Black Bird

by Greg Enslen

  He had gone to one summer semester of community college, right after high school, and that was mostly because Bethany had bugged him about it.

  So he had gone. Drafting and architecture had always fascinated him. He’d always loved the way buildings looked at they stood tall and firm against the sky, and he had blindly hoped to design and build them someday.

  He remembered several years ago when he had been fascinated by the plans for the Mall - they had hung on the wall in Abe Foreman‘s office for several months, back after Abe had found out that it was to be built on land purchased for David and his Aunt. The plans had been colorful and incredible, and he had spent long hours alone in Abe’s office, studying them. He probably knew the inside of that mall better than anyone around.

  He had decided to further that useless pipe dream by taking classes in Architecture and Drafting, along with classes in English and Psychology.

  But even the classes he’d liked failed to grab and hold his attention. He dropped out after that summer semester, after getting a ‘C’ in Psychology, acing only Architecture. The professor had told David that he possessed some very real talent in the field, but David was sure that that was just something he told everyone, trying to keep his enrollment up. When David managed to get one of the only three A’s in the class, a class with over forty people, he remembered what the prof had said, and began to wonder if maybe it was true.

  But he’d failed the English class, so David had resigned himself that college just wasn’t for him. He wasn’t sure of the exact moment when he had thrown down his weapons and shield and had hoisted that huge, dusty white flag up into the air, but after dropping out of college, David realized that nothing in Liberty would ever change for him.

  David saw the turnout he was looking for, and he slowed and signaled. A car behind him changed lanes and roared around him, and David looked away when the car passed, just in case the guy was shouting at him or flipping him off. It was easier to ignore if you didn’t see it.

  He pulled across the oncoming lane and rolled to a stop in the sizable paved turnout, rimmed with some short trees and a three foot wall of stone, high enough to warn of the drop-off on the other side, but not nearly high enough to obscure the amazing view beyond it.

  The Shenandoah Mountains stood behind him and on either side of him; he had come almost all of the way through the mountain chain and was now looking due west. The rolling expanse of the Shenandoah Valley laid before him like a sweeping green blanket, crisscrossed with roads and interrupted regularly with square swatches of different colors, different crops as seen from high above. From up here, it looked like one of those blankets that they made back in the last century, made up of square sections of different-colored fabric stitched together. He couldn’t remember what they called those kinds of blankets, but that’s what it looked like, nonetheless.

  He came up here whenever he needed to get alone, to try and get some thinking done. He had been coming here more and more often over the past few months, thinking a lot about his birthday, and sometimes it felt as if he was actually leaving, moving on and heading west, but only in little baby steps.

  He’d get a little ways west and then turn back, chicken.

  It was a Monday afternoon and there were no sightseers out, so David pretty much had the turnout to himself. He climbed up onto the stone wall and sat down, letting his feet dangle over the side. It was only a five or six foot drop to the ground on the other side of the stone wall, but the rocks and dirt below sloped quickly downwards and disappeared into a thick stand of trees. If he fell off of here and rolled, it could break an arm or a leg, at least.

  David Beaumont came up here a lot to think. This is where he came to think about him and Bethany back when he was trying to figure out what to do about them. He had been sitting right in this spot when he finally decided to end it with her before she could end it first.

  He looked to the west. The Shenandoah Valley laid spread out before him, and in a few hours the sun would dip behind another shallow range of mountains to the west that bracketed the far side of the valley. He had sat up here many times before and watched the sun disappear in the West, and it truly was a beautiful sight to see.

  It was impossible for him to stay long enough to see that same sight today - he needed to get back and tell his Aunt what he had found out from Abe Foreman. And he needed to go to the bank - the check felt like it was burning a hole in his pocket. He took it out and looked at it, staring at the numbers. Now that it was real, now that it had happened, it seemed like a dream.

  He glanced up at the mountains on the far side of the valley.

  West. Everything looked better over there. The sun went down there, and the sky was bluer, richer over there in that direction.

  He found himself thinking about Brian Church for the first time in several months. Brian and David had been good friends in high school up until Brian and his family had moved to California when they were both juniors at Liberty High School. Brian had kept in touch over the years since they had last seen each other, and in his letters, Brian never failed to invite David out for a visit - or something even more permanent.

  “It’s so nice here,” the letters always said. Maybe not in those exact words, but always something close to that. “The weather is great ten months out of the year, the beaches are close, and the women are all beautiful. You should really come and see Los Angeles, and Long Beach in particular, bud. You would love it.” Brian had evidently landed a good job managing at a shipping warehouse in Long Beach, and Brian had even offered to get David on there, as well, if he ever wanted to come out.

  David wanted it now, more than anything else in the world. He just wanted to be somewhere else, someplace where nobody knew about him or his family.

