A SUMMER Sunday in an old Midwestern river town, walking down the avenue under the elms past yards burgeoning with vinous and hedgy things and multicoloured flowerage, the industry of each homeowner shown in the beauty offered to the passer-by.
Children of these homeowners may be telling therapists awful tales of emotional deprivation in these homes, and yet back in April and May, weekends were devoted to making this front yard splendid. That’s worth something. Much can be forgiven of those who make beautiful things.
I’m on my way home from church, where I tried to forgive myself, which is a good reason to go. And also for the stories. This morning it was about John the Baptist, imprisoned by Herod, though he knew John to be a godly man and was a fan of his preaching, but John had condemned Herod for taking his brother’s wife, so to the dungeon went the prophet. Herod threw a feast, got drunk, and when his stepdaughter danced, he was deeply moved, and offered her her heart’s desire. She, consulting with Mom (the brother’s wife, now Herod’s), sought John’s head on a platter, and – voilà! – there it was, the bloody head of a godly man, dripping on the floor. Herod felt terrible about it, end of story.
A tale of cruelty that somehow brought Dick Cheney to mind and the CIA programme he kept secret from Congress, in defiance of law, and the late Robert McNamara, who was, by his own admission, a war criminal, having helped engineer the fire-bombing of Tokyo in March 1945 that incinerated 100,000 souls in one evening, an attack on civilians, its purpose purely cruel. The Japanese had committed their own atrocities on the Chinese and Koreans, the British destroyed Dresden, the Germans carried out the Holocaust, and so it goes. The heart of man is merciless.
All the more reason to savour this peaceable street and its lawns and driveways, the listless cat on the porch, the sheer beauty of ordinariness. The ambitions of our society are met on this street – peace, prosperity, a bed of petunias, a porch, a pitcher of tropical punch. There are men who would destroy this street and others would defend us against them: those opposing men may have more in common with each other than with the people living here or the people in whose names it would be destroyed.
On this street we have less interest in war crimes than, say, in a furtive romance between a president and an intern. Those are good stories, like the beheading of John, but the slaughter of 100,000 is a statistic.
You wish people got angry about cruelty, and not many do. Take the man on the freeway last Friday, offended because I merged in front of him, who pulled alongside me and lowered his window and screamed, his face contorted with rage. He followed me up the exit ramp and pulled alongside and yelled some more, red-faced, finger in the air.
I wish he could spare some rage for Dick Cheney, but off he went, and maybe he felt mortified and hoped nobody he knew was watching, and maybe his tantrum purged him of anger, so when he pulled up in his driveway on this quiet street and his children ran out to greet him, he felt an even more extravagant love for them.
When my green Volvo swung into the gap ahead of that driver, it was the final insult in a long chain and he was enraged, and for a time he sincerely wanted to shoot me and put my head on a platter, but he didn’t.
He cruised home, penitent, and spoke gently to his children. He kissed his wife. He changed, picked up a hoe and went out to cultivate those beds on the sidewalk and water the bushes.
Thank you, sir, for your uplifting yard. Your moment of public ugliness is forgiven. Go and screech no more. – (Tribune media services)