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We have all seen the famous picture of Tripeman leaving the site of his first major press interview about the conclusion of the investigation, with a tear trickling down his stoic face.
It is with much trepidation, and a fair share of humility, that I am endeavoring to take up and perhaps shed some light on the now-14-year-old question that day left us with: "Why was Tripeman crying?"
I feel, to fully answer this question, we must look at all the aspects of the incident. First, there were the months of waiting for its resolution, which must have grated heavily on his superhuman nerves and patience. True, there was a great outpouring of support from his friends and fellows, from all of those whose lives he had touched and whom he had been touched by in return; but this must be balanced against the extreme personal and psychological price that even those only distantly connected to him must have paid for their amity.
On that hot summer day less than two years before, it was not just Tripeman's family tree that lost a wayward and hopelessly fruitless branch, it was as if an entire layer of epidermis was torn off an entire generation, and then they were all baptized in a swimming pool of salty lemonade. It was not the big mystery or the misery that pounded it most solidly home into my mind, but the little details. The autopsy report, almost illegibly blurred by tears. The coffee cup, half-full, with the dead fly floating in it. The tiny banzai tree on the corner of the desk that the detective, brave Mr. Oliver, knocked off onto the hard, unyielding concrete.
Tripeman kept up the kind of heroic public image that anyone who knew him in the slightest were certain he would. He helped mastermind the search operation and the investigation, and it was undoubtedly his fame and muscle that helped move along the investigation, despite the very high corridors of power that all of those involved had to traverse.
And then, after years of painstaking effort, the final day. All the various veins of investigation, all the careful traps, and counter-traps, and counter-counter-traps, were sprung simultaneously, with the blend of forethought, imagination and divinely-inspired luck that I have never seen before. It was not just Tripeman who presided over that press conference, it was a very well-served Justice. The amount of wrongdoing that had been scraped away, like black barnacles from the dark underbelly of the Good Ship American, was truly a sight to renew this jaded individual's faith in "the system."
And yet, I'm back to where I started. As Tripeman left the meeting with his trademark confident smile, an unknown individual, perhaps a cub-reporter, fresh out of dog-show-in-the-park photo shoots, snapped the now-legendary image. It encapsulates so much in its small frame. Perhaps God, weeping to himself after casting his creation out of the Garden of Eden, looked something like this--without an audience, quiet and alone, to thyne own self, be true.
That is what this picture says to me.
That is why Tripeman was crying--because, at the end of the day, when all cows have come home to rest in their not-so-long journey to becoming hamburger, when all fat ladies have finished singing, taken off their horned helmets and retired for the night in weightless, unjudging sleep, we are alone and left to ourselves.
When there is no one left to watch and judge us, we can let the necessary brave fronts fall. When justice is served, the press conference over, Tripeman can cry
