The Stoned Man

The Stoned Man

Tortured, anguished screams swept through my home in a mighty rush. Filling my quiet calm. Slapping like cold water thrown in my face. Cries infused the screaming; cries of children—only not for sadness or injury, but in exalted praise at their accomplishment.

I stood on my porch, straining to comprehend the distant scene, transfixed by the game of horror playing across an empty field. Standing. Staring. Unsure, not due to lack of courage, but how do you stop a stoning?

The children’s voices rose, their brazen mouths forming obscene insults instead of sucking on Tootsie Pops or Pixie Sticks, flinging words of degradation adults seldom use, all aimed in collected frenzy at the object of their disdain. Small hands that should have colored in a book, played tag, or tossed a baseball on a schoolyard, now threw rocks in rapid-fire succession, hitting their target with a velocity built on disregard. With each stone released, the foundation of hatred for someone unlike them was built—targeting one solitary figure.

As he drew closer, I recognized the figure struggling across the expanse of rocky ground. An aged man matching the landscape of the empty field upon which he trod, his clothing dirty and torn, not enough covering for a thorough disguise as he attempted blending with the dirt to become the nothing others thought him. He pushed a grocery cart filled with his belongings across the field in an attempt to shorten his route for a day undoubtedly begun early. Every time I saw him, it seemed his nights bled into a new day where the passage of time was expressed by the sun’s position. Now, his day came to a standstill, halted by the thrown stones. His failure concealing his vulnerability grew apparent to the gathering crowd, his cries muted when he succumbed to their amusement.

My shouts were futile as they fell on the ears of children reenacting a scene from Lord of the Flies. Their excitement escalated as the man hid behind his cart. How did children born in innocence and without guile turn into creatures society needed to shut away never to see another day? Where were their parents or any of the other upstanding citizens inhabiting the homes on my street?

Calls to the police were met with incredulous tones, the dispatcher’s words unrepeatable, echoing my thoughts.

The children scattered at the sound of police cars pulling to the empty field, as if a gale force blew dried leaves rapidly across unfettered lawns. They fled, like each barren promise cast on their small hearts and minds from the bounty of emptiness known as their parents.

Rescued into the arms of civil authority, perhaps the man would have a chance at a shower and food so he could begin his daily ritual anew. That man was a person who once owned a complete life and somehow lost it. He still deserved to be a man, not seen as an invisible hulk of rotting, tan overcoat pushing a cart containing his life. He merited more than mere existence. He had once been someone’s child, loved and adored for just being that simple gift. He possessed a life deserving the same kindness we desire for those we love and no one had the right to strip his last bit of dignity from him, especially children. I never saw him again, the children, however, are a different story.

Time passed, children grow, yet nothing is altered since the void of their parents’ existence still reigns supreme in their lives. They are encouraged to fight for their rights by any means, the constraint of civilization a backdrop, something to feast upon until society’s rules lie twisted and reform into their version of community by the constant, perverted nurturing of the parents.

The children never changed, nor did they desire change—their prey still those unwilling to enter the unrelenting madness of them. They are powerful. A solidarity of the profane standing in our midst, spewing vulgarity as quickly as they drove those rocks at a vulnerable, innocent man. The encouragement of their antics witnessed on the parents’ faces as they consume a case of forty-ounce Budweiser, proclaiming their children will rule while the weak in the neighborhood are cast asunder by their escalating numbers. The desire to castrate the good and healthy overwhelms, the opportunity of forming a societal order of miscreants uppermost in the minds of the deviant mob.

No longer children, every day etched itself on their faces, the evil they have ingested decaying innocent trust. The children’s cries no longer linger, but are a strident, blatant call of the wild. A clamorous voice of the gang elite, represented by a horde walking down the middle of the street, daring those not within its ranks to defy.

I have defied, at times cursed and reviled as that stoned man. Joined those combating the influx of insanity. Pushed back, by not only the infidel, but by non-effective, compromise-driven apathy of neighbors unable to take a stand for right. Both groups earned their stripes of yellow in this war, for there is no conflict resolution when fighting for virtue.

The children are now of age. What exactly does that mean? They have raped the neighborhood since the ages of seven, growing the ranks of the pitiful into an outlaw fraternity forever driven by the justification of their parents. What are you if you age, but never grow? What does it mean if you take what you want by any means, disregarding your own mental and physical welfare? What happens when what you become is vulgar and violent and you have slid so far into the depths of degradation you no longer see a difference between good and evil?

I stand on my porch and watch them. The children—the ones who twelve years ago brayed at a man like a herd of donkeys, pitching stones until he buckled and fell from their attack.

They proudly huddle on a corner they control. A gang: the depraved with debauched lives that could have changed, but took the easier road they thought made them wise. The road their parents paved for them.

A flame shoots into the night sky. The pipe filled with the items necessary to sustain their rotten existence as they swill another forty-ounce Bud. Pot, crack, ice, meth; take your pick, life in their society is as they have made it. Lost.

As I continue watching, the flame is joined by other flames, and soon the young men become what they originally cursed.

The stoned man.