He entered the church with his hands to
his side. He wasn’t tall, but he was slender. He stood five feet eight and was
a solid 150lbs. He had brown hair and blue eyes. They were clear blue as the
cleanest and clearest of the sea. He walked toward the front of the church
walking down the aisle that led him through rows of pews. He sat in a pew that
was in front of the others and behind the pulpit. There was no service today,
but the church was always opened to those who wanted to confess their sins and
to come and pray. He sat with his head held up to look at the cross that was on
the wall in front of the pulpit. “Where are you God?” With anger and
fire burning inside he reached for it. It was black and was about three pounds. It had a short stock
not as long as his service weapon, but it would do the job. He took it out
looking at it intensely. He raised it to his head, and his finger was on the
trigger. He pointed it to his right temple. He cocked the gun and then.
How he got to this
point is a story in itself, and I’m here to tell it. It all started one month ago
when Lieutenant John Tucker was on patrol in Afghanistan. He took to the
streets to make sure no one was on the road. It was as dark as the depth of a
hole dug for a well. No stars could be seen he walked a mile from base. He didn’t
want to stray from his post that took up a football field in length. An hour of
his watch he heard a commotion. He walked about 50 yards from the end of his
post to find a man raping a girl. This was a normal occurrence, but what he saw
next is what would change his life. She lay on the ground, and the man’s pants were
around his ankles and his hands where on her wrist to hold her down. But there
was another there, it was a teen boy. He was strapping a vest of explosives to
her. As the man, maybe his father was raping the girl. She only looked to be
eleven or twelve. He didn’t know he tried not to look at young girls to guess their
age.
“What in the hell
are you doing?” John yells.
The boy and the man look up the man having to turn his head.
In their native tongue. “None of your damn business American.” The
man said.
“Well hell it ain’t get off of her.” John says as
he brings his rifle up. “I’ll shoot you if you don’t get off of her.”
A few more seconds pass, “I’m done anyway.” The
man said.
“You’re a sick bastard.” With his finger now on
the trigger. He withholds all his thoughts and his emotions. I so want to blow
this guy’s brains out right then and there.
“No, I’m not.” The man gets up off the girl, and
he pulls his pants up as the girl lay on the ground crying blood coming from
her vagina and a puddle of blood below her. The boy finished with what he was
doing. The boy got up off the ground and started to walk toward the back room.
“You are just a sick piece of shit you know that,
right?”
“Whatever she is my daughter I can do as I
please.”
“You just raped your daughter. You’re really a sick son
of a bitch.” John walked closer to the girl the father moves back. He
starts to move back to the back room. “Why did you strap this bomb to
her?”
“For you American bastards.”
“Why do you have such ill will against us.”
“Because you have come to our country and have tried to
save that which can’t be saved.” The man says, as he still moves slowly toward
the back room. “When she gets done crying she is going to go to your base,
and then her bomb will go off taking you Americans with her.”
“Not if I can help it.” John walks over and pulls
the girls’ underwear up and puts down her dress like clothes. He then bends
over the girl as he grabs her hands to help her off the ground. He wants to
save the girl and dis arm the bomb so badly that he forgets that the man and
the boy are still around, and before he knows it John got hit from behind.
Darkness over took him.
John awoke 30 minutes later to find that all three were
gone. He ran out of the little home back toward his base it was still night he
got about 100 yards from base when it explodes. John was thrown back from the
blast only to hit a building, and he heard some cracking noises. He moves
slowly to get up. The pain felt as if someone took a hammer to his ribs. Even
so, the pain was blocked by the scorching flames that over took his base. He
ran back into the flames to find if there were any survivors. He only saw
bodies charred by the fire and ash all around the barracks.
“FUCK GOD… I was I was supposed to stay at my post at my
ready for this. Fuck what have I done. I have I not done. Why did this happen.?”
He had no words that came to him that didn’t have the F word several times
coming out of his mouth. He thought it was his fault that this occurred when it
was not. “Why didn’t I kill that sick Fuck the moment, I saw the girl? God
Jesus Mary and Joseph, what…what have I done.”
He was honored for saving the very few that had survived
most losing a limb most becoming inflicted with PTSD. He never thought that he
should live, and somehow he survived without a scratch.
“Why,” he wondered.
I came in as he pulled the hammer back, with a click click, “Stop.
What are you doing? You don’t want to do that son.”
“Why, not I don’t deserve to be alive with what I saw and
what I didn’t do.”
“God has his reasons.”
“God Fuck God. I don’t even know how I got here.”
“The Lord led you here my son.”
“You’re not my father don’t call me son.”
“Sorry, but you shouldn’t be sorry for what you didn’t do or
saw. You must have been in the war?”
“Yeah, duh, I have a gun to my head, and I’m wearing my camouflage.”
“Yes, I see.”
We talked for a few minutes only for him to put the gun down
for the few minutes, or maybe it was an hour or longer. We talked until the
tears dried from his eyes. That night he didn’t take his life.
I did have to speak at his vigil one week later. They say
that he tried to save, well he did save a girl from a fire, but a falling beam
impaled him. God, saved him to save the girl from the fire so that he could
feel redeemed, and then then it was his time to go home.
