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Six
, Assistant Editor
11-09-2008
“And you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears / Take the rag away from your face / Now ain’t the time for your tears.”
–Bob Dylan “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”
“What if you knew her / And found her dead on the ground / How can you run when you know?”
–Neil Young, “Ohio”
I’m going to ask a seriously difficult question today. I don’t expect you to necessarily be happy with it.
I don’t know that I have an answer to this question, and I don’t know that you do, either. And I wonder, almost on a daily basis now, if God will ever forgive us for the moments we spend hesitating to answer it.
Loretta Lynn Chaisson Lewis, Ernestine Marie Daniels Patterson, Kristen Elizabeth Gary Lopez, Whitnei Charlene Dubois, LaConia “Muggy” Brown and a sixth officially unidentified woman (though ask anyone on the street and you’ll get an answer) are dead.
My question is this: do we care?
Poor daughters caught in tragic lives, killed in brutal moments, destroyed in a methodical fashion, cut off from hope, numb from despair, oh so unbelievably lonesome in death - my question is: do...we...care?
Is this it? Will we get no public outcry? It’s not that the public doesn’t know. It’s the most talked about topic in every corner of this town. It is the crème de la crème of gossip. It’s the Mount Everest of watercooler conversations. We’re drowning in serial killer chic here in Jeff Davis Parish. And yet, we discuss it as if it were “The Young and the Restless,” some unbelievable, tawdry soap opera with over-the-top characters and silly plot twists.
For three years now, I’ve talked to people about this situation, and I’ve yet to meet anyone shocked or appalled. There’s pity, there’s interest, there’s curiosity, but there’s no moral outrage. There’s no movement to hold someone’s feet to the fire over these cases. There’s no sense of “What can we do to stop this?” thrumming like a live wire through our community.
Six bodies, zero answers, shrugged shoulders.
So now we have to turn to an even more difficult topic, one that we have all spoken of privately but would never dare to utter publicly. Now we have to talk about “the high-risk lifestyle.” Drugs. Prostitution.
On page one today, Kindra Brown, sister of victim LaConia Brown, publicly says for the first time what hundreds of people have only said privately to me (and probably to you) since 2005. Paraphrased here: “If this were a rich man’s daughter...”
At first, I rejected that idea. Police have to investigate every death, rich or poor. To say they take one more seriously than another at some point becomes ridiculous.
But there’s a strong ring of truth in Kindra’s words. If it were (insert prominent citizen’s name here)’s daughter, this community would implode with concern and I defy you to argue me on that point. Because it has been said to me (and probably to you) so often and in so many different voices, I know it’s true beyond the shadow of a doubt.
But it isn’t (prominent citizen’s daughter) we’re dealing with. It’s junkies and prostitutes - society’s castoffs. They were playing with fire and they got burned, and oh so sad it might be, but them’s the breaks, right?
These women can die because no one cares for them. They can continue to die because no one cares for them, because no one takes their plight seriously.
I understand the difficulty of helping those addicted to hard drugs. The impossibility of keeping drug addicts from ruining their lives has blasted many a relationship and broken many a heart. People who play with fire DO get burned.
My question is: do we care? Do we care enough to demand answers? Do we care enough to give answers when we know them? In a town sinking under the weight of its Christians, where is our strength to fight evil men? And can we summon it only for those we seem to like?
Six mothers’ daughters dead. Six fathers’ daughters dead. Six sinners. Six children of God with six million chances for forgiveness. Six souls. Six graves. Six voices. Six feet from your home. Six words in their last seconds: “Please God, don’t let me die.”
Six unbearably lonesome deaths.
Now is the time for your tears.
