Post on 30-May-2018
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-1Leather Birds by Devon Pitlor
Round in shrinking spirals they swoop,
Each with its diamond-shaped head,
They gouge your eyes and gore your heart,
And shred you until you are dead.
----from “The Ballad of the Leather Birds” by Duke Barvo, 1974
I. The dread of racism
Brooke Nescott had lived most of her conscious life in Aristock, and she was
more than aware that whites had always outnumbered blacks in her town.Perhaps her parents had chosen to live here for that reason, but it didn’t seem
likely because neither of Brooke’s now deceased parents had ever given any
indication of having any fear or animosity against African-Americans. Brooke’s
father, a career military person, naturally worked with them every day and
depended on them for his own safety during difficult and dangerous missions.
Brooke’s mother, as with so many other things, just never mentioned any
subject that bordered on race distinction. Of course, in the eyes of some, this
unconsciousness of the black race could have easily been interpreted as a latentform of white racism during the chaotic and troubled era of Brooke’s youth, but
all that Brooke knew was that people of color had never played a very large role
in her life up to her thirty-sixth year. Like so many other social issues which
disinterested the perennially bored Brooke, the presence or absence of the black
man was simply something that never crossed her mind. Her mysterious visitors
from the future, the disappearance of Dragonsnort, her recent dream voyages
into the Secondary Alternate Realm and her rescue from certain death by
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hanging, a rescue effected by a certain enthralling Joel, about whom she had
recently learned much more through select reading on certain computer-based
websites and forums, had done much to erect a wall of strangeness between
Brooke and what she considered the mundane and bland world which
surrounded her. Deep within, Brooke sought not only the affection and vibrancy
she had experienced with Dragonsnort but also the electric sense of adventure
she had experienced in the dream realm at the side of Joel. In short, the
presence or absence of blacks in Aristock was something that had never
crossed her radar. She had no feelings one way or another.
Thus it did not come as shock to her when suddenly and without warning she
chanced to look out into her backyard and saw her ten year old son Jared
running around playing with a couple of other boys from his last year’s fourth
grade class, one of whom, named Rialto Stevens, was black. Rialto had been
with Jared at the house several times before, and the boys had played video
games and watched television together, and Brooke had certainly seen Rialto inJared’s class when she visited because, if for no other reason, Rialto was one of
only two black children in the room, and, far from being discriminated against,
actually appeared to enjoy a sort of celebrity status accorded to one who
represented a true minority. Aristock was simply not a racist place, and Brooke
had always been quite pleased by her son’s friendship with Rialto. She had even
gotten to know the boy’s mother somewhat, a totally nice woman who worked as
a nurse in the same hospital complex where Brooke had been employed for over
ten years as a histotechnologist.
But on that bright August day of 2010 upon watching the boys jumping around in
the yard, doing simply what boys do, Brooke was gripped by the most profound
of terrors. She knew it had something to do with Rialto, but she could not say
what. Under a roof, she felt, Rialto was fine, but there was something that
bothered Brooke acutely about seeing him outside playing alongside her son. A
sense of embarrassment clouded her mind at first, which was replaced by a
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simple curiosity moments later. There was something about even a familiar
black boy playing in the yard that gave Brooke shivers, and she needed to
search her mind and find out what it was. Certainly it had nothing to do with
racism, but rather it seemed to emanate from some long-repressed memory of
an event in her own childhood. The recall file was simply corrupt or missing in
her mind. Access was denied.
She called the boys in for snacks. They sat around her kitchen table and drank
strawberry flavored milk and ate sugary cookies. Almost surreptitiously, Brooke
studied Rialto. He, like her own Jared, was a healthy, tough and fine-looking
child. His dark skin was smooth and unblemished, and Brooke envied it as all
light skinned people do. A white dusting of cookie sugar covered Rialto’s upper
lip, highlighting the rich chocolaty shade of his skin. Rialto was truly a
handsome child. Brooke smiled politely as Rialto and another white friend of
Jared’s named Tony something thanked her for the snacks, shook Jared’s hand
in a very mature way, and said they needed to get home. Brooke watched Tonyand Rialto as they walked off the porch and down the front sidewalk together. A
clear azure sky hung over their heads, and before long the green boughs of leaf-
laden trees obscured their view. Brooke felt no pang of fear from anything
whatsoever. This had only come when she had seen all three of them playing in
the yard. The issue remained an unresolved mental puzzle.
II. Jared, always curious, spurs another memory
Perhaps her precocious son was reading her mind, as he often did, when he
rolled his huge brown eyes at Brooke and asked whether she had a date that
evening or whether she could talk. Brooke, having no plans, was always happy
to engage in conversation with her son. Since Dragonsnort’s disappearance
over two years before, Jared and his mother had bonded to a degree far beyond
the usual mother/son affection, and Brooke reserved as much time as she could
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to talk with Jared and answer even the most personal of his questions.
As the evening sun turned harshly orange, the two sat together in the small
kitchen dining nook, and Brooke patiently waited for whatever Jared was going
to ask. She admired the way the sun glinted off his heavy shock of sandy,
mismanaged hair. Much like that of Dragonsnort, she mused. There was not one
hour of one day that Brooke did not miss Dragonsnort, but she had ceased to
talk about him to his son because, in effect, Dragonsnort had just been too
complex to understand, even for a gifted and intuitive boy like Jared. But as hegrew bigger, there was no doubt that Jared was becoming more and more the
image of his father. She pictured him one day with metal piercings and multiple
tattoos like Dragonsnort and wondered whether he would acquire an interest in
music. With Jared, it was always hard to judge what he might become, but the
boy gave all the signs of a deep sagacity that foreshadowed a remarkable future.
Brooke knew implicitly that she needed to keep up with him and his far-reaching
questions. That had become her one obligation now in life.
Sad, she thought, I am still young enough and pretty enough to find another man, but I am bored by everyone I meet. Only Jared and the memory of his
enchanting father interest me. And of course there was Joel, but he was only in
a dream---or was he?
Jared got up and dished out two bowls of ice cream and brought them back to
the table. He enjoyed eating ice cream during his conversations with his mother.
It didn't matter if the two had not eaten dinner yet. It was discussion time, andthat called for ice cream.
"Mom, why don't we have many of Rialto's kind here?" he asked tilting a
inquisitive eye at his mother. "I mean there is Brandy in my class and Rialto.
That's all. In some cities there are thousands of African-Americans, but we don't
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have many here. How come?" Then he rocked backwards in his chair, folded
his arms and waited for a reply.
Brooke felt guilty about not knowing the answer. She wondered if the whole
town had been some sort of bigoted refuge for whites, but no, she had never
heard anything of the sort. This was exactly the sort of question that
Dragonsnort could have answered with his seemingly boundless knowledge of
places and people. But Dragonsnort was not there.
"I don't know," she said glumly. "I really don't know. I have lived here since I
was a child. My parents bought this house when I was five or six. We used to
live outside of Philadelphia. My father was in the special forces and he was
always being sent overseas on missions. I think he just needed a home base."
