CONTENTS
Front Matter
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Part One - ALMA
One
Two
Three
Four
Part Two - WATERFALLS
Five
Six
Seven
Part Three - BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Part Four - STORMS
Twelve
Thirteen
Eleven
Part Five - STORY OF YOUR LIFE
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Part Six - RAINBOWS
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Part Seven - GUARDIANS
Twenty-One
Part Eight - ALTHOUGH OF COURSE YOU END UP BECOMING YOURSELF
Twenty-Two
About the Author
Back Matter
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THE DRAGON DOCUMENTARIES
J.D. Camacho
Edited by Alida Winternheimer, www.wordessential.com
Cover Design by Kerry Hynds, www.hyndsstudio.com
Copyright © 2016 J.D. Camacho
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Dedicated to my grandfather, who – let’s be honest – isn’t going to use a kindle and will read the large print version instead.
PART ONE
ALMA
One
You’re ready for this, yes you are. You work for a swanky New York magazine and you’ve been selected to do a piece on the Scrubb Family. The Scrubb Family is your first feature piece, so you’ve started going through all of Elmo’s audio recordings that the family gave the magazine. You’re curious as to why Elmo, the only son, would adventure out as far as he did. You haven’t reached the last recording, but you know you like his “confessionals” better than the ones where he just looks around and describes the scenery. You skip over most of that.
You are now in northern Virginia, and you’ve come here to meet Olympia, the only daughter of the family. You arrive early in the morning and don’t know what to expect. You’re smart, though. You’re experienced enough. You can do this.
You park near Olympia’s apartment. Your muscles contract under your skin from the leftover winter air. The grey sky blankets you from above. You calm down, knock on the apartment door, meet Olympia. She looks fierce.
“Hey, you must be the reporter,” she says. She shakes your hand. But she doesn’t smile, perhaps because it’s early, perhaps because she doesn’t have to, perhaps because she doesn’t like you.
She has a brown complexion, dark eyes, black and straight and sleek hair. She wears colorless short heels and a colorless suit jacket, as if she’s not trying to stand out or impress anyone but herself. But she leads you to her luxury car; you see she takes care of it. So you don’t really know.
“We have a long way to go today,” she says. “I have to be over in John County for an unlawful detainer trial and then I have a trustee’s auction in Anne’s River County.”
You smile as if you know where any of that is. You nod as if you know what any of that means.
She laughs. “They didn’t tell you what I did?”
You tell her that you should have been better prepared.
“I like to say to people that I do distressed real estate when they find out I’m an attorney, and they usually smile and nod – the same way you just did, actually.”
You smile again, nod again.
“That stops the follow-up question almost every time. It’s pretty amazing.” She pulls toward the interstate.
You ask her why she wouldn’t want a follow-up question.
“Because I usually don’t like being interrogated.”
You pause and shrink in your seat, like a child caught talking back.
Olympia whirs through the traffic. She blinks yellow and dodges red beneath the greyness. Olympia appears preoccupied with the road. The busy road demands your attention, too.
Once Olympia successfully turns onto the interstate, you buck up enough to start asking questions again. You want to know why you’re going to John County.
“I told you: I have an unlawful detainer trial,” Olympia says. “Unlawful detainer is a civil claim for eviction.”
You glance at your lap.
Olympia tightens her brow. “Yeah,” she says, “I’m kickin’ somebody out they house.”
You ask how she started in distressed real estate.
“Oh, y’know, I didn’t choose this,” she says. “More like, it was just available at the time.”
What would she have wanted to do instead?
She scrunches her right cheek as if she’s heard this question before and doesn’t like to answer. “I mean, it’s like, it’s complicated,” she says. “I have to talk to myself sometimes. I do. I say, ’Is this really what you want to be doing?’ And sometimes I need to take a break and just…and just get myself together.”
You hear the howling of a siren as a crimson firetruck passes by. After the sound fades, you ask what she means by “take a break.”
“Y’know, go call your best friend,” she says. “Go call your grandma, go call your people, because they connect you back.”
What about her parents?
Olympia pauses. “Y’know, I don’t really talk to them much.”
You try to ask why.
“We aren’t close.”
Why not?
“We’re just not.”
The heat from the car fan wafts across your neck. You ask instead why she wanted to become a lawyer.
Olympia waits again. She squints forward. “Probably because my mom is a lawyer,” she says.
You fidget. You don’t know what else to say.
Olympia doesn’t appear to care. She drives the two of you for miles.
You see fewer and fewer buildings emerge on either side. Your eyes follow other drivers off the interstate, off to their burdens and their goals. You realize more and more that this – this family, this interview – this is your goal. You know that you may not get another chance, so you start talking again. Now you catch the brown bricks giving way to green trees around the road. You ask Olympia about those “breaks” she mentioned before.
