A modern fairy tale

“The young folks roll

on the little cabin floor

All merry, all happy and bright;

By and by Hard Times

Comes a-knocking at the door

Then my old Kentucky home, 

goodnight.”

—“My Old Kentucky Home”

Stephen Foster

Brent believed that to whom much is given, much is expected. He thought that whatever else he could strive to be in this world, his top consideration should be kindness and compassion for his fellow man—or, as he corrected himself, fellow person.

He was 33 years old and had done a decent job climbing the company ladder at his firm. He had married well. His wife, Charlene, was from a prominent family in the capital city. Brent and Charlene had met at the university and had prudently waited until both had graduated before being wed. Now, after almost a decade together, they considered themselves upper-middle class.

Religiously, Brent thought of himself as agnostic, maybe even deist. His grandparents had been devout Southern churchgoers, but his Baby Boomer parents were less devout: Easter and Christmas only. Brent was well-read and well-educated; he preferred to think of God as some sort of mystical, clock-winding creator. He could never square the idea that there was a loving God active in the world who allowed the poverty of third-world countries, the birth of mongoloid children, and the spread of sickness, disease, and just general meanness as part of his benevolent stewardship. 

No, Brent was too intelligent for that. We were created by something, but we were all on our own down here. Left to our own devices, kindness and compassion should be our guide. Brent believed in kindness and compassion so much that, in his mind, they became proper nouns. Kindness and Compassion. Compassion and Kindness. Those are the words Brent most wanted others to think of when they thought of him; that was very important to him. The desire to be seen in that certain way was why he did the things he did. 

Politically, Brent and Charlene settled on the label “conservative” but hastened to add that economic, not social, considerations led to them to their cautious conclusions. Party affiliation, rather than faith, was one thing their grandparents had successfully passed on through the generations, and membership in the Republican Party was the socially acceptable thing. Most of all, though, Brent and Charlene wanted to be thought of as Compassionate Conservatives, a label that contained one of Brent’s favorite words.

They had two great children—a boy and a girl. Their son, Winthrop Conner, was nine years old, and their daughter, Holly Madeline, was six. Both were private schooled, just as Brent and Charlene had been. They could afford it. Sometimes Brent felt guilty about that. There were times Brent examined his life to the point that he became teary-eyed thinking about how privileged he had been. Surely, his sheltered upbringing had been severely damaged by the lack of diversity and inclusiveness in his life. He was grateful to have received this ability for introspection during his education at the university.

Much like their evil ancestors, Brent thought, he and his wife were products of their environment, and just passing along this existence to their children who, like them, knew nothing but the benefits of White Privilege. 

And there was nothing Kind nor Compassionate about White Privilege. 

And so, after much deliberation, Brent and Charlene sold their home in a gated community on the outskirts of the city and moved to a much smaller house in a vibrant, diverse inner-city neighborhood. They enrolled young Winthrop Conner and Holly Madeline in the local public school, and disciplined themselves to feel common cause with the plight of the downtrodden, into which they were now immersed. They were very proud to be beacons of Kindness and Compassion. 

It was a source of irritation to Brent that their extended family did not go along with their mission. Although both sets of their parents had always preached Compassion and Kindness, they did not share in their  joy for this endeavor. On the contrary, they thought it was sheer lunacy. 

It is one thing to talk the talk of diversity, inclusion, and equity, Brent thought. It is another thing to walk the walk. After all those years, it was painful and discouraging to discover the hypocrisy and uncaring nature of his own parents. He also noticed Charlene’s growing estrangement and reluctance. He saw it on her face, especially when she gazed out the window of their new home at the buzzing urban scene around them.

To Brent’s delight, the local public school was filled with marvelous diversity. There were different shades to which he was unaccustomed. Transgendersim flourished. It was a cornucopian, melting-pot wonderland. 

And, to put their hard-earned money where ideals were, Brent made it known that their doors were open to all, without exclusion. They were not about to build some sort of vulgar Trumpian border wall around their generosity. They had broken the chains of privilege. As a symbolic gesture, Brent removed the locks on his household doors.

How exhilarating those first few days were! It was a huge step, but Brent felt like he had finally done it. He and his wife were the undisputed King and Queen of Kindness and Compassion. Brent, who considered himself a very humble person, even allowed himself to daydream of being featured on network television or maybe even becoming the focus of a piece in The New York Times. 

