Black Bird

by Greg Enslen

  Randy had no way to answer those questions or the dozen others his supervisor had posed him and the others in their 2 a.m. staff meeting. There was no way to predict a storm path for a storm that was so completely different from all the others. Their computer programs were based on certain criteria, and this stormed seemed to be simply ignoring the norm. And if they couldn’t get a handle on it soon, cities and towns all up and down the Eastern Seaboard could be slammed by the biggest storm of the year with little or no warning from the National Hurricane Center.

  Part Three:

  Tracking the Approach

  Chapter 9 - Sunday,

  September 18

  It was early on Sunday morning, almost 10:00, and David was holding back his emotions. His aunt, when she wasn’t out and out sloshed, had often told him that he was too emotional, too sensitive for a boy. In his aunt’s scheme of things, boys were supposed to be tough and accepting and unemotional, solid slabs of mute beef that marched through life, never looking back. The concept of a man, or even a boy, crying was completely alien to her, and David had learned that early on - he hadn’t cried in front of her or anyone else since his sixth birthday, and the party with the clown.

  His aunt had decided to throw him a surprise party in the grand tradition of kid’s birthday parties, with balloons and presents and neighborhood kids spinning each other around and attempting to pin a small strip of paper with a painted-on tail onto a colorful poster of a donkey hung on a tree. She wasn’t the most popular mother on the block, possibly because she wasn’t really a mother, but other parents had been invited and attended because they knew her nephew from school or had known the Beaumont’s before they had both passed away.

  Oh, and there had been the clown. Young David had never liked clowns very much and his aunt knew this fact all too well, but she’d decided that the only way her little David was going to get over his silly, childish fear of clowns was to face that fear head-on, so she arranged for one to show up at his party. And she neglected to tell David.

  Well, the surprise party had come off well and was a relative success up until the point where the clown had joined in. Little David was just finishing up his futile attempt to pin the tail on the donkey, managing only to pin the little tail to the tree a foot south of the donkey’s behind, and David pulled off the blindfold while the other kids laughed good-naturedly. He was still a little dizzy from the spinning and all of the excitement, and laughed along with the others.

  “BOO!” the clown screamed as he jumped out from the crowd and grabbed David as he dropped the blindfold to the ground, and David shrieked like a frightened woman, bolting from the clown’s grasp and backing into a small table, upsetting gifts and cameras and party favors in a splash of color. Everything had crashed to the ground, accompanied by the sharps sounds of breakage, and then he had started crying, loud and unmistakable, crying like a big baby.

  His aunt had been mortified, embarrassed beyond words. The other mothers had looked at her with expressions of obvious distaste, as if they were all asking the same question with their sad, questioning eyes: How could you have raised such a cry-baby?

  It was the looks from the other mothers more than anything that caused her to race forward and grab David from where he stood crying and sweep him up under her arm like a package, carrying him into the house. She had spanked him, hard, over and over and over. The other women out there were mothers and she was not, and that only meant she had to try that much harder to be a good parent to her nephew. And if that meant teaching him about what happened to crybabies, that was just too bad.

  Of course, she’d had a few drinks before the others arrived, and that combined with her own special brand of parenting had caused her to take out her frustration on David‘s behind. The sound of the worn Ping-Pong paddle, her favorite tool for his frequent and lengthy spankings, echoed outside where the other kids and parents and the clown, embarrassed at the situation, tried to pretend they didn’t hear it. Each of them pretended not to hear each of the solid WHAPs followed by a short burst of crying that was in turn followed by a harsh shout of “stop crying” or “shut up you cry-baby” or “pipe down, baby!”

  The clown went on, nervously bending long skinny balloons into rough approximations of different animals, and after about thirty or forty loud smacks, the crying stopped.

  Half a dozen kids tried to ask their mothers about the spanking only to be ‘shushed’. Later, at home, they might find out, but here, with the other kids and their parents and the clown and the balloons, they would have to sit still and be quiet.

  His aunt came out a few minutes later, practically dragging her nephew, and David walked over to the clown and gingerly shook his puffy red hand before turning to announce in a very shaky voice that it was time to open the presents.

  One of the moms commented later to her friends that little David had opened all of his presents from a standing position.

  But he’d learned his lesson, and he never cried around his aunt again. He still felt a vague, uneasy feeling around clowns, but he had learned how to keep his emotions in check, learned to keep his feelings inside.

  And now David was struggling all over again to not cry in front of his aunt.

  He was at her house, but all of the furniture had either been sold off or already moved over to the townhouse Abe had chosen for her, leaving only stacks and stacks of brown cardboard boxes. It still amazed David that Abe had found her a place so quickly. Several of the old place’s rooms were still not finished being packed up, but she would be packing those things into the remaining empty boxes and deciding whether they went to the townhouse or directly into storage, and David wondered if there was anything of his in any of these boxes. He’d thought he’d gotten everything when he’d moved out, but as he glanced around, he saw a box or two whose markings included his name.

