Sometimes when you’re walking along the pathway to life you find a fork in the road and, after careful deliberation, you choose a trail to take.
This is not what happened to him.
He didn’t have a fork in the road in which there were two paths to pick from. Instead, he had a port that he grew up in where there were many places he could set sail to or many roads where he could begin walking on. He choose none of them and decided that the only way to the top was to stay right were he was and work his way up from there.
It was a lot of hard work and he certainly hadn’t made it on his own, but at some point in the future he was made mayor over the port of his birth. It was what happened after that, after he had achieved his dreams, that is of concern to us.
“I am looking for a friend of mine.” the richly dressed man stated.
“Did something happen to him?”
“Yes…he was taken in by a creature that turned him against me. He thinks that I have come to destroy his life and all that he holds dear when the opposite is true.” the man sighed in sorrow and the mayor looked sympathetic. “I have no wish to even harm the creature that has caught him in it’s delusions so long as it releases my friend.”
“I don’t see how I could be of service, unless this man is in my town or left in some kind of prominent way. We have many travelers through here and can’t keep track of them all, despite our best efforts.”
“Is there anyway you can put up a watch for sign that doesn’t involve a ‘dead or alive’ epitaph?”
“Why certainly! This isn’t the first time we’ve done so, but it’s usually for wayward children and not for grown friends.”
“I had hoped…” There was a clinking of a small bag of money deposited on the desk.
“There will be no problem.” The bag was removed from the desk and added to a drawer on one side.
“It was a pleasure speaking with you, here is how you may contact me should any information come to light…”
The mayor was too busy thinking about what the money he had received could be put to (perhaps he’d finally be able to upgrade the port’s schoolhouse or maybe enlarge the detention center) that he wasn’t aware of what he’d done.
You can make deals with the devil without being aware of it. Good intentions can go a long, long way.
Breathing In 