Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, Spring 1908
"We'll be back in a few days, son," said John Dawson to his only child, "Mary, do you have to tickets?"
"Yes, dear, everything organized and accounted for, she gently placed his jacket on his shoulders, "everything will be fine."
"What's this for this time?" Jack asked. His parents would be in Chicago for three days.
"Midwest Historical Society, junior," John smiled.
"You wouldn't go see the Cubs without me?"
"Not without my big man," he winked, Jack was already taller than him. If only he had a little meat on those bones.
"What's got you so anxious, darling," his mother ran a finger through his sandy hair, "this isn't the first time we've left like this, you can handle it here on your own, and Dan's just down the road."
"I've been talkin' to senile Mrs. Weatherspoon in town." Jack thought he'd never get this out. He felt his face flush. "It's probably just her blabblin,' you know."
"What is it?" Even the safety of his mother's eyes couldn't protect him.
"Nothing.er, she said I ain't exactly.yours."
"She said what?" John tried to cover what was coming.
"She said that I'm not." He couldn't speak it. He raised his arm and dropped it in defeat.
His mother sat him and wrapped her arm around her sons' shoulders.
"Yes, Jack. You are adopted," she paused waiting for a reaction, but none came, "Dan found you by the stream and there was no one to claim you.you're father and I.we'd been trying to a have a baby for years.Dan brought you to us to raise."
Jack said nothing. He was adopted. His real parents were out there somewhere, but they weren't Mom and Dad. They were strangers that abandoned him. His mother grabbed his face and turned it to face hers. Her eyes were a soft brown, just like the color of her hair. She didn't smile this time with her soft, thin lips. She became very serious.
"You are just as much our son as if you were born to us, do you understand me?" she asked.
Jack nodded weakly. His father sat besides him. He was a large, strong man with blond hair just like Jack's, but it was not the same hair.
They didn't leave that day for Chicago and the Midwest Historical Society that he had heard about all his life was pretty angry for a historical society. Historians were only supposed to cause so much hell in books. He wasn't totally sure what they did for it and why he heard Dan's name popping up lately when John and Mary argued about it.
Jack listened at the top of the stairs, when they thought he was down by the lake with the guys.
"Ojima," said his father, looking Dan hard in the eye. What did he just call him? "I want to know.when you found him.you had to know. Is he one of you?"
"Yes, one day he might be. He may yet live a normal life."
"Then what do we tell him about the family business?" Mary asked in her soft drawl. She placed her hands gently on the wooden desk in the corner of the parlor.
"Up to you, when the time comes. It'll be tricky, but then again that's why our kind can't have children."
"If his time comes, you'll teach him won't you? Help him when we're not around?" Mary turned around.
"Isn't that what I already do?"
"Sometimes I wonder if I hadn't asked to be assigned to you, Ojima," Mary smiled, "I know this was a dangerous friend to make."
"We would've been one less friend and one less son. And you're Cajun accent would be a mighty bit thickah, Ms. St. Clare." John put his arm around his wife and then his arm around Dan.
The Dawsons did not have an otherwise eventful life. They lived on the old Dawson farm, but they had stopped cultivating it a century ago. Jack's grandfather had sold half the land to Dan Patterson. Mary St. Clare had been a traveling actress from Louisiana before she married John Dawson. After the death of a mysterious woman in an acting troupe-her head was cut off-and Mary, although having nothing to do with the murder, nearly left Chippewa Falls if it were not for falling in love with John. They opened The Main Street Bookshop together, raised a their adopted son and lived a rather peaceful existence.
So far, that's all Jack knew. But everyone knew the old legend of Gertrude Levy. One day, old Jesse Taylor found her headless body floating down by a stream. After he went to the police, the body was gone.
But it was all myth and no back up. Taylor was senile and there was no body. But when Jack was in kindergarten, one of the older boys found a skull while digging for arrowheads. It was just another local legend never to be proven.
Dan knew all about local legends. He was one himself: an Indian that lived out in the woods until Silas Dawson sold him half his farm and he befriended John Dawson and his young wife thirty years before. No one saw him much in town except for the Dawsons. Chippewas were, with a cruel irony, not welcomed in most of Chippewa Falls' establishments.
