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BIG WILLY by Nancy Bouchard He stood six feet, nine inches tall and weighed in at 310 pounds. Rumor had it that he'd killed a man with his bare hands - just squeezed the life right out of him. It was the kind of reputation that gained respect in the rough city where we grew up. At fifteen, Willy was already a legend. Willy and I had played together since we both wore diapers, although we were the unlikeliest of pairs. He was a massive black giant and I was a pudgy little redhead. We both worked at the factory in town - I worked in the office, Willy on the dock. Even the hardened men who worked alongside Willy feared him. He saw me home safely from work and I kept his secret that each night, instead of cruising the city streets, beating people up, he went home and lovingly lifted his elderly grandmother out of the chair she was confined to and placed her in bed. He would read to her until she fell asleep, and in the morning, he would comb her thin, gray hair, dress her in one of the beautiful nightgowns he bought with the money he made at the can company, and place her back in the chair. Willy had lost both his parents to drugs, and it was just the two of them now. He took care of her, and she gave him a reason to stay clean. Of course, there wasn't an ounce of truth to the rumors, but Willy never said otherwise. He just let everyone believe what they believed, and although everyone wrote him off as just another street hood, no one hassled him either. I remember one day at school, in Western Civilization class, our teacher read aloud an excerpt from Machiavelli's The Prince: "Since love and fear cannot exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved." I looked at Willy and winked. "That's you," I mouthed. He just smiled. The next day, I lingered a few minutes longer than usual at work and Willy went on without me. Just around the corner from the can company, fire trucks lined the street and a thick blanket of smoke covered the sky. A small child lay wrapped in a very familiar red-and-black checkered flannel shirt, held by a tearful woman. She was talking to a fireman and a reporter from the evening news. "This great big guy heard the baby crying, and came right in and got us," she said through joyful tears. "He wrapped his shirt around the baby and when the sirens came, he ran off down the street." "Did you get his name?" the reporter asked. "Yes, sort of," the woman replied. "He said it was Machiavelli." Listen to what Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:1-4: "Take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men, to be seen by them. Otherwise you have no reward from your Father in heaven. Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have their glory from men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly." For His Cause |
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