text: TW: rape, violence, death of a child WRITING CONTEST #251: To Kill a Mockingbird Write a story about someone losing faith in an institution. This is a work of fiction. Birth and Death I am an urban park ranger. I patrol the city’s parks. I cover the parks in a ten-block radius from downtown. I have been doing this for ten years. One part of my job is to kick the drunks and druggies off the park benches in the morning before the commuters coming from the subway stations see them. Ever since the legislature cut all funding for unemployment, welfare, and drug rehab assistance, the number of homeless sleeping in the park has gotten out of control. These bums just need to get jobs. They’ve been freeloading off the government for too long. There are plenty of jobs to be had. Look at all the help wanted posters on all the fast-food joints. There’s plenty of work for them that are willing to work. Last night’s snowfall covered many of the benches. After a snowfall or a bitterly cold night, it’s not unusual to find a bum dead on the bench or under a bridge where they tried to seek cover. I hate it when I find one. I have to call the coroner, and he takes a couple of hours, and I have to stand by the body to see that the clothes don’t get taken off their back. Sometimes, the bum is still alive, but it’s only a matter of time. Rescuing them only means that they’ll be back tomorrow and maybe die then. I pretend I didn’t see them and go about my rounds. It’s a mercy to let them die in the cold. They don’t feel it. They just go numb, and the heart stops eventually. I make sure that the next of kin know that this burden has been lifted from them, and they can go about their lives. February is usually the worst when the winters here are so cold. On warm sunny days, even in the winter, I meet the regular people who use the park. The joggers are my favorites. They always wave as they pass by with their music on their earpieces. I also keep an eye on the gangs. Mostly they’re a lot of noise and not much harm to anyone, but there is this new gang. With only four members, this new gang intimidates gangs more than double their size. Even the other gangs are afraid of them. We have been getting reports from the joggers about verbal harassment from this new gang, but nobody has reported an assault yet. Well, that’s not entirely true. There was this one report, but nobody believed her. I mean, she was a drunk, and she claimed someone raped her. I found her on the ground under a tree. She’d been beaten up pretty good, and her clothes were torn. The shopping cart with all her stuff was overturned, and her stuff was scattered on the ground. I took her to the emergency clinic across the street, figuring they could help her. They claim to be an emergency clinic, but they’re not really. They have doctors and nurses, so I just thought they could help her. They’re run by some fancy church group, and they claim to do all this charity work. They’ll take in a drunk and patch up his bruises and give him a bath. But they won’t do anything else except pray for him. Still, even if they stopped the woman’s bleeding, that would be a step in the right direction. She told them she had been raped, and they pushed her out the door. They wouldn’t even help stop the bleeding. They shouted that she was a whore and a tramp and how dare she come to them for help? It wasn’t all their fault. It was mostly, but not all. The legislature passed a law that said anyone turning in an abortionist or aiding in an abortion got a cash reward. The people at the clinic wanted nothing to do with her. All they really wanted to do was to use torture to force gays back to the “way of righteousness” and obedience to Jesus. I loaded her into her shopping cart and pushed her to the fire station four blocks away. The paramedics did what they could, but they couldn’t administer the rape kit. Only the police could do that. The police wouldn’t administer the rape kit unless she identified her assailants. She had been drunk and could barely remember them, but I learned enough from what she did remember to know that it was the new gang. I also suspected that if she identified them, they would kill her. Lest the state’s legislature appears totally devoid of all human kindness, which they totally were, the abortion laws had a provision for rape and incest, but the perpetrator had to be convicted before the abortion could be performed. Since such cases generally took two years or more to slog their way through the court, if they were prosecuted at all, the provision was meaningless. The woman begged for them to give her the morning-after pill, but the drug is not legal in this state. I saw her again from time to time, hiding under a bridge to get out of the rain or sleeping under some tree. Mostly she slept during the day and was about at night. As her pregnancy showed more and more, she found panhandling did not make her as much money as it had. I kept an eye on the gang that I suspected had raped her, and I guess they figured out that I knew because they left me and her alone. We talked a bit. I knew that she had tried out for the Olympic skating team and had been one of the last people cut. She had worked her entire life to make the team, and now she had nothing to show for it. An ex-boyfriend had introduced her to drugs and prostitution. She was off the drugs now, but she still drank a lot. I knew that she went to the rehab center twice a week, but she wasn’t even welcome there with her pregnancy. The city had passed an ordinance just before the big Christmas tourist season, which forced the closure of all the halfway houses and homeless shelters. The publically proclaimed goal was to drive all the “scum” south for the winter. Many left, but most could not go. So, I was on patrol before dawn on the morning after the coldest night I could remember. I came upon a body covered in snow on a park bench. Frozen blood puddled on the ground mixed with the falling snow. I figured that some drunk had finally had enough and had done himself in. I was wrong. As I cleared the snow so I could attempt to identify the body, I discovered a baby covered in ice crystals. The umbilical cord was still attached, and the placenta had not been delivered. The blood had flowed from the bench to the ground and frozen. Ice crystals glistened in the streetlight’s glare. I turned away from the body and threw up. I called the coroner and was told that with all the wrecks on the roads last night, I wouldn’t see anyone before noon, but I was advised to call the coffee shop on the corner to have them deliver something for me to eat. This was someone’s daughter and their granddaughter. Did nobody care? Why could nobody help this woman? What was her sin to be punished like this? Was devoting her entire life to a dream a crime? Why had she been tossed out in the garbage? Why did she have to die in this horrible manner? I stood next to the bench when the gang that I suspected of raping her wandered by. They laughed. They strutted like peacocks. This was a statement of their power. They were proud of what they had done and knew that I could do nothing about it. They mocked her and me for a bit and then grabbed her shopping cart. They ran toward the bridge over the river. They planned on tossing the cart into the river. I guess I lost it. How many people could have saved this helpless woman, and instead, they went out of their way to harm her? Weren’t the strong supposed to protect the weak? She was dead, and the people that did this to her were running away with all her earthly possessions. Abandoning my post, I ran through the darkness and followed the gang to the bridge. They were about to lift the shopping cart over the rail when I pulled my sidearm. I always carry two full clips and the one in the pistol because, since this is an open-carry state, I can. I shot them all at close range. The falling snow muffled the sounds of the shots. Even though they were not all dead, they offered no resistance as I threw them into the freezing water below. The flow was swift enough that the bodies would not show up until they reached the rapids ten miles away. By that time, they could not be traced back to me. I rolled the shopping cart back to the bench. The “doctor” who ran the clinic across the street who had refused treatment when he could have helped the now dead woman was standing there with one of his staff members looking at the bodies. The “doctor” was not a real doctor. He had a Doctorate of Divinity from one of those internet sites where you send them the money, and they send you your certificate. The “doctor” and his “friend” laughed and commented that the woman on the bench had met her just end. They made a joke about the wages of sin and turned away. They did not see me or hear the cart. The falling snow muffled the shots. At that range, I only needed two. I unloaded the shopping cart and loaded the bodies into it. I pushed the cart to the bridge and threw the bodies over the rail. I walked back to the bench. I stopped to buy coffee. I reloaded the cart and waited for the coroner. Somebody needs to protect the helpless even if the government doesn’t do it. I guess that’s me.