Dragonfly by Jax Hill 

See where justice gets you,” Torstein said. “Ulcers, alcoholism. Your dog’s leg broken.”

“You’re not blaming justice for what happened to Tartan?” I asked.

“I’m not blaming anyone,” he said. “I just wish that Sig, and the person who did this to Tartan, too, and all of us, could understand each other, and understand what justice really is ... and what love can do.”

“What can it do?” Franz asked. “It can’t mend Tartan’s leg, and it can’t get Sig off the sauce.”

Torstein smiled. “It is mending Tartan’s leg. Sig’s love rushed him and the animal to the vet. Sully’s love got Tartan to calm down and sit still. It’s not instantaneous, maybe, but it’s powerful. And it could get Sig off the sauce, too, if he trusted in it. Or it could at least show him that there’s a way to get off the sauce.”

He reached out to where Tartan was sitting with Sully and scratched the dog’s head. The little stump of a tail wagged like crazy, but he didn’t jump up and try to run around as he normally would have. Maybe he was still feeling the anesthesia, or maybe he understood how important it was to take things easy for a while. He was a smart dog.

“But Torstein,” Bruiser said, “I can’t see what you’re proposing ... what would it look like?”

“It looks like you, Bruiser. It looks like a man reawakened to what’s really important in life.”

Bruiser shook his head. “I know what happened to me,” he said slowly. “But I don’t think that the people I strong-armed for 30 years would think it was right that I walked away from the life scot-free.”

“Because you have a good heart, and you’re looking at it from the point of view of the victim. You’re putting yourself in their shoes and wondering how you would feel. But let’s try that trick from another viewpoint. Suppose Franz there had heard some juicy information about you — skimming from the collection money maybe — and he reported it to Nikolai and you got your nose broken, and Franz got a promotion. Then years later, you both land here, with me, and you know that Franz is the guy responsible for your nose getting broken. What do you do?”

Bruiser thought for a moment, looked at Franz and smiled. To Torstein he said, “Me, now? Today? Or me back the first day I met you?”

“Either you. The first day you met me or today, what’s the difference? Let’s say the moment you took some sunflower seeds and started conversing with me. Suppose the next person you saw with me was Franz.”

“Well, I ...” He paused and thought another moment. “It’s different,” he said. “As soon as I met you, everything changed.”

“Exactly!” Torstein said.

“What Franz had done, if he’d really done that, would have seemed so insignificant, compared to what was happening at the moment I met you ... I think we would have laughed about it.”

“Exactly!” Torstein said again.

“But Torstein, you don’t think there’s a way people who have been viciously victimized can somehow laugh about it with their enemies, do you?” Pete asked.

“I know there is. It’s a hard road, and nobody wants to take it. But look at Corrie ten Boom. Who read The Hiding Place? Years after being tortured and nearly killed in a Nazi concentration camp, she was able to embrace one of the guards with genuine love. And why? Because of what Bruiser said. What was happening inside her at that moment so far overshadowed the horrors if the past, she was able to let it go, to fully and freely forgive.”

“Even if you were good enough to forgive someone for torturing you — or for ratting you out to the boss,” Franz said with a funny grin and a glance at Bruiser, “you wouldn’t be good enough to forgive someone hurting your mother or wife or your child. It wouldn’t be natural.”

“What’s natural?” Torstein said. “And who says you have to be ‘good enough’ to forgive? You have to be loving enough. But I think you certainly can learn to forgive — and love — someone who has hurt your family. Look at Steve Saint. Who read End of the Spear? His father was horribly murdered by some Indians in Ecuador ... years later, Steve had not only forgiven the murderers, but one of them had adopted him as a grandson there in the jungle. It is possible to forgive, and everyone comes out better off. Steve had a new family, and his ‘grandfather’ was able to make up for the horrible thing he’d done. If they’d followed the natural course of human justice, Steve would have had bitterness instead of a grandpa, and the grandpa would have been dead. How would that kind of justice be of any use?”