  He’d always dreamed he would be leaving town as soon as he got his first check, but now that the day was here for him to make up his mind and decide what he wanted to do, it scared him to death. Could he really do this? Should he really just pack up all of his things in his car and leave? The idea had been a lifesaver for several years, a distant fantasy that he had used to get through the tough times and the pain. Just hang on a little while longer and then you can bail out of the crummy little town and start over, he had told himself so many times that it had become a mantra for getting through the day. And he had always played with the idea of calling Brian, finally getting in touch with him and taking him up on his offer. Surely Brian had heard David talk about his future plans, and that probably explained why he continued to invite David even though he hadn’t answered a letter of Brian’s in over a year.

  This thing with Bethany was finished, rightly or wrongly, and that had seemed to be the best shot David would ever get at happiness in this town. Maybe falling in love or being truly happy just wasn’t in the cards for David anymore.

  Or maybe just here in Liberty.

  He had a dead-end job and a boss that hated him, a boss that was just looking for the right excuse to can him. Working with Bethany was starting to drive him nuts - like the other night, when she told him that she loved him, and he’d just blown her off. One of these days, she was going to bat her eyelashes at him and they would get back together again, and inside of a week, she’d be back to riding him about something: “David, go back to college. David, go find a better job. David, go talk to your Aunt and make up with her - it’s like you’re a parent and she’s a kid!”

  Pick a topic, and Bethany could be right there, guns blazing.

  His Aunt. Things were starting to get really weird in that department, too. But now it looked like Abe was ready and willing to step in and take over baby-sitting her, and that was just fine with David. She was slipping further and further away from him and he knew it was happening, but he felt helpless - he had no idea what to do about it. She’d been that way for as long as he could remember.

  One of the old timers’ in town had once confided in him that she must’ve started drinking heavily as soon as she got home from her si
ster’s funeral, and she just never stopped. Maybe the best thing he could do for her was to just leave. Anybody who could drink away most of her nephew’s money couldn’t have it all together upstairs. If he went to California, she probably wouldn’t even notice for a month or two.

  He heard a rough squawk from off to his left and he turned to see a black bird perched on the rough cut of the stone wall about twenty feet down from him. The bird was looking at him, first with one eye and then with the other, its head bobbing back and forth.

  “Hey bird.”

  It just kept looking at him for a long second, and then the black bird hopped carefully up to the edge of the stone wall and kicked off, fluttering up into the blue sky. It flew slowly, tracing a long, lazy circle in the clear air above the roadside turnout, and after a minute or two, it squawked again and alighted on the stone wall, closer to him this time. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to fly - to just jump into the air and go wherever you wanted?

  Even birds liked him.

  So why wasn’t he happy? Maybe a change of scenery would be a good thing - give him a chance to clear his mind. He could hop into his car and head out west. Highway 132 went straight east out of Liberty to the I-95, and he could take that south to Richmond and catch Interstate 64, which made a beeline west out of Richmond to West Virginia, Tennessee, and all points west. Half hour to I-95, one hour south to Richmond, and then he could be on his way, west. Lighting out for the territories, just like Huck Finn had done at the end of that book.

  He didn’t have to stay out there, either. He could just visit Brian, hang out for a while.

  David had gotten a little over $25,000, and he could coast on that for a year or maybe a year and a half before he had to make up his mind about staying or coming back. And he would be getting more money, annually, whether or not he stayed here in Virginia. All Abe needed was an account were he could send the checks. The truth was, Liberty held nothing for him anymore.

  “You’ll love it out here.”

  He could actually HEAR Brian’s voice as he said those talismanic words - words that pulled him like a magnet with their powerful simplicity.

  David suddenly remembered that Brian’s last letter was probably one of those pieces of paper that had tumbled out of his broken glove compartment when he had tried to take that one corner too fast.

  He hopped up and was startled to see that the black bird had gotten to within about three feet of him while he had been daydreaming. David jumped back, and the bird leapt into the air and flapped over to settle casually on the hood of David’s Mazda.

  Weird. David walked over to his car while keeping one wary eye on the bird, noticing the blacks and subtle dark grays that made up the bird’s appearance, and he fished out his keys and unlocked the passenger door.

  He climbed in, straddling the mess of papers, and closed the door behind him. The bird was behind glass now, preening itself and evidently ignoring David completely, but it looked really big sitting there on the hood of his car, only a couple feet away. It seemed to be favoring one leg, like it was injured or something.

  The floorboard was covered with assorted papers. Some of them had fallen from the glove box when it had popped open, but most of the rest were permanent residents of the floorboard. Piles and piles of stuff, useful and useless, all mingled together in a hodgepodge that was frightening-looking enough to discourage David from cleaning it up.

  He started digging. He knew that the letter was rubber-banded to a short stack of letters from other friends from out of state, letters that he was notoriously bad about answering. He had lost more than his fair share of friends for reasons like that.

  He found his April MasterCard bill, unpaid, but since it was now September, it didn’t really matter. That explained why he seemed to be perpetually one payment behind every time they sent him one of their statements.