Brooke paused for a moment. In her dim memory, she saw herself starting the
first grade at Tabilan Elementary. The new children she met were just unformed
shadows in her mind. They may as well have been ghosts. She remembered
them as a shapeless group, mostly snarling faces treating her to the usual
torment accorded to new kids. And then she saw them grow bigger along withher. She saw them blossom into much larger kids and choose groups and gangs
and teams. And she remembered some of their names, names that would mean
nothing to Jared, as she had never maintained any lasting friendships. In the
panorama of her fragmented memory, there were very few black kids, but yes,
there were some. Now she was sure of it. They had no distinct faces, but they
were black. They hung about in the corners of her recollection like wraiths. She
recalled none of their names or whose clique they eventually belonged to. Yes,
she thought at length, I must have been as prejudiced as everyone else. I must
have avoided them. The black children did, however, totally disappear from her
memories when she entered Laughton Middle School. There everyone was
white. She was positive of it. In fact, she remembered that it had bothered her a
bit once, the sheer whiteness of her classmates and teachers. Jared had
provoked an entire train of thought about this issue which had not surfaced in
her mind for eons. Brooke suddenly came to the realization that certain patches
of memory were missing in her recollection. There was something about
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starting middle school in the sixth grade, something she couldn't quite get a grip
on. Then she remembered that Jared was going into the fifth grade the following
fall. He would attend Casgrove Elementary as he always had because they had
closed Tabilan, the school she first attended. Why had they closed Tabilan?
Brooke recalled something about the wiring and the drywall. It was an old,
outdated building. That was all. Tabilan dated from the early part of the
Twentieth Century, or perhaps before. It had been built on the site of some older,
institutional buildings. She knew that, but there was something else. Something
about things circling in sky. What were they? Think as she could, Brooke couldnot call then out of the dim cave of lost memory.
III. White man's guilt and a new friend
The next day was Monday, another workday at the clinic. Brooke hated the
routine nature of her laboratory job, but she needed to pay the bills. All morning
she had been disturbed by her inability to answer Jared's question about thepaucity of black residents in Aristock. Why had she never herself thought of this
before? She was just like everyone else, and Brooke, being Brooke, hated that.
She was thirty-six years old now and had never really had a close black friend in
her life. That Monday, while watching the variously garbed medical personnel
file into the hospital complex from the safety of her parked car, Brooke decided
to do something about it. There was, naturally, Dr. Amobana, a dark and
handsome Nigerian, but Amobana was married. There were also various lab
techs and other medical assistants of African descent. She watched some of
them parade into the buildings, realizing that the extent of her relationship withthem had always ended at a cordial but perfunctory good morning. Some were
cute guys too. Interesting looking and probably players of some sort. Why had
she never scanned them before? It probably had something to do with her
upbringing or more recently her immutable bonding to Dragonsnort.
Dragonsnort had for a time totally blinded her to other men. She did not regret
that. But, no, she finally thought. I have just been a garden variety racist.
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Nothing better than that. The blacks have just been invisible to me. Brooke felt
a pang of self-loathing and continued to watch the arriving employees, searching
for black faces. She was suddenly determined to make a black friend, someone
who could unveil the mystery of Aristock's tiny African-American population to
her.
Then out of the crowd came a familiar face. Caprice Stevens, an oncology nurse
and Rialto's mother. She had spoken to Caprice several times in the past,
mostly to ask whether Rialto could stay over with Jared. Caprice was vivacious,intelligent and physically animated. Like Brooke, she did not appear to have a
man in her life and was probably raising Rialto alone. Like a schoolgirl, Brooke
felt she must have a lot in common with Caprice, or at least she would find out.
She jumped out of the car and deliberately put herself into Caprice's path on the
hospital sidewalk.
"Good morning," Brooke chirped, almost unnaturally. "Rialto was at my place
yesterday. I hope I didn't keep him too late. I hope he had a good time."
Caprice seemed taken aback. Obviously, Brooke was acting too aggressive in
the abruptness of her approach. After all, she had never been so hale with
Caprice in the past. Brooke realized that she may have seemed at best
counterfeit. Caprice halted in her path and smiled warmly.
"Rialto always has a good time with Jared," she said, searching for words.
"They get along real well." Then Caprice smiled again and started to regain her
pace. The conversation was going nowhere because, in reality, it had nowhere
to go. Other than their sons playing together, there was very little basis for afriendship between the two women. A chasm of strangeness gaped in the space
between them. Brooke realized that Caprice was growing leery of her motives.
She remembered Dragonsnort and his way with people. Dragonsnort had always
been direct and said exactly what he wanted to say. There was no beating
around any bushes when it came to Dragonsnort. Brooke decided to press on in
the same way that Dragonsnort would have. She did, after all, have a small
agenda, something she wanted to discuss. Why not just skip the pretence and
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tell Caprice what it was right away?
"Look," Brooke began, "I like your son a lot. I wanted to maybe get to know you
better too. We both probably have a lot in common. I know you eat lunch with
your gang in the third floor refectory. I thought maybe we could..."
Caprice gave Brooke a disarming smile and put her totally at ease by interjecting
"Yes, we can. I bored with all this medical talk anyway. Promise me you won'tdiscuss anything biological, and we can do lunch today. I need a table away
from some of my colleagues anyway."
The two women, uncharacteristically, shook hands there on the sidewalk entry
and agreed to meet in the cafeteria in Brooke's clinic building. They could sit
alone and talk.
Later that morning Brook realized that Caprice had seen right through her. She
reinforced her decision to be direct. Relationships between blacks and whiteswere always strained, unless you were Dragonsnort and just didn't give a shit,
and Brooke was not going to play some racial dance-around game. That much
she had learned from Dragonsnort. That much she had also learned from Jared.
The noon hour found both women hustling through the scrub-clad crowd of
techs and doctors in the Lab Annex cafeteria. Both of them broke into the
seemingly immobile line of eaters to grab small salads and tiny bowls of soup.
Both, obviously, were concerned about their weight and ate light lunches.
Brooke went to pay for both lunches but Caprice stopped her. "I'll get my own"was all she said, and Brooke shrugged and let it drop at that. Then Caprice
added "These people are boring as all hell. Let's get a corner table." Brooke
was delighted. Here was someone else of her own age who was bored by the
general flow of daily humanity. The whole encounter was starting well. When
they settled down at a table, Brooke once again took her clue from Dragonsnort
and pressed directly on to her point. There was no reason why she could not
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spring exactly what she wanted onto an interesting person like Caprice. After
all, they were different from the lowing herd, or at least Brooke wanted to be.
"Both of our boys are smart and healthy," she began, staring at Caprice. "So
let's not talk about them."
"Okay," said Caprice, seemingly pleased by the refreshing opening.
"I'm going to ramble for a minute," Brooke continued, "and I hope you can bear
with me, but I have a question for you, and I'm going to get to it. But first, let metell you that I have lived most of my life in Aristock, and, as far as I am
concerned, the place sucks. I've stayed here because of my job and my house
and because...well...I'm just too plain cowardly and lazy to go somewhere else."
"I came here last year," said Caprice blankly. She poked at the browning leaves
of her cafeteria salad as if she were looking for bugs or for some reason not to
eat them.
"I used to attend Tabilan Elementary School before they closed it. I can'tremember why. Lately there seems to be a lot of stuff I can't remember. Okay, I
told you I was going to ramble, but here is my question. Maybe you're the wrong
person to ask it to. Maybe not. I am not one of these white people who thinks
that all blacks know everything about other blacks, but I am an outsider. In all
these years, I have never connected with this place, and I'm not sure I know the
city at all. I'm not sure I know anything about anything....or even care. I get
bored very easily..."
"So do I," interjected Caprice raising an eyebrow.
"Why do you think there are so few blacks in this town? Did you ever notice
that? I mean, in school there used to be a few, and then later they all but
disappeared. The blacks I see now are like you, I think. They have moved here
recently from somewhere else. What is there about this place? Are we a bunch
of bigoted whites or what?" Brooke knew her face was beginning to visibly
flush. Perhaps she had gone too far.
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Caprice poked some more at her anaemic salad and then pushed it aside,
turning her attention to the rather greasy soup that she sloshed around casually
in the chipped, institutional bowl in front of her. She looked up at Brooke and
grinned.
