No Picture Wanted / No Picture Needed

One day in my life. I was the witness. A sidewalk drama.

The sky was a marble gray, and so the light was muted but I could still see the color of the young girls eyes. The first girl, with strait blond hair pulled back severly in a day old ponytail, ruddy color on preteen plump cheeks, blue eyes bulging with disbelief and anguish, running up the sidewalk. Discarded school books in the street. She stumbles but recovers herself without losing site of her horrible goal. 
The second girl, must be sisters. Both look of Norse ancestry. This one younger, with two ponytails and chubby. The look on her face was a mixture of disbelief and terror. She too running. Her agony welling up in her blue eyes and spilling over. She was screaming incoherently into an eventual reality that will, of course, help shape the person she will become. But tonight she will not sleep.

It was just past 3 pm when I rolled out of my driveway. I turned on to Walnut, headed to the gunsmith with a few things I needed done. I was also fishing somewhere in the Sierras when my mind-vacation was ended short. Up ahead I saw the flashing amber lights of a CHP cruiser. I slowed. When I finally reached the scene my heart entered my throat. There in front of the black and white stood a stoic figure in a John Brown belt. At his feet was a young Shepherd mix, half in and half out of an old wool army blanket, writhing in agony. It's lower half surely crushed. The trooper, looking up the sidewalk a full blocks distance could see his immediate future. Hell was coming. The trooper adjusted his tear proof mask. He won't sleep tonight either.