A Veteran of the Firing Squad, Upon his Retirement

Nevertheless, my innocence remains a possibility. For though I have shot at five hundred men and seen each one fall dead at twenty yards on the hard ground before me, yet it may be that each had not his blood and death by me. A clever man he, who dreamed up the ruse of the random blank round; in him I have found salvation. For when I am dead and called to account, and face the host of saints long-gone, who turn their light away, appalled at the corpses that cry as souls cannot, “Damnation! Damn him! He is death” – When I face the Giver of Life and He asks what reason I have to pass into that place where we cannot remember our human disgrace, I will say that I prayed as I pulled every trigger and believed with the weight of my life in belief for the chance of the guilty man once to be free for the rifle I fired to be stopped with my grief for the man who lay dead to have no hate for me.  The lottery of the empty cartridge offered me hope and that hope is with me, with every thought of the dead men whose eyes bled my tears to the floor: if my Saviour will knock, I will open the door.

 

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