“The breaks?” she says. “Oh, I just need to give myself some time. I try to give myself a little two minutes when I…when I just need to take a break and think about some things.”
What does she discover on those breaks?
“I remind myself of the struggle I went through to make it to where I am.”
You want her to elaborate.
“Well, it’s unusual for me to be out here, doing what I do,” Olympia says. “I grew up in Kansas. Y’know, we didn’t have much. My father was in the military. My mother, she’s a lawyer now, but she wasn’t at the time when I was growing up. And sometimes – and I don’t really care if my mother reads this – sometimes our lights would get cut off, sometimes there wouldn’t be enough food on the table. We weren’t in the middle class. I didn’t come from that. So I h
ad to work at it, and when I got certain opportunities, when I got the opportunity to come here, to go to college for free, to go to law school for free, to start doing what I’m doing, I had to take it to the moon. I mean, country girls like me don’t get outta there all the time, so I had to take advantage.”
Where does she get her motivation?
“I always wanted to know things. We had bookstores in my community, we had libraries, but not a lot, y’know? I read a lot. We both read a lot.”
You ask if she means her brother Elmo.
“Yeah, Mo and I both read a lot.” Olympia goes silent.
You consider this, but say nothing.
The car has left the interstate and entered the mountain roads. The way ahead looks narrow, rocky; still, you can’t help but notice the yellow billboards. They tell of caverns, of stone, of BREATHTAKING SCENERY AT EVERY ENTRANCE. They appear to call to you. You listen to the quieter road and the purr of the luxury car. You want to see what it’s all about.
Olympia keeps driving.
You watch the signs appear again and again and feature bigger and bigger letters and brighter and brighter yellow and you feel flush with wanting to see the caverns, wanting to know them and understand why. You’re smarter than this, but it doesn’t matter. You fall for the local charm, briefly lose your way.
Olympia peers ahead. She appears to notice neither the signs nor you.
You read the billboards more closely; they count down the miles to the caverns. They almost ask you to prepare yourself. So you do.
When the main entrance comes into view, you don’t stare at the welcome banner, the parking lot, the half-melted brown-and-white snow piles, the dozens of empty parking spaces, or the arrows to the cavern trains. Instead, you stare at a placard. Just below the welcome banner, there is a sign for the Magic Dragon Reflection Dungeon.
You want to know what that is. You need to know what that is.
The car moves past, but you turn back and wonder. You look to Olympia, and you fear she doesn’t share your enthusiasm. You decide to look up a video of the Reflection Dungeon on your phone, and you find a few. So you watch the one with the most views. But first you lower the volume on your phone so as not to bother your driver.
An adult and three children enter a passage filled with ornate columns and mirrors. The mirrors line all the walls. They mask the path from the four explorers. The children, who look younger than teenagers, appear delighted at their endless reflections. The three giggle and point and run back and forth and smile and snicker and look happy, as if they are pleased to get lost, glad that they can’t find each other. But, you think, these children must know there’s no danger. They must know there’s no chance that they’ll forget where they are. They don’t discover the dragon, and they don’t appear to care.
You put your phone away, glance over to see if Olympia wants to continue the interview. She has turned down the car heater, and you ask her what she’s thinking.
“I’m trying not to think right now,” Olympia says. “I’m trying not to feel all this right now.”
What does she mean?
“I have a job to do,” she says. “I’d like to give you my perspective on things, what I really think, but I can’t right now. I have to do this. Afterward, we can talk. I don’t really want to, but something keeps telling me I should.”
You press your lower lip under your upper lip and nod.
“All I’ll say right now is that it’s not my fault,” she says, turning to you. “It’s not. It’s not my fault that Mo is dead.”
Two
You smell a scent like stale cake from the lacquered wood all around. These stiff, brown pews in the back of the courtroom are your seats. You see the yellow rays from the late morning beam inside as if setting the stage for a coming performance. You watch Olympia in the front of the courtroom, past the swinging divider where she sits with the other eviction attorneys. The divider underlines a separation: the people in the front are mostly white, the people in the back are mostly not.
You understand the optics of this. But you don’t have enough information to explain the difference. You consider how Olympia feels about it.
The bailiff calls for order; the judge appears. Your Honor asks for time estimates on the various matters in front of her. The judge names each case, the parties stand, the parties estimate, and the judge notes the given time. When the judge names Olympia’s case, you see an elderly pair rise. The man wears an old wool suit, and the woman dresses in what appears to be her Sunday best. They both stare at Olympia. Olympia estimates five minutes for the case with the pair; they appear without an attorney of their own.
