A Prisoner of Conscience

Kenneth Bowden lay on his deathbed, his mind as clear as a spring sky on a cloudless day, his body too degenerated to respond to any of his commands any longer; he was unable even to open his eyes. The hospital staff and family visitors that summer morning in 2007 saw a frail old man with wrinkled skin sagging over flesh so atrophied with age that much of the skeleton beneath was rudely exposed, outlined even beneath the sleeveless hospital gown, and the sheet that covered the lower half of his body. The few wisps of grey hair on the otherwise bald head only emphasized the sunken eyes and bony cheeks, while thin dry lips emitted raspy breaths that paused threateningly after each exhalation as though death played games with the living who waited anxiously nearby.

In the bright world of his mind Kenneth pondered his life. He was amazed that he had lived to the age of ninety-two with his mental faculties reasonably intact when age stole the use of both mind and body from so many people younger than he. Of course, his body had not been so enduring, but that was not surprising after a lifetime of physical labor. Shearing sheep and fencing in the high country of New Zealand's South Island, and working freight on the wharves of Port Charmers and the Port of Bluff had worn his body out even before he had turned sixty. He might have fared better if he had relied upon his mind to earn a living; and he had planned to do just that, he remembered now, had even earned a bachelor degree in physics by the time he was twenty, back in 1935. His parents had expected him to continue studying and earn the doctorate that would have made them proud. He had disappointed them terribly.

That was so long ago: yet how short life proved to be! Now, when the moments flew past at light speed, he wished he could grab onto one and pause for enough time to find peace. He had raised a good family, of that he was sure, yet he had achieved very little else and so was certain that he could have been a more inspirational role model. As if his thoughts were audible, Kerry, his oldest daughter, broke the tense silence in the hospital room,

"At least Dad had a good, honorable, hardworking life. He, and we, can be proud of that when he goes".

"Shhh!" The firstborn, Scot, hushed, "Dad's still alive, Kerry, and there's ample evidence to show that the mind can be active even when someone's in a coma".

"Scot's right, Kerry. Have a little sensitivity". Kenneth's youngest child, Shanna, berated her older sister before addressing her father, "You ignore her Dad. We are all waiting for you to get better. Carrick and Jun will be here soon with your first great, great grandchild! That's something to look forward to."

Hardworking yes, but honorable! If only they knew. His parents had not understood, 73 years ago now, when he had unexpectedly left university then moved to Invercargill in the lower South Island, so far away from Auckland city in the upper North Island where he had grown into a young man, where all his relatives and friends had lived, and where his university was located. Neither the years nor his fast approaching death could heal the wounds inflicted by his mother's tears, nor could they cure the disgrace of his father's words, words that were never to be retracted, "A bright young man with so much promise abandoning your education...you bring shame on us son!" Kenneth had never been able to ease his parents' burden with the truth, either. No, better they had thought him too weak to have ambition or too selfish to honor his parents than to know the truth.

In the stark hospital room, the first generation of Kenneth's descendants sadly sifted through memories from lives already long lived: each was retired, and old enough to be painfully conscious that all too soon they too would follow their father on the journey from life to death.

"Mum would be proud of you Dad". Kerry whispered, then broke into sobs of grief.

"Mum always was your most faithful fan, Old Man". Scot agreed. "I remember when your back gave out for good and she had to work at the grocery store checkout until you reached sixty and got a pension. She said every hour of work was a pleasure after you'd supported her and us for so long".

"You'll see her again one day, Dad. Just trust in Jesus like I've told you". Shanna declared pointedly. Kerry hissed in a loud whisper,

"Do you have to push your religion always, even now? What happened to 'sensitivity'?"

Beautiful Ella, how Kenneth yearned for her even now, more than fifteen years since he had buried her. Would he see her again? Was she waiting for him somewhere beyond this world? He didn't know, at least not with Shanna's religious fervor. He sure hoped so. He would find out soon enough: the pauses in his labored breathing were increasing and his entire body ached with fatigue just from staying alive. Yet his mind was so clear.

