Bad Samaritans

He was terribly frightening, make no mistake about that, lying there bleeding, a sight to make your whole body turn cold. Of course, you could only really see him if you looked. He was half-hidden in some shrubbery -- just a leg sticking out, an odd groan now and then. It would take a morbid curiosity, a desire beyond the normal to know whether he were alive or dead to investigate. And most of us are not so curious, not so eager to shoulder another's troubles.

Blame us if you like, but don't act as if you don't understand why we did it.

We are always painted as selfish or self-righteous, too wrapped up in ourselves to stop and help an obvious need. But I assure you: we were too frightened, not too proud. We weren't just busy; we were afraid. It was fear which blurred our peripheral vision and quickened our step. It was self-protection, not self-interest, which made us assure ourselves that we had seen no movement in the bushes and, anyway, if we had, it was certainly an animal.

The dead or dying man might well have been a trap. Everyone knows that there are bandits in the hills. It would take only a moment too long of too real an interest in the wounded man for them to spring, to beat and strip you too. And then you would be no better off than he.

Maybe he was pretending, even, feigning hurt to draw innocents off the road, like a coyote will a dog, so that the others can encircle it, and feed off their cousin's flesh. And if he wasn't pretending? Well, then. This road is hardly deserted. Surely another less busy, less connected person will come along to see to him.

I am weak and a woman, we thought to ourselves, particularly vulnerable. I am no doctor, anyway. I would probably make his situation worse by twisting a broken limb or unstaunching a wound. If he's not going to get well on his own, then I certainly won't make him any better -- and if he will, then what use am I? I have children to think of, friends, elderly parents -- what would those I am tied to do if I were set upon and killed in the hills? I will certainly report this to the proper authorities when I come to town, we assured each other. If their offices are open, anyway, and if they believe me, and if they're not too busy with the crime rife in our own city.

To take him to a doctor would be an expense we simply could not afford. And why should we? We didn't get ourselves jumped. We know how to be cautious, to travel only in daylight, only together. He invited it, going alone like he must've been. He must have people who will wonder what has become of him. Or, if he doesn't, he must have lost them through his own fault. They should have seen to him. What alchemy, exactly, transforms a single man's foolishness into a public responsibility? This is why we stick together, so that we don't put other people in such an uncomfortable, even embarassing, position.

As we lie in our beds at night, thinking it all over, our hearts twist within us. We turn and turn and secretly think, whisper to our drowsy spouses beside us, that that showy Samaritan only did it to make us look bad. All he did was make a normal response to inconvenience and unseemliness and danger seem shabby -- sinful, even.

He was heroic, certainly, we wouldn't rob him of that distinction. He will no doubt make the news -- shining in white robes, unafraid for himself, lavishing his effort and his wages on a stupid stranger, even now comatose in our hospital, using up tax dollars.

But we comfort ourselves. We take comfort, because we know the man beat up and left for dead was one of ours, not one of his. We know that the bleeding man was like us.

And this knowledge is the very reason we could shrug off the demand of his moans by hurrying along a trifle more briskly on the other side. Because we know he would have too. It was an exchange we all understood. Generosity is good only to a point, only within what is reasonable. To go beyond that is to heap foolishness on foolishness.

And, as I said, we were afraid. We couldn't have helped anyway.

Now, on top of our hurried lives, our many struggles, our lurking fears, our tired attempts at decency, we are ashamed. We are ashamed of ourselves, and cannot look one another in the eye.

It was he who did this to us, the "good" one. And we wish with all our shame-filled hearts that he hadn't come.

If he came along again,

and we recognized him from afar off,

walking down the road,

just at dusk,

alone,

I think we might set upon him,

rough him up,

rob him of the money he is so careless of.

We might stop our ears to what he has to say, and strip him of those fine garments he is so eager to spread over strangers. Maybe we would leave him lying in a ditch, to think over what he did to us as night comes. He might grow cold as the mountain road. Let that teach him to leave us well enough alone.