"So tell me how you hooked that bear, Dan," Jack prodded, hoping for a story as they headed back to the farm after a long day of fishing. Jack's father usually took him, but John and Mary were more than preoccupied nowadays and Jack took the news of his adoption a little hard.
"I've told you that one already," Dan laughed. He was tall and muscular with a scar over his left eyebrow. He kept his hair long and flowing, usually cascading over an old flannel shirt.
"You've been telling it to me my whole life. What's one more time gonna do?"
"Fill you're head with more crazy adventures. You do embellish quite a bit in your own stories. I'd hate to think that's my influence." "Aw, come on, Dan. It's a damn uncreative mind that just tells it as it happened."
"Does your mama know you use that language?"
"Only since you and Dad taught it to me.mostly you." Jack knocked Dan in the side with his pail and ran through the woods. They stopped near the water line. Dan caught up with him wrestled him to the ground.
"Sometimes I wonder how you'll be a man with all this horseplay," Dan breathed, adjusting himself up against a tree.
"Why? All the girls love it," Jack smiled.
"You were always the winner with the young women, Jack. Hope you're not getting into too much horseplay with them."
"Nah, .I ain't kissed a girl yet," said the boy sheepishly/
"That's alright, you've got time."
"I plan on kissin' a lot-but not too many. But a fair amount."
"Well, it's good to know you've got your priorities set," Dan twisted his mouth and scratched the stubble on his chin. "You know there's a little more than kissing.right?" He wasn't sure if this was good territory to venture into, not being the boy's father.
"Yeah, I know about the ways of life. Found out right on Main Street. Dick Jameson and Rodney Pepper will tell you anything-with details-if you ask. Spent plenty of pennies on getting them to tell me about girls and what to do with them and how hit a guy right so you break his jaw and headless Gertrude."
"Dick and Rodney have been working over at the mills for over five years, when did they tell you all this?"
"I was nine." Jack cheekily cocked his head and clasped his hands behind his head, leaning back. "And with all that information you still have never picked a fight or kissed a girl."
"All in good time. But they still failed to tell me I was adopted and that there's no Midwest Historical Society." Jack folded his arms as a challenge. By then his parents had told him that it was Dan who found him.
Dan closed his eyes for a moment and nodded slowly. "Yes, I found you by the stream one morning when I was fishing for lunch."
"I know all that. Didn't you ever search for my real parents? Who left me there?"
"We don't know. We never found them.Jack, the best thing anybody ever did for you before I took you in my arms that day was leave you by that stream. Only a person as lucky as yourself gets parents like the ones you got."
Jack got a walked around. "They've been lying to me about more than one thing my whole life."
"Jack, they couldn't have told you weren't theirs from day one. Or maybe they could have broken it to when you were three. You wouldn't have understood."
"They waited till I found out by accident. I'm fifteen years old! And what about this stupid Historical Society they don't work for? I can understand a whole lot now. I'm young, but I'm not stupid."
"There are some things the logical mind would not understand."
Logical mind? What was he trying to do, flatter him?
"Adoption I can understand pretty well. I know they're more my parents then anybody else and they love me. I'll get over it. But what are they now, cult leaders?" It was annoying him that Dan just sat there.
"I won't lie to you, Jack I know the answers to all your questions. But what I don't know is where it's my place to say. And I know what you're going to say, you're your own person and I should give you what you ask for, but trust me on this one, trust all us. When we get home, I'll talk to your parents. Then we'll all talk.is it a deal?" Dan got up and extended his hand. Jack sighed. "It's a deal."
"You'll be a great man one day, Jack," Dan said, he could feel it. Not everyone's destiny was set in stone. No accident or untimely death might ever befall the boy, but he could feel it in his bones.
"Eh, greatness is all hype. I just wanna draw." Jack waved his hand, not understanding what Dan meant. People were always telling him how talented he was, how smart he was. He could've grown up to be an egotist; lucky the boy was just a little cocky.
Dan looked as if he were about to say something and stopped suddenly. "Go on ahead," he said, "I'll catch up later."
"What is it?"
"Just go on ahead, son," he said, "tell your parents I'm going to speak with them when I get back. I want you to drop all your things and run."
There was something wrong; Jack knew it. Dan had a look on his face that said he might not be coming back to the farm.
"Dan."
