Paul moved silently past the decorated homes. A thousand Holy Infants were born to a thousand different mangers in a thousand different front yards. The streetlights flashed red and green in the spirit of the season, and though the stars should have shown stark against the evening sky, even they struggled to rise above the fabricated glow. Paul had to squint to find the Old North Mother.

A bell rang out in a rusty peel: midnight. Paul was late.

Paul crossed against the warning red of an outstretched hand, rushed but not hurried. The church would be full, even Catholics who spend Easter Sunday’s at the buffet attend at Christmas, and Paul knew he would have no trouble slipping unseen into the back and leaning on his hands against the wall. There was something inherently childlike about this mass – it felt more local, less committal. And Paul knew the lyrics to all the songs. Everybody did. So, everybody sang.

In the distance, at first so soft it sounded like a hum, Paul could hear the peaks and valleys of the organ. And finally, he could hear the church and make out the words.

“Oh Sing all ye angels, sing in exaltation…”

People were still arriving in groups of twos and threes, fours and fives, friends and strangers (and near-strangers.) Paul slid up the freshly shoveled steps amongst a young couple and their gaggle of puffy-coated toddlers. The children buzzed with wide-eyed excitement, for them the mass was something new, a gift – a chance to see the side of the world hidden from the day. An elderly, avian woman remained singing as she shook Paul’s hand offering him a hymnal sheet. Paul refused with a smile. No need, he thought. Save the paper.

“Adeste Fideles…”

Paul did not know the meaning of these lyrics, though he had sung them many times, but he liked their sound – the shape they made in his mouth.

“Venite adoremus…Dominum.”

The final note of the organ echoed through the vaulting space – filling it. A community was met in the dead of night – filling it with life. Men and women from all corners, from this town (and beyond) had moved in what seemed like a secret to be with one another on this night – on this new day.

Paul thought of the incoming New Year, and of the year curtailing: he wasn’t unhappy, yet he was far from satisfied. A yearly hallmark always seemed to stir up the sediment of lost possibilities.

The priest rose, echoed by the crowd, and then spoke…and, for a moment, everyone listened.

Peace.

I found Charlie curled up in the linen closet under a spotty old blanket.

“No fair!” he shouted, and let out a big sigh, “You can count to ten faster than I can. It makes the game no fun.”

I told him the game wasn’t that much fun to begin with, but he didn’t really listen. Sam, my uncle’s old retriever, awoke from all the commotion and started up the stairs; his nails clacked against the wood. He wanted out of the farmhouse as much as we did, but with the rain, we were all prisoners for the afternoon. I was in charge: no one in, no one out.

“You hide now, Max,” said Charlie, “It’s my turn to seek.”

Hiding didn’t interest me, so we both just sort of searched for no one in particular. We had only been at Uncle’s a few months, so there was still a lot to explore. Sam tagged along.

Under the bed, Charlie found a dime and few pennies, excitement enough for him, but nothing to get me too worked up over. Sam licked at an old hog bone and spiraled down onto a hair-strewn quilt. Charlie petted him for a while, and counted his newly found treasures.

In uncle’s closet, I found neatly-folded dungarees and a pressed black suit; the space smelled like mothballs, so I closed it back up and left the room. Mother was given the guest bed; it looked like no one slept there at all. There were only a handful of dresses hanging on wire hangers, and two pairs of shoes – there wasn’t even dust under the bed. There was nothing, save for a bundle wrapped in brown paper. I fished in out and called for Charlie.

The package was named and addressed, but there was no postage. I didn’t recognize the street (or even the city), but I’d heard the name before: it was my father’s.

“Do you remember him at all?” Charlie asked.

I didn’t, but said that I did.

At the corners, the package was worn. It looked like one of Charlie’s presents on Christmas morning: opened and resealed. The tacky tape peeled back easy, and a pair of man’s bib overalls slid out. I held them up like a caught fish.

“He was big,” Charlie marveled.

I nodded and handed the pair to him. The pockets were empty.

“Do you think father misses his pants, Max?”

“He probably got some new ones and doesn’t even think about them.”

Charlie agreed that was mostly likely so, but he didn’t look happy about it. Once we were satisfied, we folded the overalls as best as we could, resealed the packaging, and placed it under the foot of the bed. Sam chewed at his bone.

We lost our urge to explore; so all three of us padded back down stairs. When we reached the kitchen, I asked Charlie not to tell mother that we’d been snooping. He liked the idea of sharing a secret and swore to it.

The remainder of the day was no more exciting than a rerun.

When uncle got home, he let Sam out. The dog buried his bone in the wet soil near the walk path.

Mother got home late; Charlie was already asleep. She kissed me on the forehead and pulled the blanket tight. I told her Charlie found thirteen cents and that I had missed her.

I was recently challenged by some friends to some, “light reading.” “You want the truth?” my own personal demons said, “You can’t handle the truth! Or airplane fiction! Do it!” Like it does for so many characters from so many detective novels the whole incident started innocently. Then I got in too deep. Then I stopped and everything turned out great.

