Firebird

The open road had always taken good care of me. I had been into driving my entire life. It seemed like a great way to escape. When my mom decided to leave me and my dad when i was about 3, dad drove for 3 days. He said he was looking for mommy, but now I know he just needed to drive. So we piled into his old diesel pickup, and we rolled out on the vast Arizona roads and headed east to the flatlands and just drove. Drove until the bank account got a little less flush and we had enough for the couple of tanks of fuel we needed to get home. I remember him filling up from gas cans for us to make it back to the house. 

This is my first memory.



My next memory is my dad selling the house for an ancient Peterbuilt Semi. He straight traded that old Ranch house in The outskirts of Phoenix for a 20 some odd year old Peterbuilt and started doing local jobs. We would sleep in the rank old sleeper area in the back at night. The door didn't lock so well, so he would hold it shut with his foot at night, sleeping with his arm under the pillow. I didn't figure out until years later that he had a colt revolver with a single FMJ loaded into her underneath that pillow. I would just stay up and play with my cars all night long. all of my cars.




I remember him receiving a call, patched through the CB while we were doing a big regional run. My dad insisted that I did school, so it interrupted the CB radio school lesson I was listening to while we were driving out to our destination. I heard the Arizona State Police get on, asking my dad something about a hidden room in the house we sold, and that he was technically still the owner as the Deed wasn't transferred appropriately. Something about Coming back to Arizona for questioning.



My dad disconnected the CB radio and told me with a big smile that school was all done for the day. I cheered and bounced into the back of the truck to play with my race cars.



My Dad finally saved up enough cash for us to buy a small trailer in Tennessee. Way up in the Blue Mountains. I grew up there, and fell in love with girls, and rode bikes, and had a Nintendo. Except for that First few years of my life, I grew up fairly Natural. Things were great. I got into cars at around 16, once I got my license, and started building an ancient Firebird that my Dad had dug out of the junkyard down the street as the motor spun free. My dad took a month off Hauling to get her running with me before my License Test. I passed the first try. In my New Firebird. I loved that car. I still drive her. She keeps me close with my dad, God rest his soul.



Nowadays, I still live in that trailer up in Tennessee, though I never stop home much. I do transport of a different kind. I've been running small, important packages back and forth across the country in a somewhat legal courier service for years now. I had built up a good clientele, and the folks I worked with trusted me well enough. Contraband never seemed to be drugs or anything of the like, least I never seemed to get attention like the drug runners would. We usually parked our cars to sleep in the same rest stops out in the middle of nowhere, so I knew that I was doing something a little different. But the pay was good, and it kept m on the road in the Firebird, so I never much worried about anything else.



Company  I work for is a corporation called Applied Logistic Technologies LLC. They're a pretty large outfit, though nobody has ever heard of them. I got a pension, good benefits...hell, they even pay for my car repairs. I've gotten myself some damn good parts for the Firebird thanks to them. I even ended up building myself a damn nice garage out behind the trailer with the pay I get.



Then the other day I stopped back home to grab my mail and get any bills paid I might not have the last time I rolled on back to the homestead. I Pulled the Firebird into the garage, and pulled the steel door shut with a slam. As I walked bock over to the house to check the mail, I noticed that there was quite a substantial package in the mail box.



Inside of the mail box was the usual junk mail, a few bills I needed to pay, and a large manilla envelops that seemed overfull of papers. Was this some type of bullshit training booklet from work I needed to read? There was no return address, and there was a note card packing taped to the front with my Address. Nobody knows my address save for my boss.



Scrawled across the bottom, in marker, different from the pen used to write the address it said "OPEN IMMEDIATELY"



Not sure what it was about that package, but it made me feel uneasy. Not just the fact that nobody knew my address, but more like it was sent by somebody in trouble. The address seemed to be written hastily by someone who was in no place to send mail. The marker made it all the stranger. It looked like the same handwriting, but it was written seemingly at the post office, just before it was sent. The lettering was slightly smudged like it got rubbed against other mail after it was dropped din the box. The Envelope looked like it had been used about 50 times before, maybe to mail things, maybe just to hold this same pack of papers.



