Father Damien looked into the liquid peace in Joshua’s eyes and saw the light of innocence reflect through his soul. He felt the familiar tug at his heart that always preceded the sinking feeling; the feeling of helplessness and falling away from God when he realized the innocence of the condemned man. He looked over at Nathan who was going down the stairs to his position at the lever below.

Nathan was hidden behind the black shroud of his executioner’s mask. Only Father Damien knew his real identity. Nathan taught Joshua’s children everyday and would teach them again tomorrow. “What will become of them?” he wondered. “How will I be able to look them in the eye tomorrow, knowing that today I killed their father?”

The same way that he had looked at countless others over his five year term as the town’s executioner. His right shoulder began throbbing, a physical manifestation of Nathan’s emotional turmoil that always occurred just before pulling the lever and spelling the final doom for the accused. As he approached the lever, he looked up at Joshua for one last time.

Joshua stood calmly on the platform. He had refused the hood they offered him. He wanted to cherish these moments, his last moments on earth. The anger and disillusionment had passed away as his spirit prepared to flee from this final betrayal and take him to his heavenly home. Gone was the worry about Mary Kate. He knew that God would take care of her and the children.

He found her face at the front of the crowd and smiled down on her. Next, he searched the crowd for Andrew. Joshua wanted Andrew to know that he forgave him, but when John spotted him, Andrew wouldn’t meet his gaze.

Andrew stood to the side of the crowd, lewdly looking at Mary Kate and undressing her with his eyes. It wouldn’t be long now before she was his, he thought. There was just one more loose end to be tied up, but perhaps that drooling old idiot could be left in the hands of his own demons. It was certain that this loose end was quickly becoming unraveled by his daily intake of whiskey!

How much had he seen that night? It didn’t really matter. In the three months since that night, in back of the tavern, Elliot had moved from his lowly status as town drunk to village idiot. His vacant stares and vague mutterings were little cause for concern or attention from the town folk who, with their eyes averted, would quickly pass by him without a word.

Elliot stood in the shadow that the tavern cast over the alley between it and what had been his dry goods store. The ghosts of that night were always at his back, ready to pounce — ready to resurrect his decaying memory of the night when whiskey and cowardice had kept him in the shadows in the back of these very buildings; the night Andrew had brutally raped and bludgeoned his own wife.

Elliot’s presence had gone unnoticed until, on seeing her blood spatter on the tavern wall, his stomach wrenched itself into a tight knot and then loosening had spewed the night’s intake of alcohol on the street around him. On straightening up and turning around to face her attacker, Elliot’s feeble attempt to help the dying Alicia fell flat when Andrew’s vicious kick rendered him unconscious.

On waking, Elliot had seen Joshua bending over Alicia, but in his addled state of mind, he confused the identities of the two brothers. It wasn’t until days later, after his statement had been taken, that Elliot had been sufficiently coherent to piece together the real events of that night.

“But I had my reputation to consider! I couldn’t let the whole town know that I was too drunk to tell one brother from another!”

So, in the following months, Elliot drowned his memories of that night in a stream of whiskey; losing not only his reputation, but also his business, his family, his self-respect and finally his soul. If only he had hearkened to her cry, a cry not unlike the one he heard this very minute as Mary Kate exchanged one final agonizing look with her condemned husband.

Mary Kate didn’t need to look into Joshua’s eyes to see his innocence. She knew it just from knowing him.

She had felt the tenderness of his touch and was touched in turn, by the gentle love he bestowed on her and their children. This man, whose strong arms had held her close so many times in the last thirteen years, could never have used his strength to violate and bludgeon another woman.

She didn’t know the whole truth of that night. She only knew that the circumstances surrounding it had changed her circumstances and the lives of her children forever.

In their final look at each other, Joshua read Mary Kate’s vow to find out that truth and clear his good name — even if it took her last breath to do so.

There’s no better way to get rid of the blues than looking at a blue sky! Today is the first day in a week that I woke up to one and it is a very welcome sight.

For the last week, Winona and surrounding towns have been deluged with sheets of rain at least once a day. Over the week-end many areas contended with five to over eleven inches of rain in just a few hours. As a result of the storms, many area homes were completely lost and many area businesses suffered damage that is near irreparable. Last Saturday night Winona was hit with a storm so strong that the rain formed currents of water that literally coursed down the sidewalks and streets of the town.

My friend, Suzanne, missed all the excitement. The day before the storm, Friday, was the day Suzanne finally gave in to the intruder that violated her body and coursed through her internal organs like a torrent of rain. Friday, my friend died of cancer. Although she wasn’t a smoker, her cancer started as a small, microscopic cell in her lungs. It was first detected in her liver and eventually metastasized and sent over a dozen of its wayward children to her brain. Still, Suzanne was a fighter. The medical community gave her just six months to live, but she prevailed through nearly two years of radiation, chemotherapy, and homeopathic treatments… until last Friday.

I didn’t see much of my friend these last few months. Should I have called and disturbed her when she was sleeping or should I have just dropped by, even though she may have been unprepared to receive visitors? At the time the choices were too hard to make so I took the easy way and chose to do nothing. Today I feel guilty as I enjoy the blue sky that Suzanne didn’t get the chance to see.

Today I’m left with enjoying the blue sky and hoping that wherever Suzanne is, she can look down and forgive me. I’m hoping that wherever she is, she is enjoying blue skies today.