I have always known that it was just a matter of time before somebody did what so many have wanted to do.
Noah, who witnessed the event, brings the news while I am at Job’s house helping adding a room for the baby now only two months away. We have been working all afternoon, enjoying the heat of the day and the slick sheen of sweat our labor summons to our skin, and when Noah rides up, his horse shining from a hard gallop, we wave at him, thinking at first that he’s only come to help us. But then he gasps out the news and we put down our hammers and we step away from the skeletal frame of the nursery under construction and join my brother on the front porch so he can tell us what happened while we were here preparing for the miracle of new life. After a few seconds Leah comes out preceded by her belly to hand him a cup of water, then stays to listen.
This is what he tells us.
It happened a little more than an hour ago.
Kenneth rode his open wagon into the village to pick up some supplies he’s sent for, accompanied by his eldest son and the youngest of the young girls to join his extended family. She is Amelia and she is fourteen and she has been with him with three years, a relationship that began when she reported being raped by him at eleven, changed when she recanted two days later, and became whatever it is now when she left her parents and two younger sisters and moved in with Kenneth, calling him her “husband.” Following the usual pattern, her parents expressed outrage and appealed to her neighbors to help them rescue their darling girl, receiving little help before inevitably showing up bearing cuts and bruises and frightened expressions to go along with their insistence that it was all a misunderstanding and that Amelia’s new marriage had their blessing. The girl has rarely been seen in public, since then. Today, the first time in months, her little belly was as swollen with new life as Leah’s.
Kenneth pulled his wagon up to the community store, tied up the horses, then took his boy and went inside to get and carry out his goods. It took several trips. Amelia remained silent where she sat, not answering anybody who tried to speak to her. A crowd started to form. By the time Kenneth and his son finished the loading, half the village was there, many surrounding the wagon in a crowd five bodies thick.
Shaking his head, Noah tells us that Kenneth was not afraid, even then. He had always been untouchable and he thought he was untouchable still. When he took the reins and told the crowd that they better move, because they were hemming him in, he had the eyes of a man who was memorizing faces. His rider’s burning visage declared a dozen separate vendettas. Then somebody, it could have been anybody, shouted a call to action. Somebody, it could have been anybody, dragged Kenneth’s son from his seat. Somebody, it could have been anybody, grabbed Kenneth as well and forced him to the ground, where he was engulfed by a wave of shouting people.
He would have survived the beating.
But somebody, it could have been anybody, stabbed him in the heart.
So far, nobody had confessed to seeing who drove the blade between his ribs, though a number of the people there had long borne riders bearing the face of murder and a number bore riders bearing the face of complicity. No one will testify against a killer. In a sense, they may all be killers.
I do not know how to feel about this. Kenneth’s family hurt someone I loved as much as anyone I loved has ever been hurt. There was once a time when I might have snuffed out his life myself, had I believed there was a chance that I might get away with it. But either I’ve grown soft with the years or the long time he’s left my loved ones alone have diluted any hatred I feel. No weight has been lifted from my heart.
Leah, looking sad, asks, “Is his son all right?”
Noah tells her, “As all right as any boy can be when his father is murdered mere steps away from him.”
“And the girl?” Job asks.
Noah tells him, “She is unharmed as well. She has been brought to the home of her mother and father, neither of whom she has seen in more than a year. There is no telling whether she will stay there, rather than return to Kenneth’s family, but for the moment she is where she should be.”
Job says, “Good.”
It is his only immediate reaction.
After a little while Noah takes his leave of us and gets back on his horse, to bring the news to some of our more distant neighbors. We return to working on the new room. More than a hour passes, by my estimation, before I ask Job to stop.
He puts his hammer down and waits.
“If you were not the man I know you to be, and if I were not with you all day today, I would have wondered all my life whether you’d been the one to put that knife through that bastard’s ribs.”
Unhurt and unsurprised, he says, “But I am, and you were.”
“True. But with the man dead, there’s no reason to not tell me the truth. Was Kenneth the one who beat and robbed you, that last time?”
“Yes. Him and one of his sons. I won’t say which son, but it was one of them.”
“God. Are you all right?”
He considers his answer a long time before answering. “If you’re asking me whether I feel any pleasure at Kenneth’s death, the answer is no. It solves nothing. The world is still awash with brutality, and becoming part of it, even taking distant pleasure in it, interests me not at all. All I feel is sadness for a man whose rider so bubbled with hatred and pain that he could only achieve release by sharing it.”
“But don’t you feel safer?”
“Of course not.” He takes up his hammer again and strikes a protruding nail just once before looking ill and putting the tool down. “One day I was born. Someday I will die. What takes place between the beginning and the end is too short to fill with fear. The bad days happen from time to time, and more must be coming, but I’ve had far too many good ones in between to give the bad more weight than they’re worth.”
My vision blurs. “You’re a far better man than I’ll ever be.”
“No, I’m not. I will not lie to you, father. I fear that I’m not the man you and so many others believe me to be. I’m capable of hating people who hurt me, and wishing for bad things to happen to them. But I don’t want to hurt anyone back. While I’m alive I just want to live the best life I can, and this is the only way I know how.”
I know him well enough to recognize the closest he ever comes to annoyance. It hurts him, hurts everything he is, to be pressed for some form of celebration at his old tormentor’s death. It is the chief disadvantage of having a paragon for a son. Sometimes, many times, I cannot live up to him.
It is only late that night, as I lie beside Faith, that I wake and realize that it must not have been Kenneth I’ve feared all these years… for in asking Job whether he felt any safer, I neglected to notice that I do not.
The wheel of time continues to turn. Life in the village becomes much more peaceful without Kenneth around to prey on us. His sons heed the warning that there is only so much their neighbors will take from them, and scale back their criminality, without ever ceasing it. Leah strains a day in the birthing shed and presents Job with a son they name Isaac whose gentle rider betrays no sin worse than mischief. I put the baby in twelve-year-old Paul’s hands and he looks down at his new nephew with harmless bafflement, almost dropping him when the baby’s lips burble over with cheese. Miriam toddles about, stealing hearts with sideways glances. Leah brings me a jacket she has made for me and kisses me sweetly on the forehead, telling me that I am her second father, blessed for raising a man who could tame her rider and teach her that life can be an occasion filled with joy.