Private dicks! You pay them the money; they bring you the truth. It’s easy. It’s simple. It’s transactional. As every opening monologue from every detective novel will tell you, every gumshoe wants it that way. A harsh past is mentioned. The client is irresistible. A hat gently turns upwards. The case is taken.

Storm Front by Jim Butcher, the first book of the Dresden Files series, introduces Harry Dresden, a regular wizard like you or me or Tim in Accounting. Harry is also a detective.

The story begins with this wizard-detective getting a phone call. Hey, says the future client, do I have your permission to show up at your place of business and request your professional services in exchanges for currency? Are you a real businessman or is this just a put on?

Since this is fiction, Harry is in fact a legitimate business wizard.

The story goes from there. A hooker and a mobster are murdered via exploding hearts. The cops are worried; our protagonist arrives at the crime scene and offers no useful information. Later, a potential client wants Harry to find her missing husband. He (the husband) wants to be a wizard. The husband has recently, suspiciously disappeared. Harry has no insight. Three hundred pages later; our highly-able wizard-detective begins to suspect that these two cases might be connected.

Storm Front suffers from many weaknesses. Most annoyingly, Harry has to prove to people that he is a wizard using only the power of his words. Wouldn’t a competent wizard have some minor spells at the ready to convince potential clients that he is a wizard and not a poorly-branded detective? The excuse offered:

“There are powers in the universe that most people don’t even know about. Powers that we still don’t fully understand. The men and women who work with these powers see things in a different light. They come to understand things in a different way. This sets them apart. Sometimes it breeds unwarranted suspicion and fear.”

As a public service, I am announcing that you do not need to fear and suspect the wizard who cannot keep his love potions separate from his break-in-case-of-demon potions. Detective novels survive on the wits of their protagonists and a clever unfolding of the plot. Why? Because in the life of the detective, everyone dies or is betrayed. I don’t mind ridiculousness. A lot of detective fiction has a gallows humor to it. In Storm Front the only character that wasn’t too self-important was the talking skull that wanted to party.

Please don’t read this book.

The realtor had told me that Mr. Cook was a punctual man, and he had been correct; Mr. Cook stood on the front steps a full fifteen minutes before the agreed-upon time, waiting. I felt late as I pulled into the driveway and hustled Emily up the stone walkway. My nerves calmed somewhat when the old man smiled and handed Emily a small potted plant, but I had a desire to impress him for fear he might rescind the sales offer and take the house off the market completely.

Mr. Cook gave Emily a hug and pulled me in close to shake my hand as if to tell me a secret, the way a lot of older men (particularly old salesmen) often do.

“Have you received the grand tour?” Mr. Cook asked beaming, “She’s a lovely home. Perfect for a young family.”

We had toured the home several times before, but said we’d appreciate his intimate knowledge, and now that the papers had been signed, he could be honest about any leaky pipes and loose floorboards.

“I wanted to meet you both separate from the lawyers and the bankers,” he said unlocking the front doors, “I trust it’s not too great an inconvenience.”

“We are so grateful for this wonderful home, and for you,” assured Emily, “We’ve been looking for so long, and now it’s all happening so fast. I don’t think it’s sunk in quite yet”

“Well, mi casa es su casa,” Mr. Cook concluded, “or at least it will be.”

Emily and I grinned.

The home opened into a hallway leading to the kitchen and dining room. Emily deposited our new plant on the marble countertop, and we both marveled at the bare white walls and naked wood floors.

“I hope the plant wasn’t too presumptuous,” Mr. Cook said, “It’s a tomato plant. They were always my wife’s favorite. She could never get them to ripen to save her life, but she did love tending them a great deal.”

Mr. Cook took us on a standard tour of water shut-off valves and circuit breakers, of toilets with jiggly handles and of doors with squeaky hinges. It wall all very kind and reassuring. In the master bath, he sat for a while on the edge of the tub explaining that he didn’t have the stamina for long walks like he used to. We lingered for what felt an appropriate length of time, but reminded Mr. Cook that I had to return to work. He apologized, but held my shoulder in his large hand.

“I’ve taken up too much of your time already,” he said, “but I have a favor to ask of you both and I think I’m in a position to ask for it.”

We agreed that he was.

“My wife loved this house. It was the only home we knew together. And though she’s gone, she continues to love it. I know because she still visits me, often at night but not always – but always in our home. I hope her bond to me is stronger, but I often worry. And I’d hate to lose her again. If you see her, tell her I’ve moved to be closer to our daughter. Into one of those old folks places we always dreaded. Tell her to come to me. And not to be afraid.”

That was our agreement and we stuck to it. We moved in three weeks later.

Emily and I grew tomatoes in that house and even though we had no experience as gardeners, they grew large, and red, and wonderful.

“Are we going to get to ride that,” Charlie shouted pointing at the approaching ferry, his mouth still splotched with chocolate soft-serve.

Grandmother said that we would, but that the people onboard must disembark first, so we both would need to be patient. She pulled a handkerchief from her large beach bag and wiped it across Charlie’s smiling face. That calmed him down for a while.