I set that package on my table, dealt with my other mail, and sat across the room from it, drinking beer staring at it for what felt like the entire night. I know it doesn't make a damn lick of sense, but it seemed like that package had something ominous about it, like it had a life of its own.



I finished my beer, and laughed at myself. What am I doing, being afraid of a damn package? I laughed out loud a bit, stood up, and went over to the package and cracked it open with my Bowie Knife, cutting it along the far edge near the top flap that was taped shut. I slid out the stack of paper.



It was a book, but the covers had been cut off. the spine was gone as well. Just the glue that held the pages together remained, some of it falling off in strings along the sides. The title page read "Applied Divination, Volume 1"



I laughed out loud "What a pile of horse shit" I said and went to the fridge to crack another beer and paw through this ridiculous package my secret admirer had apparently sent me.



I turned around to look at the title page again to have another laugh.



It read "SPEAK YOUR FULL NAME" In bold, block letters. directly below the title on the front page. It hadn't been there before. This was only my second beer, no way I missed that.



I stood there for a long time, looking at the words  and finished about half my beer. I turned off the TV in the other room, and turned the lights down. I'm still not sure why, but It felt like what needed to happen. I sat down in front of the book.



"John Able"



nothing Happened.



I smiled and finished my beer. What a stupid book, must have had some time release ink on the front page to make it seem magic. I turned the front page and went to the next one.



"YOUR REAL NAME"



I stared at those words a long time. I felt my stomach drop. Nobody had ever expected I had another last name since I was about 4 years old. My dad had changed our names to Able right after that call from the AZ police.



I cracked another beer, and grabbed the Jack off the kitchen counter. I set them down on either side of the book, making it look like some kind of weird hillbilly shrine.

I took a swig of the Jack, and set it back down softly next to the book. I cleared my throat, Not sure why, I guess so the book can hear my real name well enough.

"John Arnow" I said under my breath.

I took a sip of my beer, not taking my eyes off of the book. Nothing happened.

I laughed at myself for believing  in this kind of bullshit, even if just for a moment. I took another sip of my beer to get the burn from the Jack out of the back off my throat.

Then the covers of the book regrew. They seemed to just slide out of the nonexistent spine. They were blood red, and made of solid leather. There were brass rivets down the spine as it appeared. It looked like the book was one of those books rich folk put on their bookshelves as collector's items. On the spine, burned into the leather, and still warm to the touch it said in block letters "APPLIED DDIVINATION: VOLUME ONE"

After the book stopped shuffling on my table, it fell open to a page about halfway through the book, the pages were empty. Then they started writing like someone was drafting a letter to me somewhere else.  The letters appeared in beautiful curling cursive which looks very similar to fine calligraphy. 

Dear John,

I know this is hard to believe, but this is your mother writing to you.  I know I've been gone your entire life, and I'm sorry, but I had to be. Hopefully we'll meet soon and I can explain everything to you. I don't know how long I can write to you so I'll be quick.



The company you work for is after you. They've already captured me, and I'm writing form their testing facility where the run tests to see If I have any type of magical power. I don't. I simply know how to use the sight, just like you can learn as well. this book is the book that taught me everything I know.  The company hired you doing something that you're good at because they want to keep an eye on you. They make money using these magical powers to create military weapons. You have nothing to offer them, just like me. Now that my book is gone, I have only memory to work off of, and I'll quickly become a failed experiment. Hopefully I can escape. Hopefully they don’t realize that The book is what's missing. Hopefully we Can find each other. If you want to meet me, I will be at the Chop Shop Cafe in Addison, Alabama in three days time. Tear this page from the book before it starts to burn, the page mimics whatever I do to it, and I'm going to burn it now.






I love you.






There was no signature. The page started to burn slightly at the corner of the page, and I tore it from the book and threw it outside as fast as i could. I stood at my doorway and watched it slowly burn as I finished my beer.



I went inside and cracked another beer, and went out to the garage to work on the Firebird, and to think.

TO BE CONTINUED