talk, as if they could regurgitate their shame in words.
None of the man’s inane chattering seemed to ripple the surface of the old lady’s calm. She was kinder than me. She understood the man’s need for contact and, perhaps, his need to exorcise the thoughts he had about the man in the park.
The trouble was, I suspected there was no man in the park. He was the man with the thoughts that should be feared. And how would I protect her if I turned out to be right?
“It’s an organized effort, actually,” he was telling the old woman, who was busy admiring her neighbors’ gardens as they walked past each. “It was started by a retired colonel. I was his first volunteer, actually. He’s in a wheelchair because of a war injury, so he relies on other people, like me.”
The old lady smiled at him. “It seems more worthy than watching television.”
They turned a corner toward the park. I hurried to keep up, an unseen interloper on their privacy. “I’ve never had a problem until now,” he told the old lady. “And I’ve been keeping an eye out for months. They make those sorts of fellows register. You can look up their names and addresses on the Internet and know right away if one lives near you. It’s public information. We keep track of them all.”
“Oh, dear,” the old lady said, her calm finally ruffled. But I could not tell if she rejected the idea of such men living near her or the idea that they were tagged for life like animals in the wild.
“What’s your name, dear?” she interrupted firmly when her new friend had gone on too long about his idea for basil ice cream, a suggestion I am certain revolted the old lady as much as it did me. “I remember what your mother looked like quite clearly, but I cannot remember her name. I am a bit forgetful these days.”
“It’s Robert,” he said. “For my father. He died when I was young. My mother named me Robert Michael Martin. She said three first names were better than one.”
“And her name was Eleanor,” the old lady remembered. “I recall it now.”
“That’s right,” the man said. “I already know your name.”
Oh, really? Then why had he said nothing until now?
“At least,” he continued, “I know part of your name. You’re Mrs. Bates.”
“But you must call me Noni,” she insisted.
Noni, Noni, Noni—no, no, no. Did your mother never tell you not to talk to strangers, not to invite them into your life?
“Isn’t the park the other way?” Noni asked when he led her down a side street.
“Yes. But if we go this way, we’ll be able to approach the bench from behind and you can study him without him even knowing, maybe get a better read that way.”
And if you do that, you’ll also be marching straight into a deserted bramble with a strange man, far from anyone who could hear you, with me as a powerless witness unable to sound the alarm. No! I wanted to shout. For God’s sake, have you been living in a bubble? You don’t even know this man and you surely don’t know what he is capable of, no one can know just by looking. Oh, the things I have seen, the moments that have turned people’s lives from triumph to terror, the decisions that have brought on suffering—how small they can be, how the smallest of choices can end a life.
“We shall go your way,” my friend Noni declared. “There are some hydrangeas on this block I have been wanting to see up close.”
Choices like that one.
A hundred thoughts ran through my head, accompanied by a hundred paralyzing images. I had seen so much violence in my life, before violence cut my life short. I had long ago learned that people had no shame when it came to inflicting pain on others. They’d murder a sweet little old lady as surely as they’d kill a soldier in his prime, all to fill some terrible void that yawned inside them. There are wounded people walking this earth, people whose souls have been poisoned and whose minds have been warped and whose selfishness has risen to such heights that they can take a human life as casually as stomping on an ant.
But what could I do about it but follow them? I had no power over the physical world, just a slight ability to influence wind and water and, sometimes, fire. Even then, my