The large boat churned into the dock, sending the seagulls scattering into the gray sky. It was one of the large ferries with two stories for vehicles and two for passengers; Grandmother said it would take at least twenty minutes to clear, so she told Charlie to keep an eye out for sea otters. “They sometimes come around the big boats looking for a handout,” she said, “If you spot one, I’ve got some crackers in my bag you can give them.” Charlie learned out over the rail and squinted hard.

An attendant in a bright orange vest opened the small gate that connected the front of the ferry to the dock and I heard a chorus of engines turn over. Cars poured out in single-file parade. Others who had been waiting at the water’s edge returned to their cars anticipating their opportunity to board, but the three of us remained; Charlie and I would be walk-ons.

Passengers, mostly young men with canvas backpacks, exited down the steep gangway and filed past. There were two sets of queue paths like those of a carnival ride – one for entering and one for exiting – separated by a thin rope.

“I thought I saw an otter,” Charlie said kicking at the pier, “but it was only a rock.”

Grandmother told him to keep trying.

Moving down the gangway, I spotted something white amongst the dark woolen coats and faded flannel shirts like a coin sparkling at the bottom of a dark well: and then it was obscured. I waited for it, whatever it was, to resurface. It would have to pass me, so I knew I would get my look.

An older gentlemen in a pea coat bent to tie his shoe, and I saw her. She was, as far as I could tell, my own age (within a year at least) and in her hands she twirled a white parasol. I smiled. When I remember her, I always remember her smiling back at me, but I can’t be certain that’s how it really happened. But, for a moment, we saw each other. Her eyes were the blue of robins’ eggs.

“The otters are all sleeping,” said Charlie with scholarly confidence, “there aren’t any here today.”

Grandmother told Charlie that he’d make a great lookout someday, and that he needed to keep an eye on me so that one of us didn’t get lost. “Uncle will meet you at your destination,” she said, “but until then, you both have each other.”

“Grandmother?” I asked, “All these people leaving, do they live here?”

She said that some came for visits (like Charlie and me), but most lived here at least part time.

“Can we come back real soon?”

“That’s up to your mother, Max,” she said, “but I’d love to have you both any time.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“I want to see an otter,” Charlie stated in agreement.

Grandmother gave us both a big hug and a sack lunch for the trip.

“Tell your mother to call me when you get home safe,” she said.

The line of passengers lurched into motion, we said our final goodbyes, and boarded for the journey home.

I never saw that white parasol again, but it resurfaces every once in a while in my mind, and every time that it does, I smile.

About two months ago, you may have felt a slight rumble as A Dance with Dragons, the sixth tome in the series, “A Song of Ice and Fire,” was released to the public. This rumble was not a natural disaster. It was the sudden vanishing of six years of nerd skepticism and rage. After much-publicized grief, the newest installment of one of the most intensely popular fantasy series had arrived and I think it is fair to say that the community simply got tired of being angry.

Which is probably for the best.

For those who don’t know, A Song of Ice and Fire series takes place in a world that’s medieval, a little magical, and very, very feudal. The series begins with the death of an advisor to the wine-powered king of the realm. The advisor’s replacement is the honorable king of the North..ish realm. Mayhem ensues and entraps the reader for hundreds of pages.

The books are structured very specifically, with each chapter is told from a point-of-view of one character. Many of the consistent narrators are heirs and members of the various dynasties. But many other chapters are told from the POV of one-off characters. Many of the characters die throughout the series creating a sense of uncertainty that never, ever goes away.

A Dance with Dragons continues the many, many, many, many, many plotlines from the last book. Big recognizable names like Tyrion Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen, and Jon Snow command most of the book, while the Stark clan, the Onion Knight, the Greyjoys have a much smaller narrative presence. The House Frey is there too, becoming increasingly ominous. I guess that where the saying, “Revenge is a dish best served fat,” comes from. The current war is in full recession. The seeds of the next war are clearly being planted, by old characters and new.

For those who are superfans of Martin’s prose stylings don’t worry. Lavish descriptions of food, eating, and excessive drinking abound. Until, finally, winter comes: “The snow had started to descend more heavily and the fire in the ditch was guttering out. The crowd began to break apart and stream from the yard, queen’s men, king’s men, and free folk alike, all anxious to get out of the wind and the cold. “Will my lord be feasting with us?” Mully asked Jon Snow.” Dance advances the plot and characters slowly, but well. Not knowing exactly what the next books contain, I still think it’s safe to say that this book is the eye of the storm. A Dance with Dragons will be attacked for being slow, pointless, wheel-spinning. It’s true that not much happens, but A Song of Ice and Fire has always been a game of chess. If you want to root for a particular pawn on the board, that’s fine. When it gets taken, look to the rest of the game and understand that isn’t over.

Asa Mercer tilted his flat-brimmed hat low over his eyes to block the noon-day sun and adjusted the sawgrass blade from the left to right side of his mouth, grimacing as it shifted, first down and then over, like cud being worked over by a cow. The white globe of the sun stood free in the blue blameless sky, but Spring had not yet shaken loose the cobwebs of winter, and Asa felt the whisper of late season rains in the air – two maybe three days away, but present – waiting.

