For the Sins of Three

Jeffery Kesterson

English 105

1/18/2015

For The Sins Of Three

When I played football we had a quarterback who constantly treated us linemen like we didn’t mean anything, we were nothing to him, lowlifes, the dirt on the bottom of his cleats. We were the ones who protected him, we were the ones who allowed him to makes his great plays and without us he was nothing. We were good at what we did, we were on our way to the state championships and we deserved the respect and a little gratitude from the so called leader of the team. Since I was the leader of the line I came up with the plan that on the next play we would side step and allow him to be sacked, he needed to know that he needed us, we were his protectors, we were the ones that ran this field and controlled what happened on it and it was not him. The next play came up, the crowd was screaming, everyone’s adrenaline was pumping because we knew about the imminent doom that was about to happen, the snap was called, we side-stepped and he was tackled with the ferocity of three charging gorillas. After he slowly got back to his feet we went back the huddle and I asked him do you understand now what we do for you? He nodded and apologized. This is the only time that I sabotaged something for the greater good.

As I begun to read the story the “Saboteur” written by Ha Jin, I felt as if I was back in mainland China the way he was describing the smells, “The air smelled of rotten melon” (179) , the sounds, “Food and fruit vendors crying for customers in last voices” (179), and the sights of the bustling community, “Hundreds of people running were rushing around…a concrete statute of Chairman Mao...pigeons perched on the Chairman’s raised hand and forearm” (179) .

As Mr.Chiu and his bride were eating lunch at the train station in a calm fashion as to not upset his hepatitis which he had three months ago, you could tell the police officers were up to something as they were, “telling a joke…and again stealing a...