Thomas Pembroke was not a hero. He had never had heroic thoughts or daydreams. Far, far from it. "Hero" was exactly opposite of what Thomas was. Most people would evaluate Thomas and feel justified in declaring him a "coward." That's because we're taught that everyone should have some boundaries and standards that we shouldn't allow to be violated. We should tolerate only so much and no more. What comes after "no more", is a gray area that encompasses, sending food back to a restaurant's kitchen, pushing back against bullies, and homicidal road rage.
If you are prepared to tolerate absolutely anything, you are called a coward. That's the way it works. Almost.
A brief side-trip. If you are prepared to tolerate anything because of well thought out principles, then you may be considered a Saint, a great thinker, and very brave because by tolerating anything, you protect the sanctity of your truth, the fundamental concept of your philosophy, like Gandhi or Jesus Christ. But, if you are prepared to tolerate anything because you are afraid of everything, then you are a coward and held to be the lowest form of life. Imagine someone who is so afraid that they allow themselves to be insulted, pushed around, robbed, enslaved, taken and tortured, and eventually killed like an animal for sport. The difference between the two identical ends is the cause, the motivation, the philosophy. The difference is so slight sometimes as to be measured against the width of the human soul. That's enough of that.
Thomas was a coward. He'd be the first to tell you. He despised himself for it. He was ashamed, always had been, but he felt there was nothing he could do about it. He'd tried. It was akin to trying to be taller or shorter or somebody else. He tried hard to be someone else, anyone else. But he was never anyone but Thomas the Coward.
Thomas couldn't watch movies or read books because stories contain peril and conflict in them. Thomas couldn't stand that. Thomas was frightened and nervous, of almost everything. He didn't need writers to make entertainment out of the horrible ways to die at sea, or how easily you could be crushed by a bus, or how the serial killer waits near the gas station or where the terrorist might place the bomb. He had a good imagination, and that was not "good" for him. He saw danger everywhere, and the first part of his life convinced him that his perceptions were correct.
When he was young he was taught by the children around him. How else would they respond to someone who cringed without even defending himself when you spoke to him? They would push, and Thomas would fold. They would taunt, and Thomas would run and cry. They would chase and beat, and Thomas would curl up and absorb the blows best he could, and wait for his attackers to tire or get hungry.
But even children will tire of pursuing someone who is immobile with fear, and will move on with their own lives.
Thomas' parents were at first concerned for their only child's safety and well-being. Good for them, you say. They did what you'd expect parents to do. They went to the teachers and principals and complained. They went to the parents of the children who habitually picked on Thomas and reasoned with them. They went to the police, to the parish priest, to anyone who would even pretend to listen. They prayed for him and they threatened him and they bribed him. Nothing helped. Thomas came to fear his parents as much as he did the rest of the world.
They enrolled him in karate and boxing classes. They took him to therapists and doctors. They put him on medications and even tried several rounds of shock therapy. They sent him to camps; for fat kids (he wasn't actually fat), introverted kids (that was a lot of quiet, isolated fun), ADHD kids (a nightmare for everyone) and inner-city kids (he left there in an ambulance and there was a lawsuit that closed the camp). He was counseled with tough love, soft love, reverse psychology, outward bound, role play, and every Pop-Culture cure, supplement, diet, and regimen guaranteed to "Make a Man" of your problem child. They even sent him to a military school which quickly became like Guantanamo Bay for him,
His parents eventually accepted that their only son was a disgrace to the Pembroke name or any other name, for that matter. And they never let him forget their disappointment.
Thomas was such a coward that he dared not harm or even think ill of another person. He tried to live so as not to harm any living thing, or even any non-living thing. Not because he loved or respected everything, but because he feared everything. When he was very young, he would try to run from immediate danger, but he stopped that when realized he might actually be running into even worse situations without thinking. After that time, he preferred to close his eyes and brace himself for what would happen.
I know most of you think that his story should wrap up soon with something like, "... and then the day came when Thomas stood up to the bully and pushed back and his life changed, and he was never, ever afraid again." If you imagine John Hurt reading that line, you can feel the warmth grow in your heart and your mind settles into a comfortable hum. Then you'll sigh deeply, having witnessed the redemption of Thomas, and give the story five Stars, maybe even recommend it to your family. We love happy endings and I wish that were the story.
He grew into his adulthood like this, carrying his crippling burden with him, barely concealed. Every decision he made or emotion he had was finely filtered through it. He accepted that his life would be spent in this prison that everyone told him he was responsible for building. He would never feel safe, ever. He was afraid to fall asleep because of what might happen or the nightmares he'd have. Afraid to go out, afraid to stay in. Afraid to even be heard crying in the night. Too broken to occupy his small place in the world, too intact to wake up dead one morning and have the torment over.
Thomas knew well the adage- "A coward dies a thousand deaths; the brave man dies but once." His parents had repeated it to him in hopes that such an awful realization would shake him out of his fearful state, but you can imagine the effect of such a pronouncement upon him. Thomas had keenly felt his thousand deaths, and a thousand more and a thousand again. He'd given himself up, and over, many times.
When he was 35, both his parents died of cancers within two months of one another. Prior to that, he had visited them every day and they had continued their pronouncements and warnings about not trying hard enough to change, from their deathbeds. When they died he cried for each of them as he had cried many times before during his life while contemplating their deaths.
The world had no place for, or interest in, someone like Thomas and it moved ahead without him.
You may think that you would not live that way, afraid of everything. You would rather die. You would take your own life if you were that afraid. Of course you would, because you're brave.
I told you all that so that I could tell you this.
In February of this year, Thomas turned 50 years old and couldn’t tell anyone. On the afternoon of his birthday, he accidentally stumbled into the midst of an armed robbery at the cash machine in front of a Credit Union branch, two blocks from his little apartment.
A disheveled young man, for reasons of his own, was robbing a young mother with an infant, at knife-point on the sidewalk by the cash machine. Thomas was walking past the bank but his attention was focused on the obvious danger of the enormous city bus pulling up to the stop near the bank entrance. Distracted by the bus and oblivious to the robbery, he walked right past the frightened woman and child, and collided with the armed man. The robber screamed at him and Thomas did what he always did when frightened, he froze and closed his eyes. The woman saw her chance and moved away with her child, toward the bus, and the robber, enraged, stabbed Thomas in the center of the upper abdomen with a vicious, upper thrust.
Most of the people on that side of the bus, along with the driver, saw the shocking incident. Thomas fell to the ground and curled up, best he could, with the knife still in him. The would-be robber ran off and was caught later that day thanks to eyewitness descriptions and closed-circuit TV video recording from the cash machine.
By the time the Medic-One van pulled up to the scene, Thomas had lost so much blood he could no longer see. He could only hear the voices around him. He heard the young mother and her baby crying and people from the bus consoling them. He heard people talking with each other and the police about what they'd seen and how shocking it had been.
He heard everyone saying that he, Thomas, had intervened in the armed robbery and saved the life of the mother and child and that it was the bravest, most selfless thing they'd ever seen.
When Thomas heard this, he thought the voices sounded a little bit like the voices of his parents, and then he died, right there, before he could be afraid of what came next.
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