Tonight Asa and his band of boys could sleep outside of tents if the mood struck them – it may not have been prudent, he acknowledged that, but this was the first any of these Eastern boys had seen of the great and untamed expanse of West and Asa wanted them all to remember it. He also wanted several of the boys – the talkers mostly – to feel the weather first hand and on the skin (as it were). It may drive some humility into them, thought Asa chewing at the end of the green stalk, heaven knows they will need to learn it sooner or later, better the former, for their sakes.

Asa pulled up the caravan atop a sloping green hillock around a sea of tangled cacti; he hadn’t planned to stop for another mile of so, be whenever he came across a familiar vista with its raked-over pile of campfire ashes, Asa always felt a pang of nostalgia and signaled for a halt. Winter had turned the charred remains into a soupy congealed mass, but Asa knew immediately it had been a fire of his own making from the previous year – his ashes were always scattered wide fanning out from the core, and when available, Asa liked to drop a large stone to snuff out the last remaining embers. It was a habit he had learned as a young man- a training that unlike so many other products of youth, he hadn’t discarded along the way – and it had become a bit of a calling card (a post card he sent to himself). It made Asa feel younger somehow to revisit an old campground and he liked to see if any of the young lads would pick up anything useful (a boot track, a discarded can, filings off a whittled stick); Asa liked to see what others could find. He could travel inconspicuously if the situation dictated – nearly invisibly he liked to think –but this ground was friendly and no acts of concealment had been taken. Asa doubted any voice would pipe up with useful information – interesting perhaps – but these twelve boys were young and soft on the whole, a rather sad lot really, and he didn’t expect much from them. Asa chewed the tip of his grass, enjoyed the sprawling view and waited.

Archibald Babbich, the self-fancied leader of the pack, droned on about his prowess at a variety of tasks: hunting, fishing, love making. Asa doubted the boy had actually performed any of these feats on his own (except, of course for the latter which he figured was only done on his own), the boy had probably hunted or fished with his father or maybe a grand-dad or two, but the older men would have performed the skill work – Asa was sure of that, even if the boy pulled the trigger or flushed the line, he could not be called the real sportsman – he would have been an accomplice no better than a toy dog larfing behind its master with its squidgy tongue lolling from its self-satisfied mouth.

Physically however, the boy was strong for his age – much larger than his compatriots – and if the boy could outgrow the nasty habit of pumping his own pole around others, he just might last the logging season. A small smile washed over the edges of Asa’s lips. Money had been promised for the twelve boys timely passage – hands had, in fact, been shook – but Asa had been offered a bonus for each boy who stuck until the snowfall (money he had foolishly begun spending in his head). Looking at the gaggle of wax-faced scarecrows he had nearly carried from the train station in Northern Nevada, Asa felt he could expect no more than six or seven to remain: one would get seriously injured, that was a certainty and Asa could argue for his money in that case (it wouldn’t be his fault, the boy was careless or unlucky), two would prove to be lay-about drunkards (an unforgivable sin in an industry where functional, closet drunks were the expectation), and a handful would inevitably skulk away in the night under a cloud of failure. The big one though, the talker, he had the look about him; he would stick around.

Archibald (Archie as he referred often to himself) had the broad shoulders of a plowman, and as if in agreement, his hair was the golden-yellow of Mid-western wheat fields. Electric blue eyes darted rapidly above a bushel of close-cropped and mealy whiskers supported by a thick tree trunk neck. A garish blue sombrero, tethered by a leather lanyard, clapped Archie on the back every time he blurted a loud declaration, serving as his own personal exclamation point and offending all sense of subtlety, as far as Asa was concerned. The boy was brash, but Asa thought he would fulfill any Kansas mother’s wish for a son. He thought of his own mother and wondered what may have become of her.

“The key, you see, to hunting a small rabbit is to let the bugger’s natural instincts do the work for you. And those rabbits are buggers, aren’t they? That’s a way to live, aye boy-Os? Lucky little prick, right? A bit of rubbadub in-out intercourse is all that’s on the bushy little fellows mind at…all…times. No foolin,”

A semi circle of wide-eyed faces listened intently to the self-professed expert of the outdoors all but ignoring the sunken-skinned and leathery tracker who had shepherded them all through the wild terrain. One small lad, the smallest actually, sat on a flat rock ten paces removed from the “lecture” and eyed Asa none to his liking. The boy made Asa uncomfortable, like he knew something he wasn’t sharing – saw something that wasn’t there. Asa shrugged his shoulder and turned a palm to the sky as if to say Hey kid, whatcha want? The boy, of course, said nothing. Asa hadn’t heard him utter more than a handful of words the whole trip, and never two together. Maybe he’s a bit twig in the head, Asa thought to shake his shadowy feeling; maybe the little squint is just a right dullard. But the deep look in the boy’s eye said otherwise.

“Some trackers, fools really, will tell you that a bit of fresh greens will always attract a rabbit, but I have found that not to necessarily be so – occasionally maybe, but sure as spit, not always. Mr. Cottontail is on his hunt, you understand, for a Mrs. Cottontail – above even food, even above water. This three pound fur hat-to-be is like an injin full hack for the drink – nothing else matters.”

