“I'm innocent, I tell ya. It ain't my fault. He shot at me first. I didn't even have a gun! Okay, so I managed to shoot him with his own gun, four times. Hey, is it my fault his gun has a hair trigger? All he had to do was stay upstairs and I would've just robbed the downstairs and left. Probably. But no, he's got to start shooting. What was I supposed to do, anyway? Let him shoot me?”
Guys like Willie Lunkers increasingly made George sick. That's not good for a prison chaplain. In the old days, especially on death row, most of the inmates were remorseful and fearful, and they were open to and even grateful for anything George could do for them spiritually. They knew they were at the end of the road and didn't want to face it alone. But that was a long time ago.
Today too many are like 'Tattoo Willie,' who looks like he's wearing a shirt when he isn't. Nothing is ever his fault. Everything that happens to him is because of somebody else. He's a victim of circumstance. Society is to blame, and Chaplain George, old dinosaur that he is, is part of society, so it's even partly his fault. Willie's clueless arrogance was just too much, more than George could bear.
“I just can't help him. And you know what? I don't want to. I don't want to walk down these corridors anymore. And I don't want to hear all the horrible things these animals spew out anymore. I just can't take another day! It's time for me to retire while I still have some life left in me.” So that's what George did.
The guards held a small retirement party for him, and the warden presented him with a plaque commemorating thirty-five years of faithful service. There was cake and hugs and handshakes all around. Memories and laughs were shared, and then it was over. George walked out with mixed emotions, happy, no, relieved, to be finally out of there, but also a little sad. In the end he felt like he'd failed. The task of being a prison chaplain ultimately became too much for him, and eventually the inhumanity of it all overwhelmed him. He just couldn't do it anymore. That's why he retired, right?
“No, dear,” Mary, his wife of almost forty years, reminded him. “There are lots of things we want to do while we still can. You gave most of your life to that prison. Now it's time for us to have some fun. Let's travel, see the country, do whatever we want. You've earned it. You deserve it.”
And that's what they did. Selling their brownstone for a tidy profit they bought a brand new Winnebago and hit the road. They spent five years just traveling wherever the road led them, seeing all the sights, staying at campgrounds at night, and meeting all kinds of wonderful people doing the very same thing.
They didn't notice when their home state abolished the death penalty, commuting everyone on death row to life in prison. And even if they had noticed, so what? Parole would be out of the question, wouldn't it? Besides, it's not their problem anymore. “The world's tallest lollipop is just an hour away! Let's go see it!”
Eventually even all that fun became less exciting, and George and Mary grew weary of living in the Winnebago. They missed seeing their kids and grandkids, and now that they were both pushing sixty-five it was time to slow down, settle down and maybe do something else. So they moved back to the outskirts of their home town and bought an old two-story farmhouse on five acres, really too much land for George to take care of. Most of it he left for nature to take its course. Mary had her garden and he had his dogs and a few chickens. They always had eggs but he just couldn't bring himself to kill a chicken for supper. He'd much rather just go to the KFC down the road.
Life was good, this one, anyway. They had their health, and it now seemed like George's former life as a prison chaplain was someone else's, a million years ago.
“George, wake up. Did you hear that?” Mary pushed on George's shoulder a couple of times, trying to rouse him out of a deep sleep. He slept so soundly these days! “George,” she whispered, “There's a noise coming from downstairs. I think we might have a prowler!”
“Okay, I'm up,” George sat up, swung his feet around to the floor and took a deep breath, trying to wake up enough to shake away some of the cobwebs as he groped in the dark for the flashlight in the nightstand drawer.
“Be careful, George.”
“I will, don't worry.” Their old farmhouse always creaked at night, especially if the wind was blowing. Some folks in town hinted that the old place might even be haunted. Was that why they got such a good deal on it? Anyway, for what seemed like the thousandth time George dutifully got up to look for nothing just to ease Mary's fears.
As he trudged down the hallway towards the top of the stairs he now thought he heard something, too. What was that? He shined his flashlight down the stairs and saw movement. “Who's there?” He saw a shape move in the shadows, and then a quick glimpse of someone's face. Wait a minute, I know that face, George thought. “Willie? Willie Lunkers, is that you? What are you ...”
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