"Just go, dammit!" Jack, rarely seeing such immediacy in Dan, turned around to follow orders when he met up with a blade to his throat. The cold blade slowly lifted his head to look into steel gray eyes. It was a man much taller than, and Jack was a tall young man, nearly six feet and still growing. This man had brown hair slicked back and high, imposing cheekbones. He smelled like expensive cologne.
"You brought a fresh one, Dan Patterson.is that what you're calling yourself nowadays?" the man spoke.
"He isn't part of this, Clement."
"He will be one day, better prepare him." The man, Clement smiled. "But it's your parents that are interesting. They knew I was coming. They sent someone.for the boy I can only assume, maybe to warn you too." he smiled and put his finger to his lips and he slowly pulled back the sword from Jack's throat, "that was a mistake."
Jack walked backwards and right into Dan who had already pulled out his own sword from the rowboat. It was unreal.
Dan thrust forward at Clement with a loud clash of blades.
"Run, Jack!"
Jack turned around and ran several yards downstream and dove under a log covered by brush. He was soaked through and nearly waist deep in the water, but he didn't notice. He just kept his eyes fixed on Dan.
Dan continued to fight the stranger. This was more incredible than any tall tale Dan had ever told of his adventures or ancient stories passed down from generations. But he didn't think about that. He was more scared than he had ever been in his whole life.
Dan, like Jack had always seen him, was only second in strength and cunning to his father, but with one clean run through with Clement's sword, he was done for.
"Dan!" Jack cried no longer able to hide, once to frightened to move, now too frenzied to stay still. He ran for him as Clement prepared for yet another blow. Clement raised his sword and took Dan's head clean off.
Jack stopped.
He dropped to his knees in horror. Dan had just been beheaded. Now this Clement, this stranger who had just that night waltzed in front of them, waited.and smiled.
A haze past over the body of his life long friend and a lightening bolt shot clear up his murderer. Then more. And more until he thought the whole woods would explode. Trees burst all around him and only then did Jack duck and cover.
When Jack awoke it was completely dark. He must have fainted. Struggling to his feet, he looked around for Dan, his body and his head rested where Jack had left. Clement was nowhere in sight. Unable to stand the sight Jack fled through the woods with only one goal: home. As he ran he tripped over something. He scrambled on the ground to find a person, Ted Rawlings, one of the other clerks from his parents' bookshop. He was dead. Someone stabbed him.
Jack kept on running through the woods, not stopping at the sight of flames coming from the clearing ahead. He crashed into the fence running along Dan's yard and jumped over it, ignoring the pain and splinters in his knees. It was clear now that the ball of fire was his house.
Even Dan was gone from his mind now. He had to get to his parents.
"Mama! Dad!" he yelled. His home was just a roaring ball of flames. It hurt to stand less than twenty feet from it.
Again he pleaded, now in tears, "Mama! Dad!"
There was always a chance they weren't in there, but where else could they be? He was too afraid to leave. He collapsed to the ground and wretched.
He didn't notice the man coming up behind him until he felt cold steel on his back. He looked up in unspeakable rage.
"I don't know what your people are, boy, but I don't like being watched," Clement lowered his eyes, "I saved this for you." He tossed a gold necklace into Jack's hand. It was his mother's. "Southern women, they can scream.I that was before I killed them."
Jack lunged himself at Clement with a primal scream. Clement struck him in the face and Jack fell to the ground unconscious.
"When you're worth it."
Jack fled Chippewa Falls the next day. He knew now what his parents had been trying to protect him from his whole life. With the little money and supplies he had, he fled the states as well. The only valuable he had was his mother's necklace. The strange figure on his parents' wrist used to hang from her neck as well. They said it was ancient Indian symbol.
After months of darkness and anger, and a couple years of misery and loneliness he found new life. He spent some time by the Santa Monica Pier and started drawing again. Late in 1910 he was traveling through Europe and met another young man the same age, Fabrizio De Rossi, who traveled with him on his adventures across the continent. In Paris, they met an unlikely mentor and friend, one-legged woman who was a con artist by day and a prostitute by night. Early in 1912 Tessa Dupont made enough dirty money to leave Paris and fled the police to the French countryside as her young, slightly more law-abiding friends left for Germany and Austria, then the British Isles.
