Furious and Foolish: On Power, Poison, and Knowing When to Put the Shovel Down

A city show with sharp women and sharper knives, and a porch matron with something to say about both

I heard about this new television show called Furious, and from what I can gather, it's about a woman with a plan, a federal agent on her tail, and a whole lot of lawyers getting poisoned. The writer seems to think that's a story about power. I've got a different word for it, but I'll get to that.

We had a woman here in Harrow Corners, Mrs. Haynes, who got it in her head that the land across the creek belonged to her family by some old promise nobody could produce in writing. So she decided to take it. Cut through Farmer Delaney's fence in the middle of the night, barbed wire and all, and spent the better part of a year in the county jail for her trouble. She came back with a scar on her cheek and nothing else to show for it. The land was still Delaney's. The promise was still nowhere. That's the thing about promises that only live in your own head: they're very convincing right up until the moment you're bleeding in someone else's pasture.

Now, Furious apparently draws on the Greek Furies, the Erinyes, those old winged creatures who chased down wrongdoers and made their lives miserable until justice was served. I appreciate the reference. But whoever wrote this show might want to revisit their mythology, because the Furies weren't in the revenge business for the thrill of it. They wanted wrongs righted. There is a difference between righting a wrong and just making sure everyone around you is as miserable as you feel. One of those is justice. The other is a second hole next to the first one.

The show is supposed to be funny, too. Witty women trading sharp lines while bodies pile up. I've known sharp women my whole life, and I'll tell you, the sharpest ones I respected never needed anyone bleeding on the floor to prove the point. Mrs. Haynes, God rest her, would've called that kind of wit a blessing curse: blesses you with a good line, curses everyone in earshot with the fallout.

The show wraps it all up in twists, apparently, and the writer calls the ending a triumph. Two wrongs meeting in a room and squaring off. I've seen that before, and what I can tell you is that it doesn't clean anything up. It just makes the mess bigger and wetter.

Old Man Thompson could've told them that. He spent twenty years building his dock on the lake, piece by piece, tending it like it was one of his own children. The lake swallowed it whole in the storm of '63. Then last month, it came back. Dock still in one piece, sitting right where he'd left it, like the lake had simply been holding onto it for a while and decided it was done. Old Man Thompson looked at it for a long time and said, Nature's wild, kid, but it hits the reset button when it damn well pleases. He didn't ask questions. He just went and got his fishing rod.

Power isn't what this show thinks it is. It's not a blush and a quip and a poison slipped into a glass. It's not being the cleverest person at the table while the lawyers drop around you. Real power is quieter than that and considerably harder to fake. It's knowing which fence not to cut, which promise is worth keeping, and when to stop digging and start filling in the hole you've made. Mrs. Haynes figured that out eventually. She came home from jail, walked up to her porch, counted three steps where there had always been two, and nobody in town recalled a third ever being built. She didn't make a fuss about it. She just nodded, went inside, and kept her hands to herself from then on.

That's wisdom. Not a television show. Not a scheme. Just a woman who finally understood that some things in this world are bigger than her grievance, and the sooner you reckon with that, the fewer scars you carry home.

The folks in Furious might be entertaining. I don't doubt it. But entertaining and instructive are two different animals, and I'd hate for anyone watching to walk away thinking poisoning lawyers is a reasonable response to being wronged. It isn't. It's just a faster way to dig.

Keep your hands clean and your porch swept. -- Aunt Dot
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