Words Burned to Flame

by Brian S. Wheeler

  Chapter 2 – Paper Swans

  I don’t think my father ever entertained the thought that all those scowling residents who gathered outside of the town library ever, truly, possessed good reason to fear Mr. Turner the way they did. Dad must’ve thought the animosity the town showed Mr. Turner was some kind of unfounded form of bigotry focused against those as ugly as Mr. Turner. Perhaps dad thought the town’s resentment grew out of envy for the recognition Mr. Turner’s poetry attracted from the outside world. Perhaps dad just thought the rest of Addieville hated Mr. Turner because he was a man who spent his years in ideas and worked in verse - Addieville wouldn’t have been the first village to hate neighbors who occupied themselves so idly. But dad never knew just how deeply Mr. Turner scratched for secrets. Dad never suspected Mr. Turner flirted with shadows. Dad only thought Addieville hated Mr. Turner for his poetry, a poetry that refused to be directed by meter or rhyme, a poetry that showed so little respect for morality, a poetry that celebrated the vulgar, a poetry my father said provided a truer picture of the world. Dad claimed Addieville should’ve thrown Mr. Turner a parade the day his poetry won that prestigious award, and dad said those people of Addieville showed their true colors the afternoon the outside world attempted to reward Mr. Turner for his words.

  I suppose the story concerning how I came to help Mr. Turner burn half of Addieville to the ground starts that distant afternoon when the town gathered at the town library and demanded my father remove Mr. Turner’s poetry from the bookshelves.

  “Please, I’m only asking that all of you allow our visitors access to the library’s doors.” My father pleaded with the crowd, but no one gave any indication of stepping aside. “I respect everyone’s right to protest, and I certainly respect those of you who take issue with Mr. Turner’s writings. But we can all do better than this. There’s no reason to intimidate anyone who comes to our town to recognize the efforts of one of our neighbors.”

  A man’s gruff voice shouted from the crowd. “We’re not intimidating anyone!”

  My father held up a hand. “Then, please, take a few steps back from the walkway.”

  The crowd continued to ignore my father, and the delegation that travelled so far to isolated Addieville remained seated in their vehicle. I didn’t fault them, for I was scared myself as I stood in the library and gazed through the windows while my father begged that crowd to make room for Mr. Turner’s visitors. That man might shout time and again that his intention wasn’t to frighten anyone, but I knew better. The largest men of the community linked their arms and formed a wall at the edge of the parking lot with their wide shoulders. And they came with their guns holstered upon their hips. Those guns terrified me. Dad told me they had every right beneath state law to carry those guns wherever they pleased in order to protect themselves, but I couldn’t imagine how those glaring men and women, with assault rifles slung over their shoulders, could think anything in the library threatened them to such an extent that they needed to come with their weapons. I didn’t blame those people who had come to reward Mr. Turner for remaining safely in their car.

  I hadn’t yet learned very much about Mr. Turner, and I found the man hard to read. Fear, anger, and disappointment must’ve filled that old man as he watched those protesters shake signs claiming him to be a perversion of their faith, and a danger to their families. Mr. Turner was nearly motionless as he sat at the finest wooden table the library could muster, dressed in what was no doubt his best suite, accented by a blue tie. I felt a connection with Mr. Turner that first moment I saw him. We were both born with faces that made strangers uncomfortable.

  Mr. Turner didn’t look very comfortable himself. It looked as if he couldn’t find the correct way his long arms extending from a crooked spine needed to rest at the table, and the pair of walking canes tied to his wrists clattered every time Mr. Turner turned to see if his delegation yet faced their fears and approached the library. The man’s head seemed too large for his shoulders, and a disturbing image bubbled in my imagination of Mr. Turner’s slender neck snapping if he shifted the weight of his skull too quickly in one direction or the other as he looked through the library’s windows at the protesters gathered to condemn his poetry.

  A woman with long, gray hair streaming to her hips shouted at my father. “We’ll let those people through, and we’ll let them give Mr. Turner his award, if you promise to remove that filthy book from the library, Vance Frost! You promise to get rid of that book, and we’ll stand real quiet and polite as he watch those folks from out of town step inside!”

  “I can’t do that, Mrs. Monken. Removing that book would go against what I work to do as this town’s librarian. I didn’t become a librarian to censor books.”

  One of the men forming the wall at the edge of the parking lot unlinked his arms from his neighbors long enough to glare at my father. “It’s your job to do what this community tells you do. It’s our taxes that pay your salary, Vance Frost, and that means it’s your job to get rid of any of the books we tell you to throw in the trash.”

  My mother stood quietly at my father’s side, though I knew her blood started fuming the moment the first protester arrived that morning with a sign condemning Mr. Turner’s poetry. She had held back that rage, and she had done what she could to support my dad with her silent presence. But her green eyes burned as that man pointed his finger at my father.

  “That’s a steaming heap of horseshit, Dwayne Zachery!” My mom hissed. “Don’t forget you earn your living driving a lawn tractor for the county highway department! Don’t forget that it’s my taxes that pay your inflated salary! When are you going to come by my home and mow my lawn? Don’t my taxes give me the right to tell you how to do your job?”

  Dwayne growled. “That’s not the same thing, Nikki.”

  “The hell it isn’t,” my mother stepped forward. “Any idiot can drive a lawn mower. How dare you, how dare any of you, tell my husband what does and doesn’t belong in his library? He’s read more books than the rest of you combined. He’s studied for years to run a library! How dare any of you?”

  “You’re welcome to leave if you don’t like it, bitch!” A woman screamed.

  My mom laughed. “We’re pushing the limits of our vocabularies now!”

