One Hideously Tender Act

I recently witnessed a sophisticated, and hideously violent crime.  I was the only witness, so I was asked to attend a police line-up to identify the suspect who had been taken into custody.  Needless to say, I was reluctant.  I was reluctant because I knew why the crime had been perpetrated, and I knew there was no alternative for what had been done.

I watched as the suspects entered the room on the opposite side of the one-way mirror I looked through, and made the decision to lie.  I was going to do whatever I could to see that the man responsible for this crime, was set free.  I owe my life to the horror he committed.

The laws of any particular society are there for numerous reasons, one of which is to maintain the framework of the society they protect.  Unfortunately, the laws of society, and the mandates of the Human Spirit, aren't always coinciding.  When that occurs, the future of the individual responsible for the crime is determined by a jury of twelve, or the single, pointed finger of one.

The crime took place on a rural country road sometime between midnight, and 1 A.M.. There was a full moon in the sky, and I was sitting in my parked car in an envelope of darkness created by a grouping of oak trees.  I saw a man emerge from the trees a few hundred yards ahead of me, where he turned and walked in my direction.  Five minutes later, another man emerged in the same fashion, just ahead of the other.  He turned and waited until they were standing face-to-face.  The second man, the assailant, dropped the first to the pavement with a quick, and unexpected blow to the head, and walked back into the forest.  Neither had seen me.

When the assailant returned a minute or two later he was carrying a small suitcase, and a lantern.  He set the lantern by the victims head, and opened the suitcase on the ground next to it.  I could see the glittering reflection of steel, and glass,  emanating from inside.  The assailant disrobed, and took one of the instruments out of the case.  He used it to cut off his victims shirt.  

The assailant lowered himself onto one knee next to his victim.  He stared at his face for what seemed an unusually long time, and reached out with his right hand.  He placed it on his victims cheek.  He bowed his head, and his body shook as if he were crying.

After he had calmed himself he reached into his bag, and removed a handful of small tools that he used to remove his victim's heart.  He was expert in his surgical precision.  He made only the necessary cuts, and he made those cuts with a tenderness I've never seen.  When he was done, he slid his hands into the open cavity in his victim, and lifted the heart as if he was holding his first born child, for the first time.  Then he placed it on the road next to him.  The precision, and haste, in what he did next defined Grace.

With a series of calculated, well practiced movements that blended together as if they were one, he cut into his own chest, removed his heart, and placed it into his victim.  An instant after completing the final stitch that closed the flesh around the transplanted organ the assailant fell over, and died.

I watched as life returned to the victim.  I watched as small convulsions reawakened individual limbs.  I watched as the head rose, and the torso propped up, and forward.  I watched as the man stood and looked down at the assailant.  I watched as he carried his lifeless body to a patch of Forget-Me-Not's, and laid him down.  I watched as he lifted his old heart to his lips, and kissed it gently before laying it next to the man who had given him his.  I watched as the man walked toward me, and passed.  And when he looked into my eyes, I froze.  

When I was sure he was gone, I drove to where he had laid his assailant, and turned my headlights on him.  I got out, and bent over the heart that had been removed.  It was a dull gray, and half its normal size.  If it hadn't been replaced it would have ended.  Then I went over, and knelt by the man's body.

Every aspect of the man was normal except for those that defined his face.  His face was a consistent ripple of every feature, and every detail, of every person who had ever loved me.  And there were a lot.  There were the ones I expected, and so many I didn't.  I knew the moment I saw them that the face of the world that shaped me was made up of the people I shared it with.  I knew that if anyone was going to take the fall for this crime, it would be me.

The heart I saw the assailant remove, and give to his victim, wasn't a heart at all.  It was Love.  And the man who he had placed it in wasn't a random victim.  He was me.  The eyes that I'd looked into as they passed were my own, and the guilt for what I had taken, and never repaid, left me frozen.  

As I studied the men in the line-up in front of me, I wept.  I wept for everyone who fails to understand that what the people in our lives want for us, and what the Universe wants for us, are exactly the same.  I wept for everyone who fails to understand that there is no Universe beyond the people in their own.  The whole world was the assailant, and everything it had sacrificed, it had sacrificed for me.

I wept most of all for myself, out of gratitude for all I'd been given.