"I could get mad at you," she began with a little laugh, "but since you at least
gave me the credit for not being a representative of my race, let me tell you this.
I came here with Rialto to get away from a bad neighborhood and because the
medical center pays well. To be totally honest with you, I have never encountered any discrimination here. My neighbors are all white, and we get
along fine. White doctors and professors ask me out on dates. I have a perfectly
fair white supervisor who just gave me a promotion and a raise. Maybe it's
because I am a true minority here. Maybe not. But I can tell you that I have a
race-radar as do most other people of color. If I were being discriminated
against, I would know it. So far nothing. Yep, it's a humdrum place full of dreary
people, but they have all been nothing but nice to me and Rialto, and speaking of
Rialto, his teachers have all been white too, and he loves them. They seem to
love him. Maybe they are all pretending, but it doesn't show. As for why there
are not more blacks here, I can't say. I don't know much about the town's history.
There are black people living and working all over Pennsylvania. I don't know
why so many of us have skipped over Aristock. I'm sorry about my answer. I
really can't help you."
Brooke, totally ignoring her food like Caprice, felt disappointed. Even though
she had said that she did not expect an African-American to know about other
African-Americans, she secretly expected more.
Caprice pushed all of her food to the side. "Let's go outside," she said. "I still
smoke. Wanna join me?"
"I gave it up a couple of years ago, but yes."
The two women rose from the table and emptied their still full trays in the
appropriate recycling bins and went outside to the smokers' corner of the
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building. Caprice lit up a long, thin, brown cigarette, inhaled and stared at
Brooke for a minute. It was a hot August day, and both women complained of
the heat. They knew they would not be outside for long. Brooke sensed that
Caprice was still thinking about her question and had more to say.
"I came from Delancy Street off the Mainline in Philly," Caprice said without
prologue. "That's the ghetto to you, Honey, and, you know the so-called ghetto
is filled with all kinds of people. Some are kind and caring. Others would slit
your throat for ten bucks. Still others are kind of spooky. The ghetto has a wayof pulling in on itself, being kind of separate. Not all black folks are good and
pure either, like some misinformed whites would like to make them. Some love
living in the rent zones and all the flashdash action that comes with it. Now, not
all of us are from the South either. I suppose most of us here can trace
ourselves back to some slave, but not everyone. I had an aunt, Begaya, she was
from Haiti and living with this old spooky voodoo guy from some other island.
They practiced that religion. I forget what it is called. Something voodoo. They
did things like call up spirits and turn people into zombies. They cut the heads
off goats, put them on a stake in the yard and prayed to them. Weird shit. We
used to avoid them like we would a den of snakes. These were the kind of
relatives that never left the inner city. Their creepy religion and the neighborhood
just held them in. Anyway, it was my aunt Begaya and her scary old witch doctor
boyfriend who started shouting and braying when I got this job in Aristock. As if
they actually knew something about what was beyond the city limits of
Philadelphia. "Anywhere but Aristock," my aunt once screamed at me. "Don't
go to Aristock!!" Now what in the hell did these kind of people know about
Aristock? We are four hours out of Philly. Far as I know, they came here fromHaiti as children and had never left Philadelphia. So why were they so riled up
about me moving to Aristock? They knew I wanted out of Philly with Rialto, and
they didn't give a hoot. Usually all they wanted from my family was money
anyway. But Aristock, that spooked them. I mean really spooked them. So
there. All I have done is add to your mystery. Let's get back to work before we
both have to move to the ghetto."
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and Jared to play alone. At once, the fear vanished. Brooke became calm and
relaxed and realized that whatever was troubling her came from the sight of
Rialto outside playing with the boys. She needed to test this discovery. Rialto
left the bathroom and walked into the kitchen. Could he have a glass of water?
Of course. Why not some lemonade? She poured him a glass from the pitcher
in the refrigerator and resumed watching out of the window. Everything seemed
normal. There was no fear. She waited for Rialto to finish his drink and then told
him to go outside. The minute he joined the other two boys, Brooke's heart
began hammering again. Beads of sweat formed on her forehead. Yes, it wasabout Rialto---the black kid---being in the yard. Inside, Rialto was just another
kid, and a nice one too, a good playmate for Jared, but outside he inspired panic.
Brooke realized at length that she needed to get the boys inside. Any excuse
would do. Hastily she located a box of chocolate chip cookies and dumped them
carelessly into a bowl. She ran to the door and waved the bowl in front of the
three boys. "Cookie time," she gasped, almost unable to speak. "Cookie time!
Come in and get some cookies." Brooke realized she was acting strange, but
she needed to relieve herself of the fright. Above all, she needed to find out what
was causing it.
V. A trip into local history
The Historical Foundation of Aristock amounted to an office in the back of one
branch of the public library. Inside the office were shelves of books, sheaves of
old newspapers, stacks of photos, galleries of VHS tapes and a few CD and DVD
disks as well. There were also two very messy desks. On one of the desks
Brooke immediately noted a name plate: Cassandrea Borlick. Brookeremembered Cassandrea from high school. She had been part of a crowd of
kids who represented some of the oldest families in Aristock. For reasons
unknown Cassandrea's group always hung together and were very clannish.
They considered themselves some sort of aristocracy due to the prominence of
their parents and to the fact that a few parks and streets in the center of town
bore their family names. It did not strike Brooke as strange that Cassandrea was
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still a Borlick. She probably was the girl least likely to marry in Brooke's entire
class, and she was ugly to boot. There was something that was always hostile
about Cassandrea's ugliness too, but Brooke forgot what it was. She was glad
that Cassandrea did not seem to be present, although she doubted that
Cassandrea would have even recognized her after all this time. The class of
1992 was far behind both of them now, and Brooke had had very little to do with
it even when she was part of it. Cassandrea Borlick had always been
unpleasant and repellant.
The other desk was staffed by a young man who looked more like a high school
senior than a city employee. His name plate was turned sideways and obscured
by stacks of decaying magazines from which he was busy clipping articles for
lamination. He raised up his head to greet Brooke and then immediately
dropped it again to the scissors work he was performing. When he was finished
clipping, he sighed and said "Well now. What can I help you with?" The kid
stood up and bent over his desk, staring straight into Brooke's cleavage. During
most of their discussion his eyes would return to her chest like a fumbling
adolescent who was getting his first look a woman close up. His face was
covered with pimples which seemed to brighten as he spoke. Brooke also noted
that he was wearing orange sneakers, a meaningless detail that caught her
attention for a moment. What could this kid know about the history of Aristock?
He didn't even know how to match his socks or disguise his interest in female
parts. But Brooke was determined to make the most of her visit.
"I want to know about...about..." She could not bring herself to tell this leering
boy that she was interested in the history of African-Americans in Aristock.
Stammering and searching for words, she finally said "Tabilan Elementary
School on Perimeter Street in Old Town." The boy still fixated on her chest, slid
sideways over to a huge filing cabinet and began digging through some
paperbound files. Finally he extracted a large folder tied with ribbons and
marked "Tabilan."
"Here it is," he said drooling slightly out of the corner of his mouth. "Do you
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want to sit down at that table and look through the file? Of course, nothing can
be checked out. You will have to keep it all here, but I can make copies for you
of anything of interest." He handed Brooke the heavy file and pointed at a small
table in the far corner of the room. Then he sat back down and resumed his
snipping and clipping.
