The Bad Samaritan

Sweat burns Blithe’s eyes. Muscles cramp. Head pounds. She staggers into a clearing she can barely discern in the pre-dawn gloom. Unable to go on, she lets her burden fall gently to the leafy, loamy ground. Bending forward, hands on her knees, she pants until the dizziness and nausea pass. Perhaps this place will do. It’s shady or at least will be once the sun’s up. A stream, cut into sheer rock walls, makes access from the north virtually impossible and provides pleasant gurgling background noise. A few hundred feet—which felt like a few thousand, climbing with a load heavier than herself—higher than the nearest hiking trail, surrounded by ancient oaks and maples and behind them, a dense stockade of pines. She’ll know for sure in the light, but it’s probably invisible from the trail or anywhere else people are likely to wander, and no one in their right mind will negotiate the minefield of the killer brambles between here and the path. The bloody scratches on her hands provide ample evidence of the thorny undergrowth, as mean as any she’s seen since her Tennessee girlhood. “No one’s likely to find you up here,” she whispers to Sean, not that her voice would register even if she shouted. “Should be quite pleasant for you. Looks like there might even be a nice open view there, through the trees.” She points, pointlessly. “We’ll know better when morning comes.” She’s used to his failure to respond. He hasn’t spoken for months and certainly won’t now. If anything his silence has made her more chatty. She puts on her gloves, clears away loose dirt and last year’s leaves, lifts her shovel high and brings it down with all her might. Loud metallic clang—she hit a rock. Pain shoots through her, intensifying as it lingers in her wrists, elbows, and shoulders. Her knees buckle. She lies where she falls, barely having the strength to cry. What’s she going to do without her last companion? No friends, no family now, completely alone. Why is he making her do this? Hasn’t she done enough for him already? Hell, he can’t make her do anything. She won’t do this. She can’t. It’s too much. Of course she can and will. There’s no too much. She digs. And digs… until pointillist dots of sunlight, tinged scarlet and gold by the intensely colored fall leaves, dapple the ground. Their beauty cuts pinholes through Blithe’s grief and fatigue. Standing straight, she checks out the view she theorized for Sean companion. My God! Softly rounded, multiply hued trees are so beautiful she realizes she’s holding her breath. Way off in the cloudless blue distance, sun glints from two tiny silvery spires. The shining tips of the Empire State and Chrysler buildings hint at the presence of the magnificently indifferent metropolis below. Now that she’s free of her emotional obligations and, assuming Richard comes through for her, soon to be free of her financial ones, she might accept the challenge the city so famously poses to the adventurous and ambitious. She needs only to find her calling. She finally completes her excavation. Lifting Sean’s large gray-haired head and broad but bony shoulders for the last time, she drags him into the hole and kisses his lifeless cheek. She lights a joint, without inhaling, and drops it on top of him, needlessly making sure the embers don’t burn his ancient Jimi Hendrix T-shirt. Next she tosses in his Purple Heart, Vietnam service medal, and New York City Police Department Medal of Honor. In his superannuated hippie days, he mocked these medallions. He never disposed of his commendations, though. Toward the end, Blithe would place them on his lap, and he’d caress them as if they were purring cats. About to chuck in his service revolver as she planned, she hesitates. Sean wanted her to have it, and Richard’s last phone call… he certainly made it sound like there’s going to be trouble. Also, with street crime spiking… Sure, they say the economy has turned a corner, but the one truism she’s able to glean about economics is that they are always wrong. Anyway, these days, turning a corner is likely to get you mugged. “I love you, Sean. Good soldier, good cop, and one great hippie, even if you did come to it late in life. How could I have been so lucky as to have you as a father and Judith as a mother?” She’s trying hard not to cry. Sean wasn’t sentimental, and she didn’t bring tissue or a handkerchief. “I’ve done as you directed. just like we did for Judith. She’s near but not next to you. ” After a good long cry, she covers him with dirt, packs it down, and spreads leaves on top until the spot, except for a gentle rise, looks pretty much the way she found it. There’s no sign that a body lies beneath all those rotting leaves. Proud of having completed her mission—Sean and Judith brought her up to always do her duty, even if they had odd ideas of what her duties might be—she smiles for the first time in days. Having bushwhacked her way back through the thorn thicket, Blithe finally arrives at her rental car and begins driving back to the city. Eyes so fogged with tears it’s as if she’s looking at the road though a sandblasted glass shower door rather than the car’s windshield, she pulls off the Palisades Parkway at each overlook in a bootless attempt to pull herself together. How the hell can she pull herself together? Sean is dead. By the time she leaves the car with the Hertz attendant, her tear ducts ache from overuse, her forearms hurt from gripping the steering wheel, and her shoulder muscles feel as if they’re about to rip apart from tension—just another few maladies to add to the list. Leaving the rental office, she almost trips over the outstretched legs of a young woman dozing against a wall, an empty cup by her side. Still relatively clean and well-dressed, she looks as if she could get a job if she wanted one. Sure, if there were any jobs available. Blithe deposits a five-dollar-bill into the cup. Will New York degenerate to the Calcutta stage, where parents maim their children to make them more effective beggars? The recovery is trumpeted in the media, whispered like a prayer on elevators, in bus stops, and on street corners. Homelessness is on the wane, but like unemployment, it’s a lagging indicator, at least according to Richard. The woman wakes with a start. “Oh, thanks.” Having no one left to bury, Blithe lays the shovel next to the woman. Blithe hasn’t eaten since last night, but what she most needs is a hot bath and a good night’s sleep. But if she doesn’t eat, she’ll wake up famished in a few hours. Then the reality of Sean’s passing will crash down on her, making further sleep impossible. She dreads the 3:00 a.m. loneliness, bad enough while he lived, now unbearable. Sean is dead. She’ll never see him again, never speak to him, never hear his voice. At least after Judith died, she still had Sean. Not long after Judith’s passing, Sean stopped making sense and soon stopped recognizing Blithe, but at least she got to take care of him. That was something. Something beats nothing any day. So she’ll eat. Blithe steels herself for the three-block trek up Broadway to get some Zabar’s soup to take out. And maybe one of their seeded rye breads, too.