A series of cases go by quickly in front of you. You hear the attorneys call these cases “one-minute matters” on “agreed orders” or “failures to appear” or “no pleadings filed” or others reasons you miss. You wonder whether these matters pass too summarily, that people’s homes are at stake, that this should matter more. But maybe you’re being too sentimental.
You listen to the judge call Olympia’s case again. You observe the elderly pair approach the front, pass the swinging divider, and stand as firm as they appear able. The pair and Olympia are positioned at opposite tables; you ready your pencil.
“Your Honor,” Olympia says, “this action stems from a foreclosure sale and purchase for the subject matter property.”
Olympia’s voice carries a surer speed and cadence than before.
“Plaintiff was the successful purchaser at the sale for fair consideration,” she says. “The purchase price was paid and the trustee’s deed in foreclosure was duly recorded among the land records of John County, Virginia. Plaintiff sent Defendants notice of its acquisition and made demand for possession. Defendants have failed and refused to vacate the premises and Plaintiff now seeks in this action possession of the subject matter property.”
The elderly pair begins. They speak of their home and complain of procedure and yap about their bank and yell about their finances and the foreclosure and the notices and the loss of their house and the loss of their world. They prattle and sniffle through their case.
When they finish, Olympia does not look in their direction. “Your Honor,” she says, “I have a certified copy of the trustee’s deed in foreclosure. I submit this document to the court as a self-authenticated record under 8.01-389.”
The judge takes the document, examines it, shakes her head. She exhales and looks to the pair.
The pair starts again. They repeat their cries of illegalities and lack of contact and babble about rights and tradition and chatter on about the lies fed to them by everyone involved.
The judge looks back to Olympia.
“Your Honor,” Olympia says, “I’d like an opportunity for cross-examination.”
The judge tells Olympia to go ahead.
Olympia reaches for a white sheet covered with black, scribbled writing. She hands the sheet to the elderly woman. “Ma’am,” she says, “is this a copy of your Grounds of Defense that you filed with the court?”
The elderly woman acknowledges the sheet as a copy of her document.
“Ma’am,” Olympia says, “do you admit that everything on this sheet is a true statement, as you see it?”
The woman admits the truth of the sheet.
“I’d like to enter this document into evidence,” Olympia says. She gives the sheet to the judge. “No further questions, Your Honor.” She returns to her table.
The judge closes her eyes, kneads her forehead, turns to her computer monitor. She taps and taps on her keyboard and stares into the pale glow of her screen. And she shakes her head again. The judge asks Olympia if she has anything else.
“No, Judge,” Olympia says. “Argument for closing?”
Your Honor nods.
“Simply put, the trustee’s deed in foreclosure is prima facie evidence of possession under Virginia law. Arguments as to title are not relevant to an unlawful detainer matter. And title, in any case, is beyond the ju
risdiction of the general district court. Moreover, the Grounds of Defense in evidence clearly shows, by judicial admission under Eubank v. Spencer, that the defendants consider the daily fair market value of the property to be eighty-five dollars per day. Therefore, we ask this court for possession of the subject matter property as well as damages in the amount of $7,310, which equals $85 a day from the time of foreclosure to today, the trial date. We also ask for an appeal bond to be set for the same amount.”
The pair looks livid. They roar that they didn’t know the daily rental value of the property, that they just repeated on their Grounds of Defense what Olympia wrote on her original filing, that they were hoodwinked into saying what was said. The woman has wrinkled her once-tidy outfit. The man has already sweated through his wool suit. They demand to know where justice has gone.
The judge pauses. She exhales again, looks to both parties, and apologizes to the elderly pair. Now the judge glances down at the documents in front of her and announces an award of possession of the subject matter property and an award of damages in the amount of $7,310, all for the plaintiff.
The elderly pair briefly wails and briefly howls. They move toward the exit, stagger right past you. You notice a lemon perfume as the elderly woman limps by. Her husband steadies her, supports her.
You see Olympia gather her papers and her folders. You see her expression. You see nothing at all.
Three
It’s the middle of the day, and you’re more curious than hungry sitting here on a soft striped seat in front of a firetruck-red table in a restaurant near a college town.
Olympia has ordered. She glances toward the kitchen and tells you that she feels nostalgic here. She has told you not to ask questions until the food comes. Olympia wants silence. She has control over you, not the restaurant.
But then the restaurant obliges. The food arrives: chicken tenders, house sauce, fries, and toast. The chicken looks hand-dipped and deliciously oily. The sauce tastes tart and toothsome, like sugared peppers. The fries feel crisp and crumpled. The toast gives off hints of garlic and butter.
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