Brooke, embarrassed at herself for not being able to ask the question she
wanted, sat down and untied the huge folder. As the contents spilled forth into
her hands and onto the table, she became aware that she was drinking from afire hose. There was too much information on the school and the buildings
themselves for her to digest in one brief visit. And nothing was arranged
chronologically. Brooke flipped through the documents, which mostly amounted
to articles about the comings and goings of principals and teachers from about
1920 onwards until she came to some more recent articles dating from the early
80s. She skimmed a few of these to see if there were some names she
remembered. There were none. Then she came on a much later article dated in
1985. It was about the closing of the school for "health and safety" reasons.
The mayor of Aristock had been at the closing, some big fat guy squeezed into
an outdated waistcoat. He was quoted as saying it "was well nigh time to close
the place" even though he himself had once attended the school and "would
miss it." So far Brooke was discovering really nothing about the school, but then
she extracted a group of letters still in envelopes held together by decomposing
rubber bands which snapped apart as she held them. The stamps on the letters
dated from at least the 1920s to the 80s and most were handwritten and
addressed to various clerks or librarians at the Historical Society. Some were so
old they didn't even have zip codes, and others, predating these did not evenhave street addresses. In all, there may have been fifty private-looking letters
addressed to the Aristock Historical Society. A lot of people had apparently been
writing for information on Tabilan. Brooke extracted a letter from an envelope
which bore a wartime stamp, unfolded it and started to read. In a neat
penmanship was written "Dear Mrs. Cecilia Borlick." Many of the other letters
were addressed to Cecilia Borlick as well. Brooke realized that Cassandrea must
have inherited her job directly from her grandmother, who, ostensibly, had been
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the town historian for as far back as anyone could remember. But then the
shock came. The letter was virtually unreadable. It's first sentence was clear
enough: "I am writing to inquire about some of the recent happenings at Tabilan
Elementary School" but nearly every phrase after that had been blacked out as
if the document was some sort of top secret memo that had been censored.
Brooke examined several more letters and found the same censorship.
Blackened out sentences abounded in each of them, and the signatures were
likewise obscured. Someone had taken a very long time to edit out anything of
substance in these letters, but still they were saved. Why? At this moment thekid looked up from his desk and asked if she was finding what she wanted.
"We're closing in a half hour," he said, still scanning her breasts.
Brooke replaced the letters innocently as if she had discovered nothing. The
final sheaf of papers in the folder however contained exactly what she wanted to
see. It was a collection of class pictures taken each year since 1918 up to the
closing of the school in 1985, one year after she had transferred to middleschool. Her own group picture from 1984 lay on top of the pile. And there she
was, pretty and wiry-looking at ten. Lost in a sea of normal looking kids. Near
the top of the photo the face of one child had been blurred out again with a black
marker. Who in the hell was that, and why did they black out his or her face?
Flipping through the various class years, Brooke found more and more of the
same phenomena: faces blackened out. The farther back she went, the more
faces had been obscured. Brooke calculated that she would have started the first
grade in 1980. She found the class photo for that year and identified herself
peering out from between the shoulders of two much larger and more ominous-
looking girls. There were five black scratches across the picture. Five missing
children. Brooke also noted that there were no black children in any of the
pictures. Was it the black kids who had been blurred away? Puzzled now
beyond belief, she replaced the contents of the folder as neatly as she could,
retied the ribbons, stood up and handed it to the young man at the desk. By
design, she bent over showing him much more cleavage and breast than he was
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expecting and smiled pleasantly into his eyes.
"Have you worked here long?" she asked in as seductive a voice as she could
marshal.
"This is my first year," the boy stammered, overcome by Brooke's more than
ample chest.
"What does it take to get a job like this? I mean what do you have to know?"
"I majored in history at Pioneer State. There aren't many choices."
"Well then, you must have learned something about Aristock," Brooke said.
"You must have some personal knowledge from the time you have spent here."
"You'll have to ask Miss Borlick for that. She runs the show. She is the one who
assists the researchers and so on."
Brooke put her hand on the boy's bony shoulder. "But I'm asking you. I guess
you must be a lot cuter than Miss Borlick. I wish you could help me."
The boy's face turned bright red, again accentuating the clusters of post-
adolescent pimples that spread like craters across his skin.
"I...I'm not supposed to...."
"Where is she, anyway? Your Miss Borlick? I haven't seen her this afternoon."
"She is at a librarians' convention in Carlyle. She won't be back until tomorrow.
You can come then."
"But I need information now."
"We..we..we're closing in five minutes..."
"All the better. I can buy you a drink and tell you what I'm looking for. I don't
have time to go through all this...this junk."
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The boy gulped audibly. He sat straight up and found the nerve to agree to meet
Brooke in a small café just down the block. Brooke told him not to be late and
winked an eye.
VI. Blair Lashton
As soon as Brooke Nescott got outside of the musty historical society, she
pulled out her phone and called Jared, telling him to get something to eat and
that she would be a little late. Jared, always mature, seemed enthusiastic.
"What does he look like?" he chirped. "I hope he likes to play Cosmonauts and
Invaders." Jared wanted nothing more than for his mother to find a boyfriend,
and especially a boyfriend he could relate to. Brooke chuckled to herself
thinking of the young man she was about to meet. "I don't think you would like
this one," she laughed into the phone. "Don't hold your breath, and by all
means, please do wait up for me because this is going to be a short one."
Realizing what she had just said, Brooke chuckled again and said "I really didn't
mean what I just said. I hope you know that." Jared laughed back and said that
he did.
Then Brooke fumbled with her address book and found Caprice Stevens'
number. She hoped the friendly nurse would answer, and she did. Brooke held
nothing back. There was something strange about Aristock, about her old
school. There was something being blacked out of the history, something
people were not supposed to read. "There was not one black face in those
school pictures," she said. "And I remember some black kids here and there
when I was about six or seven. They are not in the pictures. Or at least their
faces don't show. Caprice, do you want to work with me to find out about thismystery? If you don't, I'll understand. There's something about me....and about
Rialto that I need to tell you and as soon as possible. We need to meet. Can you
come to my place tonight? Can you bring Rialto? Can you come around
seven?"
"That's pretty late," said Caprice in a mulling it over tone.
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"I think it's pretty important. Right now you're my only friend and the only one I
can trust."
"We got to friendship pretty fast," said Caprice.
"Life is too short for a long dance around. Just tell me you can come over.
Please. I have some news to share."
At length Caprice agreed to drive by Brooke's at seven thirty. "But don't let the
boys get started on that damned game," she said. "They'll keep us there allnight, and we have to work tomorrow...or at least I do."
By the time Brooke was signing off with Caprice she noted a spindly, bandy
legged boy aiming straight for her table on the café terrace alongside the
sidewalk. He sat down, panting like a wet puppy, flabbergasted that an older
woman, and such a eye-catching one, had requested his company. He had had
precious few dates in his life and was at his core quite petrified of women. But
Brooke and her open cleavage was reeling him in like a sardine to a cracker. He
plumped down in the chair across from her and raised a faux-confident hand to
summon a waiter who had hardly taken notice of his arrival. "Two whiskey
sours," he commanded in a bravado voice. "Yes, sir!!" the waiter answered
mockingly. "Right away, your excellence! Coming right up. Say, are you old
enough to drink? Show me your ID." Deflated, the boy pulled out his license
and poked his finger at his birth date. "See 1987!! I'm 23." The waiter verified
the dates and went off to get the drinks.
Brooke amused by the clumsiness of the boy's public self, smiled and said
"Why, how did you know that I drink whiskey sours? You must read minds."
"I can sometimes. My little sister says..."
"Let's forget your little sister for right now if you don't mind," said Brooke, taking
the boy's hands into hers and cutting him off. "Let's start with your name."
"Blair Lashton. I'm from Tillamook. I graduated from Pioneer State last year, and
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this is the first job I have had. It's not easy with Miss Borlick in the room either.