Six months later, Brent sat on what remained of his living-room couch, clutching a bottle of cheap wine. It was truly a “living” room now, for the floor was littered with dirty sleeping blankets and squatters of various diversity. 

It had been children, at first. To Brent’s amazement, many of his neighbors were all too willing to allow their children to visit, at first, and then to remain indefinitely. They consumed Brent and Charlene’s food, used their bathrooms, wore Winthrop Conner’s and Holly Madeline’s clothes, slept in their beds, and commandeered their toys.

Charlene had tried to talk to Brent about her misgivings. He calmly pointed out that she was succumbing to the same ancestral backwardness that had warped the minds of their parents. 

She left with the children after the first week. Winthrop Conner and Holly Madeline seemed like completely different beings, depressed and disheveled, after Brent’s experiment. Brent was disheartened but not surprised to learn that the love of his life was not as firmly committed to Kindness and Compassion as he was.

There were other things Brent did not foresee. It was not just children who crossed the threshold of his unlocked doors. Adults  of every variety also availed themselves of Brent’s hospitality and sanctuary. Brent was annoyed that his liberality was often repaid with theft, destruction, and disregard for his property. It turned out that although many of these people enjoyed his Kindness and Compassion, they did not care to be seen as Kind and Compassionate themselves.

At times, when alone in a corner (his bedroom had long since been taken over), Brent had his doubts. He missed his own children terribly. They had not thrived during this experiment. He had not been able to devote the time to care for them because of the new children and residents who had taken advantage of his generosity and sanctuary. He was forced to admit that the time he had devoted to caring for all his many new residents, their needs, their sicknesses, and their quarrels had left him with little time to devote to caring for and loving his own wife and children. Brent’s mind was broad, and the depths of his compassion were vast, but his resources were not infinite, and his generosity was beholden to the constraints of time and space.

Then there was his career. The firm required 50-plus hours a week of Brent’s time and devotion. Brent was showing up late and unkempt. He was missing assignments and appointments due to the stress of his new home life. His colleagues, whom he had considered in the same social bracket as himself, ostracized him. The worst were those whom he had heard expound upon the virtues of Compassion and Kindness themselves. 

Brent tried to reason with them. They were insistent upon keeping their own doors locked. Almost all of them closed both their doors and their hearts to unexpected guests. When Brent pleaded with them that most of these unfortunates just wanted better lives for themselves and their families, this did not seem to sway them at all. Brent was disgusted.

What was wrong with them? Were they not serious about their ideals—the same ones Brent espoused? Could they not see that he was trying to embody the virtues that they themselves extolled? Where was their sympathy? Where was their assistance?  

Brent had left his job to devote himself fully to what was left of his home and his visitors. His mental derangement—what else could it be called at this point?—had escalated to the degree that he did not allow himself to consider that, without any income, he could scarcely provide for himself, let alone his new companions. It turned out that finances, like time and generosity, were also not infinite. Embodying Kindness and Compassion generated no income and was quite costly.

One night, Brent was ashamed to let his frustration override his Compassion and Kindness. One of his sojourners fought with another guest. A knife was brandished. There was bloodshed. Police were summoned. 

Brent made it known to the police that both parties were no longer welcome at his home. The officers explained that both had established residential status at his dwelling. To legally get them off his land, he would have to resort to the eviction process—a word that sounded as callous to Brent as “deportation,” and something that could take months or even years. 

“What’s your problem?” the community resource officer had asked. “These people are merely seeking a better life. Is that a crime? Do you really want to separate them from their family and friends? Where is your Kindness and Compassion?”

She was right, of course. Brent did not even know the many people now occupying his home, and he was judging them. Some closed-minded people, like his relatives, would say his home had become a den of violence, sexual perversion, sloth, and filthiness. He saw it clearly now; it was people living freely—because of him. 

Taking another sip from the bottle, Brent pulled a torn piece of carpet over himself and hummed to block out the raucous din. He remembered with contempt what he’d thought was a happier time, his two children rolling and frolicking around on the floor of their old home, happy, merry, and bright, ignorant of the injustice of their privileged life. 

Now, unburdened by all that, he wrapped himself completely in the wretched piece of carpet. Before he drifted into unconsciousness, he glimpsed a vision of a newspaper headline above a photograph of his beaming face: A Kind and Compassionate Man.