  He found tapes and movies that he had forgotten he had bought, still in their little plastic bags. He found old food, some of which he could identify and some packages that he didn’t dare open and only tossed them into the backseat, which constituted his trashcan. The aluminum foil wrapped mysteries didn’t even seem to feel right as he pitched them into the back of his car, so why open them? He found a five-dollar bill, and he also found a small bag of older movies that he had been planning to sell at that ever-elusive garage sale he’d always planned on having, but never seemed to get around to.

  Here it was.

  He pulled out a loose stack of different sized, different colored envelopes and letters, all rubber-banded together. He rummaged through the pile until he found it, and pulled the letter and its envelope free.

  He climbed out of the car and walked back over to the stone wall.

  The envelope was addressed from Brian Church, 3031 Haversham Lane, Long Beach CA 90231, and when he pulled the actual letter out, he saw that it was only a few lines long, the classic symptoms of someone who hasn’t heard from a friend in a long time but can’t quite seem to give up hope that someday the delinquent friend would write back. It was anybody’s guess how long Brian would continue to send these short little letters before he finally just decides to chuck the whole thing and give up. Or maybe he thought David really would take him up on his invitation when he hit 18.

  Hey Davey-Boy,

  I know it’s been a long time since I heard from you, but I just can’t believe that you’re too busy to write me. How have you been? I’d love to hear all about things. Did you ever ask that Bethany girl out? Last time you wrote, you were thinking about asking her out, but that was almost a year ago. Do you remember?

  Things are good here. Sheela and I are talking about getting married. I told you about her - I met her on the Redondo Beach pier, at this little club there, remember?

  The job at the warehouse is fine - I can get you on there anytime. And Sheela says she knows some cute single girls where she works.

  Hey, come out and see me sometime, okay? I know it probably won’t ever happen, but a guy can keep his hopes up, right? You’d love it out here.

  Well, gotta go. Write me back, sometime, you big jerk.

  The bottom of the letter was signed “Your Friend Brian” and Brian had listed his address again, just to be sure.

  And his phone number.

  David folded up the letter and stuffed it into his pocket, his mind working. Could he really go? Should he go? For the first time in his life, he was really and truly considering leaving Liberty. But what would his Aunt say when he told her? What would Bethany do - anything?

  “SQUAWK!” The black bird was looking at him again, now back on the stone wall and working its head back and forth again. The bird was probably only hungry, but to David it actually looked like it was nodding at him, its dingy yellow beak pointing right at him.

  “What?” David felt giddy, as if some weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He could do it. He could really do it - for once in his life, he could do something for himself, something that might make him happy.

  “What do you think, bird? West, into the sunset? Riding off, like a cowboy?”

  The black bird squawked again, louder this time, and leapt into the air. It circled the turnout once, twice, as it had done before, and then it waggled its wings and took off out over the trees and the valley, straight as an arrow.

  Due west.

  David smiled and patted the letter in his pocket as he walked back to his car. He took one more look at the black bird as it flew west into the setting sun towards California, nodded to himself, and then he climbed into his Mazda and headed home.

  Norma Jenkins was famous in the town of Liberty, Virginia, and she hated it.

  She was a crucial part of the Story about Beaumont’s death that no one, no matter how hurried they were to tell the whole thing, ever left out. Everyone in town knew that she was the last person to see Sheriff Beaumont alive, sitting over him as the killer had driven away in Beaumont's own car.

  Everyone also knew that she had dropped off the pol
ice force only a couple months after that terrible rainy night. The speculation was obvious and not very inventive: she had admired the man, had respected the man. Some even went as far as to say that she had loved the man, not as a daughter might love her father, but in the way that a woman might love a man.

  She took his death very hard, no matter what people thought of their relationship, and after a few months of depression that had bordered on illness, Norma Jenkins had climbed behind the big flat wheel of a yellow school bus.

  Norma was a good bus driver, albeit a little strict on her helpless passengers. The kids didn’t like her very much, and that suited Norma just fine. She didn’t like them either. She made them sit down and behave themselves. There was no yelling, no eating, no drinking, no throwing of anything on Norma’s bus. No one was allowed to stand up or change seats while the bus was in motion. Period. Any foul-ups and Norma would make the kid come up and sit in the seat directly behind hers, and then the kid would have to stay there for the rest of the bus ride. Everyone else was allowed to get off at their stops or at the school, depending on which route Norma was on, morning or afternoon, but the kid who had acted up was not - no, that kid was made to return to wherever he or she had been picked up. Norma Jenkins was known to retrace, on occasion, her entire bus route, dropping off kids all along the way, and each of them was then responsible for finding his or her own way to school or be counted as absent. Most of the parents of these kids were upset when they found out they had to take time off work and bring their little ‘angels’ in to school, or go to the school and bring them home in the afternoon, but they most often were more angry at their kids after Norma was contacted and she had a chance to explain what their particular “darling” had done to warrant being punished. But Norma rarely had trouble on her bus - all of the kids knew about her.