A Good Man

He was a man, just a man, but he was a good man. He paid his taxes, his cars were insured, he was a hard worker, a loving husband, a doting father. He did not smoke, he did not swear, and he attended church every Sunday without fail.

            Yes, he was just a man, but he was a good man.

            It was a beautiful summer day, this man sitting on his porch, holding hands with his wife, soaking in the sun with a lazy smile on his face. His eyes, which had been closed with contentment, suddenly flung open as he heard someone ascending the stairs to his front door. He nudged his wife when he saw the visitor, a cop in uniform, an ominous grey look on his face.

            “Good afternoon,” the intruder said.

            “Good afternoon, officer.”

            “I have some bad news, sir,” said the officer, and the man’s wife covered her mouth.

            They had thought their daughters, ages sixteen and fourteen, were together at a church lock-in the night before. In fact, they were at a party, the kind of party in a big brick house with no parents home. They had both gotten in the car, intoxicated. The car veered off the road, running into a pole, killing them both.

            He was a man, just a man, but he was a good man. He cried day and night as he planned the details for his girls’ funeral, the pink lined caskets, the music they liked. He tried to comfort his wife, his beautiful wife, but she was removed from him by her shield of grief, and would not let him touch her.

            The day after the girls’ memorial service, the good man’s wife put a gun in her mouth and blew herself away.

            He was a man, just a man, but he was a good man. Even with his firm faith, he could not find the ray of hope in the darkness of that valley. He could not get out of bed in the morning. Too many months of withering excuses, and he lost his job. Soon thereafter, his car was repossessed. Then his home went into foreclosure.

            He is a man, just a man, but he is a good man. He sits between two skyscrapers, the lowest of the low, in a grimy flannel shirt and ripped-up jeans, his beard overgrown. At night, he cries to himself, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and during the day he asks the passerby for change, but you just wave your hand at him and think, He got himself into this situation; he can get himself out of it.