Savior Complex

Little Bird says I have a “savior complex.”

I’m shocked! Shocked, I tell you!”

Not really. She’s right, of course. Like her mother, she has the unique ability to always be right where I’m concerned. Sometimes I wonder if they’re not different aspects of the same person. Between mothers and daughters, that’s not unusual.

It’s not unusual between fathers and sons, either. Daddy and I never once discussed saving anybody or anything. It was simply a matter of citizenship, duty, and manliness.

“The Lord has blessed you, Buddy. It’s your obligation to return it.”

At church, Tish Hughes and I spun tales of the dead. She blessed me with that. I mentioned a small part of one of the more painful experiences I ever had with my dad.

One day, Daddy called me into his office, saying, “Sit down, Buddy.”

Not, “Have a seat, Buddy.” or “Make a drink, Buddy.” or “Where’s your sister, Buddy?” or even “Take this to your momma, Buddy.” Just. “Sit down, Buddy.”

“This isn’t known yet, so it’s of the utmost importance that you not discuss it.” He said.

“Oh shit.” I thought. Were we in trouble? We’d been having trouble with the GSA because a former employee told them we sold laboratory cabinets to dealers for less than what we charged the federal government. (Terribly legal, by the way. We just needed Bill Goodman to rough them up a bit.) It wasn’t that, though.

“Earlier today, somebody kidnapped Mrs. Hearin.” He said.

This was pretty late in the day. I had a date. Maybe not the best date, but a date. I was gonna get smashed. Now, this.

I’ll be honest with you, I barely knew Annie Laurie Hearin. She was an older social lion in a town full of older ladies and social lions. Her health hadn’t been so great. Her husband was a legend. An absolute legend, both to Mississippi and the Campbell Family.

Daddy and Bob Hearin both thought I told dirty jokes well. Bob Hearin would come by Missco on Saturday afternoons when Daddy worked without a tie, but Mr. Hearin didn’t. He had both a tie and a cigar. You had to watch Bob Hearin. He had a reputation for flicking the ash from his cigar into your coffee. It was his way of establishing dominance.

A lot of my dirty jokes came from a Redd Foxx album. “Tell the one about the old women at the zoo.” Mr. Hearin thought it was funny as hell. Those were happier days. Better days. Days with less pain.

Mr Hearin was surrounded by JPD, the FBI, and his family. Brum Day, Leon Lewis, Billy Neville, and Rowan Taylor met at Momma’s house because they couldn’t be with Mr. Hearin.

Rowan had a car radio with this huge battery that he could take inside. It sat on the TV. Daddy had been in High School with JPD Chief Jim Black. He called twice. The men sat in the sunroom Daddy had just built. Momma and I sat in the kitchen, smoking and drinking, and waiting. I called my date.

“Hey. Something, um, something’s come up. I can’t meet you.” She said she’d go without me. I said something about how I’d try to meet her later if I could. She made it pretty clear she couldn’t care less.

“Hey Buddy! Bring me some ice.” The call came from the sunroom. “Two,” said Rowan. “Coffee,” said Mr. Lewis.

Delivering orders like a waiter, I saw Brum staring out the plate-glass windows to Momma’s shade garden. “Can I get you anything?”

“Just leave the bottle.” He said.

Returning with the bottle, I heard Brum say, still not facing his friends.

“You know, each of us could get on the phone and order two hundred men to spend the night looking for Annie Laurie.”

“They won’t let us,” Daddy said. Meaning the FBI.

I wanted to stay with them. Not because I wanted to hear the gossip, which I guess would be news soon, or that I got something out of being around powerful people, but because these were the most important men in my life on a very personal level. When I was a child, Brum used to dress up like Santa and ask what I wanted for Christmas. Mrs. Lewis baked the Swiss roll we had every Christmas morning. God knows how many times I drove Rowan home, then picked him up the next day to get his car. Until my shoulders outgrew his inventory, most of my clothes came from Billy Neville at the Rogue.

They were in pain, serious pain. Bob Hearin was their friend, but he was also their master, and his gentle wife was either in the hands of criminals or dead, and we were among the very few people in Jackson who knew about it.

The next day, the FBI decided to let the media know that the rumors they heard were true. Annie Laurie Hearin, seventy-three years old, had been kidnapped. A week and a half later, Bob Hearin made a statement to the press:

“My name is Robert Hearin. My wife Annie Laurie was taken from our home over 10 days ago. My children and I have done everything humanly possible to obtain her release. My children and I appeal to whoever has my wife that she may be safely returned to us. Thank you.”

The reality of situations like this is why Daddy infested, not just me, but all of us with this “Savior Complex.” To me, it’s not complex at all. It’s a way of reinvesting in the world what had been given to me.

Annie Laurie Hearin was never found. Daddy died in his office, writing his best friends about fishing. Billy Neville lost his business and his wife, and then he died. Brum died slowly and painfully from ALS. Jane Lewis also died slowly and painfully from ALS. Rowan and Leon died of regular old man things. Bob Hearin never laughed at one of my jokes again, though I told him several.

I’m not dead. Not yet. Little Bird and I will get a beer soda tomorrow night. I’ll close my eyes, saying a prayer for her mom before then, before getting a few hours sleep for myself, fitful or not.

I’m not a savior. I’m just a dude. A dude in a world that doesn’t always make sense, but always has someone suffering in it.