Thing With Feathers (9781616634704)

by Sweazy-kulju, Anne

  Tears escaped the little boy. He wished he wouldn’t cry, but he could not help it. A hard rock was in his tiny throat, and his childish voice quivered. “I didn’t mean it, Grandpa.”

  The old man said nothing as he crossed the room in two large strides and opened the lid to the antique banana box. With one hand holding the lid, he gestured to the boy with the other.

  “No, Grandpa. Please. Please don’t make me go in the box. There’s spiders in there!”

  “Spiders! Bah! They’re no match for your size and strength. More importantly, there are truths to be found in there. When you discover those truths, then you may come out.”

  The box was the size of a child’s coffin, and it felt like one. It was dark and close and especially hot in this warmest of Augusts.

  The child whimpered as he approached it, his thumb jammed back into his mouth. “Please, Grandpa. I’m hungry.” He looked inside the box. Its bottom could be seen, with tiny little black specks here and there. “Please, Grandpa. Don’t make me go in the box!” The boy cried openly.

  “No more of this nonsense, boy! Get yourself in there. When the evil that has crossed your mind is gone, you may come out.”

  Victor climbed in. The lid closed with a whump! The little boy began sweating immediately. He closed his eyes in the blackness and tried to pretend there was nothing else in there with him. His tortured mind raced. Trickles of sweat ran from his hairline here and there, making like vermin as they tracked across his skin. Fleeting images of a red tricycle came to him. Then a foggy memory of riding on a horse with a pretty, dark-haired lady, who must have been his mother, drifted into his thoughts. Victor pinched himself on the upper arm, hard. But it didn’t help. His mind’s eye saw the man from the picnic. He was throwing Victor up in the air, laughing. Victor remembered that from when he’d been a baby. No! That man was not his father. Victor pinched himself repeatedly until he could think of little else besides the pain. The pretty lady was not laughing and smiling. She was sad. The laughing man was mean and made his mother leave. The little boy in the big black box made himself believe those “truths” that his grandpa recited for him regularly. Victor found those truths in the miserable confines of the box in great haste. He pushed open the lid and jumped out hurriedly, relishing the cool air on his clammy skin. The preacher had taken the opportunity to swig from his brown jug while the boy committed his ‘truths’ to memory. At the sound of the boy jumping from the banana box, he set the jug inside the deep sink where the boy’s eyes could not reach. He turned around and faced the boy.

  “I saw it all, Grandpa! That man was mean and made my mommy leave home…she was always really sad. I was sad too, until you came for me.” The boy looked at his grandpa hopefully.

  “Is that the truth, boy?”

  “Yes, sir. Boy, Grandpa, the truth can sure make ya hungry.”

  The old man turned to the sink board and began slicing ham to go with eggs and bread for their dinner. “Sit yourself at the table, boy. It is time for the truth to be rewarded.”

  Chapter 47

  August, 1933

  Chicago, Illinois

  News of the great Tillamook Burn traveled coast-to-coast. Cindy dated several successful reporters, and even one newspaper mogul, so it was not difficult for her to get details about the Tillamook County destruction.

  On her date the night before with Chester Lasley, who, as one with controlling interest in one of Chicago’s largest newspapers, had up-to-the-hour information, she’d learned Oregon had lost more than 300,000 acres, and over 24 billion board feet of prime timber. The loss of forest creatures numbered in the millions. He also confirmed for her that lives had been lost among the unskilled, volunteer firefighters. Cindy had wanted to question further on the matter, but not from Chester. As far as that man was concerned, she had no more and no less interest in the Tillamook Burn beyond a natural curiosity. Chester Lasley made Cindy a bit nervous. Truth be told, he reminded her of the preacher, and she didn’t want him knowing details of her past life. He was willing to pay a small fortune for a single night with her, though, and he’d always remained a gentlemen. Nonetheless, Cindy counted her chickens for the day she could afford to bring to an end her dates with Chester Lasley, without becoming one of his enemies. Especially since, in recent months, Lasley had been making it known to Chicago’s upper-crust he had political aspirations.

