The Blackbird Book

The image of the bird had stayed with her all day. Dead, for sure, but something more. The fan of its mottled black tail feathers, all she had glimpsed on her morning walk with Tully, had stood straight up out of the ground.

Flocks of traveling grackles were common, and this was certainly not the first dead bird she had come across, living so close to the wildlife refuge. Still, it had uneased her.

After her coffee, she had gone back out for another look at it. She left Tully inside, lest the earnest retriever get hold of it. She had stopped a few yards from the spot where the feathers rose upright from the frost-tipped grass. She didn’t want to see its face and reasoned to herself again that it was nothing. Just something she had more time to notice now that she was finally able to be outside more during daylight.

Quitting her job had been an easy decision after winning the $20,000 Queen of Hearts jackpot at the VFW. It hadn’t even felt like a decision. There hadn’t been a day in the past five years that she hadn’t almost quit her job as a customer service rep after taking an earful from an “unsatisfied customer.” Sending the email to her boss letting her know that she wouldn’t be in on Monday, or any day after that, had felt more like taking her hand off a hot stove.

She knew the money wouldn’t last long, but she had done the math and calculated that the jackpot, combined with her savings, would give her a year. The first few weeks were pure euphoria – long hikes with Tully, visits to friends she had lost touch with, just sitting on her back stoop to feel the afternoon sun. No angry callers, no apologies, just bliss.

But when she’d turned the calendar over to February, she felt the first tug back toward the familiar road of conscientiousness. What was she going to do when this year ended? For as long as she could remember, she had been propelled forward by the twin forces of anxiety and dread. This world - and likely the next - were complicated and dangerous, and she felt always on the verge of some misstep from which she would plunge irretrievably into the abyss.

The relief from leaving her job had been her first taste of peace. And although still happy and light, she’d begun to have the dream again. It had bubbled up off and on over the years, always the same.

The fluorescent ceiling lights buzzed and flickered in the small, metal room in the bank, but somehow there wasn’t enough light to see, and she just kept shuffling through the documents that she couldn’t read, and no matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t find the little black book. And she had to hurry because there was almost no time left.

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She had only been to the actual room one time, after her grandmother died, to get the deeds to the house and the cemetery lot. There had certainly been no rush that day, as she seemed to be the only person left alive that needed to access a lockbox. The young teller had seemingly never had a customer come in for one. Apprehension flashed in her face at the sight of the tiny key fished out of the bottom of the manilla envelope. She barely glanced at the legal documents I presented to her before picking up the phone for someone else.

“Thank you, Ms. Logan?” she had asked, after quickly reading the first paragraph of the document.

“Yes,” she replied, “Gillian.”

A woman in her sixties had soon appeared from behind the wall of beige fabric dividers, quickly reviewed the documents, and escorted her down a long hallway to the vault of stainless steel boxes. The clerk had efficiently unlocked the vault room, located her grandmother’s box, #10388, taken her to the interior room with the metal table, completed the two-key unlocking procedure, and turned to leave.

“Just push the buzzer when you’re done,” she’d instructed, and left her alone with the responsibility of the lock box.

Gillian wasn’t sure what she had expected, but the contents seemed sparse. She was relieved to easily find the deeds that she needed, but after that, the remaining items were a disappointment. The title to a car long-gone, her grandparents’ marriage license that maybe she could frame, not much else. She almost hadn’t even bothered to open the little black book.

Worn and faded, she’d guessed the small leather book was a loan schedule ledger. The rubber band that someone had secured around its center had dried out and broken instantly when she touched it. Several pages had been torn from the front of the book. Only two pages had writing.

In neat gold print, on the first page:

01/11/133, sermo

08/04/880, mot

And in identical print on the second page:

05/03/1690, focal

06/12/1829, wort

Gillian had stared at the pages for some time, trying to remember anything from her college foreign language classes. But that was too long ago; nothing was familiar. As far as she knew, her grandmother hadn’t spoken any foreign languages. College had not been an option for her. Maybe it was something of her great-grandparents that she had kept. But why?

She thought back to the references her grandmother had made about ancestors who were “carriers.” For years, Gillian had been ashamed to think that her relatives had carried diseases. But one story that her grandmother had told her, not long before her death, made her realize her mistake. She’d given her a ring and then told her that she’d had a visit from an ancestor carrier, and her time left was short. Her grandmother had not been distressed by this message, just went on to calmly tell some of the stories that this ancestor had relayed centuries ago.

Gillian had not paid attention to the details, thinking instead about arrangements that she would need to make now that the dementia had progressed.

She checked the book again to make sure she hadn’t missed some cash stashed between pages, but there was nothing. She returned the book to the box, placed the deeds she had come for in her manilla envelope, and pressed the buzzer.

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Gillian came back inside from her dead-bird inspection to find Tully asleep in the day’s first patch of sun. Good, she thought, I’ll sneak out and make it to the grocery store and back before he wakes up. Shopping would distract her and help shake off whatever this feeling was that had settled on her. Besides, that cold front was coming in soon and she wanted to stock up so she didn’t have to get back out if there was ice. She grabbed the list from the organizer on the side of her refrigerator and made note of the calendar – last day of February.

The store was packed. Everyone half frantic trying to find what they needed and think of what they might need if the storm was as bad as what was now rumored. So Gillian’s usual leisurely experience was curtailed. She got her staples plus extra coffee and cream for herself and extra canned food for Tully. Leaving the pet aisle she noticed the bags of wild bird seed and threw one in her cart. The juncos and finches would have a hard time finding food if the snow and ice lasted very long.

By the time she made it home, Tully was already up and pacing. She took him outside for a quick walk before unloading the groceries. The temperature had already dropped several degrees and she could feel that the precipitation would start soon. She started toward their usual short route, but Tully pulled in the opposite direction. She resisted, thinking of the groceries out on the counter, but relented thinking they might not be able to make it very far for the next few days.

They headed down toward the small creek that separated her property from the neighbor’s. It had already begun to freeze. Tully trotted happily along beside it, stopping to investigate interesting smells. As he lingered over one particularly suspicious spot, she noticed something frozen in a shallow spot of water. It was a black feather.

She felt something settle inside her. Tully looked up at her, inquiring. They turned back for the warmth of the house.

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That night, after dinner and a glass of pinot noir in front of a fire, Gillian drifted easily off to sleep. The dream returned, but this time the little black book was there. And she could read the words: sermo, mot, focal, wort.

She still didn’t know what they meant, but she knew what she had to do.

In the morning, she woke to a silenced and unspoiled white landscape. She started the coffee, opened a new can of food for Tully, and pulled the table over to the patch of sun. She opened her computer and began to write.

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Inside the metal box, in the unflouresced darkness, gold letters emerged on the third page of the little black book.

03/01/2021, word