She rarely lets me look at files and never lets me give out information on the
phone. She saves all that fun stuff for herself. Her grandmother founded the
society back before any of us were born. She literally runs the town. Comes
from a banking family. They say she owns the deeds on 90% of the land within
the city limits. No one messes with Miss Borlick"
"You poor thing," said Brooke teasingly, "a cute guy like you stuck in a back
room with an old biddy like that in Aristock of all places."
"Miss Borlick isn't all that old, but she sure is a biddy. Seems like I can't do
anything right."
"Well, you're my choice of helper. I once knew Miss Borlick. We went to school
together, and, believe me, that was enough. Can you just avoid her and do a
little research for me? I'll make it worth your while."
Blair Lashton straightened up in his seat. A beautiful older woman needed his
services. No one had ever needed him before. He was filled a new sense of
determination and pride. "I'll do anything for you," he stuttered. "Anything."
Brooke took a sip of her whiskey sour and pushed it away. She hated sweet
drinks but did not complain because she wanted to make Blair seem as
important as she needed him to be in order to achieve her ends. Blair,
characteristically, gulped his drink down and snapped his fingers for another.
The waiter, still mocking him, did a kind of pirouette and snapped his own
fingers in the air several times in succession, twirling like a toreador.
Then Brooke got down to business. She explained her interest in both Tabilan
School and the sparse black population of the city. Blair seemed disappointed.
It was as if he was expecting some item of high adventure or real intrigue from
this curvaceous and seductive woman sitting across the table from him.
Something to do with hidden treasure or pirates' gold or glistering rubies torn
from the skulls of slithering serpents. He continued to gape at Brooke's plentiful
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chest as Brooke fanned herself and complained of the August heat. Fortunately
for Brooke, she was wearing the top of her red swimsuit instead of a standard
bra. All around her were young women in one piece tops or risqué camisoles.
She needed to make the most of the moment. "Do you mind if I take off my
shirt?" she asked Blair. "It's really getting hot this afternoon."
Blair's eyes ballooned out of his head and his cheeks swelled to the point of him
spraying some whiskey sour out onto the table between the two. "No!!" he
almost screamed. "I mean no, take it off if you want."
Brooke stood up and slowly pulled her light jersey off from the bottom up, not
only revealing her flat stomach and well formed navel but her strikingly red
halter top. The waiter sashayed by and gave her a slight whistle. She snarled at
him with faked contempt. Blair was transfixed. This was probably as close as
he had ever been to seeing a woman's breasts, and he could not take his eyes
off them.
"I need you to do that research....for me," cooed Brooke. "You'll be my bestesthero ever. You will, won't you?" A quick wave of embarrassment washed over
Brooke as she said the word "bestest." She wondered if she were going too far.
It turned out that she wasn't. Babytalk was working.
The meeting finished when Blair became so agitated that he knocked his third
drink off the table, spilling some of it into his crotch. He hobbled away shaking
hands again and again with Brooke, promising to find something out about the
black population of Aristock and Tabilan School as well. "I'm a good historian,"
he babbled, trying to hide the damp stain on his khaki pants. "If Miss Borlickdoesn't catch me, I'll have some news for you tomorrow. Of course, I can't go
into the movie cabinet. Only she has the key to that. It's off limits."
"Movie cabinet?" said Brooke lifting an eyebrow.
"Sixteen millimeter movies mostly. Historical photography. I don't even know
how to run one of those projectors."
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"I do," said Brooke solemnly, "I mean if you ever get into that cabinet."
"I'll do the best I can." Blair pranced off down the sidewalk. It was more than
probable that he was right then returning on his mission to the closed library.
He had a key. Brooke was sure of it.
The waiter came by and dropped the tab in front of Brooke in a neat little plastic
tray. "The miracles of seduction," he said with a crude irony. "Makes me happy
I'm gay." Brooke dropped some bills in the tray, got up, pretended not to notice
and left.
VII. Caprice and Rialto arrive
It was almost totally dark when Caprice drove her Ford Focus into Brooke's
carport and released her son to run without a word to Brooke into Jared's room.
In minutes, the electronically explosive sounds of the video war game began
reverberating through the walls.
Caprice, still wearing her floral nurse's frock, plopped down in a living room
chair. "I'll take a drink," she said without preamble. "If we're going to be friends,
we can skip introductions and the tour of the house. You've seen one house,
you've seen them all. This chair is what I'm looking for right now."
Brooke mixed two rum and cokes and gave one to Caprice and settled down in
the opposite chair. "I feel great," she said. "I feel like I have stumbled onto a
mystery, and I want to solve it. It is probably none of my business, either. But
that makes it more fun. Nothing ever happens in Aristock, and now something
finally has."
Caprice listened patiently as Brooke gave a hurried sketch of her life: Justine,
the future world, Adrian Albritton, and, of course, the thunder and glory of
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Dragonsnort, and then Joel and the dream world. Brooke was able to condense
her life's main events into a very short but inspired narrative. "Believe what you
want about me," she concluded, "but here is what I want you to know. I have
always been bored stiff. I have never really felt much about anything in life,
except with Dragonsnort, and now he is gone. I need something to latch onto. A
challenge. A mystery. It makes me feel real again. Jared got this whole thing
started when he asked me why there are so few blacks in Aristock, and that got
me thinking about my school. I knew there were some there when I was little."
Caprice lit a long brown cigarette, exhaled straight up into the air, and regained
her patiently listening face. Brooke went on to detail for her the day's visit to the
historical society, the blackened photos, the censored letters. "They are hiding
something," she concluded. She looked at Caprice for a reaction.
Caprice was silent for a minute, then she burst forth: "So Honey, here you are
with the only black friend in your whole life trying to escape your boredom by
tracking down some cocked-up atrocity committed against black folks around
here, digging up some dirt that you probably think will impress me, finding somekind of racism in practice that doesn't surprise people like me in the slightest
anyway. Do you expect me to jump up and start crusading with you? Do you
want me to carry a sign through the town hall reading "What have you done to
my people?" Do you expect me to call my "special" contact at the NAACP
because all us black folk are supposed to have one? This is a lot of shit. It may
interest you, but I'm not buying into it. Nobody bothers me or Rialto here. I told
you that. And that other little black sister in Jared's class, Brandy, I know her
mother from school meetings. She told me the same thing. I really don't care
how many of us live here. It's the way we live that counts. I like the medical
center and my job. I like my house. I like my neighbors. Rialto likes his school
and his teachers. Rialto likes Jared. We are all happy, and here you go trying to
start something....and because...because you are bored. I ain't buying it."
Brooke was shocked by the directness of Caprice's words. Of course, she had
been stereotyping. She had been acting totally white. She felt embarrassed and
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small. Even if there were some kind of vast conspiracy, why should she have
tried to drag someone like Caprice into it. Tears came to her eyes. Brooke cried
very infrequently, and when she did, she did her best to hide it. She was not the
crying type. But now her eyes were moist enough to melt some sudden
kindness out of Caprice, who put an arm around her and said "Don't worry. Let's
have another drink and let our sons be friends. Let's have lunch often. Let's
shop together or whatever else it is that you like to do. But let's not go looking
for trouble where there is none. Especially racial trouble."
Brooke allowed herself to cry a little more openly. Caprice's embrace was
almost motherly, although the two women were about the same age. "There's
more," she blurted suddenly. And then she calmly described her own
inexplicable terror on seeing Rialto playing with the other boys in the yard.
Caprice took it all in and said "Hmmmm." In effect, "Hmmmm" was all she said
anymore that night. It could have meant a lot of different things. Brooke hoped
that it meant that Caprice was thinking, wondering, pondering. But she realized
at length that the hmmmm could have just been a means of dismissing thesubject.
The next day at work, the two women passed each other on the entry sidewalk
without saying much more than good morning. There was no mention of lunch.
