A Tragic Hero Remembers

It was a lot like being in jail. Some people called him a hero, but he sure didn’t feel like one. He just did what seemed like the right thing to do at the time. That’s all. The worst part is that he could remember it all in startling detail.

Stuart was born with a surprisingly good memory. It was a help when he played card games, but it made the games too easy for him. It helped him in school, all the way through college. He didn’t need to study much. Information just stayed with him.

He was pretty sure he didn’t have an eidetic memory, like Marilu Henner or the character “Sheldon” from The Big Bang Theory. He just remembered things more accurately and for a longer time than most people.

It wasn’t a big deal to him. He wasn’t especially social and when people found out about his special ability they were interested at first, but then it seemed to put them off. It was like they couldn’t see him except for his memory.

Some teachers and others said Stuart was “on the spectrum,” which is their way of saying he had some form of autism. He didn’t like the phrase. Whenever somebody referred to him that way, he felt like they were tossing him into a basket and discounting him as a person.

Instead of choosing a profession where his memory would be an advantage, he decided to become a landscaper and a groundskeeper. He excelled in his jobs, and soon he was working for a firm that managed the historic grounds at Camp David, Maryland. There he took in all the comings and goings of the president, his family, and all the politicians and advisors who spent time with the president every weekend. He found that all to be very interesting. He kept up with the news, so he knew who the visitors were.

Then, one July Monday everything changed. He was replanting some coneflowers in the heat of the Mid-South summer when several large black vans pulled into the compound. Men with guns scrambled out and entered the buildings where the president had been just the day before. They ran around and looked everyplace, and they finally left, after taking many boxes of what Stuart assumed to be evidence of some sort.

One of the officers interviewed Stuart for a few minutes, along with all the other workers. He asked about if Stuart knew who had visited the president that weekend. Stuart told him. He then asked about the prior weekend. Stuart remembered that too.

Eventually the officers all left. Then things went back to normal with the staff getting ready for the next presidential visit.

The next day, a black Suburban SUV drove in to Camp David and two FBI agents asked Stuart to go with them, so he did. They took him to FBI headquarters and interviewed him again – this time asking who had been to see the president going back many months. Then they asked him to go to a lab where a woman wearing a white lab coat did some memory tests with him. Stuart figured she wanted to prove that his memory was as good as he said it was. It was.

Then Stuart was asked to do a deposition under oath about the people he saw coming and going from Camp David. He knew most of the names because they were well known people, or he heard someone referring to them by name.

At one point Stuart couldn’t name a couple of the people, but he asked for a piece of paper and drew them with a pencil. Stuart also drew very well. From those drawings the FBI people identified those unnamed visitors.

Well, after they took Stuwart back to his apartment, he turned on the television and learned that the president and his advisors were denying that they had ever talked with quite a few of the people Stuart saw entering the meeting rooms at Camp David. It turned out that some of those people were foreign agents, some were wealthy donors, and others were people associated with a complicated scheme to take full and permanent control over the White House and the nation.

They were very powerful people and Stuart felt faint when he realized that his good memory was going to be used to put the president and some of those people in jail. Stuart didn’t think they would be very happy with him and would do anything to keep him from testifying in court.

The days went by, and the government sent more people to protect Stuart. They decided it was too dangerous for him to do his work, so they took him to a “secure” location somewhere near Washington. He didn’t know where. They blindfolded him in the Suburban so he wouldn’t know.

When it came time for him to testify, they drove him to the courthouse in an armored personnel carrier and surrounded him with soldiers as he walked to the building. Shots rang out as a sniper tried to kill him, but the body armor he’d been told to wear saved his life.

His testimony was easy. He just answered the questions. The defense lawyer tried to discredit him, but she couldn’t. The defendants looked worried.

When he left the stand, some agents took him to a room with a lot of books on the wall. Somebody moved one of the books and the wall turned into doors. They went through the doors to a private elevator which took them down to the entrance of a tunnel. From there they went to a house where Stuart was asked to get into the trunk of a car in the garage. That car zoomed off to Reagan National Airport where Stuart, wearing a fake beard and sunglasses, boarded a private jet that took him to someplace in Arizona, he thought.

Now, months later, there is a new president. The old one, and a lot of other people are in jail. Stuart lives in a nice house that is surrounded by 12-foot-high walls. Inside the walls, unseen by passers-by, is a 10-foot electrified fence with razor wire at the top. There is a hardened steel dome that covers the house at night. A squad of highly trained military people watch out for Stuart’s safety.

A lot of people called Stuart a hero for testifying against those evil people. He even won a large cash prize for what he did. It didn’t feel heroic to him. They asked him questions and he used his memory to tell them the answers. The powerful people he identified have promised to find Stuart, torture him, and kill him. They are very smart people and could probably infiltrate his little compound that he calls “Camp Stuart.” As hard as the authorities try to keep him safe, he knows it’s just a matter of time.

So, other than a few guards, Stuart has no friends, except for Barney, his cat. They stay in the house, except to get some sun by the pool in the morning. He has everything he could possibly want except his freedom.

He was just getting to know a girl when all this first happened. They said she was a security risk, so he never saw her again. His keepers have suggested the possibility of hiring female companions for his “needs,” but that felt wrong. His parents don’t know where he is, but he can talk to them on the phone over a secure line from time to time. He doesn’t know where they are, either. For their protection they were put into hiding as well.

Stuart, the hero, watches television and goes on-line to see what the world is up to through a secure server. He sleeps. He uses his memory to remember everything that happened in his life – all the good and the bad. He remembers it so clearly that it hurts.

He still gets letters forwarded to him from people who thank him for saving the country and for being so heroic. He just shakes his head. He knows he is just a weird guy with a great memory who told the truth.

He thinks a hero is someone who puts him or herself at risk to help others. Firefighters, police, soldiers… and so many other regular people who are just living their lives and sacrificing for their families and neighbors. He doesn’t see himself as equal to those sorts of people. He knows he’s just a guy with a great memory who won’t be able to make any more memories because everyone calls him a hero.