How to Make the World a Better Place

Do your best. Do right. Be honest. Be compassionate. Help your neighbors in need.

That’s a decent life. Very Jimmy Stewart.

And if trouble came to town and threatened his family and friends, we all know what Jimmy would do. He’d stand up straight with his hat tipped back, squinting, and ask what he could do for them and whether they wouldn’t like to just move on.

But what if the trouble was bigger than a few men? What if it was all around, almost invisible, jumping out of the shadows in black masks and spiriting people away, people who weren’t expecting it, who didn’t think they’d done anything wrong, who were unprepared and defenseless.

If Jimmy were the sheriff, he’d run those bandits out of town. He’d rally the townfolk to help him.

Well, trouble has come to our town, and the sheriff isn’t Jimmy Stewart. Indeed, the sheriff is just the opposite, more like Black Bart.

Now what? People are cracking open their drapes and peering out to see what Bart is going to do. He and his gang are in the saloon getting liquored up, slapping the barmaid on the ass, shooting at the feet of the town lawyer, telling him to dance and laughing as he tries.

There’s no judge to hold Bart back. The judge is a circuit judge, and he’s somewhere else just now, out in the vast territory, god knows where.

Maybe Bart and his gang will raise hell, scare everyone for a bit, get heir sadistic kicks and move on. That’s what everyone peeking out the window between parted curtains is hoping.

Bart doesn’t leave though. Word goes out that he’s running a lawless town and desperados come from all over the territory. There are no rules. Bart and his boys do what they damn well please. They take the women, humiliate the men. Standing up to them seems hopeless. Worse than hopeless, lethal.

But then someone does. 

It’s the blacksmith, a hard man with a kind heart, or the lad not much older than a schoolboy with the reckless courage of the young. They set traps for Bart’s men. They steal their guns in the night. They cut loose their horses. And after each daring act of resistance, they hide in plain sight, going on about their business with the downcast gaze of obedience. Some of them are caught and shot. Some manage to slip out of town, but most stay, not out of fear but out of determination to save their town and their families and neighbors by undermining and routing out the pestilence that has descended upon them.

Did they succeed in taking back their town? Yes, but it took a long time and a lot of suffering. Was it worth it? Bart lies dead in an unmarked grave, or that’s the story that is told, but maybe he just slunk away in the night when he realized the town was stronger than he was, had more guts, had more to live for. The children of the blacksmith and the young lad who were the first resisters go to school in a new building erected on the site of the old saloon from which Bart unleashed his terror. They read about Bart in their school books the way they read about all history, with open and welcomed curiosity, and without fear. 

So what do you think, was it worth it?