“What we can talk about, is what justice truly means, the arguments surrounding the topic—injustice to fight injustice, the moral qualms with vigilantism, the emotional and psychological trauma associated with taking the law into one’s own hands, moral and ethical dilemmas surrounding the death penalty, I could go on…” He rolled his eyes, and students chuckled. I did too.
“So, Kane used to be a student in my evening class,” I continued. “He’d actually done his term paper on the topic of ethics surrounding vigilantism. He gave a copy of it to me prior to turning himself in, and his self-effacing and self-examining approach to the topic spurred me to hone my own dissertation topic to vigilantism, and very specifically, the ethics and even psychology surrounding it. I already knew I wanted to incorporate the psychology of victimization into my study of justice, but I ended up focusing my research on justice and vigilantism as a result of victimization.”
“You married your student?” a young gal asked, clearly having heard nothing else of what I’d said.
“Well … we weren’t in a relationship at that time,” I lied.
But then the class erupted into laughter, and my brain scrambled to figure out what I’d said that was so funny. Until I glanced to Kane just to see him mock scowling at me. He rolled his eyes, and I had to fight back the laughter then too.
“That’s not the point,” I continued quickly.
“She did, however, steal my term paper topic and use it as her dissertation topic,” Kane continued dramatically. “You guys caught that, right?”
“Wha—?”
“Well, you did,” he said sarcastically. “Just sayin’…”
And more laughter.
“I did not,” I said indignantly as I gaped at him.
His lips pursed into a small, very satisfied smile as his eyebrows shot up.
He held his free hand up in placation as his other hand still toyed with my backside. “I’m kidding. It’s a topic we’re both equally passionate about for good reason, and it was an amazing experience being interviewed by her for her project. We would go through interview questions during visitations or she’d mail me questions, and it was … cathartic—which is such a bullshit cliché word, but…”
My eyes bulged as I glanced at him. He was cussing in my classroom again. When he looked at me and caught my eyeball admonishment, he laughed.
“She’s sensitive to cuss words,” he said to the class. “Don’t mind her.” And he rolled his eyes again as students laughed once more. “My point is, it was amazing. Talking to her in such detail about a past we’d both experienced was…” He shook his head. “It helped me learn to talk about it, and it taught me I actually love talking about it. Umm…” He glanced at me as he contemplated something. “It also really helped me isolate my feelings on certain things.” He held the eye contact for a moment, and his lips pulled up slightly.
“The thing was,” he continued as he looked back to the students. “From the time I committed this crime to the time I found Helene again, I was doing everything in my power to destroy myself. I was spiraling out of control in a very self-destructive way. My behaviors, my actions, my lifestyle, none of it was acceptable. And yet, I couldn’t seem to give up the need to hurt myself. In fact, letting go of that was like recovering from an addiction—the need to feel pain was very strong. But I’m a smart man,” he remarked casually, and students smiled at his easy manner. “I knew my actions were being driven by guilt. I could see what I was doing, and I thought I understood it—even if I didn’t think I could change it.”
A sea of enthralled eyes stared back at him.
“But I was wrong. It was so much more complicated than that. And that realization was one of the first things I discovered about myself just through working on her dissertation questions and talking with her.”
“So if it wasn’t guilt, what was driving you?” a student asked even as she was still raising her hand.
“I was angry,” Kane said simply. “I was carrying more fury and rage than I knew what to do with. I was internalizing it and aiming it at myself, but I was … mad. One of the most poignant moments of this process for me was when Helene asked me if I would have killed the man if he hadn’t become confrontational.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I couldn’t answer that question,” he said bluntly. He looked at me again. “I couldn’t tell the woman I loved more than anything else in this world, who I wanted to marry and have children with, and who I wanted to trust me with her life and future whether I was capable of killing out of rage or not.” He swallowed harshly over a lump in his throat as he looked at me, and his brow flinched.