I read A Hero for Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov in college. In the book, Lermontov presents his reader with the Byronic, anti-hero they had come both to worship and despise. Indeed, Lermontov described his protagonist Pechorin in chilling terms in his preface to the second edition of his work: “Pechorin, gentlemen, is in fact a portrait, but not of one man only: he is a composite portrait, made up of all the vices which flourish, fullgrown, amongst the present generation.” – Lord Byron died ten years after Lermontov was born, and it seems likely that Lermontov would have known the contradictions of the Byronic hero very well. In fact, Lermontov wrote a poem entitled “No, I’m Not Byron.” In many ways, the moody, selfish, but alluring figure of Pechorin recalls Lord Byron himself. Lermontov studied the role society had in creating such a narcissistic figure. In creating Pechorin, he was holding up a mirror to society. Nowadays, we might ask who is our hero. To answer that question, I will tell a story.
As I pulled into a parking space in front of the chapel where I pray after work, I noticed a Black man outside the chapel doors. His stance told me almost immediately that he was waiting for someone to come by, and I knew that he was going to ask me for something. Not because he was Black. I avoided eye contact, but he started right in. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but he had a spiel and, for some reason, I paused to listen to it. Maybe I did because I’d had a strange day or because it was a Friday afternoon after work and I had few plans. In short, he wanted a ride to a town twenty minutes away. I’d expected a request for a dollar to get a coffee or to take a bus. But for me to give him a ride, that seemed like a tall order.
The police had brought him here; they’d come to his home that morning to arrest him. The issue was related to his history as a drug-dealer, a crime he’d already served his time for. Still, he had some lingering formality to fulfill – the cause of his arrest. In court that morning, the judge had deemed no further action necessary.
After all, he was a good guy now. He’d given up selling drugs and had a construction job. He was living the straight-and-narrow now and raising a teenage daughter. Occasionally, he went to church. He showed me a card with his picture that said he was a felon just to prove the whole thing.
“The police won’t do anything for me!”, he complained as I pondered his situation. “I’m stuck here.” I offered to give him money for a taxi, but he refused. He wanted to pay me back once we got to his hotel room. I looked at his hoodie and his huge, laceless sneakers. Secretly, I tried to size him up. “I have the laces in my pocket,” he told me, noticing my gaze. “Please help me out,” he added, “My daughter is waiting and worried.”
Perhaps, his level of integrity attracted me to him and made me concede. Either that or I was feeling the need for some kind of connection that afternoon. Either way, I found that we were walking to my car. As we approached it, he pointed to the car next to mine and said the woman who owned it had offered him money, too. He said something about her not being a true Christian.
As we drove out of town, he sounded less like a worried father who went to Church and more like a worldly-wise man. He started to ask me strange questions. He wanted to know about my sexual orientation. With an air of self-satisfaction, he confessed to being bisexual, the result of experimenting with a high school friend. Shortly after, he asked if I smoked marijuana and said he had some in his hotel room to share. He seemed to think the way to my heart was more or less by selling himself. Nonetheless, I found even his inappropriateness poignant. It seemed like he needed a teacher.
After a period of silence that lasted at least five minutes, he thanked me again for what I was doing for him. “WWJD” I told him. He confirmed vehemently that this was what Jesus would do. Was he right? I thought about the times that the Pharisees called Jesus crazy because he ate and drank with tax-collectors and sinners. In my mind, I recalled Jesus saying, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matt 9:13). Still, in comparison to Jesus, I felt so inadequate, so empty. Yes, to many people, I was doing something crazy and maybe to some, selfless, but I wasn’t a savior coming to rescue this man. I was another sinner.
Before we reached his beat-up hotel, we talked a little more, but I didn’t learn much about him except that he hated his ex-girlfriend, the mother of his daughter, and that he came from Brooklyn. I also learned that he bore no hard feelings towards the police for his arrest. As we talked, he frequently called me the “n-word” which of course I didn’t use with him – a strange phenomenon.
Once we got to his hotel room, he realized that he’d have to ask management to open the door for him. The key was inside. After a somewhat dour-looking white-man unlocked the door for him, he went inside the room only to quickly come out with an armful of what appeared to be dirty laundry. He threw the laundry into the trunk of his somewhat dented, New York plated SUV. “No, money in there,” he told me, “but my boss is going to come because he owes me money. He’ll be here in thirty minutes.” He suggested smoking while we waited. I said no, but I agreed to take his number. “I’ll get you back,” he promised.
As we were saying goodbye, I wanted to ask him about his daughter. She had been the main reason for his urgency to get back, but now there was no sign of her or urgency to reach her. However, I said nothing about it.
We both got into our cars. I sat in mine wondering whether to text him. I’d written his number in a note on my phone. I highlighted the number and copied it, but it wouldn’t paste into my phone app. When I went back to my notes to see the number again, I couldn’t find it. I looked over and saw him still in his car. Should I ask him for it again? No, I decided. It was better this way. I drove away feeling a little sheepish about the whole event.
That evening at Friday night mass, I thought about the whole thing with more clarity. Here was a Black man whose story fit the stories of so many others in the news. There were some discrepancies such as his generally positive attitude towards the police, but on the whole, this former drug-dealer was a hero of our time. Had his arrest turned violent, he was the kind of person that would make it into the news and be remembered as another victim. There would be much talk about the fact that he was turning his life around, and many would comment on the apparent pettiness of the reason for the arrest. They might even have a night vigil for him and a protest march against the police.
But in the roughly twenty-minutes that I’d been with him, I’d seen his humanity and it wasn’t so different from mine. In the end, he was just another man. He was a sinner in need of redemption. Like me, he was a victim of himself as much as he was a victim of the world. Of course, I didn’t know all the details of his story. Only God knew that. It wasn’t my place nor anybody else’s to judge his life, his innocence, or his guilt. In sum, I wasn’t his savior, but we both needed one.