"We'll be back in a few days, son," said John Dawson to his only child, "Mary, do you have to tickets?"
"Yes, dear, everything organized and accounted for, she gently placed his jacket on his shoulders, "everything will be fine."
"What's this for this time?" Jack asked. His parents would be in Chicago for three days.
"Midwest Historical Society, junior," John smiled.
"You wouldn't go see the Cubs without me?"
"Not without my big man," he winked, Jack was already taller than him. If only he had a little meat on those bones.
"What's got you so anxious, darling," his mother ran a finger through his sandy hair, "this isn't the first time we've left like this, you can handle it here on your own, and Dan's just down the road."
"I've been talkin' to senile Mrs. Weatherspoon in town." Jack thought he'd never get this out. He felt his face flush. "It's probably just her blabblin,' you know."
"What is it?" Even the safety of his mother's eyes couldn't protect him.
"Nothing.er, she said I ain't exactly.yours."
"She said what?" John tried to cover what was coming.
"She said that I'm not." He couldn't speak it. He raised his arm and dropped it in defeat.
His mother sat him and wrapped her arm around her sons' shoulders.
"Yes, Jack. You are adopted," she paused waiting for a reaction, but none came, "Dan found you by the stream and there was no one to claim you.you're father and I.we'd been trying to a have a baby for years.Dan brought you to us to raise."
Jack said nothing. He was adopted. His real parents were out there somewhere, but they weren't Mom and Dad. They were strangers that abandoned him. His mother grabbed his face and turned it to face hers. Her eyes were a soft brown, just like the color of her hair. She didn't smile this time with her soft, thin lips. She became very serious.
"You are just as much our son as if you were born to us, do you understand me?" she asked.
Jack nodded weakly. His father sat besides him. He was a large, strong man with blond hair just like Jack's, but it was not the same hair.
They didn't leave that day for Chicago and the Midwest Historical Society that he had heard about all his life was pretty angry for a historical society. Historians were only supposed to cause so much hell in books. He wasn't totally sure what they did for it and why he heard Dan's name popping up lately when John and Mary argued about it.
Jack listened at the top of the stairs, when they thought he was down by the lake with the guys.
"Ojima," said his father, looking Dan hard in the eye. What did he just call him? "I want to know.when you found him.you had to know. Is he one of you?"
"Yes, one day he might be. He may yet live a normal life."
"Then what do we tell him about the family business?" Mary asked in her soft drawl. She placed her hands gently on the wooden desk in the corner of the parlor.
"Up to you, when the time comes. It'll be tricky, but then again that's why our kind can't have children."
"If his time comes, you'll teach him won't you? Help him when we're not around?" Mary turned around.
"Isn't that what I already do?"
"Sometimes I wonder if I hadn't asked to be assigned to you, Ojima," Mary smiled, "I know this was a dangerous friend to make."
"We would've been one less friend and one less son. And you're Cajun accent would be a mighty bit thickah, Ms. St. Clare." John put his arm around his wife and then his arm around Dan.
The Dawsons did not have an otherwise eventful life. They lived on the old Dawson farm, but they had stopped cultivating it a century ago. Jack's grandfather had sold half the land to Dan Patterson. Mary St. Clare had been a traveling actress from Louisiana before she married John Dawson. After the death of a mysterious woman in an acting troupe-her head was cut off-and Mary, although having nothing to do with the murder, nearly left Chippewa Falls if it were not for falling in love with John. They opened The Main Street Bookshop together, raised a their adopted son and lived a rather peaceful existence.
So far, that's all Jack knew. But everyone knew the old legend of Gertrude Levy. One day, old Jesse Taylor found her headless body floating down by a stream. After he went to the police, the body was gone.
But it was all myth and no back up. Taylor was senile and there was no body. But when Jack was in kindergarten, one of the older boys found a skull while digging for arrowheads. It was just another local legend never to be proven.
Dan knew all about local legends. He was one himself: an Indian that lived out in the woods until Silas Dawson sold him half his farm and he befriended John Dawson and his young wife thirty years before. No one saw him much in town except for the Dawsons. Chippewas were, with a cruel irony, not welcomed in most of Chippewa Falls' establishments.
