The Empathy Solution by David Henson

A brawl erupts at the supermarket checkout when somebody cuts in line. You’d think people would be used to it. Such behavior is practically a sport these days — along with running red lights, talking on the phone in restaurants and theaters, coughing and sneezing with uncovered mouths.  Besides, there are worse things. Smash and grabs. Carjackings. Fraud. Embezzlement. Insider training.

Most people aren’t crooks, but jerks are common as cruel memes. The so-called experts say people no longer believe social norms apply because they have no empathy.

It tempts me to become a recluse like my brother.

#

Bernie, tanned and muscular from his lifestyle, nearly pulls my arm off as he yanks me into his cabin.

“Can we have a little sunlight for once?” I reach for a curtain my brother has fashioned from a bedsheet.

“Don’t! Somebody might’ve followed you.”

Assuring my younger brother there’s no one is pointless. He’s lived off-grid for years, and I don’t see that changing. He has a garden, apple trees, a diesel generator and a well he refuses to have tested because “they” would put chemicals in it. His makeshift kitchen has an old icebox, wood-burning stove, and apple crates nailed to the wall for cabinets.

My brother bought his small spread with his share of our mother’s nest egg. Mom had made corporate VP. She’d planned to retire early and already had mapped out her travel dreams. But her heart had other ideas.

When Mom died, Bernie was about halfway to earning his degree in forestry. His grades were excellent, but he couldn’t handle the campus hustle and bustle. He started referring to his professors as saboteurs. I convinced him to see a specialist, who prescribed meds. My brother hated how they made him feel “like a wet sheep.” He stopped attending classes, retreated to his room, and refused further medication. I encouraged him to see if the doctor would prescribe something else, but my brother wouldn’t have it and dropped out of school.

Bernie pours us each a cup of dark amber liquid. I have to admit his homemade hooch is pretty good. Shivering, I suggest lighting a fire, but he says the logs are “untrustworthy.” As usual, we reminisce about when we were kids, and Bernie begins dwelling on how everyone bullied him. Everyone didn’t. Just Fred Framer. Fred was in my fifth grade class. He’d been held back twice and was a few inches and several pounds bigger than me. He was my personal tormentor… until Bernie stepped in.

I get back up, soaked from the mud puddle Fred has pushed me into. When I face him, my fists raised like the fighter I’m not, he laughs and points at his shoes. I decide it’s better to polish them again than having the wind knocked out me … or worse. As I’m kneeling at his feet, I hear a scream. Bernie charges and launches himself onto Fred’s back. My brother clamps his legs around Fred and lands a couple punches before the bully bucks off my brother and ties into him. 

As we sip moonshine, I tell my brother for the umpteenth time how sorry I am about my behavior after the incident with Fred Framer. Bernie leads me outside and motions toward the wildflowers and apple blossoms and says if I had anything to do with his living like this instead of in the crowded city, I should “take a bow.” Then we get into a Seinfeld-like discussion about how bough and bow could possibly be pronounced the same.

I finish my drink and, satisfied my brother is no worse, if no better, I hug him and say I’ll be back in a week. 

#

“They’ve come up with a new additive,” Mr. Jenkins, my boss at the water treatment plant, says. “It’s a goo. We’re the pilot. If we can find a way to dissolve it, the additive will be used everywhere.”

“What is it? A new fluoride, chlorine or—”

“Don’t know and don’t care. Neither do you, Peters. You’re the chemist. Get on it and stay on it.” He smirks. “You don’t have anybody to go home to.”

Thanks for reminding me, asshole. The thought of my ex-wife and her tennis instructor still is like a hard serve that bounces up and hits me in the nuts. But Jenkins is right. I’m glad to have an excuse to avoid going to my house of echoes.

For hours, my efforts to dissolve the goo in water are fruitless. Needing a break, I go to my desk and pour a cup of tea from my thermos. As I take a sip, I glance at the photo I have of Bernie and me as kids. In it, my brother’s split lip is almost healed.