  Her friend Wendell did not like Lasley at all. He had begged her to step lightly about the man, if she absolutely must date him. “He’s a bully. A silver-spoon’d scoundrel in hundred-dollar suits. Believe me, I know the type,” Wendell had said. He believed the man held his wickedness in check only because he had a reputation to protect. “Beware,” Wendell had warned her just that morning, “of Lasley’s formidable anger.”

  Cindy thought her friend was spot on about Lasley. And there was something more about Chester that reminded Cindy of the preacher, his word had reputation and influence over that of most others. He, too, may be untouchable.

  She’d happened by a favorite watering hole of another reporter she dated, found him there, and learned worse news out of Tillamook: Sean had been a volunteer firefighter and he’d been hurt. Thank goodness he’d survived. Elrod Tjaden had died in the fire. Elrod was Rebecca’s husband, Cindy knew, and she was heart-broken for Rebecca. She’d always counted the couple as Blair’s closest, truest friends. Think of something else.

  Cindy sighed and looked about her room. She was going to move. Her top-back room was cramped. And she could never have men visit her there. Her meddlesome, ever-inquiring landlady would never hear of it. She could manage those nuisances; Cindy was easy-going about most anything. But, there was the arrangement of her bath; she was growing less facile about her bath being shared, and located a floor below her room. The only thing Cindy did like about her current apartment was the three flights of stairs to get to her room. She’d rather liked getting the exercise.

  She’d saved up money enough to move across town to a spacious apartment with a water view—and it’s own water closet, of course. It was not one of the swanky new ones they were building on the water. Those didn’t appeal to Cindy. Instead, a few streets back away from the water, she and Wendell had happened upon a swanky old one. It was a small two-story publishing house, purpose-built in 1888, of brick and floated glass and tall ceilings, and capable of accommodating heavy industry equipment. It had been erected during a construction heyday, created by abundant available space near the rails, that came about after the fire of 1871. By the turn of the last century, the whole row had become a magnet for the printing industry. All of the other old buildings on the street were multiple stories high, and were being converted into luxury apartments. But no investor had taken up the restoration of her little two-story, deeming it hardly worth the trouble.

  Cindy fell in love with the vastness of private space and the dazzling natural light pouring through tall windows. But what had sold her was the character of the building. It had functioned in a specific way for a long time, then found itself transformed to function in another way—something quite different, but beautiful and grand—precisely because of that first function’s influences. The space lived two lives.

  She’d instructed Wendell, who acted as her agent, to release the necessary funds, and Cindy purchased the space on the spot. She’d had the building split top-from-bottom, and renovated into two luxury residences. Cindy would be taking the top floor, with its tall windows and water view; she had a renter in the form of a quiet, elderly gentleman for the bottom apartment. The new place was the first thing Cindy can remember being truly happy about since—No. That was not your life and it does you no good to think about it.

  But she was homesick for Oregon. Careful…Don’t let the panic in your heart get started…Slow your breathing, slow your heart beat. She missed her husband and her child so awful much. It had been not quite 2 years since she’
d run for Blair’s life and took the helm; almost two years since she had felt the soft skin of her child’s cheek, or smelled his baby-scented hair. Oh…God… She grabbed her stomach and curled fetal-like on her bed, willing her sudden nausea to go away. She tried to quickly tamp down thoughts of Sean and Victor whenever they bubbled up to her consciousness. But sometimes the blues swamped over her, leaving her depressed and fairly bereft of hope she would ever see her family again. She knew Blair was not strong enough to return to Oregon.

  Anyway, Cindy had sent a letter to Sean months earlier asking him to forget Blair. Rebecca was widowed, and Cindy had told Sean to marry another.

  Cindy fought her depression by getting up and going shopping on Navy Pier. She’d stopped at the bakery window and paid for a cinnamon roll and coffee. She strolled a few shop windows farther, then stopped to gaze through a jeweler’s window at a darling watch piece. The gold neck chain was spaced every few inches with pale pink crystal beads. The front of the piece was beautifully scrolled, but what caught Cindy’s eye was inside. The shopkeeper had opened the piece to show a porcelain face, hand-painted with pale pink calla-lilies. What a guilty pleasure it would be, to wear something close to my heart which so reminds me of the Marshall home, Cindy mused. It’s too expensive. You mustn’t.

