One story illustrates that responsibility to the community lies in being honest and direct, not permitting yourself to hide in subterfuge, and in having the perceptiveness to get involved with events beyond your own four walls, outside your windows, when needed, as when a woman's life may depend upon it.
The final segment of "Getting By" describes a party Gary Soto and his wife Carolyn throw to celebrate the release of his first poetry collection. With their cottage filled with friends and relatives not seen "in nine months--or years!" Soto's sister Debra drags him to a bedroom window where she points at a woman on top of a "tin shed in the back yard" yelling obscenities in self-defense at a man waving a steak knife at her. Soto pulls down the shade. He contemplates calling the police.
Pulling down the shade, I felt inclined to telephone the police. I hesitated, however, and went over to tell Carolyn about what was happening outside. She rushed ... and peeked through the shade. They were gone.
A moment later Debra tugs on Soto's sleeve saying the woman is at the front door. When he opens to her, she pretends to have a broken-down car and asks to use the phone, refusing to meet his stare. He watches her and wonders if he should directly tell her that he knows it was trouble with a man and a steak knife, not trouble with a broken-down car, that brought her to his door.
Not wanting to embarrass someone so clearly in need of comfort, not wanting to get involved, he waits, walks her to the door, and wishes her luck with her car. She thanks him.
But I said nothing, for fear of getting involved, and when the young woman was off the telephone I walked her to the door and--very stupidly--wished her luck in getting her car started. On the steps she half-turned to me and ... said, "Thanks."
Although Soto does not draw morals and lessons at the conclusions of his stories, there is a clear implication that he would have done well to have acted on his inclination to intervene in trying to rescue her from violence and that he did poorly in engaging in subterfuge with her. For the young woman, there would have been a natural inclination to hide the truth as people tend to shy away from strangers who are in danger: homes and families are instinctively protected from invasion by dangerous elements.
But for Soto, there was that half-turned-toward inclination to intervene on her behalf. He would have done well to respond to it if for no other reason than that she may have seen a new pattern of being. Two of an individual's responsibilities to the community are (1) to follow beneficial inclinations that have the potential to lead to good and (2) to reject the inclination to hide in subterfuge.
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