Faces in the crowd nodded agreeably as if this were all well accepted fact, obvious really. That boy has caught about as many rabbits as I’ve caught kangaroos, Asa thought and turned to face the western ridge of mountains. They undulated in waves like a women lying seductively on her side and called to him. It was a beautiful voice.

“What I do is, I always flush out a burrow because, what will really help you out is catching a female – preferably one that is of an age to have reared a few nasty nippers – soiled a few nests, if you know what I’m getting at. You are going to use that tarted-up old doe to catch some plump young buck by the hairs of his privates – it’s like a divining rod that will lead them right into your trap.”

The boy may have been spinning fantasies, but Asa knew that even a liar tripped over some truth eventually; he had known some woman he would have called “honey pots”, and even knew a few men who employed them.

“That doe has a scent, like a bitch in heat, that will attract males from here to Havana – rabbits will be practically rolling over themselves to two-step with your noose-trap. A doe has a…gland that you slice on out and spread a little around as bait and voila,” Archie waved his arms like a vaudevillian emcee, his sombrero now thwapping as if in a gale.

“Just take care to wash the doe’s stink off nice and thorough like, otherwise rabbits will be humping you like a Frenchmen under a full moon.”

There were several bursts of laughter, of a much more agreeable timber than the laugh inching up Asa’s throat. He supposed these boys were poised to buy anything put before them, and Asa couldn’t fault them for that; after all, he had sold them on the adventure of logging in the western territories, hadn’t he? And they had eaten up his pitch with near ravenous acceptance. They came, to have some grand ole’ stories to tell, and to be men.

Well, they weren’t men yet. And let’s see what stories they’re telling when they get to Kettle Rock, Asa thought. The day is getting away from us.

Asa rose gingerly to his feet, his legs feeling less like steal with every passing year, and picked up a palm-sized rock to his left feeling its cool rough-hewn edge and walked it over to the deceased fire pit. With a clank, the rock settled next to its stout counterpoint amidst the aging ashes. Ladies and Gentlemen of the glen, until next year, Asa thought and nodded once.

“If that’s enough rest for an old hand, that should be might generous to you young’uns. Enough flapping your gums and diddling with your carrots, it’s time to move.”

The mass of boys stirred to attention, their skinny whey-colored legs looking, in Asa’s opinion, ridiculous supporting over-stuffed packs and bulging satchels. They would become stronger, tanner in the coming months; at least Asa hoped they would. Their youth made him feel very antiquated indeed, but perhaps was all for the best, sometimes the old ways aren’t best ways.

Asa roused the splotchy old mule from his digestive comatose with a sideways click of the tongue and clapped the old fella on the rump. Braggadocio brayed like a squeaky hinge, beginning to move before finishing his half-hearted protest. This was not the mule’s first time on the trail either having made all three of Asa’s previous trips; that much experience would have made Bragg Asa’s lieutenant he supposed. What the mule had seen before his time in the Northwest, Asa didn’t know, but he suspected Bragg had been driven up from the Northern Mexican territory in search of gold. Asa unlashed the mule’s hitch with a rough downward tug. He clicked again and the mule lumbered forward, pots and pans gently thumping his flanks. The boys followed.

“Archie you take the rear,” Asa said without looking behind him.

The boy moved into position amidst some muffled voices and soft tittering. Asa always made the strongest boy take up the caboose, it was another of his trail-hand habits. Strong boys keep a good pace, and can prevent stragglers from falling behind; the fact that Asa would be separated from Archie’s near constant jabbering by eleven other boys was a bit of a fortunate byproduct.

Asa and Bragg led the way over the hillock and followed a dying creek into an open mesa flat. The first fragrant blossoms of spring were beginning to timidly open in the late afternoon sun, and their perfume momentarily cut through the stink of adolescent travelers. Reedy grasses, still heavy with moisture, clung to Asa’s dungarees and swished loudly as he passed; his boots squished and were quickly made heavy by the saturated ground. Despite the show in the sky, winter had not yet been bested by his sister, the spring. But harder, drier ground lay ahead.

Asa looked to the west, at the jagged triangles of true mountains that stretched out beyond the horizon like teeth of some massive leviathan. He knew they must be crossed – on the other side rested Kettle Rock, and the coins Asa had been promised. The day would come when Asa’s path would cross that of the mountains, and that day would be a nightmare. It was every year. Thank the man in the moon, they would not cross today, and maybe not even tomorrow, but those mountains were growing taller and steeper with each passing step. Asa knew what he was getting himself into, but the boys, he would let them find out on their own time. Why waste a perfectly good surprise? The clever ones should have seen it coming anyway, but Asa doubted any of them had bothered to think that far ahead – except, maybe the little one. There was something behind his eyes – Something that suggested he might know something. Something cold.

“Keep a pace fellows,” Asa said, “A stroll in the grass and nothing more; your grandmothers could set a better pace.”

Their caravan continued across the dewy meadow, up a spine of granite, and disappeared into the darkness of the tree line.