Ella had been proud of him, mostly, and when she wasn't he alone knew it, for she always upheld him before everyone, even the kids. When he refused promotions on the wharves, secretly preferring to remain as anonymous in society as possible, even at the cost of significant pay increases and workplace status, Ella had been deeply hurt and confused in the privacy of their bedroom, yet she supported him unswervingly in public. When he had saved a drowning boy the time they camped at Lake Wakatipu in the summer, Ella had not understood Kenneth's reasons for angrily demanding that the local reporter respect his privacy and not publish his name, still she had supported him: always, unwaveringly.

The door of the small hospital room opened and chairs scraped on the vinyl floor as the first generation of Kenneth's descendants made more space available.

"Hello Harrison, it's so good to see you". Kenneth heard Kerry greet her son, unable to disguise the pride in her voice even on this somber day. There was a pause as mother and offspring exchanged hugs.

"Hi Mum. How's Gramps doing today?"

"He's very weak. Your uncle Scot thinks he may be listening to us though. I'm sure he'll be glad to know you flew all the way to see him...why don't you tell him about your promotion at the Ministry?"

"Not now, mum". Harrison muttered with obvious embarrassment. "Hi Scot, Shanna; I have to apologize for not keeping in touch more often...I'm so busy with work in Wellington, as you can imagine".

"No worries, Harry. We get to hear the Minister read your speeches in Parliament on the radio, that's good enough. Besides, weddings and funerals make the best family reunions!"

"Scot Bowden!" Shanna exclaimed in a lowered voice, "Sensitivity please!"

"Yeah, sorry sis...sorry Dad".

Funerals. Kenneth hadn't been to either his mother or his father's funeral. Even after forty years and more, the risk of Auckland had seemed monstrous. The potential consequences of his crime had magnified over the years. First came the fear of jail and of shaming his parents, then of shaming the beautiful woman he had married in Invercargill when he was twenty-three, then the children, the grandchildren. Each year added more reasons to hide away from his past, and made discovery potentially more devastating. Even now, he feared his imminent death notice might nudge someone's recollection, bring out the truth, and smear his memory and the lives of his surviving family with disgrace: a ridiculous fear in reality, few if any would be alive to remember... still.

The old skeletal body on the bed tensed and Kenneth Bowden's breathing stopped. The four family members fell silent and each held their own breaths, eyes fixed apprehensively on their moribund forebear. The old man's body was so terribly wasted that everyone in the room assumed death had chosen that moment to rob them of Kenneth's life. They were wrong.

20 seconds...then the wasted lungs sucked weakly at life again. Kerry sobbed loudly.

Inside his dying skin and bone Kenneth experienced overwhelming compassion for his first daughter. He felt his conscious life balancing precariously at the edge of a vast and unknown void that waited beyond his flesh life. Yet his love for Kerry was so strong, it embraced his entire experience of her: love for the helpless newborn cradled in his arms; love for the cute toddler sharing her momentous discoveries and experiences with a vocabulary of a single, mispronounced word; love for the school girl, the teenager, the newly wed daughter, the mother, the grandmother. There on his deathbed he felt love for his daughter more real and substantial than at any time before. Could death take this from him? He looked full into the void for the first time. Was it the end or a beginning?

Neither, not yet. Kenneth needed peace.

19 years of age was both an end and a beginning, he recalled. The intelligent, responsible, socially conscious young man with dreams and ambitions of noble and great deeds that would influence the world for the better had died, lured by his own arrogance into an act so despicable that a broken coward would emerge to spend the next 73 years hiding from the consequences. If only he had chosen wisely! He had had no excuse for his actions. Any of his three accomplices could have claimed to have been steered toward crime by poverty, or by a dysfunctional family. Not Kenneth. He hadn't needed money at nineteen. His mother had inherited a high country sheep station when she was still a young woman and had sold it to remain in Auckland city with Kenneth's father, a successful lawyer. Both parents were proud to provide their only boy with every advantage and every good character building experience that the times could offer. Nor had they failed in his upbringing, but had raised him with much loving attention, ensuring he had received the best formal education available, while at home instilling in him Christian values, including respect for all people and their property, and community responsibility. Indeed, Kenneth's had been a model upbringing. He had had every chance to succeed in his chosen field, to be a respectable member of the community.