  And there were a couple of boxes marked “William” which took him completely by surprise - he had no idea that his aunt had kept any of his father’s things. He’d poked through one of the boxes out of curiosity while he was waiting for her to come down from her bedroom, but the box was just full of clothes and other things. The other box looked like it contained old case files and paperwork, each with William T. Beaumont’s scrawled notes on the green covers or decorating loose sheets of notebook paper that had been shoved inside the files, and David found himself wishing for a month to examine every item in detail to get some type of insight into his father’s true nature. It looked fascinating, but he only had a few minutes before his aunt had come downstairs and they’d commenced their good-byes.

  And now, out on the front porch, David worked hard to keep his tears back. He was an emotional boy, and he knew it.

  His aunt stood there with dust on her clothes and no vodka in sight and he wanted to stay, felt like he NEEDED to stay to make sure she got settled into the new place all right. Things were going great for her, a new place and hopefully, with it, a new outlook on life. She’d be sober and happy, and wasn’t that what he had wanted for her?

  Yes, that’s what he wanted for her. And for him, he just wanted out.

  “Gotta go, okay? You sure you’re going to be okay with the move and all?” he asked, the concern in his voice very real and very apparent.

  She dabbed at her eyes with the dishrag she’d been carrying and nodded. “Yeah, if I need help I’ll call Abe or somebody. I’ll be just fine. Now, you make sure you drive careful and write me as soon as you get there, okay?” As she said the last part she moved to him and swept him up in her arms and for a moment he felt total love before she stepped away and turned, starting towards his Mazda. Her hugs were always like that, short and sweet and fleeting.

  And when he turned around to head for his car, he saw that Bethany‘s Honda had pulled up into the driveway behind his car.

  This was the last thing he needed - he was already emotional enough with leaving his Aunt, the only family he had ever known, and now here came the only girl he had every really lov
ed. What was this, the last scene in some tearjerker of a movie? Were they both going to work on him and cajole him and beg him to stay? The idea of just bolting to his car and driving away, going over the lawn if he had to, suddenly appealed to him.

  Bethany got out and she was carrying something.

  “Morning, Miss Thatcher. How are you?” Bethany asked his Aunt before turning to him.

  His Aunt answered. “Well, my little boy is leaving me. What do you think about that?” He glanced away from Bethany and saw that his Aunt was crying.

  Bethany handed him a red binder full of papers. He took it and started to open it, but she put one hand on top of it. “It’s just a book to remind you of us. So you don’t forget.” She looked up at him and leaned closer, kissing his cheek softly. And then she turned and got into her car and drove away.

  “I think she really loves you, David. You should think twice about leaving her.”

  He looked angrily at his Aunt. “I have thought twice, Gloria. I’ve thought about it a thousand times, and it would never work.”

  He tucked the binder under his arm and headed for his car, just wanting to be gone from this place. He had expected a big scene from his Aunt earlier, and just now he had expected a big scene from Bethany when he’d seen her pull up, and neither had happened, and now his emotions were frayed. He needed to leave now, get on the road before he changed his mind.

  He took one last long look at the old house, the only one he had ever really known - except for his recently-vacated apartment, and that had never really counted anyway - and walked to his car, taking his keys out. Amazing how the big, important moments in someone’s’ life are still made of up familiar little things, like taking out your keys and jingling them around your fingers.

  She followed him down to the driveway and after he had unlocked the door and thrown the binder in the passenger seat, he saw that she was walking around his car, appraising it with a careful eye as if she was thinking about buying it instead of sending off her only family in it.

  “Tires?” she asked, and he smiled.

  “Just aired them up yesterday, and the guy at the shop said they’re good for at least 20,000 more miles before I have to start worrying. They’ll be fine.”

  She turned and saw him looking at her. “I just want you to be careful, and safe, okay?” The tears were close again, and he knew it. “Nothing wrong with me wanting the best for my only nephew, right?”

  “Of course not.”

  He went around the driver’s side and opened the door and was about to climb in when she hugged him again, hugging him for longer this time.

  “You’ll be careful, right?” she asked, pulling away from him and looking into his eyes, and, for a moment, she seemed so completely and utterly sober that it was impossible to believe she had ever touched the stuff. The clarity in her eyes was something to behold.

  And he smiled, close to tears himself, though he would never admit it, not to himself or her or anybody else. “Of course I’ll be careful. And I’ll call you when I get there. The number will be the same, right?”

  “Uh-huh. I don’t know what day it changes over, but it won’t be for a while - and I’m going to try and get the same number. If not, there’ll be a recording.” She glanced back up at the house. “Lots of stuff to move, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know.” He kissed her on the cheek and climbed in, making a show of putting on his seat belt, showing her each step to prove that he was going to be careful.

  “Oh, cut that out,” she said, her smile matching his more mischievous one. “You take care of yourself, David, okay?”