“Do you think it’s dead, Max?”

I said I didn’t know and to hush up.

The color drained out of Charlie’s cheeks, until he was as ashen as the wind-worn slats on the barn; he pursed his lips tight.

In the trampled hay, placed as delicately as a freshly laid egg, a bird sat, his wings tucked at his side and his eyes black and open. The bird was still.

My boots cracked the dry hay as I slunk towards our find; Charlie stayed put. So did the bird. I held my breath as I forced my hand towards the animal’s tiny head. There was silence.

“Max?” pleaded Charlie.

The bird was soft as I stroked its back with my thumb.

“Yeah,” I said, “It’s dead. Probably has been for days”

I walked over and gave Charlie a hug and I felt the front of my shirt grow damp.

When Charlie was through, we exited Uncle’s barn together and latched the big, wooden door. Neither of us talked. As we reached the grass, Charlie broke out in a run towards the house. I took the dirt walkway.

By the time I entered the farmhouse, Charlie was already on Mother’s knee and she had heard the whole story; she kind of smiled and brushed Charlie’s dirty hair away from his eyes.

“Why did the bird have to die in our barn?” Charlie asked.

“Everybody is looking for a place that’s safe and warm to lie down in,” said Mother, “even a little bird. And the barn is as good a place as any, I suppose.”

“There are spider’s in the barn. It should have died in the house,” Charlie said.

“Spiders don’t bother the birds,” Mother assured, “it knew what it was doing.”

I asked what we should do with the bird – another animal was likely to find it if we left it in the barn.

Charlie’s face soured, and he looked like he would start up again.

“I think a funeral would be best,” Mother said.

Charlie’s eyes grew big and he smiled so that we could see all his teeth.

“But not tonight,” she said, “A funeral at night, just doesn’t seem appropriate.”

Charlie and I agreed.

That night, we scoured Uncle’s heavy encyclopedia by flashlight for a bird that looked like ours – I did most of the looking because Charlie doesn’t read big words yet. The excitement of our search waned and we fell asleep at the foot of the bunk.

After breakfast, under the tall walnut tree, we prepared the bird for his funeral. Charlie dug a hole with the little spade, and I wrapped the bird in tissue paper and placed it in a preserves jar. Mother said some nice words and we buried our friend. Charlie looked real proud to be the one to cover the grave with dirt and pack it tight. I was glad that he didn’t cry.

All that day, I tried not to think about the bird, but that never really works.

When the sun had set for evening, and the stars and fireflies lit the dusk, I walked the pathway to the old barn; Charlie was already inside lying in the hay.

“There aren’t any other birds, Max. I already checked. Six spiders, a mouse, and a couple of June bugs, but no birds.”

“That’s good,” I said.

Charlie nodded, but without much behind it. He had collected all his foundlings into a neat pile.

“Should we have another funeral tomorrow?” Charlie asked; his eyes round as copper pennies.

“No,” I said, “I figure those kinds don’t really get funerals. Just birds, and dogs, and cats, and those-likes.”

Charlie got squinty for a long while like he was trying to sound out one those long words from the encyclopedia. Finally, he tapped me on the shoulder.

“Max,” he said, “That doesn’t seem quite fair.”

“No, Charlie, it doesn’t, but that’s just the way it is.”

After years of talk, the revolution came in the night, and was over. We had beaten them. The young men cheered and the old men grumbled, only the women remained silent on the matter, waiting for their lots in life to improve (if indeed the rhetoric was to become reality). No one was sure.

We buried Poppa that night in the backyard. We had no coffin, but mother wanted him in the ground before sunrise; so it was so. Poppa had been shot during the large demonstration at the university, by whom I can’t say. Mother was standing beside him when it happened and thankfully he bled out quickly; the hospitals were as chaotic as everywhere else, and a slow, preventable death would have been too much for her. Poppa was a large man, so I enlisted the help of a neighbor to lower him into the ground. I said a few words, mother wept, and it was over; Poppa had been a quiet man.

Our house, along with the others on the block, had been looted quite severely in the jubilation and had sustained modest fire damage from an errant bottle of kerosene. Only the evening rains had saved my mother the pains of losing both her husband and home on the same evening, but Poppa’s study was rendered unrecognizable by the flames. His careful arrangements of papers, neatly categorized and artfully unnoticeable, billowed out onto the lawn like curled, yellow snowflakes forming into rank mounds.

“Momma, I’ll clear them away in the morning,” I offered, “I’m beat.”

“Poppa deserves to have them cleaned now, don’t you think?” she said; so it was so.

I filed fragile documents into empty manila folders careful to account for date and subject and area of study. We had been violated from the inside out; and it made me sorry for Poppa to have his life’s work exposed on the lawn for all the world to see; I had never even seen most of his work papers. Not ever a glance.

Pulling back a blacked and broken slat board, I cleared away soggy handfuls of drywall uncovering a hidden trove of composition notebooks, bound into tiny stacks as if my father had been planning to deliver them door-to-door alongside the morning paper. Carefully drafted on the first book, in inch-high letters, my father had printed the name of my mother, which was a level of sentimentality I thought him incapable. It seemed quite sweet, but private in a cute way so I set it aside for Mother. Underneath, written on the next book with the same level of care and craft was my name in full view of the world; I opened it.