"So tell me how you hooked that bear, Dan," Jack prodded, hoping for a story as they headed back to the farm after a long day of fishing. Jack's father usually took him, but John and Mary were more than preoccupied nowadays and Jack took the news of his adoption a little hard.
"I've told you that one already," Dan laughed. He was tall and muscular with a scar over his left eyebrow. He kept his hair long and flowing, usually cascading over an old flannel shirt.
"You've been telling it to me my whole life. What's one more time gonna do?"
"Fill you're head with more crazy adventures. You do embellish quite a bit in your own stories. I'd hate to think that's my influence." "Aw, come on, Dan. It's a damn uncreative mind that just tells it as it happened."
"Does your mama know you use that language?"
"Only since you and Dad taught it to me.mostly you." Jack knocked Dan in the side with his pail and ran through the woods. They stopped near the water line. Dan caught up with him wrestled him to the ground.
"Sometimes I wonder how you'll be a man with all this horseplay," Dan breathed, adjusting himself up against a tree.
"Why? All the girls love it," Jack smiled.
"You were always the winner with the young women, Jack. Hope you're not getting into too much horseplay with them."
"Nah, .I ain't kissed a girl yet," said the boy sheepishly/
"That's alright, you've got time."
"I plan on kissin' a lot-but not too many. But a fair amount."
"Well, it's good to know you've got your priorities set," Dan twisted his mouth and scratched the stubble on his chin. "You know there's a little more than kissing.right?" He wasn't sure if this was good territory to venture into, not being the boy's father.
"Yeah, I know about the ways of life. Found out right on Main Street. Dick Jameson and Rodney Pepper will tell you anything-with details-if you ask. Spent plenty of pennies on getting them to tell me about girls and what to do with them and how hit a guy right so you break his jaw and headless Gertrude."
"Dick and Rodney have been working over at the mills for over five years, when did they tell you all this?"
"I was nine." Jack cheekily cocked his head and clasped his hands behind his head, leaning back. "And with all that information you still have never picked a fight or kissed a girl."
"All in good time. But they still failed to tell me I was adopted and that there's no Midwest Historical Society." Jack folded his arms as a challenge. By then his parents had told him that it was Dan who found him.
Dan closed his eyes for a moment and nodded slowly. "Yes, I found you by the stream one morning when I was fishing for lunch."
"I know all that. Didn't you ever search for my real parents? Who left me there?"
"We don't know. We never found them.Jack, the best thing anybody ever did for you before I took you in my arms that day was leave you by that stream. Only a person as lucky as yourself gets parents like the ones you got."
Jack got a walked around. "They've been lying to me about more than one thing my whole life."
"Jack, they couldn't have told you weren't theirs from day one. Or maybe they could have broken it to when you were three. You wouldn't have understood."
"They waited till I found out by accident. I'm fifteen years old! And what about this stupid Historical Society they don't work for? I can understand a whole lot now. I'm young, but I'm not stupid."
"There are some things the logical mind would not understand."
Logical mind? What was he trying to do, flatter him?
"Adoption I can understand pretty well. I know they're more my parents then anybody else and they love me. I'll get over it. But what are they now, cult leaders?" It was annoying him that Dan just sat there.
"I won't lie to you, Jack I know the answers to all your questions. But what I don't know is where it's my place to say. And I know what you're going to say, you're your own person and I should give you what you ask for, but trust me on this one, trust all us. When we get home, I'll talk to your parents. Then we'll all talk.is it a deal?" Dan got up and extended his hand. Jack sighed. "It's a deal."
"You'll be a great man one day, Jack," Dan said, he could feel it. Not everyone's destiny was set in stone. No accident or untimely death might ever befall the boy, but he could feel it in his bones.
"Eh, greatness is all hype. I just wanna draw." Jack waved his hand, not understanding what Dan meant. People were always telling him how talented he was, how smart he was. He could've grown up to be an egotist; lucky the boy was just a little cocky.
Dan looked as if he were about to say something and stopped suddenly. "Go on ahead," he said, "I'll catch up later."
"What is it?"
"Just go on ahead, son," he said, "tell your parents I'm going to speak with them when I get back. I want you to drop all your things and run."
There was something wrong; Jack knew it. Dan had a look on his face that said he might not be coming back to the farm.
"Dan."
