by Joe Sharp
Whoa, he called her Jess! She must really be drowning in shit. She looked down at the tiny hands in her lap and considered her tiny options. That's when a last resort came knocking at the back of her brain. It was an awful idea, and he probably wouldn't go for it. But that's why they called them last resorts, wasn't it?
"How about an advance on my next blog?"
"You have something in mind?" he asked, intrigued.
Jess reached up and plucked her phone from the night stand. The message was still there, smirking at her, saying "I told you so."
"You better be right about this," she muttered to the phone. She took a deep breath, and then said something she would never be able to take back.
"I'm going to The Rusty Gate.”
Eunice, October 5th
Eunice Louise Pembry ran a finger lightly over the gilded frame, as she had done every morning for the last one hundred and forty-three years.
Before she had procured it, the letter had languished in a museum in Jackson, vacuum-sealed in a glass case with temperature and humidity controls. If they had known to whom the letter had been written, they would have sealed her up in a glass case as well.
The parchment had yellowed a bit, but it was still clearly legible. It was the one thing she wanted out of all of it, the one touchstone to a life that was no longer her own. In the mornings she would spend these few rare moments alone with it, trying to remember.
The remembering came harder these days.
The knock on her office door jolted her from her reverie. She placed the framed letter back into its nook in the wall and spun the dial, juggling the tumblers. She swung the portrait back in place and admired her likeness. The traces of gray in her golden hair was evident in the portrait, as were the traces of crows feet in the corners of her sky blue eyes. These were the same crows feet she had looked at in the mirror for the last one hundred and forty-three years. Pity it couldn't have been her younger self looking back at her all that time.
It had been painted by an itinerant artist one fall day while traveling through Willow Tree looking for work. She had paid him twenty-five dollars for his efforts, a princely sum at the time. She had heard that he eventually took his own life in the summer of '31. Eunice tried not to take it personally.
"Come," she commanded, and her office door sprang open.
"Good day, Madame," thundered Colonel Davis. His voice boomed even when he wasn't trying.
"Inside voices, Colonel," she cautioned him. "We are not on the battlefield anymore."
"Apologies," he said, lowering his voice to an acceptable level. Colonel Davis cradled a thick, brown ledger in his arms as he stepped up to her desk. His full, black beard had been growing wild for the last few months in anticipation of the festival. He had also brought his uniform out earlier this year, as had many of the residents. The epaulets were fraying loose, and the buttons tarnishing. It had been repaired as best it could over time. A few more years and he would have to consider replacing it with a costume. Eunice was not looking forward to that conversation.
She sat squarely in her black leather chair, which groaned under her weight. She cleared some papers from her blotter, and Colonel Davis set the ledger on the desk in front of her. He stepped back and folded his hands behind him militarily. The Colonel was not a man for sitting.
"So, Colonel, how go the preparations?" she inquired as she opened the ledger to the last page entered. She slipped on her reading glasses, hanging from a silver chain around her neck.
"Well, Madame," he began, a look of embarrassment creeping over his face. "The security protocols have not yet ... fleshed out as we had hoped."
"And why is that?" Eunice looked up from the ledger and nailed him with a disappointing glare.
The Colonel's hands became animated. "Well, we established the additional checkpoints as we had discussed. This necessitated adding a few extra men to the watch list. We assigned several of these posts to the Hatchet." He rubbed his hands together nervously. "They were ... disinclined to accept these positions."
Eunice leaned back into her chair and pulled the glasses from her face. The lines in her forehead had deepened these last years, and it was all from holding these clans at bay. It was a system that would never work, and they were entrenched in it.
"And this comes from Fenton?"
"Yes, Madame," he answered quickly. "He said that his men felt these positions ... beneath them."
She stood, outraged.
"Beneath a Hatchet to walk a post?"
"He added that a Hatchet's responsibility was to the people ... not the town."
Eunice leaned forward and placed her hands on the desk. She could feel her anger going critical, her breathing becoming shallow and strained. She knew that lashing out at the Colonel was counterproductive, and would only lessen her credibility in his eyes.
In this job, appearance was everything.
"Thank you, Colonel," she said finally, her breathing having come under control. "I will deal with Fenton in time. For now, if you need additional help, I will authorize the Bellwether to render assistance." Eunice herself was Bellwether, and knew there would be no questioning this order.
Colonel Davis seemed impressed by her offer, and bowed slightly.
"Thank you, Madame."
"Tell me, Colonel," she said, looking intently into his eyes. "Will this Festival be a safe one?"
He seemed taken aback by her question.
"Absolutely," he hastened to answer her. "The Paladin would never allow the outside world to pierce the veil. In fact, pursuant to our last meeting, I personally supervised the installation of a dozen new surveillance cameras." He motioned toward the computer on her desk. "May I?"
"Certainly," she replied, stepping to the side to allow him access to her desk. He was the only one she would permit in her chair.
Colonel Davis took a seat at the desk and place the keyboard in front of him. Eunice hoped that he did not notice the thin layer of dust covering it. She had barely touched this new model since its installation months ago. She wasn't completely ignorant of its workings; she knew how to turn it on. But, as one whose destiny was to lead her people into the new Millennium, she often felt mired in the old one.