Foolishly, Kenneth's motivations toward crime had been more misguided and prideful than the simple desire for easy money that drove his three partners in crime. He had fully expected to be a model member of society: that was assured. But before he fulfilled his potential, he had told himself, he needed to break free and willfully live outside the confines of what society considered acceptable. Only then could he rejoin the community on his own terms, as one who had chosen society, not been born into it and forever trapped by its prison of conformity. Oh how he would wish for decades and decades that he had conformed to what was good and right rather than treading a reprehensible and disgraceful road along which there was no return! Since the crime, every day of his life had been shrouded with guilt, every moment tainted, no matter how joyous or important the occasion, even the arrival of the first great, great grandchild.

Young Carrick entered the room with his Chinese wife Jun. Chairs scraped the floor again as the old people turned their attention to the newest member of the family, yet they delayed the standard questions concerning the newborn.

"How's Gramps doing, Grandma Henderson?" Carrick asked his grandmother, Shanna.

"As well as we can expect, Carrick. He can't look at you but he may be able to hear you. Why don't you introduce him to your son...has the little man got a name yet?"

"Yes, Grandma. Jun and I finally decided yesterday: we have named him after Gramps." Carrick raised his voice in the hope his ancient relative might hear him better, "Gramps! It's Carrick, Peter and Kath's son. You've met Jun...she...we've had our first child! It's a boy and we've decided to name him Kenneth: after you Gramps! He's just two weeks old...here, I'll get him and put his hand on yours." Carrick lowered his voice as he took the infant from his mother. "Come and meet your, great, great granddad, Kenny! He's got the same name as you...there now, isn't his grip strong Gramps! Kenny, I'll tell you one day all about how Gramps loaded warships in the Second World War!"

The baby cried; a piercing sound yet full of life. Carrick lifted the miniature hand from the wrinkled, bony finger nearly a century old, then handed the child back to his mother. The old people followed with their eyes.

"How heavy was little Kenny when he was born, Jun?" Kerry asked.

"Just Three Kilograms, Mrs. Field, and the labor was only two hours".

"Lucky you!"

A lot could happen in two hours, Kenneth the older mused after the tiny hand of his latest descendant released its grip on his finger: a baby could be born, a man could die, or a robbery could go horribly wrong so that lives were ruined: lives of both victims and criminals. And that is what had happened so long, long ago. Now, as he lay dying, surrounded by loved ones who had no idea of his soul's torment, Kenneth reexamined the memories etched so deeply in his mind by 73 years of agonizing review.

The clock tower on the Ferry Building on the waterfront in Auckland had towered above all the surrounding buildings. Kenneth had stared at the hands for fifteen minutes as he waited with Gareth Armstrong, Thomas Blaine, and Martin Grayson in the Morris 25 that Gareth and Tom had stolen the previous night. The car was a new four-door saloon with a powerful, six-cylinder motor beneath the elongated hood that was flanked on either side by two prominent wheel arches rising up from the front of the running boards.

At 9:10 a.m. when the morning rush of passengers traveling to work at the shops and businesses of the central city had eased, yet before the banks opened at 10 a.m., the four men moved the Morris and parked directly outside the Ferry Building entrance. They pulled the brims of their hats low on their foreheads, confident that the beards grown over the past four weeks would provide adequate disguises. They then exited the car, purposefully heading into the building to the security room beside the ticket windows.

The door was locked, as they had expected. Without hesitation, big Gareth kicked the door with the flat of his foot; the power of his tree-stump leg backed by his considerable weight burst the locking mechanism with ease and the heavy wooden door flung open violently.

Inside the room, two male clerks wore masks of surprise and shock. Tom and Martin, followed by Kenneth, rushed into the room brandishing short truncheons. One burly clerk swung a fist at Tom who evaded the punch and deftly landed his truncheon on the side of the man's head with a loud thud. The clerk slumped to the floor. Gareth remained at the doorway guarding the entrance while Tom and Martin herded the conscious clerk into a restroom and secured the door. Meanwhile, Kenneth locked another door to keep the cashiers at the ticket windows out of the room.