  “Oh, young lady, you simply must!” The shopkeeper had walked out the open door to engage the beautiful young woman who was contemplating the ladies’ timepiece. He’d only placed it in his front window that morning. “The watchmaker no doubt had you in his mind when he crafted its beauty. Come, let me show it to you,” the shopkeeper said, bowing deeply.

  Cindy could not resist. She followed the shopkeeper inside to see the timepiece up close. It was exquisite. And, Cindy had reasoned, her twenty-second birthday was coming up. When she’d handed it back to the man to wrap up, he asked her, “how would you like it engraved, Miss?” Cindy was momentarily stumped. She did not know if she should put her name on the piece or Blair’s name on the piece. But the man, wrongly sensing her hesitation at paying extra for engraving, interrupted her thoughts saying, “Tell you what, Miss. I will put on there for you a name, a special date, a favorite proverb, you just name it. And I won’t charge you but for half the standard engraving fee.”

  Cindy thought a moment. “You can put a proverb on it?”

  “On the backside, yes Miss.”

  Cindy smiled and turned coyly away from the man as she reached into her bodice and withdrew the treasured Emily Dickinson poem. She had long since transferred the strangely soothing words onto a piece of pink stationery, which she handed the shopkeeper. “Can you engrave all of those words on the backside?”

  The jeweler read the words to himself and smiled as he finished, nodding. “I, too, am a fan of Miss Dickinson. Haunting yet alluring, do you agree?”

  “Yes, I do.” Cindy replied. “How long will that take you, sir?”

  “Oh, by the time you walk to the end of Navy Pier and back to this spot again, it will be ready for you. I’ll get to it straight away.”

  Chapter 48

  September, 1939

  Cloverdale, Oregon

  Lorette moved into the Marshall’s house six years earlier, soon after Sean was found near dead in a dry creek bed smack in the middle of the Great Burn. Will could not be expected to run the farm and gristmill by himself and look after Mavis and Sean too. The solution became obvious; they needed to hire a housekeeper and nurse companion. Lorette nursed Sean back to some semblance of health, fetched Mavis whenever she began wandering through the house in her confused state, and cooked and cleaned for the men. Lorette was an extremely busy young woman. She was buxom and a little on the ample side. She was not a great beauty, but neither was she unattractive with her bouncy blonde hair that fell below her shoulders whenever it wasn’t pinned up, and generous lips. Sean was certain that his brother sometimes watched Lorette for too long whenever she exited a room, but Lorette never seemed to notice any of Will’s attention. She was simply a young woman who was grateful for a full-time job that included such grand room and board.

  Two months before the second Tillamook Burn, Lorette’s job became a little easier. She suddenly had one less patient to worry about. She’d been out in the garden when Mavis rose early from her nap and began wandering the downstairs rooms again. Her cataracts were as thick as jelly wax, and for some time, she’d been unable to make out anything more than shadows. When Lorette found Mavis, she was cowering in the corner of the music room in extreme distress over being lost and not knowing where she was. Lorette did her best to calm the elderly woman down, but the experience had rattled Mavis’s final reserve of strength. She died in her sleep later that same night.

  No one blamed Lorette except Lorette. She atoned by lavishing attention on Sean, who grew rankled by the constant care. Her hovering finally forced him out of bed each day and pushed him to his limits, something that saved him from wasting away. The tip of the tree had hit Sean square across his midsection. It had cracked four of his ribs, damaged his spleen, and had broken his back in several places. The injuries resulted in making his heart work all the harder just to take breaths. Now his heart was abnormally sized and working twice as hard as that of a healthy man. Sean knew that he needed to take life easier, but he refused to lie in bed like an invalid. If that would be his existence, he would just as soon die.

