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The ear had been washed clean of blood and rested on a blanket of cotton. Just like the others.
Porter knew they were able to estimate age through the carbon dating of material in the eyes; it was called the Lynnerup method. The process could narrow the age down to within a year or two.
The four monkeys comes from the Tosho-gu Shrine in Nikko, Japan, where a carving of three apes resides above the entrance. The first covering his ears, the second covering his eyes, and the third covering his mouth, they depict the proverb “Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.” The fourth monkey represents “Do no evil.”
Anything you could play at eighty years old while toting your oxygen tank and wearing pastel slacks would never be a sport in his book.
Women were perfectly capable of handling pain but not emotion. Men handled emotion but not pain.
“The life cycle carving at the Tosho-gu Shrine is made up of eight panels in all. The monkeys appear in the second panel. Can anyone tell me their names?” I, of course, had the answer, and I raised my hand earnestly. If Mrs. Carter also knew, she chose not to participate. Father looked to me, then Mrs. Carter, and back to me. “Well, you did get your hand in the air first. Why don’t you tell us their names?” “Mizaru, Kikazaru, and Iwazaru.”
“Mizaru means see no evil, Kikazaru means hear no evil, and Iwazaru means speak no evil.”
“Shizaru,” I said. “His name is Shizaru.” “He stands for do no evil,” Father said. “And that, of course, is the rub. Should someone see or hear evil, there is little one can do. When someone speaks evil, there is fault to be had, but when they do evil . . . well, when they do evil there is no room for forgiveness.”
“They eat trash and carry more diseases than a Kardashian at Mardi Gras,”
Real life doesn’t work that way. I’ve seen more lives end than I can count, and they all seem to hold that same expectation at the end, their eyes glancing at the door, waiting for their savior to arrive. He doesn’t, though. In real life, the only true savior is oneself.
