The Tattooed Heart Read Free

head.
    I had never seen anything like that wound. It was . . . what word would suffice? How can I describe the damage? How am I to explain without resorting to horror movie clichés?
    His face, from the hairline, down to the bridge of his nose, down to the place on his mouth where the lips dimple a little in the middle, and from there down to the bare white bone of his jaw, was no longer there.
    It was all too easy to see what he must have looked like if I simply duplicated and reversed the remainder of his face. But no sane person can see such a thing and calmly reconstitute what is no longer there. The outrage is too great. The anger that wells up inside you is too powerful. There is no looking at such a thing and reasoning, there is only the most profound sense of wrongness, of an unspeakable sin.
    Tears filled my eyes. Not because I knew the boy, I didn’t, not even because I could see the pain and sadness on the faces of those who had undertaken the heartrending job of wrapping him for burial, though I could. I cried because it was wrong. I cried because it should not be, should never be.
    Messenger did not cry, neither did his female counterpart. They both looked on with the clenched, stony resolve of those who are past crying but not yet past feeling.
    â€œWhat was his name?”
    â€œAimal,” the female answered. “His name was Aimal.”
    The reality around me had slowed to a stop. Now all the men were as frozen as the boy on the table. Hisshroud was gone and the men were held motionless in the act of cleaning the body with damp rags.
    Motionless tears hung on the cheeks of a man I took to be Aimal’s father. But as if he had read my mind—and he may well have—Messenger said, “That is not the father, that is Aimal’s uncle. The father is in America. As are those we must deal with.”
    â€œThe ones who killed Aimal?”
    Messenger shook his head. “The men who killed Aimal are not our concern.”
    â€œThen why are we here?” I asked. Was this soul-searing display unnecessary? Had I been burdened with yet another gruesome memory for no good reason?
    â€œThe wickedness we pursue is not murder, but murder’s source,” Messenger said. “It is hatred we pursue. Hatred.”

2
    WE DID NOT BID THE FEMALE MESSENGER GOOD-BYE. One second she was there and the next she was gone. And a second after that, we, too, were gone.
    There was a brick marker that read Theodore Roosevelt on a limestone banner and beneath it the words High School . I somehow knew we were in Iowa.
    The same combination of red brick and limestone comprised the school itself. The central portion was three stories tall, three generous stories, so that the structure was taller and more impressive than the simple number of floors might indicate. The wings extendedto left and right and were of just two floors each. There were architectural details rendered in stone—window framing, a stone railing across the roofline—that gave the school a slightly ornate look, an almost Old World look. It very nearly evoked Downton Abbey.
    Just before the front door was a tall flagpole. The Stars and Stripes snapped in a breeze stiff enough to ruffle the mature hardwood and fir trees that flanked the entrance and which were dotted haphazardly across the lawn.
    It looked like the very model of a high school—what a traditional high school ought to be.
    As usual, I had questions. As usual, I didn’t ask. It’s not that Messenger will never answer a question, but he prefers not to, and for whatever reason, I don’t want to nag at him. He’s the master, I’m the apprentice. I’ve accepted that. More or less. And as the teacher he gets to choose how and when to tell me things.
    Frustrating? Extremely.
    We walked at a normal pace across the lawn. Kids were pouring from buses that had pulled up in the parking lot. At the same time freshmen and sophomores and juniors were