  That day, Sean rose early and got right to the business of picking through old photographs. He had started his own business turning his historic, scenic photos into picture postcards. They were much in demand, since the Tillamook forests ceased to exist, having been devoured by fire, twice. The forests of the scenic Pacific Northwest lived only in the minds of those who could remember and on Sean Marshall’s postcards. The postcard business and Sean’s sideline of making ham radio sets didn’t just add to the family income; they gave Sean Marshall a reason to live. Once again, Sean had saved nearly enough money to attend the college and become an engineer. He was registered for the spring semester. Sean sat cross-legged on the large braided rug in the parlor. The room had three floor-to-ceiling windows to provide the light he needed, but he swore that he could still smell his mother’s strong cologne emanating from the bedroom just off the parlor, and it persisted in making him feel melancholy about all the people missing from his life. He picked up his pencil and began rating each of the photographs on a point system. Then he went back through the pile and began numbering them in order of quality. He decided he would send off only the top twenty-four and see how they fared. He was cataloging the remaining photographs as he returned them to their boxes when Will burst through the parlor doors.

  “Sean! You’re not going to believe this! Guess who I just heard is getting himself a ham radio set?” He did not bother to wait for his surprised, mildly annoyed brother to answer before he blurted the answer. “Preacher Bowman! That’s who!”

  “Baloney!” Sean laughed. “He’d never dream of asking me to build him a set. I’m not sure I would even if he paid me double.”

  “Well, he ain’t gonna ask you. I guess there’s a guy up in Garibaldi who builds ‘em now. Your friend Osborne from over there in Salem was just by and stopped to say hello. I didn’t know you was up or I’d have asked him in, Sean—”

  “That’s okay. Get on with it,” he urged.

  “Right. Anyways, he got a set built by this Garibaldi guy and applied for his license. Osborne says everything checks out, so…I guess we’re gonna have us a new voice in the night to chit-chat with.” The mirth in Will’s eyes was unmistakable.

  “Glad you’re having so much fun with this, Will,” his now-dour brother answered. “We’ll have no peace—the deviate’s voice can intrude into our very own parlor, day or night.”

  “Yeah.” His chuckle had been full of good humor, but Sean raised a negative Will had not considered. Still, Sean clearly missed what it was about the news that had lifted
Will’s spirits. “But listen. I thought that maybe, just maybe, the preacher might allow Victor to, you know, talk on the radio now and then. I mean, Victor’s at an age now where the preacher might just have trouble keeping him off’a it.”

  Sean looked over to the radio sitting idle on the desk by the window. “Victor,” he said, looking up sadly at his brother. “You know, Will, I was thinking last night when I couldn’t fall asleep, that I can’t really picture Blair so clear in my head anymore. I’m forgettin’ what she looked like unless I study the portrait. And I don’t remember what she sounded like. Her memory’s fading as fast as my blue jeans.”

  The mirth drained from Will’s eyes. He crossed the threshold and sat in a chair across from his brother’s position on the floor. He studied his hands for a few seconds, but when he finally looked at his brother, he was as serious as a heart attack.

  “Sean, brother, it has been more than seven years since she left. Seven years. We don’t even know if she’s alive. Rebecca’s alone now too. She still loves you, you know. It’d be far better to drift off to sleep with images of a woman who is real, who’s here and who loves you, than to pine for someone who’s never coming back.” He paused. “Little brother, I promised myself I wouldn’t intrude on your privacies, but I think it needs saying for your own good. Sean, your wife is never coming home to you.”

  “I know.”

  Sean went back to flipping through photos, but aimlessly. Will studied his hands some more, twirled his mustache, coughed. The silence grew louder by the second.

  “So, whaddya think of the preacher doin’ a radio broadcast? Maybe he’s planning to do sermons on the air or something like that.”

  “Nah. He’s just a lonely old man, like the rest of us.”

  But Sean was thinking how unlike other men the preacher was. Sean knew that Bowman was not merely old and lonely but old and dirty. Sean’s fingers stopped flipping photos. He looked up at his brother as the thought occurred to him, and slowly, his mouth turned into a devious grin.