"Just go, dammit!" Jack, rarely seeing such immediacy in Dan, turned around to follow orders when he met up with a blade to his throat. The cold blade slowly lifted his head to look into steel gray eyes. It was a man much taller than, and Jack was a tall young man, nearly six feet and still growing. This man had brown hair slicked back and high, imposing cheekbones. He smelled like expensive cologne.
"You brought a fresh one, Dan Patterson.is that what you're calling yourself nowadays?" the man spoke.
"He isn't part of this, Clement."
"He will be one day, better prepare him." The man, Clement smiled. "But it's your parents that are interesting. They knew I was coming. They sent someone.for the boy I can only assume, maybe to warn you too." he smiled and put his finger to his lips and he slowly pulled back the sword from Jack's throat, "that was a mistake."
Jack walked backwards and right into Dan who had already pulled out his own sword from the rowboat. It was unreal.
Dan thrust forward at Clement with a loud clash of blades.
"Run, Jack!"
Jack turned around and ran several yards downstream and dove under a log covered by brush. He was soaked through and nearly waist deep in the water, but he didn't notice. He just kept his eyes fixed on Dan.
Dan continued to fight the stranger. This was more incredible than any tall tale Dan had ever told of his adventures or ancient stories passed down from generations. But he didn't think about that. He was more scared than he had ever been in his whole life.
Dan, like Jack had always seen him, was only second in strength and cunning to his father, but with one clean run through with Clement's sword, he was done for.
"Dan!" Jack cried no longer able to hide, once to frightened to move, now too frenzied to stay still. He ran for him as Clement prepared for yet another blow. Clement raised his sword and took Dan's head clean off.
Jack stopped.
He dropped to his knees in horror. Dan had just been beheaded. Now this Clement, this stranger who had just that night waltzed in front of them, waited.and smiled.
A haze past over the body of his life long friend and a lightening bolt shot clear up his murderer. Then more. And more until he thought the whole woods would explode. Trees burst all around him and only then did Jack duck and cover.
When Jack awoke it was completely dark. He must have fainted. Struggling to his feet, he looked around for Dan, his body and his head rested where Jack had left. Clement was nowhere in sight. Unable to stand the sight Jack fled through the woods with only one goal: home. As he ran he tripped over something. He scrambled on the ground to find a person, Ted Rawlings, one of the other clerks from his parents' bookshop. He was dead. Someone stabbed him.
Jack kept on running through the woods, not stopping at the sight of flames coming from the clearing ahead. He crashed into the fence running along Dan's yard and jumped over it, ignoring the pain and splinters in his knees. It was clear now that the ball of fire was his house.
Even Dan was gone from his mind now. He had to get to his parents.
"Mama! Dad!" he yelled. His home was just a roaring ball of flames. It hurt to stand less than twenty feet from it.
Again he pleaded, now in tears, "Mama! Dad!"
There was always a chance they weren't in there, but where else could they be? He was too afraid to leave. He collapsed to the ground and wretched.
He didn't notice the man coming up behind him until he felt cold steel on his back. He looked up in unspeakable rage.
"I don't know what your people are, boy, but I don't like being watched," Clement lowered his eyes, "I saved this for you." He tossed a gold necklace into Jack's hand. It was his mother's. "Southern women, they can scream.I that was before I killed them."
Jack lunged himself at Clement with a primal scream. Clement struck him in the face and Jack fell to the ground unconscious.
"When you're worth it."
Jack fled Chippewa Falls the next day. He knew now what his parents had been trying to protect him from his whole life. With the little money and supplies he had, he fled the states as well. The only valuable he had was his mother's necklace. The strange figure on his parents' wrist used to hang from her neck as well. They said it was ancient Indian symbol.
After months of darkness and anger, and a couple years of misery and loneliness he found new life. He spent some time by the Santa Monica Pier and started drawing again. Late in 1910 he was traveling through Europe and met another young man the same age, Fabrizio De Rossi, who traveled with him on his adventures across the continent. In Paris, they met an unlikely mentor and friend, one-legged woman who was a con artist by day and a prostitute by night. Early in 1912 Tessa Dupont made enough dirty money to leave Paris and fled the police to the French countryside as her young, slightly more law-abiding friends left for Germany and Austria, then the British Isles.