Information about me was overcrowding each line and margin, as if my father had been attempting to cram ten pounds of text in a six pound sack: my interests, snippets of my conversations, where I was likely to be found. I closed the book and turned it over like I was unfamiliar with the invention of bound literature; it was, to be fair, an unfamiliar discovery. I pushed over the knee-high stack of books; totaling at least twenty. It clapped and fluttered to the charred earth while dozens more remained upright.

I found, hidden amongst my father’s academic papers, hundreds of scribbled notebooks chronicling the daily conversations of his peers, his students, and his friends, but no discovery hurt like those first two. Each dozen pages or so, a red initial not belonging to my father, smiled back at me.

At the foot of my father’s grave I collected everything in a heap. The books were wet, they burned slowly; plumes of white vapor twisted in the soft morning breeze; the books gradually blew away. I cried a little.

My mother slapped me across the face for burning the books, and cursed me in my father’s name, but she would get over it. It had been a long two days.

Our neighbor saw the smoke and went outside – he had seen me all day.

“Finishing what the vandals started I see,” he said from the safety of his yard.

I stared at him a good long while and nodded.

“Clearing away the junk,” I said, “there’s a lot of debris in the neighborhood.”

“There’s a lot of debris everywhere,” he agreed.

He was a friendly sort of chap, but he was not one of us.

Today I came across this article by Malcolm Gladwell on Atticus Finch: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/10/090810fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all. In the following paragraphs, I’ll explain why I disagree with Gladwell’s analysis of Atticus and To Kill a Mockingbird.

Let me qualify my statements by saying I’m working in rural Maine right now, and I have no access to a To Kill a Mockingbird book. I did teach the novel a year-and-a-half ago to ninth graders, however, so I do remember the passages I’ll reference here.

Gladwell spends the first third of his article describing Jim Folsom, an Alabaman governor of the 1950’s–who had a “gradual and paternalistic” view toward bringing about racial justice, “a prodigious drinker, and a brilliant campaigner,” and a man who said “All men are just alike.” And then Gladwell claims that Harper Lee based Atticus Finch’s character off Jim Folsom, that Atticus was an “Old-style Southern liberalist” instead of a Civil Right’s activist, and that, therefore, Atticus shouldn’t be toted as a such a hero, since he wasn’t radical enough.

Although Atticus wasn’t a large scale Civil Right’s activist, he also was not the passive, stuck-in-social-mores “Old-style Southern liberalist” that Malcolm Gladwell claims. I’ll take a closer look at the To Kill a Mockingbird passages Gladwell cites in order to debunk Gladwell’s claims.

Gladwell says the scene in which Atticus quietly leaves court after the jury pronounces Tom Robinson guilty shows Atticus couldn’t be a Civil Right’s hero. “If Finch were a civil-rights hero, he would be brimming with rage at the unjust verdict. But he isn’t. He’s not Thurgood Marshall looking for racial salvation through the law. He’s Jim Folsom, looking for racial salvation through hearts and minds.”

Why must Gladwell write in dichotomies? To him, if Atticus isn’t Thurgood Marshall then he must be Jim Folsom. But does Gladwell forget that Atticus doesn’t bow under the jury’s verdict? As Atticus says, he knew the jury would convict Tom Robinson; only Jem, Atticus’s son, in his naivete and youthful inexperience with racism, thinks Atticus stood a chance. Even before he lost, Atticus planned to take the case to a higher court, and he has hope to win in that court. But then Tom Robinson escapes, and is shot and killed, and Atticus’s work abruptly ends. He would have taken his case further if he had the chance; he doesn’t have the chance, so he continues his work as a small-town lawyer. Lee didn’t portray a governor like Folson or a big-time Civil Rights activist; she portrayed a small-town lawyer who did his best against racial prejudices.

At the end of this same section Gladwell writes that, “All men [Atticus] believes, are just alike.” Atticus never says or implies he believes all men are alike; his closing speech in court suggests this simple statement is ludicrous. All people are not or never will be equal in ability, he says, but everyone should be equal before the law. I wish I had before me this excellent speech–to which Gladwell never even mentions. Here, Atticus appeals to Tom Robinson’s innocence before the law, not just the “hearts-and-minds” approach for which Gladwell derides Atticus. Atticus doesn’t tell the jury to let Robinson off because they’re good people, Atticus tells the jury to let Tom Robinson off because he has proved Tom innocent, so it’s their duty before the law.

Gladwell, amazingly, admits that Atticus stands up to racism. Yet he qualifies this praise by citing instances where Atticus admits that some men who are racists also have good traits. Gladwell also qualifies this praise by saying “What [Atticus] will not do is look at the problem of racism outside the immediate context of Mr. Cunningham, Mr. Levy, and the island community of Maycomb, Alabama. Folsom was the same way.”