The three robbers then turned their attention to collecting the wads of notes and bags of coins that lay on the table and in the open safe. The sum was hefty after a weekend of leisure trips to destinations on the harbor, and numerous concession tickets purchased that morning. But the thieves had little time. The ticket sellers soon gathered themselves and began yelling out their windows. Their shouts of 'Help!' and 'Robbery!' echoed loudly in the wide, enclosed space, and passersby immediately began to stop to examine the scene.

"Hurry! A ferry has arrived, people are coming!" Gareth shouted into the security room. The three men inside hastily filled a small leather suitcase with money, yet when they emerged from the room only a minute later, more than thirty people were standing in the concourse well back from the ticket windows and the open security room doorway, watching intently. Meanwhile, a number of passengers were also approaching from the nearest wharf where the steam ferry Toroa had berthed 20 minutes late. Gareth hastily led his associates toward the front exit of the building. "Get out of the way!" He yelled menacingly at a group of people, mostly middle-aged men in suits.

"Stop those men, they have robbed us!" A ticket seller shouted repeatedly behind Kenneth.

A tall, overweight man stepped into Gareth's path, his face set with angry determination. He spoke forcefully, "Put the money down, and stand where you are until the police arrive!"

Gaining courage from this brave stand four middle-aged men moved to block the getaway route more purposefully. More men began to approach the robbers from other directions. Gareth accepted the challenge fearlessly, sprinting four paces then swinging a large fist with fearsome power into the first man's jaw whereupon he dropped limply to the hard floor, unconscious.

Kenneth found himself behind his companions carrying the brown suitcase with the money stashed inside in his left hand. He watched the group of men blocking the escape route hastily step aside as Gareth bore down upon them threateningly. Just then, someone grabbed the sleeve of Kenneth's suit jacket below his left shoulder, yelling at him to stop. Instinctively Kenneth spun his upper body and swung his right fist into his aggressor's abdomen with all his might. Kenneth's hat dislodged from his head so that his bearded face was fully exposed. He turned with his punch to see a grey haired man fall back under the force of his blow. Kenneth's memory of it would always be very vivid and slow, as though repeated in slow motion on a modern television. The old man was thin and of such light build that the punch knocked him backwards off his feet. Grimacing with pain the victim bent at the waist and began to move his hands toward his abdomen rather than bracing himself for the fall. His body turned slightly to one side in the air before he fell to the ground, where he landed on his right hip. Kenneth would never forget the crack of breaking bone, loud even amidst the shouts and confusion in the enclosed space. He turned away and ran after his partners in crime.

With cries of shock and abuse following them, the robbers exited the building, reached the stolen car, and made their escape, turning this way and that along a deliberately deceptive route until they were on the main street of business in Auckland: Queen Street. Thomas drove as quickly as he could without being reckless or drawing attention to the powerful blue Morris, which now blended in with other cars on the busy, central city road. The pavements were busy, mostly with male pedestrians dressed in dark suits and ties walking under the shop canopies that sheltered the pavements. People crossed the road at random points, slowing traffic down, while electric trams worked their way up and down the twin tracks on the center of the street, presenting further obstacles.

Kenneth sat in the rear on the right hand side. He turned his head away from the window and shielded his face with his right hand as the car passed the Hugh Wrights store. His father's law firm had their premises a few buildings up the street, before the towering, eight story New Zealand Insurance Co. Ltd. building. Kenneth had visited his father's offices innumerable times over the years and now feared that someone would recognize him and connect him to the stolen car and the robbery. Thomas continued driving without incident.

As planned, Thomas stopped the car beside Leaning's Footwear shop opposite the Auckland Town Hall so that Martin could cross the road on foot and head toward his lodgings in an attic flat on Greys Avenue. Martin took the suitcase containing the money with him, looking back and tipping his hat cheerfully as he made his way across the street.