With a few keystrokes, Colonel Davis was able to pull up images of various key points of entry into the town of Willow Tree.
"As you can see, all the principal roads leading in and out of Willow Tree are covered. Also, I have been working with Fenton, successfully, I might add, to target areas within the town where outsiders might need monitoring."
He pressed a single key and Eunice saw the screen split into six rectangles. One of them caught her attention.
"Where is that?" she asked, pointing to the upper right image. "Is that the infirmary?"
"Yes, Madame."
"You really feel it necessary to spy on the good doctor?"
"Madame," he answered her, a bit condescendingly, she thought, "last year there were no fewer than seventy-three visitors to the Festival treated at the infirmary for various ailments. We felt that, with that amount of traffic, it would be prudent to keep an eye on things."
The Colonel reached for a notepad and pen. "I am writing down the procedure necessary to access this software, although I am certain you will have no problem."
The tone of his voice seemed to suggest that he thought that she would. She decided to bring it out in the open.
"How have you adapted so effortlessly, Colonel?"
Again, he was taken aback. "Madame?"
"Your arrival here came the summer after mine, yet you seem to have both feet planted firmly in the here and now. I sometimes envy you in that way. I cannot seem to get a foothold."
The Colonel paused in thought for a moment, folding his weathered hands in his lap. "Well, Madame," he started, this time without the tone of condescension in his voice. "I suppose I would attribute it to the influences of the battlefield. The strategies involved are not altogether dissimilar."
He rose from her chair, relinquishing her seat. As she took her chair, she pressed him on this.
"But all of this technology ... I will admit to being flummoxed. Some days I feel as if I had been uncovered in some archaeological dig."
Colonel Davis smiled. "Madame, as far as I have been able to ascertain, even some born in this century are flummoxed."
He walked around to the front of the desk and stood, hands clasped behind him, with, she thought, a touch of superiority in his expression. She could allow him that.
"Not to worry, Madame," he assured her. "There will always be those for whom the battlefield lies in that little black box. We have only to lead them." He stood tall awaiting his dismissal, seemingly always at attention. "If there is nothing else ... "
"That is all, Colonel," she said. "And, thank you for your insights."
He gave a slight, respectful bow and stepped out of the office, leaving her alone with her thoughts.
This would be the 80th anniversary of the Willow Tree Festival, and Eunice would admit to a touch of complacency. In the days since that first festival in the autumn of '33, the town of Willow Tree had become a precision instrument, cranking out the pageantry like a Swiss timepiece.
But that was not always the case. In the early days their numbers were few, and they seemed to be growing without purpose or plan. In those days, the danger of discovery was ever present.
The only maxim seemed to be that they were bound together, no one of them able to leave the confines of Willow Tree for any length of time. They were stagnating like a dead pool.
Then, the clans had come together, three points of a triangle that would form the foundation of Willow Tree. The clans were the brainchild of Colonel William Morgan Davis, though, if pressed, he would deny it. He preferred to direct from the wings, an impulse Eunice respected whenever possible.
Lately Eunice had begun to lament the loss of those early days, when she had presented her people with the next grand scheme - The Willow Tree Festival.
They had laughed at first, the notion of putting on a festival in the depths of the depression.
"Who would come?" they said. "Who would want to be reminded of how little they had, and how far their once great nation had fallen?"
Eunice would remember when that once great people had allowed their differences to drive them to the edge of destruction. But they had fought back, and they could again. They need only be shown.
Once the preparations for that first festival had begun, the people embraced it, throwing themselves into it with a fervent passion.
They sewed their own costumes from memory, adapting them with the remnants of 20th century clothing. The men produced wood carvings which were sold for pennies. The women baked and churned homemade butter and sewed multicolored quilts. The oak rocking chairs and kerosene lanterns and pot-bellied stoves used in their everyday lives were brought out as stage props, against the backdrop of the rustic homes and shops they had carved out for themselves.
The effect was complete.
Willow Tree, Ohio had become a memento to the outside world, a bubble where time had stopped at a crossroads, and we had taken the right and proper turn.
There was no pretense, and the tourists could sense it. They were drawn in and drawn back to a time when a nation fell and rose up again.
And for the people of Willow Tree ... ?
It was the one time of year, save Halloween, when they could be who they truly were ... survivors.
This one week of the year, in preparation and celebration, they were free to live out the life they had only ever lived in memories. The new memories they created would be their own.
Eunice fought for this time for them, and she would let nothing endanger it.
Another knock at her door. Another problem to be solved, another challenge to be met. Heavy lays the crown ...
"Come." The door creaked open and through it passed a woman of rare color and beauty.
"Annabel," said Eunice with a delight in her voice. She took the girls hands and gazed at her with an esteem that might have been real, had she not been a Negress. "Come, have a seat."
