A Tortoise in the Road by Driggs Warren;

Author:Driggs, Warren;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-63505-073-8
Publisher: North Loop Books

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A number of bizarre rules have developed over time concerning the killing of each other. A man is allowed to kill a kind stranger from a foreign country if his president declares war. Indeed, there is no penalty at all for such a thing. If a man has the ingenuity to kill an entire squadron of kind strangers he might even be honored with a parade. But if that man kills the same kind stranger a week after the politicians sign a peace treaty, he might be sentenced to the electric chair.

What if a perfectly sane man hides in the bushes and shoots a demented serial killer who is being led to the gallows? He will be hung next, even though his victim was a terrible human being who was about to be executed in any event. Not only that, but the executioners will be paid by the state for their labor when they kill him. It is all quite confusing.

There are exceptions to the rules, of course. There are always exceptions. But, generally speaking, it is wrong to kill a human being. And because a human being is a person, it is also against the rules for a person to kill himself. In fact, it’s a first degree felony. When the rules were made many years ago, if a man killed himself, his corpse would have been mutilated and his property would have been automatically forfeited to the King. If he failed in his suicide attempt, the law required that he be executed for having broken the anti-suicide law. “You have been convicted of trying to kill yourself, you wretched beast! Your sentence is death! Off with his head!”

Jenny was not a student of history, legal or religious. Yet she’d been taught that suicide was a sin. According to Mormonism, her body was a gift from God and her mortal life was a “testing period” to see how she’d do—a probationary time to evaluate how she measured up on the worthiness scale. No one, according to Jenny’s theology, had the right to evade these tests. Her faith, however, allowed an exception for someone who was plain crazy. But the “crazy” line is a fuzzy one, for there are many people who walk it, but aren’t certifiably crazy—maybe just eccentric.

Jenny, however, was not out of her mind. So the “crazy person” loophole didn’t apply to her. She could incur the wrath of God if she killed herself, sane as she was. For that reason, she considered her decision carefully before discussing it with anyone, even Clay.

Jenny knew her options were limited if she wanted to end her life. She would most likely require help. She didn’t know the sad dilemma illustrated by a fellow quad named Carlos, a thirty-year-old who lived in Colorado at the time. He tried to shoot himself but couldn’t lift the pistol high enough. Then he tried to drown himself by driving his motorized wheelchair into a river by his house, but he got stuck on the muddy shore.

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