Over the years, I am sure you have read Crime and Punishment and considered all the social issues related to crime and poverty. Today, as our society grapples with issues related to gun violence and our Bill of Rights, there is talk of an attempt to ban certain types of people from certain weapons. In our nation we also have other nations, nations within nations, namely the American Indians. Interestingly, sometimes all of these problems come together and make things even more complicated.
Okay, how about a little outdoor reading for you, maybe it could help if I assigned you a little reading assignment today? You see, there was a very good story titled; “Do you want me to shoot you?” by Raymond Abbott in the Journal of Creative Fiction, Issue 9, 1998, Edited by Lee Gurtkind, ISSN: 1070-0714.
This story is about two clergymen who had been shot, were working with local American Indians on the reservation. The Indians were quite upset about the way they were being treated and the inequality of the courts and laws when there were confrontations between Whiteman and Indians. Two young men shot members of the clergy, one had been killed. One had lived after the young American Indian who attacked with the pistol shot him in the buttocks as he walked out the door after fatally wounding the other member of the clergy.
The survivor tells the story, and there is a first-person narrative and a second-person narrator involved with those first-person quotes, while the clergyman tells the story without emotion and with full understanding of the earlier pent-up anger. , hostility and injustice of the courts and these problems of poverty in the reserve. The story takes place in Rapid City, Iowa, on the Pine Ridge Reservation and is actually a bit of historical fiction.
This story really makes one think about what is right and what is wrong and how punishment is administered and questions whether prison is relevant when the shooter and his friend must spend the rest of their lives in an unfair situation treated as citizens of second class. You don’t have to be a bloody-hearted left-wing thinker to understand or see the situation or to side with either side of the equation of equality or equal justice under the law, or what is fair and right or what which is not. Wiser, emotionless, and cool-headed Father Dillon breaks it all down in simple terms and allows the reader to decide.
This short story is excellent and makes you think, in fact, that that’s probably his intention and author Raymond Abbott definitely manages to put you front and center as if you were there to see the realities that we all face. I hope you enjoy. Nice work Raymond Abbott, excellent writing.