VIII. Blair Lashton's research
Blair Lashton carried his wobbly frame with a greater sense of pride when hemet Brooke Nescott that afternoon at the same sidewalk café they had spoken in
the day before. The same waiter automatically served them whiskey sours
without waiting for an order. The waiter seemed very dry and professional.
Brooke rapidly realized that she had left him an gargantuan tip the previous day.
Blair was bulging with bits and pieces of information, but the thing he was most
proud of was that he had been able to look through city archives and other
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folders right under the nose of the "tyrannical" Cassandrea Borlick. At one
point, Blair exclaimed "She's a tigress!" This made his research an even bolder
move, something he knew Brooke would appreciate. Brooke wondered whether
the young man would start bartering his news for sex. After all, she had all but
promised it to him for a job well done. She was not sure she could fulfill that
part of whatever understanding they had. Blair was definitely too young and not
at all her type.
But Blair seemed more subdued. He explained a few facts about Tabilan Schoolto Brooke. First of all, Tabilan had not always been an elementary school. Its
first buildings had been erected to house a sort of academy back around the turn
of the century. It was a "Negro" academy, Blair explained . He went on to make
clear that they had those sort of places even in the North in those days. Aristock
had been settled in the early Nineteenth Century by a colony of peace-loving
Abolitionist Quakers. The early settlers were known to have aided in helping
slaves escape from the South, and Aristock had been one of the many stops on
the Underground Railway. The Quakers felt it was their obligation to take care of
the runaway slaves who fell into their jurisdiction, so they gave them farm and
domestic jobs and sectioned off parts of town for them to live in. It was, in
effect, de facto segregation, but it was done with a true sympathy toward a race
which the Quakers felt had been prevented from evolving into their true
potential. Some early town father named Nathan Tabilan decided to contribute a
part of his fortune to build an academy for the descendants of the escaped
slaves. Thus Aristock had indeed had a small but viable black population at one
point, and the streets and farms around the site of Tabilan Elementary seemed to
be the focal point of this community. All in all, Aristock seemed to have been avery safe haven both before and after the Civil War for African-Americans. There
were no open records of racial strife, no riots, no lynchings, no fights. The
blacks of Aristock just kept to themselves, did business with the whites, worked
and minded their own business.
"Then around 1919-1920," Blair continued, "the history seems to get a little more
cloudy. It has to do with a wayward preacher of some kind who came out to
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Aristock from the east somewhere. He was some kind of islander, a jet black
man who took over the Mount Nebo Baptist Church and transformed its black
congregation into something that really spooked out the locals, both black and
white. His name was Suleman and his religion was something like the worship
of devils and demons and such. They used the claws of chickens to decorate
their windows, drank blood straight from a live calf's throat, played weird drum
music and prayed to strange gods. Naturally, the local whites were disturbed, but
this Suleman never seemed to pay much attention to them. His goal according
to the few notations of it that I could find was to control the black population andmake it do his bidding. He did this with something called 'leather birds'. The
records are scant, mostly old newspaper clippings, and they never say exactly
what a leather bird was. But Suleman used them to plant fear among the black
residents. There are several scribbled notations of leather birds."
"What about the documents, the letters with all that black-out?" asked Brooke.
"I haven't gotten to that yet, but I will. What I learned is that Suleman made some
kind of deal with the whites. I mean the big names...like Borlick, just to mentionone. Old Cecelia Borlick was Cassandrea's grandmother and she ran the
historical society for at least forty years. She had first say on what was kept and
what was discarded. If I have my guess, it was she who did the censorship on
those letters. The only facts I can gather is that little by little the black
community of Aristock started disappearing. They probably moved away. There
is no record of any killings or anything. Of course, there wouldn't be, would
there?"
"I suppose not," said Brooke pensively. "That would have been a hard thing tokeep hidden no matter how much black ink-out was used."
"Well, whatever it was, the Negro Academy was closed for lack of attendance in
1919, and the city turned it into a public school. White families started building
houses where blacks had once had small farms, and voila you get Old Town and
Tabilan Elementary. I'll know more after tomorrow. I want to see what exactly is
in that movie cabinet. I may even slip out a reel or two for us to view. In private,
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of course."
Brooke squeezed Blair's hand across the table. She rolled her eyes approvingly
across his pimply face. She wanted to keep him hot on the trail, but the things
he had told her so far amounted to very little. Some kind of West Indian voodoo
churchman and then vanishing black folk. There had to be much more to the
mystery. The leather bird thing seemed intriguing. Blair could probably find out
about it for her. She paid the tab as she had the day before and set a date with
Blair for the next day, same place. The boy needed encouragement. Brooke
bent over the table and kissed his forehead. God, I'm turning into a whore, she
thought, but I need to get to the bottom of this. As the lad walked away, red
faced, it occurred to Brooke that she was no doubt doing him an injustice.
Maybe she would have to reward him in the end after all. Maybe not. Time
would tell.
IX. An unexpected turn of events
When she arrived at home that night, she found both Jared and Rialto sitting
side by side on the porch swing. Both boys looked sad and dejected. Jared's
arm was around Rialto's shoulder. Jared looked up at his mother, and Brooke
could see that he had tears in his eyes. Rialto continued to look at his feet. "My
best friend," blurted Jared, "and he's leaving."
It was true. Rialto was crying too, but he said that his mother wanted him to
spend the rest of the summer vacation with his cousin Jordan in Florida. She
had also said that she was applying for a transfer to another hospital near
Jacksonville. Nurses could, she had told Rialto, get a job anywhere, and
suddenly Caprice wanted to move. Brooke wondered how much her recent
inquiry had influenced this decision. What exactly did Caprice's parting hmmm
mean anyway? Had Brooke raked up some smoldering coals that should have
been left unstirred? She wondered what she would say to Caprice the next time
they passed at the hospital. No doubt Caprice would have little to say. As things
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developed, this was far from the truth.
Rialto dried his tears and hugged both Jared and Brooke again. As he started
off toward home, he looked over shoulder and said "I hope I'll be coming back
someday." But both Brooke and Jared somehow knew implicitly that he never
would.
At dinner that night, Jared became less gloomy and asked his mother if she had
ever found out why so few blacks lived in Aristock. Brooke, characteristically
frank with her son, said that she was working on the matter and that she might
even have an answer soon. Jared stared at the uneaten food in his plate and
muttered something barely audible. When Brooke asked him to repeat it he
looked up and said "leather birds."
Brooke was stunned. That was the same expression Blair had used in
explaining how some scary black shaman named Suleman had once controlled
the small black population of Aristock. "What on Earth are leather birds?" she
asked. Jared shrugged his shoulders and said that Rialto didn't know either butthat was what his mother was worried about. Brooke realized that she would
need to contact Caprice again, regardless of the latter's unsympathetic attitude.
X. Blair gets back in contact
Blair Lashton called Brooke Nescott at her job in the middle of the next day. He
sounded winded and somewhat panicky. "Cassandrea Borlick may be onto me,"
he said with genuine fear in his voice. "I'm not sure. But I don't want to meet
you at that same café today. I want to wait a couple of days and see what
Cassandrea is up to. There may be more to this than just losing my job.
Cassandrea is...well...dangerous."
Brooke asked him if he had learned any more about the leather birds, and Blair
replied that he had not but that he had gained access to the forbidden movie
cabinet during Cassandrea's lunch break. Cassandrea apparently had left the
key in her top desk drawer, and Blair had found the temerity to look inside the
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cabinet. He explained that most of the films in there dated from the 1960s and
70s and were on 16 millimeter reels. From the looks of the labels on them, they
were mostly films taken to chronicle the expansion and growth of Aristock over
the period, local documentaries. Construction of a bridge. Demolition of a
building. Dedication of a park. "But," he added in a hushed tone, "I saw one
very small reel pushed back in the corner. The label on it says Tabilan. I
supposed you'd be interested, so I took it. I hid it in my brief case. I'm going to
put it in a big mailing envelope and drop it off for you at the clinic this afternoon.
