Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology(76)

Keep your eyes on this column, dear readers. The truth will out eventually, and I will report on it.


Personal Correspondence





Raymond Barrow


December 22, 2012

Dearest Will,

Here I am again with my pen and paper. I’ve been thinking a lot about paper lately, the pages Owen had from his uncle when he first pitched me the idea of his play. He wouldn’t let me read them for myself, he just sort of waved them around in front of me and said he was going to use them as the basis for his script. He only had fragments, Arthur Covington killed himself without ever finishing the play.

Of course I read those fragments eventually. It wasn’t snooping, just protecting my investment. Besides, it was Owen’s fault for passing out drunk on my couch with the damn pages still in his jacket pocket.

It was all there—Owen’s father, Richard; his uncle, Arthur; and Clara. Of course in the play they were Edward, Andrew, and Claire, but it’s obvious who they were supposed to be. Except it was fiction. Fantasy. Or maybe I was too stubborn to see what was right in front of my face.

This is what I think now: Owen’s father did something terrible to Clara a long time ago. Clara murdered him, and Owen witnessed the whole thing. Of course, Owen didn’t remember it happening, not consciously. Trauma and all that. But on some primal level he did remember. He was in love with Clara, or he thought he was. It was all tangled up in guilt and her killing his father, like some goddamned soap opera, but real.

Clara loved Owen too, in her own way. Not the way he wanted her to, but like a mother bird that hatches an egg and realizes a cuckoo has snuck its own egg into her nest. Her baby is gone and she’s accidentally raised the cuckoo’s child, but she defends it and she cares for it because that’s her nature, and it’s not the baby’s fault after all.

It’s why Owen tried to kill himself. He thought it would set her free. And it’s why Clara couldn’t let him.

At first I didn’t believe it, any of it, but the more time I spent around them, the more time I spent with Clara . . . God, Will. You were gone, and I didn’t have anyone else. I thought I could help Clara, do one good thing in my life and save her. I started thinking maybe Owen was right. Maybe if no one in his family was left alive, she could finally leave. I didn’t . . . I just bumped him, really. He lost his balance. He was so utterly piss drunk, he probably didn’t even feel it when the train hit him.

I never told Clara, but I think she knew. She was the one who insisted the play go on, in Owen’s memory. I tried to convince her to leave. I’d just killed a man. I couldn’t think straight. I was raving, shouting at her. I think I almost hit her. But Clara just looked at me with this incredible pity in her eyes. She put her hand on my arm, and said, “Grief can change the nature of a person, Ray, when nothing else can. Enough loss, and it weighs you down, you forget how to fly.”

She told me everything I needed to know, Will, but I didn’t know how to listen.

I didn’t know how to listen when you told me you needed help all those years ago. The empty bottles, the needles; I refused to see it because I didn’t want it to be true. I should have listened. I miss you, Will.

Yours, always,

Ray


Personal Correspondence





Raymond Barrow


October 20, 1955

Dear Ray,

This is it, our big night. The Secret of Flight opens, and I don’t know what will happen after that. There’s something I’m going to try, Ray, and if it doesn’t work, I might not see you again. So I wanted to say thank you for everything you’ve done for me, and everything you tried to do. You’re a good friend. I don’t have many of those, so believe me when I say our time together meant a lot to me even though I couldn’t tell you everything about me. Instead, I’m giving you this story. It’s the best I can do, Ray. I hope you’ll understand.

Love,

Clara


The Starling and the Fox

Once upon a time, there was a fox, and there was a starling. They weren’t really a fox and a starling, they only looked that way from the outside, but for the purposes of this story, those names will do. This happened far away, in another country, many years ago.

The starling was flying, minding her own business, when she spotted a tree with lovely branches. She landed on one and discovered a fox lying across the tree’s roots, crying piteously.

“Oh, they have killed me,” the fox said. “I shall die if you don’t aid me.”

The starling couldn’t see anything wrong with the fox, but she didn’t see the harm in helping him either.

“What is it you need, sir fox?” she asked him.

“Only a feather from your beautiful wing, and I will be well again,” the fox said.

The starling was doubtful. She looked again and she couldn’t see any blood on the fox’s fine fur, but he continued moaning as she looked him over, and it certainly sounded as if he might die.

The starling chose one of the small feathers near the top of her wing. She didn’t think it would hurt to pull it out, and she didn’t think she would miss it either. As she took hold of it in her beak, the fox cried out again.

“Not that feather! Only the long feather at the tip of your wing will do. The straight and glossy one that shines like a still pool at midnight, even when you think there is no light at all.”