When I ask my brother why I didn’t see him at recess, he lifts a textbook and says he had to study. After school, I suggest we hang around and shoot some hoops. Bernie’s eyes focus over my shoulder. I look and see Fred approaching. When I turn back, Bernie is headed for home.

After Bernie attacked Fred in my defense, my brother became the whipping boy instead of me. I was so relieved, I never stepped in to protect my brother. Fredeventuallygot expelled for stealing bicycles. By then, Bernie was isolating himself more and more and had started down the path to becoming like he is today. I’m not saying Fred was the sole cause. Our workaholic mother and our father abandoning us probably contributed. Then there’s also the whole nature-nurture thing. But I can’t help feeling I’m partly to blame.

I return to my work station … and to more futility. I’m about to give up around midnight when I accidentally spill a little tea into the beaker with the sample. The water effervesces …  and presto! Serendipity waves its wand. The goo dissolves.

After determining through trial and error that the catechins in the tea are responsible, I adjust the compounds in my dilution formula.

The next morning, when Jenkins asks how I did it, I don’t give dumb luck the credit. “I varied the amounts using a Pell Curve. Everything’s in the log.” Except the tea.

#

About a week later, after getting home from my workout, I down a couple glasses of water. Soon after, the phone rings — a telemarketer trying to sell me extended car insurance. I snatch the phone. “Once and for all, will you quit —” Then it strikes me that the woman is only trying to make a living. I tell her I’m not interested at present, but she should feel free to call again. I can hardly believe the words coming out of my mouth.

After showering, I’m watching the news when Sally Stat, the news anchor of the leading local station, does a story on the wave of politeness and good behavior that has swept over the city. Even her social media followers, she says, have retracted their claws. Come to think of it, there has been a change in people’s behavior. Fewer folks running red lights and cutting in line. Nobody’s sneezed on me. A woman in a Mazda even motioned for me to take the parking spot we both came upon at the gym. I feel different, too, more laid back. Like an elevator music version of I Am The Walrus. I thought it was fatigue from the long hours I worked.

“Nobody seems to knows the reason for the better behavior, but let’s hope it lasts, right Jim?” Sally says.

The weatherman grins at his colleague. “Must be something in the water. Speaking of which we’re in for a period of rain…”

I click off the TV. Something in the water?

For the next couple days, I stick to bottled water, even in my coffee and to brush my teeth. I start feeling more on edge. When a guy on a bicycle blows through a stop sign, and I nearly hit him, I lay on the horn. Goo goo g’joob.

I start drinking tap water again and feel as if something has taken a file to the edginess. A fellow and I have a good-natured argument at the grocery store checkout, both insisting the other go first. That night, after thinking about my ex-wife without flinching, I pour all my bottled water down the drain.

#

 I wind through hills and hollers to Bernie’s place. As I approach the ramshackle cabin, I feel the usual pangs of guilt over any role I played in my brother’s situation. As satisfied as Bernie seems, I can’t imagine he’s truly happy. How could he be when he mistrusts chunks of firewood and everyone but me? I don’t think he’s miserable, though. Sometimes not-miserable is as close to happy that life allows.

When I eventually arrive at my brother’s cabin, he let’s me in and hurries to peek out the window.

I tell Bernie what I’ve concluded about the additive in the water and how great things are in town because of it.

“So, Ralph … you’re helping poison people.”

“The authorities have their reasons, Bernie…I see you’re having a nice harvest of Fujis this season.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

We debate the merits of increasing people’s empathy artificially until Bernie slumps in his chair and looks up at the ceiling. “You’re not yourself, Ralph. You’re under the influence of the stuff you’re defending.”

“Maybe I am. Maybe everybody should be.”

“Let’s agree to disagree.” Bernie stands. “I don’t like arguing with you, Ralph. I’ll get us a drink.”

I continue debating with my brother in my mind. “Bernie, did you get lost in there?” I say after a few minutes.

Returning, he hands me a cup. I down the moonshine, which burns my throat more than usual and makes my head spin.

