Four and Twenty Blackbirds by Cherie Priest Read Free Book Online Page A

and Mr. Wicks answered for them both. "That depends on the circumstances. We could have sat down and talked things through, and if she was being rude or unkind—then we would have taken action."
    "Like what?"
    "That depends. But you have to leave that up to us. We're the ones who make the decisions around here."
    I sat silent for another moment, growing calmer before looking at either of them. A lesson was coming together, and I sensed it was important. Behind me a pair of high heels clattered on the shiny floor, and phones rang at the check-in desk. Oh yes, it was a hotel now. I looked over my shoulder and out the front windows beside the doors. Across the road the sad, sagging ruins of other hotels and restaurants forlornly decayed to uniform shades of gray.
    I raised my eyes. "Can I ask you something?"
    They nodded, once again in full accord aligned against me.
    "Why is this still here? I mean, people take care of it and keep it pretty. It's not like the rest of everything out here that looks like it's going to fall down any second. Didn't you guys see when we were driving here? The Choo Choo isn't like everything around it. It's different, but people protect it and love it, they don't abandon it or tear it down. This whole part of town looks like it got sick and died. Why does this place still look alive?"
    After a few seconds of blank stares from them both, the reading teacher shrugged and softened a little. "I guess because, well, just because it was able to evolve. When it couldn't be one thing anymore, it became something else and kept on living that way . . . and it did it with style."
    "But it's not the same."
    "But it's still here," she restated my point without contributing anything new. "In the end it outlasted everything else."
    So that was it—the lesson unintended.
    Yes, it was important indeed. I learned more on that field trip than my school had ever expected, though it wasn't from the teachers. I learned volumes more than I might have gleaned from a blackboard, and I learned it from a big brick hotel that patiently wore a tacky neon sign like a plastic crown—not because it looked good but because it had become a necessity.
    I closed my eyes again, wanting to remember the beauty of the place instead of my violence there. I listened for the churning engines of long-rusted trains, straining to hear them dragging themselves along the tracks and puffing to a laborious stop. I did not see them on that visit, but in the rear of the hotel, dozens of retired passenger cars were permanently parked on the remaining tracks. Gradually they were being renovated and restored, eventually to become luxury hotel rooms. All the ghosts in the old Pullman and Cincinnati cars cried out the rueful truth in voices like whistles, steam, and crackling lumps of burning coal.
    Now you know, now you know. It is not enough to simply survive and to be victorious . . . it must be done with grace.
    4
Interregnum
    I
    The summer I turned thirteen, Lu and Dave sent me to Camp Lookout, on the next mountain over. I was none too pleased with the prospect, initially, but once I got there it was all right. It wasn't a full-fledged summer camp, anyway—it only ran for two weeks out of the year, and I was near enough to home that a phone call would probably have summoned my aunt and uncle faster than a pizza.
    I tried not to feel too betrayed as they drove off and left me, and I tried to remember that it was only a couple of weeks. This was supposed to be fun. Dave said that I was there to taste some independence, and when he put it that way, it didn't sound so bad.
    The camp itself was civilized enough, which is to say, at least there weren't any tents. I didn't like the thought of tents. I like having more between me and the elements than a thin sheet of canvas, and I've never seen the point of going out of your way to pretend you haven't got any plumbing. Therefore, I was greatly reassured by the sight of cabins and a