxed and the pain, still there, but only an echo of what it was. “It stays with you RJ, it stays with you until you let mortality go…” Darkness, my old friend, was here for some advise, but I could give him none.

So Darkness called me to remember that which I live to forget. “How many badges have you worn? How many authorities did you represent? Why do you try to fit where you don’t belong? Would anything really change the reasons you are here?”

My chest fluttered real funny as I tried to answer, Darkness said, "speak softly lest you wake the dead.” Now I wondered who he was referring to.

I said “I wore three, no…four badges. I represented at least five different authorities, if you include Commanding Generals and Operational Commanders add at least another five.

I came home to help mom and dad when my life fell apart out west, I still have to keep my word and look after Mom. I don’t try to fit at all, I just show up until they tell me to go away. And on intense reflection, nothing would change the reasons I am here, I would choose to do the same things, Darkness old man.”

“Tell me RJ, did the little girl in the Bronx remind you of anyone…like the little teen bar slave in Korea, or the Philippina dancer chained to the floor in Naha or maybe the Latina girl tied to a gate in East LA. Your gun, your badge, your daring moves, your cold reckoning… your self-righteousness and your decency couldn’t save any of them RJ, why?”

The pain in my chest was subsiding as if an elephant were getting off my chest. I took another sip of my liquor and answered my old friend.

“Darkness you know this…remember the little girl when I was growing up? Dad had the furniture store and the Moving Company. She was about 7 years old. Always dirty and played around the trucks. She always pestered me for candy or money because she knew ‘my Dad had a store and trucks.’ It was near Christmas, I gave her a dollar and she ran across the street to the candy store and got hit by a car. I ran out in the street to stop the other cars and almost got hit, I couldn’t do anything.”

The sharp stinging pains in my chest were back. I wondered why Darkness was bringing this up, why he wouldn’t let it go. I said, “stop this” as I reached for the bottle that fell to the floor. I couldn’t reach the bottle, I could not get up from my chair.

“RJ, you didn’t answer the question…why couldn’t you save her and what about the other one, why couldn’t you save any of them?” The pain snatched me to the floor and I could not get up. As I reached for the bottle laying next to me , Darkness softly said, “Answer!”

“The other one? Darkness, do you mean the little girl hit by a car outside our apartment in LA. The little girl who was killed by the car on Venice Blvd near Gramercy Place…right outside my window, she was thrown to the curb. My wife and I ran to her as she called for her mother. I stopped traffic, got blankets, got the ambulance driver to drive right on the sidewalk. I got the girls mother right on the scene…my first official acts as a Deputy. I couldn’t save any of them Darkness.”

My arms were wrapped around my chest in agony as I looked up staring at absolute blackness. Darkness was everywhere and nowhere when again he asked me, “why couldn’t you save them?”

I yelled, “Only God has the power to raise the dead and save the damned. I don’t have that power... and authority itself can only change conditions when it chooses, not when its own servants want to change it. That’s why.” The pain stopped suddenly and everything got darker. I didn’t know where I was.

“RJ” said Darkness, “God’s power has surely saved the damned and raised the dead…your still here.”

Darkness continued, “your lament, your grief, your guilt, your shame…won’t save anyone.

Do what you did when you took on the Church and challenged them to help the kids in your neighborhood.

Do what you did when you challenged your superiors and their authority, that is, remind those around you to do something good in a world full of bad.”

Darkness said, “You will be an immortal all too soon, live this life with all the strength that is in you. You know how to forgive others. Forgive yourself.” All of the sudden light left me blinded for a moment, funny, when I could see it was nothingness now, blinded by light.

I soon saw the daylight and everything around me. The bottle was still nearly empty. I was full of resolve, I know what to do. So I leave you with one message and several minutes of Christmas music video.

The message is ‘agape’ that is love. Not lust, sex love, friend love, family love or even patriotic love. This love ‘agape’ is defined by not doing because of what you feel, but doing the most right despite what you feel. So the best I can do for you is to get you to feel my pain and hope you can reach a higher love.

Merry Christmas and make a Happy New Year

RJ