When the Sleeping Bird Sings

Live: November 15th, 2017

Sons of Abraham.

I wrote about it. I learned their pain. I saw the horror.

About a week ago I received a phone call from Marissa asking if I would travel with her to small town Wisconsin to investigate a shooting at the Sons of Abraham synagogue in Salem. I had two hours to get ready.

Sure, I said.

What else could I say?

So, I packed my bags with jeans, sweaters and a nice pants suit in case I would need it, and then made way for America's Dairyland. I wasn't sure what to expect as a Chicago native. Wisconsin was always a border away, so close, yet so foreign. We shared the Midwest ninety-degree summers and subzero winters thanks to Lake Michigan, but what else did we have in common?

Marissa drove most of the way even though I told her how I take I-80 every time I go to visit family back home. She teased me about if I even knew how to drive since she only ever sees me on the bike.

That was about the only conversation we shared the whole way there. Marissa seemed tired and tense, but she wasn't one to share her personal problems. That I knew of. Sometimes I wondered if people were more open to talking to others, they just didn't feel like to talking to me, or at least because they weren't patient enough for my response.

After we crossed the Illinois border and stopped at an oasis for a bathroom break, I took over the wheel for the last hour and half. I was surprised to find that Wisconsin reminded me of Iowa by the way the rolling hills and sour smell of cows take over your senses. It was shockingly familiar.

When we pulled into Salem Wisconsin I knew.

The town was small and quiet and large all at the same time.

The houses were spread across a yellowed-over landscape, divided by a main highway that separated one side of town with the surrounding shallow lake from the other.

Marissa told me the population was nine-thousand. Though it didn't feel like it.

Our first destination was the town's only motel, which greeted us with the need for a little renovating. Marissa and I brought in our bags and started plotting where to begin our investigations.

That led us to the synagogue. It was a tall rectangular building, possessing sharp angles and two large pillars running down the front steps. There were two banners waving in the wind on the pole out front; an American flag, and the other, the flag of Israel. It reminded me more of a government building than a place for religious gatherings.

Police cars trailed the parking lot and side streets and I remembered thinking that I had no idea what Marissa was about to bring me into, but a part of me felt like I was supposed to know.

We talked to some of the cops out front to see what they had to say about the story. We knew they wouldn't let us inside, but we thought it would be a good starting point to gather information.

When we left I felt like something changed inside of me. It sounds dramatic, and it is. But for as much death as I could feel running down my spine, I also felt a powerful lifeforce that wanted their story heard.

Seven sons lost. Seven injured. On Shabbat.

It was a miracle. The ratio, I mean. A few hours ago, we heard news circulate the hospital that one of the seven injured victims lost their life. Eight sons now gone. No longer a miracle.

The hospital was difficult to deal with. There were journalists flooding the halls trying to get whatever little information they could. Marissa and I had already started putting the pieces together and my stomach was in knots as she handed her cell-phone displaying the inside state of the synagogue.