- Paradise didn't seem much like Paradise
last week.
-
- It was a lot more like Hell.
-
- I'm talking about the hell created by
an 18-year-old whose assault on the value of human life began in a Massachusetts
gay bar and ended just outside Mountain Home.
-
- It's a story I didn't want to follow,
but I couldn't help myself. Everything that happened, happened so close.
A fugitive. A traffic stop. A death. A shoot-out between the perp and the
police. It was very big city. Very "Hawaii Five-0."
-
- Urban crime. Hollywood action. The unreal
made all too real. And so achingly reminiscent of a way of life I'd thought
I'd left behind.
-
- And just as my churning feelings were
subsiding, Dwayne the Earth Mover brought them back. The Earth Movers and
the Brodys had dinner together at our place the other night, and afterward
Dwayne and I stepped out onto the front porch while he had a smoke.
-
- It was 28 degrees and snowing just a
little, and we stood hugging ourselves, watching the big flakes drift down
from the murky sky.
-
- "Terrible thing, what happened in
Gassville," Dwayne said. He flicked an ash onto the snow. "Don't
you have a bud on the Gassville Police Department? The officer writing
the ticket - that wasn't your friend, was it?"
-
- I don't have a bud who's a police officer
in Gassville, but I've gotten e-mail from one about this column. The kind
of e-mail that makes you hope someday the sender will become a friend.
Because of that, Dwayne the Earth Mover's question struck a chord.
-
- In fact, when I'd heard about the traffic
stop, and the shooting, my first thought was, "Oh no! Was that J.D.?"
-
- And I'd clicked around the Web like a
lunatic until I found out it wasn't.
-
- "No," I told Dwayne. "It
wasn't him."
-
- Dwayne dropped his cigarette. Ground
it out with his work-booted heel. "Glad to hear it," he said.
"Bet you were relieved."
-
- I started to reply, but I couldn't. I
was shivering and shuddering and shaking, and not from the chill. What
was getting to me wasn't the weather. It was what I'd almost said. A thought
I still can't get out of my mind.
-
- Last February 4th, a man died. Unexpectedly.
Brutally. Bloodily. A police officer in the line of duty, doing something
he must've done, oh, thousands of times without any problem.
-
- A man I didn't know.
-
- And because I didn't know him, because
I'd never gotten an e-mail from him - or been stopped by him for speeding
or helped by him when my tire went flat on Highway 62 - when someone asked
me how I felt I came oh-so-close - this close - to echoing "relieved."
-
- As though the victim and his life, his
history and his hopes and his dreams, his family and his friends, his very
humanity, didn't count as much as they would have if he'd been my friend,
or my co-worker, or my relative. Or me.
-
- I know Dwayne meant well. But how could
I - how could anyone - feel "relieved" just because a tragedy
wasn't as horribly immediate as it might have been?
-
- Every day we walk this planet, we make
choices and judgments. It's what we have to do in order to survive. So
we can act in our best interests and in the best interests of those with
whom we share our lives. I understand that all too well.
-
- But as I grow older, I see that much
of what we do and think and feel is automatic, the continuation of a past
pattern instead of a new response to what's here. In this case, my pattern
probably would've made it easier to face the fact that I had no control
over a heinous crime.
-
- In this case, "easier" doesn't
cut it. (And between you and me, I can't think of a case where it would.)
-
- So, here are the hard words, the true
words, about a tragedy that's got me shuddering again as I write.
-
- On February 4th, in Gassville, Arkansas,
police officer Jim Sell was senselessly murdered. He was 63 years old.
He was a human being who walked a path of duty and courage. He deserved
better than he got.
-
- I didn't know Jim Sell, but I offer my
sympathies to all those who did, and who must deal with his loss. I honor
Jim Sell in print and in my heart.
-
- I mourn.
-
- _____
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- Author Larry Brody's weekly column, LIVE!
FROM PARADISE! appears on his website, www.larrybrody.com. He has written
thousands of hour of network television, and is the author of "Television
Writing from the Inside Out" and "Turning Points in Television." Brody
is Creative Director of The Cloud Creek Institute for the Arts, the world's
first in-residence media colony. More about his activities can be seen
on www.tvwriter.com and www.cloudcreek.org. Brody, his wife
and their dogs, cats, horses and chickens live in Marion County, Arkansas.
The other residents of the mythical town of Paradise reside in his imagination.
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