To Kill a Mockingbird is a good novel, and a good novel has complex characters. Thus, Atticus can applaud how Walter Cunningham lives independently of WPA handouts and rebuke him for leading a potential lynch mob. Atticus’ attitude doesn’t mean he applauds Cunningham’s racism; it just shows how any human being, with some admirable qualities, can also be racist. Gladwell ignores one of the excellent messages in Lee’s novel–that a racist can lurk within even the best of us–and complains that Lee didn’t go far enough in her condemnation.

Folsom was a governor; if he only looked at one town he wouldn’t have been doing his duty. But Atticus was a lawyer in one town whose first priority was that town. Plus, he would have looked beyond that town if he’d had a chance to take his case higher. Gladwell argues that Folsom (and by a weak extension, Atticus) couldn’t see that “racism had a structural dimension,” that it must be changed at a political, not just personal level. Atticus started with the personal level, but he also worked in the political realm. He worked for justice among his neighbors and then in the courts, leading to the larger world.

Next, Gladwell argues that Atticus wants the jurors to “swap one of their prejudices for another,” i.e. Atticus wants the jurors to be prejudiced against the white trash Ewells whereas they would usually be prejudiced against a black man. Yes, the Ewells are white trash, but in the courtroom Atticus never once refers to, let alone derides, the Ewell’s social class. He sticks strictly to facts of the case, and he gains no pleasure–personally or in the context of his case–in humiliating the girl Mayella, who says Robinson raped her but was in actuality raped or beaten by her father. Galdwell cites other cases of the time period that use class as a way to argue for guilt or innocence, but he uses no evidence of Atticus doing so in To Kill A Mockingbird’s court case.

And lastly, when I was sick of Gladwell picking apart the novel for his own argument, he completely misconstrues the book’s ending. A kind, eccentric neighborhood recluse, Boo Radley, kills Bob Ewell when Ewell is trying to hurt, or even kill, Scout and Jem, Atticus’ kids. The Sheriff and Atticus decide not to bring the events to the limelight. Gladwell claims that this final event means, “Maycomb would go back to the way it had always been,” that the Sheriff and Atticus have “cut their little side deal” and “decided to obstruct justice in the name of saving their beloved neighbor (ie. Boo Radley) the burden of angel-food cake.” This conclusion may be cute word choice yet it’s untrue to the novel and the characters’ motivations.

If they took Boo to court, he’d get off in self-defense, but they decide he should be left alone. Boo Radley’s character is a parallel to Tom Robinson’s character. Both men have quietly done good to others and deserve to be left alone. Robinson is brought to the spotlight and convicted of a crime he didn’t commit; Boo would be brought to the spotlight and acquitted of an act of self-defense. The Sheriff and Atticus want to spare him of this exposure to which they couldn’t spare Tom Robinson. Furthermore, Maycomb can’t revert to the way it has been, because it never changed in the first place. It still doesn’t understand the best citizens among it, and it still needs people like Atticus and the Sheriff (who asked Atticus to take Tom Robinson’s case) to defend its  falsely accused and misunderstood people.

Gladwell’s last two sentences say that Atticus adopts “one set of standards for respectable whites like Boo Radley and another for white trash like Bob Ewell. A book that we thought instructed us about the world tells us, instead, about the limitations of Jim Crow liberalism in Maycomb, Alabama.” I’ll discuss each sentence separately.

Let me reiterate that Atticus never acts on social conventions; he looks at peoples’ actions and characters. Ewell both raped or beat his own daughter as well as tried to killed Atticus’ children. Boo Radley saved Atticus’ children’s life. Their social class was completely incidental to his views of the people. And who thought Boo Radley was a respectable white anyway? The whole town except Atticus wanted Boo thrown in an asylum and said that he sliced his own father’s leg open with scissors. Boo Radley is only deemed “respectable” in order to fit Gladwell’s argument.

And that last sentence–meant to be revelatory and stunning–doesn’t make sense. The first and the second potential functions of the book aren’t mutually exclusive. Even if the book did only tell us about the limitations of Jim Crow liberalism, wouldn’t that be a way of “instructing us about the world?” (A very vague phrase, by the way.) The world of Alabama, in the fifties, placed limits on Jim Crow liberalism, and To Kill a Mockingbird, through specific characters and situations, could show these limits so that political reformers and others could make things how they should be. Although, as I’ve proved, Atticus wasn’t the passive man, ignorant of the outside world, that Gladwell thinks.

So, why was Atticus a hero? It would take someone more learned than I to scratch the surface of that complex character. But, as a teacher, I taught him as an admirable character because he treats people the same despite their race, social class, or differing viewpoints. Atticus has progressive views and hidden talents and yet, unlike Gladwell’s description of Folsom, Atticus uses these views and talents only when occasion arises, not vainly, nor superfluously. He is a man who works for family justice all the time and neighborhood and community justice and national justice when occasion arises. I could give multiple examples which prove these traits, but I’ll spare you here. Other real Civil Right’s heroes could have had different, maybe better, qualities, but these are Atticus’ fictional ones.

This complex, classic novel and novel’s hero deserves a more nuanced perspective than this article gives it and him.