As for meeting again, let's put that off for a few days."
Brooke thanked him and asked him to call her as soon as he could. She was
eager to see what was on the reel, but like most people in 2010, she lacked a
16mm projector. That was something she would have to find on the way home.
At about three PM, there was a loud knock on her laboratory door. When she
opened it, there stood Caprice, wide-eyed and with an expression of sheer horror
on her face. Brooke started to speak, but Caprice cut her off. "We need to talk,"
she said. "When and where can we meet?" Brooke was staggered. She hadexpected anger and resentment. Instead she got a sense of total panic.
Something had truly shaken Caprice to the bone. "Come by my house around
six," she said. And then she added hastily "Let's not talk here or anywhere else
in public." Caprice shook her head in agreement, and, without uttering another
word turned and walked briskly down the clinic corridor back toward the main
hospital.
At five o'clock, Brooke closed down her station and left the laboratory. She went
down to the main desk and asked the receptionist if there was any mail or packages left for her. The receptionist told her that "strangely enough" there
was a big envelope, and "it was delivered by a kid on a bike." She handed
Brooke a stiff mailing envelope which had been taped over several times and
marked confidential. Blair certainly knew how to arouse suspicion. It amused
Brooke that Blair went about on a bicycle. He really is a kid, she thought.
As she was driving home, she switched on the radio for some local news. It was
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just a habit. Mostly she wanted to know about traffic, but a news bulletin
interrupted the usual reports. Union Parkway had been shut down in both
directions because the police were investigating a hit and run killing that had
occurred around four PM. A young man on a bicycle had been struck down by a
speeding motorist. The young man was dead, and although there were several
witnesses, none had managed to get the license plate of the driver's vehicle.
Brooke head swam with fear. Somehow she knew it was Blair, and before getting
home, her suspicions were confirmed. A further news bulletin identified him asone Blair Lashton, a city historical society clerk. Dumbstruck, Brooke pulled her
car to the side of the street. She knew it had not been a random accident. And
she knew that she had no doubt been the cause of the kid's death. That was
more guilt than Brooke was prepared to bear at the moment. She felt like
opening the window and screaming as loud as possible. She felt like running.
She felt like banging her head against the dashboard. What would Dragonsnort
have done in such a circumstance? At that moment of her greatest anxiety, she
needed the strength of Dragonsnort. Beside her on the car seat was the package
Blair had left, but her utter sense of revulsion caused her to briefly forget it. She
needed to get home to Jared, hug him, run away with him, try to forget. What
chamber of horrors had she opened? She throttled the car as fast as the traffic
would allow and reached her front doorstep covered with sweat and panting in
apprehension. She could hear the television inside and assumed that Jared was
watching it. Entering her house she noticed the huge claw of what she assumed
to be a turkey lying just outside the doorway. Leather birds, she thought,
dashing over it and into the living room. Jared was curled in front of the
television. A reporter was on the scene of a appalling accident. A young manhad been clipped by a speeding car which had not stopped at the scene. A
manhunt was underway. The police had no leads. Jared looked up at his frayed
mother. "You know about this, don't you?" he said calmly. Brooke shook her
head and walked into the kitchen without answering. She needed a drink.
XI. Caprice arrives
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Caprice was filled with rage from the moment she entered Brooke's house until
the moment she finally left but the anger was not directed at Brooke. Instead, it
was a kind of seething resentment against the stupidity of "some" black people.
Caprice was motivated enough to ask Jared to please allow her and his mother
to talk privately. She obviously did not know how advanced the boy was or how
open Brooke had always been with him. Nor did she care. Caprice hurriedly
explained to Brooke that she wanted Rialto out of town for his own safety.
Because of Brooke's account, she had taken a quick trip to her old
neighborhood in Philadelphia and called on her aging Aunt Begaya, who wasbedridden on a filthy mattress surrounded by burning candles and various
rotting and stinking animal parts, which were arranged in an unsettling
symmetrical pattern around her bed. It was all part of what Begaya and her
strange relations called "the old religion." "It is all about worshipping animal
parts," said Caprice. "They pray to the severed head of a pig, for example, and
wave chicken claws at one another." Brooke remembered the chicken claw that
had greeted her at the door when she got home. Caprice continued: "Begaya
didn't want to talk but she finally told me that when she was a little girl, whichmust have been a hundred years ago, they sent one of their own voodoo priests
out to a church here. It was part of an established community of black folks, the
descendants of slaves, I suppose. His aim was to take over the community by
terror. When the people resisted him, he used some sort of invocative power
that he had brought with him to put a curse on their children. According to
Begaya, it was real too. This guy wanted to punish all the black folks for not
obeying his every whim, so he brought something out of the skies that would
swoop down and pluck their children up, something like a huge bird...more than
one actually. The priest knew how to summon them because they were somesort of ancient creatures that inhabited the foothills in this part of the state.
Begaya called them "dinosaur birds." One after another account came back to
Begaya about these birds singling out black kids and grabbing them up with
their long, sharp beaks. Once the kids were gone, they were never seen again,
although the people here did occasionally find bones, so Begaya supposes that
these dinosaur birds ate them as prey. They only attacked children. Black
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children. Maybe the adults were too big."
Brooke remembered the business about "leather birds" that Blair had told her.
She also began to remember something else...a kind of fear of things coming
from the sky that she had repressed since early childhood.
Caprice went on to say that whatever it was that the voodoo priest called down
from the skies was still said to be here. For some reason, these birds seemed to
prefer only black children, it was part of the curse, and there were reports
ranging over many years of a mighty bird suddenly sweeping down from the sky
and grabbing an unprotected child outside. It had supposedly happened long
after both the voodoo priest and the majority of black folk had disappeared from
Aristock, and, according to Begaya, it still could happen today. The birds were
programmed, it seemed, to kill black kids if they caught them outside. The priest
also wielded the power of mind control and was able to make most people forget
what they had seen.
Brooke shook her head in disbelief. Was that the reason she had feared seeingRialto outside playing with Jared and Tony?
For an hour or two, the two women sat trading suppositions and guesses.
Brooke remembered the severed chicken claw and went out and brought it into
the house. "Someone is trying to tell you something," said Caprice. "I'm sure of
it."
Brooke told Caprice about Blair and the information he had gathered. She also
told Caprice about his sudden death.
A little later, Jared wandered into the room wearing his pajamas. He announced
that he was going to bed and hugged both his mother and Caprice. He seemed
very afraid. "I miss Rialto" were his parting words.
"The boy died for a movie," said Caprice after Jared was gone. "By all that's
holy..."
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"Wait!" shouted Brooke. "The movie. It is still in the car. Do you know where we
can find a 16mm projector at this hour? Do you know how to use one?"
"I think I could still string the film through," said Caprice. " But I don't even know
where or if we can rent one. They definitely don't make them anymore. That's
old fogey stuff..."
Brooke thought deeply and then snapped her fingers. "So we'll ask an old
fogey," she said. "My neighbors. They have been all around the world several
times. They've invited me to see their travel films on more than one occasion.
Both are in their eighties, and there is nothing modern in their house. She still
uses a mixmaster, and he has gadgets that look like war surplus. I bet they have
a projector."
Although it was nearing eleven o'clock, Brooke ran next door, knocked, was
admitted and came back grinning. The Vorschwitzes had a perfectly good 16mm
projector, and they were more than willing to lend it to her. They even offered to
come over and help her string the film in, something Brooke declined becauseshe had no idea of what was on the reel and didn't want to involve anyone
further.
