No Mercy

She sits beside the window in her efficiency apartment. She reads the newspaper in the dying summer light. A fan, turned on high, several feet away, battles the hot summer air where she sits. The air conditioner broke several weeks ago. She does not have the money to fix or replace it.

She reads the newspaper story about the President’s past substance abuse. She thinks about Jefferson, her dead son. Gone many years now.

She tried to raise him well. She did all a mother could do. He was born retarded and that made it all the more difficult in this bad neighborhood.

The neighborhood was all bad boys angry at life. Jefferson had been a good boy. The bad boys had tricked him.

They told him to stand by the door and keep watch. The bad boys then robbed and killed the store owner and his wife. Jefferson had no idea what they were going to do when he went for the ride with them and walked into the store.

They all, of course, got caught.

Jefferson was sentenced to death along with the others even though Jefferson had never been in trouble before. Lord, he was retarded too. That meant nothing.

She appealed right up until the day the Governor decided he would not grant Jefferson clemency. Then they killed him.

The Governor had become President. And she had become old and alone.

She wonders what drugs the President had taken that day, the day he let her boy die.

She sees his smirk and glee as he faces the television cameras after the execution.

“We will show no mercy to brutal murderers,” he said.