… I’m on Bernie’s cot with my wrists and ankles tied. The bindings are loose enough to wriggle out of, but I play along to see what my brother’s up to.

“Sorry, Ralph. This is for your own good. For everyone’s.” He starts whimpering. “This isn’t right,” he says. “Promise to stay with me a few days if I untie you.”

I promise. My brother’s too agitated to be left alone. If only he had tap water. Bernie unties me. I try to text Jenkins that I’ll be absent a few days but, as usual, there’s no service.

For the next three days, my brother and I work in his garden. We eat Fuji apples and vegetables washed down with well water and hooch. On the fourth morning, Bernie asks me if I’m feeling like myself yet. I am, and I’m not sure I like it. The fuzziness that enveloped me like a cozy blanket is gone. “I see why you’re upset, Bernie. But —”

“There’s no but. It’s—”

“You don’t know what it was like in town before. You’re out here away from everyone. Things are so much better now. Did I tell you—”

“No, no, no.” Bernie swings his head side to side. He sits on his homemade rocking chair, then stands again. “You might think what they’re doing now is good. But what if they treat the water so that —” he sits and stands again — “so that you have to salute if you see somebody in a uniform.” Another down and up. “What about that? You wouldn’t want that would you? Would you?”

Bernie’s example hits home. As much as I hate to admit it.

My brother pulls out a pocket knife. Before I can stop him, he draws the blade across his palm and holds up his arm, red swirling down it. “It has to come from the blood. Not some chemical. From the blood.”

“Jeez, Bernie, I get it already.” I hurry to the kitchen, grab a frayed pillowcase Bernie uses as a dishtowel and wrap it around his hand.

I stay another day until Bernie seems back to normal. Normal for him.

#

My first night home, I lie away wrestling with doubts about my plan. The empathy solution isn’t so bad. It’s fostered a better society. Not “fostered,” Bernie would say, forced. Yes, but…no, but… I’m about to give up on sleep when I find myself in Bernie’s cabin, the two of us sipping his moonshine. A man and woman burst in. When I see their uniforms, I stand and salute. My brother refuses, so they grab him by the elbows and drag him away. I sit up gasping and see Bernie — standing at the foot of my bed and holding up his bloody arm. I wake up for real.

The next morning, I buy a burner phone on the way to work.

At the water treatment plant, I start explaining my absence to Jenkins.

“Not necessary, my boy,” he says. “Glad you’re back safe and sound.” He takes another sip of coffee.

I go to my work station and disconnect the infuser. No more additive. That’s the easy part.

Fearing another pilot project might be commissioned, I make a call with the burner and say I have a hot tip. After being on hold several minutes, a familiar voice comes on the line — Sally Stat, the news anchor.

I tell her everything and point out how variations of the solution might be abused in the future. I sweeten the scoop with a lie, saying that the solution is a carcinogen. As I expected, she’s skeptical. I convince her to use nothing but bottled water for a few days and see for herself how she feels. The following week “Cancer-causing Mind Control Drug Added To Water Supply” shouts from the headlines.

Most people aren’t sure what to think. Their confusion turns to outrage as the effect of the empathy solution wears off. Whistleblowers come forward from water treatment facilities in two other communities. They say they were never able to solve the “goo problem.” Must not be tea drinkers. At least not careless tea drinkers.

Some low-level government bureaucrat takes the fall for the water treatment scandal. Jenkins doesn’t know whether to fire or promote me, so he does neither.

Crime rates and antisocial behavior surge. Some days I question whether I’ve done the right thing, but always reach the same conclusion. The solution, as my brother said, must come from the blood, not mind-altering chemicals. I’m full of doubt about whether we’re up to the challenge … until one Saturday when I visit Bernie. As always, he rushes to the window as soon as I enter his cabin. I sigh, but then he takes a deep breath and, hand trembling, opens the curtain. I notice he’s even built a fire. My brother gives me hope.

David Henson

Image by Bernd Müller from Pixabay – close up of a glass of water surrounded by water droplets on a blue background