Annabel Jeffers walked nervously to the small padded chair in front of the desk. As she sat, her hands fumbled with her hair and her dress, not quite sure what to do with themselves. She looked at Eunice with furtive glances, until finally her curiosity got the better of her.
"I was told you wanted to see me, Madame," she squeaked like a little mouse. "Did I do something wrong?"
"Oh no, child," Eunice assured her. Stepping behind Annabel's chair, she placed her bony fingers on the girl's shoulders. "What would make you think that?"
"I never been here before," she answered warily. "Not in seventy-six years."
Eunice took the meaning behind her statement, but she was in no mood to debate the social sciences. This was in essence a job interview, and Eunice would have to evaluate her based on other criteria.
"Apologies, child," said Eunice as soothingly as she could muster. "Time does get away from me these days."
She stepped around in front of the girl and leaned against the front of the desk. Annabel was forced to stretch her neck uncomfortably in order to look up at her. Eunice smiled. All part of the process.
"Tell me child, how do you like your home here in Willow Tree?"
It was not a threatening question, but Annabel's lip quivered nonetheless.
"I like it fine, Madame," she answered with a quaver in her voice.
"Have you ever thought of leaving Willow Tree?"
Annabel's expression curled into a question, and within that question was fear.
"But, I can't leave Willow Tree, Madame, you know that. Just like everybody else."
"You are Bellwether, are you not?" Eunice waited for the girl to nod timidly. "You could leave for a brief time, and then come back."
The girls face held its uncertainty. "Where would I go, Madame? I been here all my life."
"You would do something for me," replied Eunice, touching her hand lovingly to the girl's cheek. "Just a few hours drive from here. You can drive?"
"Yes, Madame," the girl answered.
Eunice knew this, of course. It was part of her training, to drive the delivery truck, just like the others of her kind.
"Excellent!" exclaimed Eunice excitedly, as she moved to an ornate cabinet mounted on the wall opposite her desk. Opening the cabinet door, she extracted a small, wood box made of cherry, with elaborate silver inlays along the edges. Eunice brought the box to Annabel and held it out.
"This must get to its destination tonight at midnight."
Annabel took the box and set it in her lap gingerly, as if it were made of eggshells. She ran her fingers lightly along the silver lines, admiring the beautiful creation. Eunice knew all of the skilled carpenters in Willow Tree. She had obviously selected the right one for its construction.
She looked up at Eunice for permission, who simply nodded. Annabel placed her hands on either side of the lid and slowly opened the box. Once she saw, Eunice knew she would understand.
The box was filled with soil, the blackest loam that could have come from only one place. In the center of the dirt lay a small scrap of tree branch with an unearthly glow.
"It is not fair for us to keep this to ourselves." Eunice sat down in the small chair across from Annabel, whose eyes were riveted to the box. "That would be covetous."
She took hold of Annabel's hands tightly, demanding her attention.
"There are other who are in need, and I am sending you to them. You know what to do?"
Annabel looked at Eunice, who saw the awe in her eyes at the task that had been handed to her. She glanced once more at the small branch in the soil, then lowered the lid. The girl dared not look too long. It would stir a hunger in her that could only be satisfied in one way, and now was not the time.
"It is called 'Whispering Pines', and it is waiting for you."
Eunice flitted around behind the desk and took a yellow
envelope from the center drawer. She brought it to Annabel, who took it willingly.
"All the information is in there, along with some funds, should you need to stay the night."
Annabel started to open the envelope when Eunice locked eyes with her.
"Stay only one night," she cautioned. "You will wish to stay longer, and you will think you can. You cannot."
Annabel nodded. Everyone knew what happened when you stayed away too long.
She cradled the box in the crook of her arm and gripped the envelope in her hand and stood. As she started toward the door, she turned back.
"What if someone sees me with this? They'll think I stole it."
Eunice had to remind herself that patience was a virtue. "You are Bellwether, never forget that. You answer to no one."
"Yes, Madame," she said reverently.
Annabel squared her shoulders a bit and, with her confidence bolstered, walked to the door and slipped out into the morning sun.
Eunice had an uneasy feeling in her gut about this one, but the girl had received the training as the others had, and they had performed flawlessly. She decided to put her faith in tradition. It had always served them well.
Another knock at the door. Eunice glanced at the hands on the Tiffany grandfather clock in the corner and sighed. Her day was just getting started.
"Come."
Willow, 1863
It was a pine box.
At first the Willow had thought it a gift, brought by the men and buried deep into the Willow's black soil. They had carried it from a long way off and dug a hole for it. Their implements tickled the Willow's roots as the men carved out a nook for their present. Then, they stood around the box and moaned and said their incantations. They struggled the box into the hole and covered it over with loam. They erected some sort of marker at the site with elaborate carvings, pounding it into ground with their implements.
The festivities lasted only a brief time, and then they were gone, leaving the Willow to ponder the meaning of this unexpected tribute.
After the men had gone, the Willow reached out its roots tentatively to this new treasure. It curled its tendrils under and around the hard shell and found it smooth and unyielding. It probed the surface of the box tenaciously, searching for any rough crag or split where it could insinuate itself into the meat within.