Further up the hill, just before the broad intersection of Queen Street and Karangahape Road, Thomas stopped the car again so that Kenneth could make his way home. Kenneth exited the car, whereupon Tom drove away, turning west into Karangahape Road, past McCabe's Radios, leaving Kenneth to walk 200 feet up the hill to the busy intersection. Kenneth felt extremely exposed and was sure someone who had witnessed the robbery at the Ferry Building would recognise him. A constable wearing white gloves stood on a simple wooden step placed in the middle of the intersection of Queen Street and Karangahape Road where he tirelessly guided the traffic with elaborate hand signals. Kenneth bowed his head as he turned east onto Karangahape Road, glad of the steady flow of cars and the occasional tram that would keep the constable occupied. He continued on, across Symonds Street, then over the Grafton Bridge where for the first time in his life he considered suicide, the awful weight of his guilt and fear making the long, terrifying fall to the ground far below morbidly inviting.

That was the last time Kenneth had seen Martin, Gareth, or Thomas. Over the next few days he waited in agonizing fear for the police to arrest him. The papers announced that Gareth Armstrong and Thomas Blaine had been apprehended, but neither man was cooperating with the police. The public were asked to help police identify the remaining two robbers, one of whom had viciously assaulted an elderly gentleman of sixty-four. The brave pensioner had valiantly tried to stop the thief, only to be punched to the ground, tragically breaking his femur at the hip in the fall. Kenneth had read the news with great distress, knowing that such an injury was a very common cause of debilitation and death in the elderly. The courageous old man would suffer much for the rest of his life, perhaps even die, because of Kenneth's actions. Numerous letters to the editor expressed the public outcry for the remaining two cowardly robbers to surrender, that justice might be served.

When the days turned to weeks and Kenneth was not apprehended, he decided to flee to the South Island. His accusing conscience was further incited by his parent's distress at this decision. Life would never be carefree again, nor would he ever again dream of great and noble deeds.

"Gramps is breathing fast!" Carrick said with concern. Everyone in the hospital room turned their attention from the young Kenny to the old. Gradually, the raspy breathing of their ancestor slowed down ... only to pause threateningly again at each exhalation. The adult occupants of the room were reminded of the nearness of the supreme robber, death.

"Dad was a hard worker in his day". Scott mumbled, remembering Kenneth panting with exhaustion after cutting down a large tree for firewood with axe and saw, carrying heavy rolls of wire up steep sheep station hillsides where he cut fence posts and batons from trees he felled himself, coming home late from the docks night after night, painting the weatherboard house in his holiday, or digging over the large vegetable garden on his days off work.

"You set me a good example, Old Man, not to shy away from work but to tackle a job wholeheartedly until it's done".

"You have always been generous too, Dad". Kerry said tearfully. "Did you know, Carrick, that Dad and Mum once took out a mortgage to help a couple who had lost their house and their young baby in a fire?"

"They hadn't known the people either". Scot added. "Then when Dad inherited his parent's money after he and Mum had retired, they gave half to a charity to educate poor kids overseas, then they put all the rest in trust for the family. They didn't spend anything on themselves at all!"

"...and they were never proud about it either," Shanna added, "They were humble people, good humble people. You have lived a good life, Dad."

"I paid for my Engineering studies from the Bowden Family Trust". Carrick informed them all, then spoke to his great grandfather. "Thanks for everything you have done for us, Gramps. It means a lot to your family. I will teach my son to be like you...and I hope I live up to your example".

Such a lie he had lived, the old man agonized in the now fading world of his mind. It was so easy to do good without pride when your past actions condemned you utterly, condemned you without hope of reprieve. No, he had not lived a good life, but a repentant, tormented, and unforgiven life. How he longed for peace even more now that the unknown abyss of death waited, so dark and close. Was Shanna right, could God...Jesus Christ... forgive him? It was worth a try he supposed.

The cadaver on the bed exhaled involuntarily: life had already departed. The family waited anxiously once more, but breathing did not start again this time. Kerry wailed loudly, while grief in various measures assailed all the adults in the room. No one knew or suspected that a prisoner of conscience had just been freed, his 73 year sentence served.