An Innocent Victim of Blind Justice

by Kevin Sweeney

I’ve been thinking of Dr. Richard Kimble, not Harrison Ford
in the movies but David Janssen, the old TV Richard, what
he taught me the year I turned l5 as my family began again
in a small town where we’d never be happy, living in an
apartment but soon a new house in a subdivision as my father
tried to help my sister and me go on without our mother,
dead suddenly two years earlier. On a small TV in an extra

bedroom, Monday night at l0, I watched “The Fugitive.”
Fifty years later I think that title worthy of Camus, but in l963
I knew nothing of strangers, rebels, plagues and not enough,
about The Fall. I knew my father had fallen; sometimes
I heard him wailing in the bathroom like a wounded animal.

David Janssen had this mannerism, a twitch of his mouth,
a small concession to anguish, although he was a Stoic who
understood it didn’t matter he hadn’t killed his wife, that
a one-armed man had stolen everything. He would have to
go on without the consolation of irony, take crummy jobs,

be ready to leave if pursuit came close, never tell anyone
he was a doctor, had lived something more than this menial
life, waiting to reclaim his innocence. Meanwhile he was
the stranger upon whose kindness others could depend.

In high school English I learned which Americans had won
the Nobel Prize, not knowing I’d one day turn to Greek
tragedy the way some people inhabit favorite cafés. I only
knew I’d be tired Tuesday morning, facing a long bus ride
and derision from older boys. But watching Richard Kimble

in black and white I began my education with a great mentor,
his mouth twitching, another indignity absorbed. None of
it was fair but Richard Kimble kept facing the day and its
iniquities as Lt. Gerard kept chasing him, never grasping
the magnitude of what had happened to an innocent man.
I kept the vigil those dark nights with Richard Kimble.
And with my father who’d lost his wife too. Sometimes
I’d go into the bathroom and hold him. He’d blow his nose,
wipe clean his glasses then go back into life, too busy
to ponder justice though I suspected he’d feel better
if once in a while his mouth might slightly twitch.