  “Let me tell you something,” and older man shouted. “You might be happy to let your boy read Mr. Turner’s perverted pages of poetry, but the rest of us in this community aren’t so willing to watch that devilry ruin our children. You’re not from here. You’ve forgotten what it means to live as the Lord wishes!”

  My father gripped my mother’s elbow before she could take a step closer to the crowd. “Now, everyone take a breath. It’s natural to get emotional in a moment like this.”

  “Don’t tell us what’s natural!” Another voiced shouted.

  “You don’t put Mr. Turner’s book in our library and then tell us what’s natural!” Another protester agreed.

  The protestors roared back into their chants proclaiming Mr. Turner’s poetry an affront to community, country and heaven. My father’s shoulders slumped. He seemed to deflate, while my mom shook with anger. And my eyes kept drifting to all those guns carried to my father’s library. I always thought those guns were kept for protection against muggers, murderers and rabid dogs. I never dreamed those guns were kept for protection against poetry.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t let any of those folks beyond the window harm your mother or father.”

  Mr. Turner’s cracking voice startled me, and he laughed as I jumped at the window.

  “I promise you that crowd hates my ugly face much more than yours, son. Come over here and let me show you a little trick to get your mind off of so much sound and fury. Let a little magic put some color back into your face.”

  Mr. Turner’s hands had not been idle while I stared through the library’s windows at the protesters. His long fingers, made crooked for their bulbous knuckles, had folded paper swans from pages ripped from a notebook. I bent clo
ser to examine the birds without taking them into my hands, and I was impressed by the intricate ways Mr. Turner creased his paper to shape such creatures. Scribbles of black ink flowed across every swan, lending an appearance of feathers to the paper, feathers linked into a kind of language I couldn’t decipher. Mr. Turner winked once at me, and when he clapped his hands onto his knees, those folded swans drifted about the table, floating across the surface as if the wood had been transformed to water.

  The trick made me smile, and it would’ve been enough to lift my spirits if those paper birds merely floated from one end of the table to the next. But Mr. Turner’s magic went yet further. The swans craned their long necks. They ruffled their paper wings. My eyes turned wide with astonishment as those swans gathered together to float into the shapes of five-pointed stars and circling rings, as if Mr. Turner choreographed their dancing. The old man’s hands never left his knees, and I couldn’t guess how Mr. Turner might’ve summoned so much movement into his folded paper. I laughed along with Mr. Turner when a pair of swans started pecking at one another, as if fighting for attention. I’d never seen such a spectacular trick, and it made me forget about that crowd and their signs screaming on the other side of the window, demanding my father to throw Mr. Turner’s book of poetry into the trash upon the very day the outside world came to reward the old man for his verse.

  I heard my father push through the library doors, and Mr. Turner’s paper swans collapsed upon the table, the breath of life abandoning them in a common instant.

  “I’m very sorry, Mr. Turner, but I’m afraid the delegation is leaving. They thought it best to leave the ceremony for another place and time rather than stay and encourage further commotion.”

  My father appeared dejected, but Mr. Turner smiled, as if he had experienced no disappointment. “I think they made a wise decision, Mr. Frost.”

  My father sighed. “I wish you could’ve received the ceremony you and your poetry deserve.”

  Mr. Turner shrugged. “Oh, it’s not so bad. This town’s been trying to chase us Turners beyond city limits ever since my grandfather tried earning a living in the mines responsible for putting this town on the map. Those folks can wave their signs and shout all they want, but you and I know how well I’ve shaped my words. We know the truth in those letters.”

  “I’m afraid to say you have more grace than me,” replied my father.

  Mr. Turner arched an eyebrow. “Now, Mr. Frost, I truly thank you for that sentiment. It’s not often that someone says the Turners own any grace.”

  Blue and red lights swirled through the windows as a local police cruiser arrived to encourage the crowd to disperse. I doubted anyone would be visiting the library for the rest of the day, but dad vowed to keep the building’s business hours no matter how mom encouraged him to take the afternoon off. My dad believed in his job. He believed a librarian held a duty as important as any owned by a police officer or firefighter. My poor dad just believed too much in books, and fortune couldn’t shake his faith in ideas no matter how bad luck delivered him to a library in a town as ugly and simple as Addieville.

  I recognized my mother’s foul mood when she finally entered the library after the last protester left the parking lot, and so I wasn’t in any hurry to return home. I stayed with dad, and I sat at that table with Mr. Turner as I read from the interactive adventure books, peeking from time to time to see if any of his paper swans returned to life. The birds remained as still as Mr. Turner, who didn’t do much more than breath as he waited for my father to finish his business so that he could accept a lift home.

  Finally, curiosity got the better of me.

  “How did you do it?”

  “Do what?” Mr. Turner grinned.

  “How did you animate your paper swans? I used to really be into magic, so I know a few card tricks, and I’ve read how magic’s all about deceiving the eyes of your audience. But I don’t have a guess as to what chapter your trick with those paper swans came from, so give me a little clue as to how you pulled it off.”

  Mr. Turner winked. “Magnets and paperclips.”

  My mind churned while I thought that over, distracting my thoughts from my adventure books. While I waited for my father to return after giving Mr. Turner a ride home, I helped myself to a closer inspection of those paper swans. I gently unfolded each creature, but I failed to find a paperclip or magnet within any of the birds. The strange, black runes inked on the paper remained undecipherable to me. I held the swans to the light in every direction, but I couldn’t harvest any further sense from the toys, and my frustrating attempts at folding the animals together again led me realize Mr. Turner’s origami was beyond my fingers.

  Thus Mr. Turner hooked me. Those paper swans were my introduction to that old man’s power. Mr. Turner’s words might’ve been enough to garner accolades, but I would learn that poetry was the weaker magic wielded by Mr. Turner.

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