  “I will,” he said as he started the car up and slowly backed it out of the driveway. He backed onto the road and put the Mazda into gear, and it wheezed once before catching and popping into gear. She was standing in the middle of the driveway and waving, and as he slowly pulled away, he waved back, continuing to wave until she was out of sight. He loved her more at that moment than he ever had, as if the several days of sobriety had awakened in her a mother he had never known. And he wondered again if he was doing the right thing - if she was sober all the time, couldn’t they get along a lot better? And might that help him get along here in this crappy little town, if he knew he had some family that he could talk to?

  But it was already decided. Sure he would miss her, but this decision that he had made was the right one and it felt right, and any lingering doubts he had about this trip would fade as soon as he hit the road, he was sure.

  David Beaumont finished a few more last-minute things, like topping off the gas and picking up a Super Big Gulp and some candy at the 7-11, and the tears never came. And they wouldn’t, as far as he was concerned. He would miss his Aunt, seeing her with new eyes, and he would miss Bethany, he was sure of that, but this decision was right.

  He was almost to the County Line Bridge and out of the city limits when he’d drunk enough of the soda to prop it between two of his bags on the floorboard of the passenger seat. He decided to get out his big folding map of Virginia, the one that he had taken and highlighted his route down to Richmond and east to West Virginia, and look at it again.

  He took his eyes off the road for a few moments to search around before finding it. He took his eyes off the road again for several seconds as he tried to fold it in a way that best showed where he was going, finishing up the folding as he passed over the County Line Bridge and crossed the city limits out of Liberty.

  It was because he had taken his eyes off the road that he didn’t see the grayish-white van with the black curtains in the back go sliding past him on the bridge.

  He didn’t see the van or its curtains or its driver, a strange-looking man with a scraggly reddish beard whose piercing, smallish eyes never left the roadway before him. And David certainly didn’t see the steely smile that stole slowly across the man’s face, darkening it, as the man and his van crossed that imaginary borderline and passed once more back into Liberty.

  No, David was too busy folding his map, far too busy trying to figure where he was going.

  Jack drifted quietly back into Liberty.

  As is the case in smaller towns, Liberty was populated with a diverse mix of age groups and ethnic backgrounds, but for the most part it was the younger citizens of Liberty that did most of the actual work in the town, manning the counters at the fast food joints and cleaning the tables at the local restaurants. The younger kids were the ones that worked in the stores in the strip malls that were sprinkled around the small city, and they took the customers money at the gas stations. They didn’t own the stores or manage them or anything like that, but they made up the vast majority of the towns workforce, or at least that level of it.

  Of course, it was the older residents of the town that actually owned and ran everything, but they traveled in vastly different circles than the younger folk and, consequently, did not spend nearly as much time out there in the town, observing and seeing and remembering. They, by choice, spent most of their time moving in their own circles, moving in packs and traveling to and from one another’s’ houses, planning and investing and spending, but spending very little of their time moving about on the streets of Liberty.

  That was the main reason that Jack Terrington came to Liberty on that windy Sunday afternoon and nobody recognized him, at least not for a while. He could move around in Liberty without being recognized because most of the people that would’ve remembered him from his last visit were busy off doing things other than wiping down the counters at McDonalds or working the pumps at the Exxon station. Just about everyone that Jack came into contact with in his first hours in Liberty was under the age of 30, and even though they had all surely heard of this man and the legend that had grown up around him, none of them knew who they were looking at.

  A lot of people did see Jack, but they had no clue as to the significance of this bearded, leather-jacketed specter from their little town’s past. Some might have grown uneasy if Jack’s gaze happened to linger on them a li
ttle too long, but other than that, Jack attracted little attention.

  He drifted into town like an aged leaf on the brisk, early fall breeze. The wind was picking up and swirling the true leaves around in the gutters as he drove through the old streets, remembering, and the wind mirrored the quickening in his pulse, the excitement in his mind. He had thought that the town would have changed so much that he would not remember it, but it came back to his mind. Slowly, reluctantly, but it all came back. It was exactly as he’d remembered it.

  Well, not exactly, but close. Of course, there were a few little things that were different; any town, given 18 years, will grow a little, even if it grows at the glacial speed that this town seemed to hold the patent on.

  Liberty had grown over the intervening years, but it still held that simple, small-town feel that still seemed to attract new citizens and new businesses. The town had added a good-sized mall that Jack had passed on his way into town, and even though it was smaller than others in the northern part of the state and posed little threat to the tenacious downtown merchants, there had been small rumblings of fear from some people that Liberty was growing and expanding too fast. There were fears that Liberty was fast becoming another Springfield or Manassas or Fredericksburg, other local area towns that had grown by leaps and bounds over the past decade, often to the chagrin of some of their inhabitants. The mall, known quaintly as Liberty Place, had been built in 1988 and was populated by the ordinary eclectic mix of food establishments, bookstores, theatres, clothe shops, women’s shoe stores, and the necessary “anchor” stores on each end, in this case a branch of J.C. Penney’s and the Hecht’s Company. The mall had been built on the eastern outskirts of town, almost equidistant from downtown Liberty and the junction of 132 and Interstate-95.