Good men were very rare, Ellie knew. She was beginning to believe that perhaps she had found one. Or rather, that one had found her.
All the more reason that Arthur’s frantic screams during the night worried the girl. Those screams sometimes echoed through the dark mansion and forced icy shivers down her spine.
(May 9, 2019)
Arthur took an afternoon stroll through the private museum he had built over the years. It had started as a small collection that would easily fit into one room, and slowly turned into a museum that was housed in three adjacent rooms of his mansion.
It was a personal monument to the ugliness of his family’s past. One he’d erected to remind himself of where he came from and where he wanted to go.
There stood several mannequins in the dark corners of the rooms, all outfitted with various and authentic Ku Klux Klan robes. The walls were decorated with ritual swords and knives used by real Klan members; Arthur had certificates of authenticity for each and every item in his museum. The most expensive weapon he owned was a 1920s Knights of the Camelia sword. It was in exceptional condition, with most of the black paint on the handle still intact.
Today Arthur was interested in the centerpiece that stood in the middle room of his museum: a glass case that housed various old books, pamphlets, forms, and photographs. Documents of hatred and bigotry.
Arthur knew the propaganda of fear firsthand. His family hadn’t been members of the KKK in any official capacity, but they had always funded several factions. Apartheid, racial segregation, had somehow been his family’s obsession.
After the Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves had come into effect in 1808, slave owners started to breed their blacks and sold them nationally. The stronger and faster the slave, the more he was worth. At times the stud fee alone for a black man was worth a small house.
Arthur knew all of this because the Toaves family had made its wealth as the middleman between breeders and farmers looking to procure new workers.
“Like cattle,” Arthur whispered to himself. “They treated them like cattle.”
When slavery was outlawed and money could no longer be made, capitalism turned into pure and irrational hatred.
Arthur’s eyes fell on a black-and-white photograph in the right corner of the glass case. It featured a small boy in a white robe, surrounded by grown men in their ghostly KKK costumes. An initiation ceremony, Arthur knew.
The boy was smiling, was excited. That was how these organizations lived on from generation to generation. Children were taught to hate, systematically and strategically, and witnessed violence against black people at the earliest age. Those little boys, sometimes girls too, never stood a chance.
Another girl Arthur wasn’t sure stood a chance was Ellie, he mused as he walked away from the glass case toward the door. She had skipped school quite a bit last month and Arthur wasn’t sure how to proceed with her.
If only she could see what he saw in her, maybe she would be willing to invest more in herself. Arthur understood, almost intuitively, that Ellie suffered primarily from self-loathing. She did not truly believe that she was worthy. Valuable.
He stepped into the hallway, greeted one of his maids, and set course for the main front door. What had happened to Ellie back in Cleveland? He had an idea, of course, but the girl refused to speak of it. She was fourteen, that uncomfortable age where boys were still afraid but men could already fall in love. Her pale blue eyes and lightly tanned skin hinted at her mixed heritage as much as they added to her natural beauty.
Arthur hoped she wouldn’t run off again. That she would stay. That she would let him help her. He repeated this prayer to himself as he stepped outside and walked toward the garage. If she let him help her, anything was possible. He believed that. He had to believe it. If he didn’t put stock in hope and redemption, what good was all the work he put in with his charities and the reintegration project?
He opened the garage and stepped inside. Of the six cars he owned, the Jaguar was by far his favorite. His only vice, Arthur thought, was that he loved to drive. Fast, sometimes even dangerously. Three years ago that had almost cost him his life.
Arthur shook his head and opened the door of his Jaguar. He had spent enough time in the past for one day.
(September 22, 2019)
Darkness was already falling on Brettville when Ethan stepped outside. He had just finished his late shift at Brooks Mechanical and was exhausted.
“Stealing shit sure was less work,” Ethan mumbled to himself as he started to walk off the terrain and toward the main road running through Brettville.
“Nah, nah, man,” Ethan corrected himself as he passed the factory’s outer gate. “We don’t think like that anymore.”
He greeted two guys that passed by. They were coming in for the night shift.
It had been two years now since his parole officer had made Ethan aware of the Southeastern Reintegration Project. He had agreed to it then because he had nowhere else to be, anyway. If it didn’t work out, he had told himself, he could always clean out whatever factory was dumb enough to employ him.
But it hadn’t worked out that way. His parole officer sent him off to Brettville and Ethan had met the old man himself.
Ethan thought back to that first meeting with Arthur Toaves as he walked along the main road toward the center of town. The old man had been soft-spoken and kind in ways Ethan hadn’t known before. It wasn’t the weak kind of kindness, Ethan had realized. The old man knew exactly what he wanted and why he wanted it. Difference was, he had wanted it for Ethan.
The old man had said, “You’ll be a great fit for the project. I believe in you.” Over time Ethan had started believing in himself, too.
Now he worked at Brooks Mechanical, had done so for almost two years, and he helped make pressure vessels. Ethan Walker was an honest man. He put in an honest day’s work for an honest wage. He shook his head in mild disbelief. His years as a burglar almost seemed like a distant dream now.
That dreamlike state seemed to follow Ethan on his walk home. He knew the feeling of being followed, of being stalked. His time on the streets had educated him in ways he didn’t care to remember. That feeling was with him now and he turned around to see who wanted any of his business.
He saw nothing. Only the main road stretched out next to Brooks Mechanical, running off toward the farmlands, chasing the town’s border in the dark.
Ethan shook his head, turned around, and upped his pace. Other men would have blamed themselves. They would have said that they were tired and had to be imagining things. Not Ethan. He had survived year after year on the streets on nothing more than his instinct and common sense. If that instinct told him now that somebody was following him, then somebody was following him.
The center of town came into view and Ethan was all the happier for it. Of course, nobody was out at this time.
A few men were drinking their sorrows away at Ray’s Liquors, the local bar, but other than that the town streets were abandoned. Should he go in there? Seek the company of men he didn’t really like just to escape the dread building up inside of him?
Before Ethan could make up his mind a strange sensation crawled up on him. It started in his toes and quickly ran up toward his knees. An itch, but not on the outside of his body, not anywhere he could scratch.
It worked its way toward his chest, where it extended to his shoulders and neck, and for a moment Ethan thought he was having a heart attack. But the itch passed along from his neck to the inside of his head and roared through his skull.
The feeling was maddening and in desperation Ethan clawed at his head, hoping to relieve himself of this undefined torture. It didn’t help.