Mr. Wick’s

I was playing taxi for Mr. Wick, a local abortionist who gets around. He is skilled in his profession to such a degree that he lost most other skills, amongst them the ability to drive. It has been said that he can perform an abortion with both eyes tied behind his back, so to speak.

As I was saying, I was driving Mr. Wick to his mother’s house, where he would, naturally, eat his supper – one can’t work on a full stomach when one’s hungry, so to speak. After Mr. Wick had finished his meal we drove east to the orphanage, where he would, as usual, give the kids some candy and a new book he’d read to them that week. This was on a Monday, of course, and this week the book was Animal Farm by George Orwell.

Having read the first two chapters of the book, Mr. Wick leaves the orphans wanting more but satisfied and happy knowing that he would return tomorrow at the same time to read the next two chapters. Together we drive over the north bridge to a junkyard inhabited by old cars and broken refrigerators, and also, a dog named Scruffy. There Mr. Wick feeds Scruffy with the dog food he had brought with him; he pets him and tells him he’s a good boy.

When Scruffy finishes eating his dinner Mr. Wick leaves him wagging his tail and at least ten times happier than he was before Mr. Wick showed up. I drive Mr. Wick to his office, where we work our way through the crowd and up the stairs to the second floor. There Mr. Wick picks up a list of addresses we were to visit later in the day, very late in the day, as Mr. Wick liked to work nights.

He lets me know that there would be six stops this night, as he stares out his window looking at the crowd gathered before his office. A crowd of good, god-fearing people, who wish to save lives, people who are pro-life as it were. People who held up signs with words like “Murderer” and “Monster” painted on them in red, very melodramatic. He sighs and walks over to the phone.

He calls home to talk to his wife who just came home from work. She’s a nurse, and had worked a double shift on this particular day. He tells her he loves her and asks her about her day. They exchange other general information and he tells her to greet the kids just before he hangs up. He then puts on his white coat and grabs his doctor’s bag. I take my cue and walk over to the door, which I hold open for him.

We walk down the stairs and out into the crowd again. We move through the shouting masses of the faithful trying not to upset them, more than they already are. Unfortunately, Mr. Wick happened to bump into a man holding the “Murderer” sign. The man took great offense to this and pushed Mr. Wick to the ground. Then, with the help of his friends, he began kicking Mr. Wick, making sure to hit him with the “Murderer” sign once or twice.

By the time they stopped kicking, Mr. Wick was little more than a body. His eyes shifted towards me, and he muttered something. He died before the ambulance got there.

“Yeah, but where’s the punch line?”

- Jakob Lint