By the time Brooke and Caprice had the projector set up and ready to run, it was
nearly midnight. Brooke pulled all the curtains and took a deep breath. "There
is probably not going to be much of anything at all," she said almost hopefully.
"It's more than likely just a documentary about closing Tabilan."
"Not if it was closed in 1985," said Caprice. "They had stopped using 16mm by
then."
"Well, let's see," said Brooke taking a big swallow of her whiskey drink. "Let's
see."
Caprice threw the switch, and against the wall of Brooke's living room some
grainy images began flickering and jerking. The film was in poor quality and
blotched with imperfections. It had been obviously taken outside of Tabilan
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Elementary School on a cloudy day, which made the people in it even harder to
recognize. Whoever had shot the footage began by photographing the school's
sign in front and then proceeded to shoot the entire building from side to side
until he finally arrived at the playground behind. The playground was full of
children. These were quite obviously children either of the late 1950s or early
60s, judging by their hair styles and mode of dress. Around the playground they
ran and screamed and frolicked while a group of professionally dressed teachers
looked on. One of the teachers was smoking, which would have been forbidden
by the eighties, but teachers of an earlier period had done it. The footageseemed totally routine and unprofessional until all at once the camera appeared
to have been dropped to the ground. There was no sound, so it was impossible
to tell what had happened, but when the photographer picked it up again, he
must have been running. The flickering frames brightened considerably too,
indicating that the sun had come out. Then the scene was totally of the children,
a group of perhaps twenty of them, all standing frozen in place around the
playground, all totally immobile. Their heads were turned upward to the sky.
Not one of them moved. Some of these children were black too. That wasevident from the film. What possibly could have made all these children stop
moving and search the sky? The film never showed this. The camera angle
suddenly went above the children's heads and swept across the sky. The grainy
quality of the film did not reveal anything, but something was holding these
children---and the unseen cameraman---in thrall. Abruptly there was total chaos,
the children scattered this way and that and the camera was once again dropped
on the ground. It continued to record, but all one saw were running feet until the
film sputtered to an unexpected end and the wall went blank. The film whipped
around on the bottom reel like a lash.
Then Brooke remembered. A trancelike state descended over her mind, and she
failed to hear Caprice talking to her. A long-subdued memory moved like a huge
iceberg across her mind. The Tabilan playground. Her class out for recess.
The warning screams. One classmate pointing to the sky. Everyone else
motionless in place. Heads turned upward just like the children in the film. Then
shock. It was huge and shiny and made a dry rustling sound with its outspread
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wings. It had pivoting orange eyes and visibly jagged teeth in its extended beak.
It screeched like an iron door on a rusty hinge. It plunged downward, swooping
toward the crowd. The children scattered, taking cover inside and near the brick
school building. When it was over, one was missing. Everyone was warned by
stern adult voices not to talk about it. The missing one, who was he? Yes, Evan,
little Evan. Then Brooke saw his face. Little Evan was black. And she recalled
now clearly that the last time she had seen his tortured face he was being torn
upward in the beak of a huge birdlike thing that resembled for all the world a
prehistoric beast, a dinosaur, a leathery dinosaur. The children were told in nouncertain terms that what they had witnessed was not real. They were told to
forget it. And most did. Brooke did. Undoubtedly some still remembered. But
they said nothing. It was too unreal. A classmate carried off by a huge flying
creature, a classmate who never returned and never was spoken of again. How
many times in the past had this happened, and how many times had it been
somehow suppressed by the staff at Tabilan? Who was exerting this sort of
general mind control?
The memory blazed in technicolor through Brooke's mind. All these years she
had buried it, but the grainy film, which undoubtedly chronicled a like event, had
released the locks of memory.
Brooke babbled it all out to Caprice. Caprice was scared and spent the rest
night sleeping on Brooke's couch. She was relieved that Rialto was away from
Aristock. Brooke was thankful too. She knew that come the next day, she would
have to tell Jared everything, but that was something she did not mention to
Caprice. She would withhold nothing from her son. She never had.
The next day both Caprice and Brooke made excuses and stayed home from
their jobs. Caprice returned to her own house and began the hasty packing
process. She could find a job anywhere and was going to leave Aristock as
soon as possible. This resolution was above discussion. "I may not even have
time to say goodbye," she told Brooke. "I'm out of here. Now."
Brooke was not so lucky. Her own job was not as available as Caprice's.
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Besides, she had longer roots in Aristock. What would Dragonsnort have done?
Would he have run away? Brooke knew the answer. It was clearly no.
Dragonsnort would have stayed and fought.
About ten that morning Brooke, while Jared was playing his interminable war
games in his room, heard a knock at the door. Weary and beaten down by the
weight of her now clear memory and the fear that it would happen again, she
glanced at the door and knew instinctively who it was. And she was right.
Unsightly as ever, Cassandrea stood on the doorstep and held out her hand. "I
believe you have something that belongs to the city archives" was all she said,
and that was delivered in a bland, rasping voice. Then almost as an afterthought
she added "Some things are best not known. I think you could say that whatever
happened in Aristock needs to stay in Aristock, or whatever the old saying is."
Brooke retrieved the metal reel from the projector and placed it in Cassandrea's
hands. She knew without asking that that Cassandrea would continue in her
own family's tradition to keep unbelievable secrets away from the eyes of a
prying world. It was no doubt Cassandrea who controlled the leather birds now.
She had inherited more than just the historical society. She had inherited the
power to invoke the unspeakable and to make people forget about it afterwards.
As Blair had said, she was dangerous. How many had she killed? And for what
reason? Brooke wondered during the rest of the day whether she could live in a
town where a woman like Cassandrea could wield such unnatural power. How
safe would she and Jared be now? Unconsciously, she began making mentalplans to move away. A sense of protective urgency welled up in her chest.
XII. Conclusion
Caprice's phone call was brief and hurried. "Keep Jared indoors for a few days,"
she said. "It's Cassandrea. She gained control of the old priest's secrets. She
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can summon the birds. That’s known in my aunt’s so-called church. She’s used
the power more than once over the years. I'm sure she'll want you out of the way
now."
"I know," said Brooke. "I'm leaving town as soon as I can."
"I don't think you will need to. I talked to Begaya. She is not dead yet. She sent
someone."
"Who?"
"Just someone. Stay low and watch the news."
That was all Caprice ever said, and, sadly, it was the last that Brooke would ever
hear from her. But Caprice’s words had not been in vain. Two days later, a host
of blue police lights were flashing in the parking lot outside of the library branch
that housed the Aristock Historical Society. Police with flashlights were
searching the ground. Ribbons had been put up to cordon off the entire lot. A
curious crowd gathered. Brooke parked her car and got out to see what thecommotion was. Her sense of guilt over the death of Blair Lashton was almost
unbearable, but it was trumped by her pounding fear for the safety of her son,
whom she had confined, for once without giving a precise reason, indoors.
Some serious looking reporters stood behind the police lines. Brooke timidly
inquired what was going on.
"Dunno," said one reporter. "The police think it was a pack of wild dogs or
maybe wolves. They are not ruling out coyotes either. It’s pretty gruesome.
Under that blanket is Miss Borlick, the library historian. You would not want tosee what is left of her. She's been torn to shreds. There are not going to be a lot
of pieces to bury. Whatever did that to the poor lady must have been a monster
or monsters from hell."
"Leather birds," said Brooke quietly.
"What?" said the reporter. "What did you say?"
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"Nothing," said Brooke, and she turned and walked away.
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Devon Pitlor - - June, 2010
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