He was so kind. Everyone said so. I hadn't met a lot of truly kind people in my life, but it was true of him. There was something soft and gentle and familiar about him. My best friend, my pals at the club, sometimes when we'd meet people for the first time, within minutes, they'd shine because of him. He was a very, very kind man.
We had a great dinner at one of our favorite restaurants on the North side of Chicago, and since we were trapped in the middle of a bleak and powerful winter, we decided to trudge through the feet of snow and face the painful wind. We'd been dating for about two months and he was still pulling out my chair, lighting my cigarette and opening doors for me. I was twenty three, and behavior was half the battle for me. I'd transitioned when I was nineteen years old, so the world was still new. It held huge promise and huge responsibility. I was still in the midst of not only finding my voice, but truly accepting it. Embracing what I hoped had been true all along. I was still shaky. I was still wobbly. I wasn't on the ground yet. But Tom: tall, funny, blue-eyed and smart, never wavered. Tom was holding me up and keeping me safe.
And making me laugh. And I desperately needed to laugh.
As we walked outside, the snow pummeled us from all sides, and we found ourselves tripping and sliding like two drunk penguins. Luckily, my apartment was only blocks from where we'd eaten, but in a Chicago Winter, two blocks can be fifteen miles. Especially when you're trying to keep your eyeballs from freezing solid.
We found a small over hang from a second hand store that we decided to rest under for a moment, and I took out a cigarette.
"I'd light you up babe, but I'm so cold, I think I'd use the flame to set my face on fire."
I lit it myself with one shaky hand, and just about half way through, as Tom began to put his arms around me and whisper what he thought we might do in bed that night, my shoulder felt a small push. It felt as though he's taken his finger and poked me. I turned to shoot him a dirty look, when I noticed the insides of one, raw egg and it's cracked, half-frozen shell running down the sleeve of my jacket.
The wind was still whisking the snow around us like small tornadoes, and speeding off in the distance was an electric green car with sounds of angry voices shooting out from the open windows. The rage pierced frozen air, and came straight at both of us, stopping our hearts for a moment as we huddled in the doorway.
"Let's go, babe." Tom said taking a more firm hold of me.
I put out the cigarette, and stayed close.
It was almost midnight and in the middle of the week, so the usually busy neighborhood was eerily quiet with only the sounds of our own breath and the formidable wind whipping through our clothes. As we rounded the corner, and took deep breaths heading towards the longer route for the two blocks than we originally anticipated, I felt a rumbling through my back. I felt something happening. Something was coming, and instinctively, I grabbed Tom's arm, and began rushing him along. We slipped a few times, and tried as best we could to be each other's guide. I could finally see my apartment only feet away, and I began to let go of the feeling through my back and take a deeper breath. And as I did, the green car pulled up beside us.
Two men in black masks and big shiny black winter coats got out. The car barely stopped enough when they rose up like mountains with baseball bats, and came at us both, huffing out hot, tangible air. I remember Tom throwing me to the ground and screaming at me to run, as he tried to fold his arms up over his head to protect whatever he could from the first blow. It was 1983, and there was no such thing as cell phones, so I began screaming at the top of my lungs for someone to help us.
Both men climbed on top of Tom swinging and bludgeoning his head and body. As I grabbed the ankle of one of them I was struck on the of my face with a shoe. There was blood splattering on the white snow, and occasionally it was swirl upward as the wind continued it's relentless attack. Over and over they'd swing, raising a bat above, to the side, and from below.
And then it stopped. As suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. I don't remember them getting back in the car. I don't remember the car. I don't remember their faces, or their height, or their sounds. I only remember them being there, doing this ungodly thing, and then quiet.
There was a long, long, intense quiet.
I sat for a moment and across from me was Tom, face down in the gutter, his great heavy arms twisted like a broken pinwheel. There was a trickle of blood coming from his head, and it swirled around the snow and poured out into the gutter mixing with the gravel and the swill of the street. He moaned a low, throaty moan that came from the center of his belly. Like a wounded animal. It shattered the silence, and went right through me. There was blood coming from my ear, and my arm throbbed. I called his name, and he moaned one final time.
Tom never did anything to anyone except fall in love with me. That was his fatal mistake. He lived in a world where falling in love with someone like me enraged groups of people enough to want him dead.
Tom was just a nice guy who had a huge heart and whose journey was stopped short.
After the ambulance, and the police, and a small crowd appeared, they lifted Tom from the small bank of snow he died on. In his place, was the beginnings of a large snow Angel.
Tom was one of the kindest people I'd ever met. Everyone said so.