By John Rogitz

Story No. 1

She was young, no more than 14, and pretty. It was one of those lazy summer days and she was lucky enough to be outdoors and near the river, so she strolled with her friends down to its banks in the summer haze and with sun kissing her glistening hair, floated downstream in a little rowboat, talking about boys and laughing.

But then every parent’s nightmare broke through the bright day an unexpectedly as lighting. Three older men spied the young group and stalked them along the river, the girls unaware and blissful. Surging ahead of the boat to a bend, the men lunged over the banks and grappled the boat, now occupied by terrified maidens, to shore. They bound the girls’ hands and knowing that safety depended on absconding with the girls as fast and far away as possible, they fled with their prey.

Luck, however, did not abandon the girls. For it turned out that one of them was the daughter of a famous man, who did what famous men did in such circumstances. Hearing the distant screams of the kidnapped and surmising the worst, he immediately telephoned the police.

The best of society then swung into action. Within minutes, “Amber alerts” were electrifying freeway signs, distracting a few drivers into accidents but making the greater social point that we are all part of the same village. Everyone was exhorted to call 911 in the event of suspicious behaviors that might point to the kidnappers, and dozens of calls ensured, all reporting perfectly ordinary behavior of otherwise innocent people who were temporarily detained, searched, and questioned, and who left relieved that society exacted such a small price for the vigilance that protects us all. Back in the girls’ neighborhood, yellow ribbons soon festooned every telephone pole and tree to show solidarity with the victims. And eventually, it worked. Weeks later, an alert off-duty policeman found one of the kidnappers rummaging for food through a dumpster. The kidnapper agreed to turn state’s evidence, leading the police to the hideaway, where the girls were rescued.

Unfortunately, owing to the lengthy passage of time they were held captive, the girls had been repeatedly molested and in fact had Stockholm syndrome, developing close attachments with their tormentors, whom they had begun referring to as their “husbands.” When they saw the famous father with the police, the daughter cursed her dad, and the other girls wept bitterly.

Still, society did not let them down. A platoon of crisis counselors descended first on their school, corralling all students for days and eliciting emotional responses to the tragedy. The girls of course went through many years of counseling, eventually succeeding to the point where each one was eventually able to get off welfare and support the children their kidnappers had left them. During this time, they appeared, for substantial fees, on Oprah, baring their souls by weeping publicly in front of millions of voyeuristic viewers eager to know the kind side of the kidnappers. The perpetrators, for their part, were given multi-year terms, indeed approaching five years each, after the ACLU put up a spirited defense on their behalf. When they were released, not a man of them committed another violent crime for a full six months.

Story No. 2

She was young, no more than 14, and pretty. It was one of those lazy summer days and she was lucky enough to be outdoors and near the river, so she strolled with her friends down to its banks in the summer haze and with sun kissing her glistening hair, floated downstream in a little rowboat, talking about boys and laughing.

But then every parent’s nightmare broke through the bright day an unexpectedly as lighting. Three older men spied the young group and stalked them along the river, the girls unaware and blissful. Surging ahead of the boat to a bend, the men lunged over the banks and grappled the boat, now occupied by terrified maidens, to shore. They bound the girls’ hands and knowing that safety depended on absconding with the girls as fast and far away as possible, they fled with their prey.

Luck, however, did not abandon the girls. For it turned out that one of them was the daughter of a famous man, who did what famous men did in such circumstances. Hearing the distant screams of the kidnapped and surmising the worst…he ordered one son back to the village to gather help, and with his other son pursued the kidnappers on the dead run, armed with the best hunting firearm of the day.

It took a few days but aided by the resourcefulness of his daughter in feigning a leg injury, which greatly slowed the progress of the kidnappers, and owing to a bottomless physical stamina, the father and son soon closed the distance. They knew that blundering into the makeshift camp the kidnappers had set up to quickly cook some food would result in the immediate murder of the girls, who were sitting quietly in the distance, eyes affixed to their captors.

So the father took a deep breath. At 500 yards, he would be able to squeeze off a single shot without warning but then what about the other two kidnappers? So he sent his son, armed with a knife, creeping dangerously close to the camp, with orders to charge from the bushes and slash as fast and furiously as he could.

Before she heard the crack of the rifle; before the look of shock on her captor’s face registered; the girl, watching her captor silently in the quiet afternoon, was startled by the sight of red blossom suddenly spreading on the front of the man’s shirt. And before the rifle report could reach the camp she jumped up and shouted “Daddy’s here!” Then the rest of the camp heard what she had seen and her captor had felt in his last dying moments, and without debate or deliberation the girls immediately sprinted back down the trail toward the river.

The remaining kidnappers, fleeing, were quickly cut down by her brother’s knife and her father’s second shot. There were no yellow ribbons. There were no counselors. There was never time for the kidnappers to touch the girls much less for any to connection to be made, and no episode of Oprah revealed the kinder aspects of the criminals or the emotional anguish of the girls.

All that happened was that Jemima Boone kept running until the dad that she loved, Daniel, swept her up in his brawny arms.

Ten days before, in the swelter of an east coast summer hundreds of miles away, a band of men wanted for sedition and rebellion against their own government had published a document still burning with the fire of freedom even after Benjamin Franklin and John Adams had watered down Thomas Jefferson’s original manifesto.

Now please vote on which story you liked more.

COPYRIGHT 2009 JOHN M. ROGITZ