These Four Things
From The Village Wiki
[edit] Notes From The Wiki Founder: These Four Things by ConcernedCitizen 18:16, October 12nd, 2009 (EST)
What do a veteran, a district councilman, and a suicide survivor all have in common?
This isn’t a trick question. This is the question I’ve been poring over the for the last week. It’s my job right now.
The veteran is a compact man with brown eyes and his hair still shaved tight to the scalp. When I see him on screen he walks with a strong sense of purpose through crowds. People step aside on sidewalks to let him by. He’s not angry. He’s intense, confident, strong.
He’s also missing most of his lower left leg.
I’ve scrubbed through archival footage of the subject. He’s been working on regaining that confident stride, that powerful walk, for several months now since he got his prosthetic. It’s a part of his external character, and maybe his internal one. He was a leader, a career military man. And now he’s sidelined, and he’s working on rebuilding himself.
Sometimes I watch him get drunk and stagger home in a weird zig-zag pattern. He hasn’t quite adapted to the new leg when inebriated.
The councilman, now, he just spends long hours at his offices working the phones. He hates paperwork, I think. But while that’s grinding him down, when he shuts the office and leaves to drive home in his blue sedan, he smiles. And his daughter and son are always waiting for him on the stoop of a small brick townhouse when he gets home.
Is it a facade? Nothing I’ve seen indicates it is. He does what he does, and goes home to a loving family.
And then there’s the suicide survivor. She wears long sleeved sweaters even in the summer, and is relieved that Fall is here. When she walks through crowds, she’s like a furtive, hunted animal, darting this way and that, buffeted by the herd.
She has wide, green eyes and pale hair, but tans religiously. I think its her one part of the day where she relinquishes her fears and burdens. When she comes out, she looks, for a brief moment, happy. It’s a moment of meditation.
Every Wednesday she joins group discussion. On Fridays her therapist. I don’t have audio, I just watch her walk into those doors.
Who are these people? Suspects? Terrorists?
My job is to figure out patterns. In their own lives. Between them.
What do these three people have in common? I file my reports on my theories.
I mentioned a weird analysis test I took to get this job. If you’re curious to see kind of what it was like, someone showed me this. It’s the same idea.
Check it out, get a taste of what it took for me to get this job.
--previous note: Ask No Questions
--index of Notes from the Wiki Founder
