August 3, 2001

  • Shawna and notforprophet: Bonnie and Clyde??


    She was a runaway.  Had to be.  About 12 years old, dressed in pajamas, late at night, in the bad part of town, a block away from the orphanage, and running in the direction away from the orphanage.  I just caught a brief glimpse of her while passing from the other direction in my car, but there was no doubt in my mind—a runaway for sure.  But what a fleet-footed waif she was with thighs pumping and feet barely touching the ground!  She sent chills up my spine as I beheld her vibrancy, her energy engaged in her quest for freedom and  wilderness.  And then she turned the corner and was gone.


    A little further down the street, as I continued driving in the direction I was initially going, I encountered the frantic social workers.  They were running, too, but already worn out and no match for the wildering waif.  As they saw me approach, they flagged me down.  *Oh hell*, I thought, *this is always how I get involved….*


    Sure enough, they, confirmed her status as a break-away.  And pleaded, pleaded for assistance as the police had not yet arrived and they feared that that girl with her phenomenal speed would be long gone with no trace by time the cops showed up.


     “Okay,” I said to one of them, “get in.”  I then did a  180 and bee-lined back to the corner where I’d last seen her.  But she was  already gone.  Up and down the adjoining streets and alleys there was no sign of her—no body in flight.  All that was left unexplored was a dark, dead-end alley that culminated in  a brace of barb wire fence erected to threateningly detach the corridor provided for the train tracks.  As I drove up to the fence I was thinking “no way she could have gotten over that,”  but I was wrong!  There she was on the other side, already 50 yards down the track—a fleeting spectre of unbridled vigor.


    The social worker got out of my truck and stood at the fence screaming for her to come back.  Already in motion halfway up the fence, I stopped to the ask the social worker one question: “What’s her name?”  “Shawna,” was the reply.  Then I was up on the wire.  Seat of my pants ripped but… up, over, and…down on one foot.  And running before the other foot even landed.  Yeah, running like a paratrooper on a night jump as I hit the ground.  Poor Shawna!  Now stalked  by a running fool with automaton feet, she had no chance to get away…except… whenever I “run for the money,” my mind always drifts.  And so I started thinking about how as a child I never ran away but always dreamed about it.  And a voice inside whispered “It’s not too late.”  I would catch her—no doubt about that.  But what if I just reached out, took her hand, and continued to run?  Would she run with me?  Of course, she would!  Two runaways!!  How joyously my adrenalin-heightened imagination was playing with that notion.  And then a deadening realization brought me back to ground: one runaway and one kidnapper!  Ha!  it was too late for me.  And, soon, too, for her as the distance between us had closed to 20 feet.  “Shawna, hon, I love to run.  And you’re fast, but I’m faster and I’ll be right there,” I forewarned.


    She never stopped running until I snatched her hand like someone overreaching for the baton in a relay race.  And then she started crying, “I want to go home.  Please let me go home.”  Blabbering, balling her eyes out.  And I thought, ah man, what if I let her go?  No—in this neighborhood she’d likely be killed and/or raped before the end of the night.  And even if she got home, if there was still a home, might that not, too, be a dreadful fate?  No—even though I hated playing “authority”, I knew too little and it was too late.   I led her back to the arms of the social worker who brushed her hair back caringly, gave her a big hug, and said, “Shawna, doll, it will be alright.”

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