MPC 90A: Jack the Ax
Sept 29, 2021 1:35:14 GMT
Post by supesman on Sept 29, 2021 1:35:14 GMT
"Sometimes, even when the world is telling you your wrong, you have to know what's right." Zack says, sitting across from Marigold in on the front lawn of their new manor house shelter, a bonfire the best they can do with the fireplace in the actual house in such a state of disrepair. Zack was finally caving, telling Marigold about some of her ancestors, some of the family she had been adopted into. "That's what my ancestor, Grant Zello, knew and it's something my family has always carried with us." He said, taking a deep breath, stoking the fire and looking into it. This was going to be a long story and he wanted to be able to tell it all in one go.
"Grant Zello was born in the same town in nowhere, Maine that I was. Back when the town was the lumber transportation capital of the world." he said, describing a tall, strapping man with dark hair and green eyes that was accompanied by the thwack, thwack, thwack of falling trees, possessed of broad shoulders and calloused hands. "He worked day in and day out, living a life so simple and humble that he barely noticed the turn of the twentieth century go by. he got up, he went to work, he did what he could for his friends and his neighbors until...something changed. A new sort of folk moved into town. They were immigrants from Germany, they were the Baermanns and they were Jewish." he said, visibly wincing at this part of the story, he had heard it so many times and still silently raged at the ignorance and hatred of people removed from him in time by a hundred years. "They were a good sort, hard working, kind and intelligent. Always willing to pitch in where they could. To Grant and his family, that was all that mattered. To some other people in the town...it didn't matter what the Baermanns did." He said, looking into the fire, past it into Marigold's eyes, imprinting on her a long list of injustices that humans had committed on one another for little to no reason at all. She had always been confused by that, so was he, and it didn't seem like either of them were going to figure it all out any time soon.
"Painted slurs on the front of their home, dangerous and toxic hazing to their father and sons who worked in the same lumber yards and Grant...and then one day it boiled over. Someone loosened an ax head, just a little...just enough. And Abraham Baermann lived the rest of his life with one leg and a thousand yard stare." He sat back, looking up at the stars, letting out a deep breath so that he could pursued himself to continue. Marigold yelped, flinching and withdrawing from the fire at the mental image. "Abraham's son, Zachary, confided in Grant one night at a bar, said he wanted to do something about it. To bust into their bigoted boys club and wreck the place, put the same fear in those monsters that they had put into his family and anyone else that wasn't like them. My ancestor, Grant, agreed." he said, tossing another bit of wood onto the fire, jumpscaring his insectoid daughter with the sudden thud and crackle of the flames.
"Grant helped Zachary train for months, turned his hands into weapons, and even more dangerous ones with an Ax between them." He held up his hands, casting a long, dark shadow behind himself as he closed his fingers around a phantom ax handle. "That night, the lodge where the "good old boys" spent their days drinking and simmering in their hatred was smashed open by a single man in a black sack hood with an ax by his side. Nobody died, but nobody ever bothered the Baermanns again either. People began to whisper, and the hateful folk began to shake. Whispering to one another in their lodges and camps about a man they called "Jack the Ax"." He said, again looking at her through the flames, the shadows dancing across his face almost becoming a pantomime of the black sack hood that Zachary Baermann had once worn all those years ago.
"And ever after that, anyone who took to that kind of talk or action on our streets lived his life in fear of that man. The police, the newspapers, the government said he was a terrorist. An anarchist, attacking good, clean, christian America. Not hard to read between the lines on that particular score." He said, a grin of satisfaction spreading from one side of his face to the other as he neared the point of this story, the thing he wanted to impress onto his young daughter. "But they were wrong. Sometimes, what's right is right, and protecting people is more important than following the letter of the law. Sometimes, especially when the people in charge are corrupt, you have to hold in your heart the things that you know to be right." He said, letting his hand run over his collarbone and then placing his palm over his heart, feeling a kinship with the two men of his tale across a century of time and thousands of miles of space. "They never did find the man in that black sack hood. They never found out who it was either. Bigots in my town still whisper to themselves superstitiously about being haunted by the ghost of Jack the Ax. Because even with Zachary Baermann and Grant Zello long in the ground, when you erect a symbol like that. It has a tendancy to outlive you." He said, finally standing up from the fire place, upending a prepared bucket of water onto the crackling wooden blaze, though not before the visor of his helmet caught the roaring orange and crimson light taking on the sparkling gaze of a grinning Jack-o-Lantern.
There it was. The old mantra. The truth of the matter. A hero is something more than a man. And their shadows look as large as his did, casting itself over the grass in the last dying embers.
"Grant Zello was born in the same town in nowhere, Maine that I was. Back when the town was the lumber transportation capital of the world." he said, describing a tall, strapping man with dark hair and green eyes that was accompanied by the thwack, thwack, thwack of falling trees, possessed of broad shoulders and calloused hands. "He worked day in and day out, living a life so simple and humble that he barely noticed the turn of the twentieth century go by. he got up, he went to work, he did what he could for his friends and his neighbors until...something changed. A new sort of folk moved into town. They were immigrants from Germany, they were the Baermanns and they were Jewish." he said, visibly wincing at this part of the story, he had heard it so many times and still silently raged at the ignorance and hatred of people removed from him in time by a hundred years. "They were a good sort, hard working, kind and intelligent. Always willing to pitch in where they could. To Grant and his family, that was all that mattered. To some other people in the town...it didn't matter what the Baermanns did." He said, looking into the fire, past it into Marigold's eyes, imprinting on her a long list of injustices that humans had committed on one another for little to no reason at all. She had always been confused by that, so was he, and it didn't seem like either of them were going to figure it all out any time soon.
"Painted slurs on the front of their home, dangerous and toxic hazing to their father and sons who worked in the same lumber yards and Grant...and then one day it boiled over. Someone loosened an ax head, just a little...just enough. And Abraham Baermann lived the rest of his life with one leg and a thousand yard stare." He sat back, looking up at the stars, letting out a deep breath so that he could pursued himself to continue. Marigold yelped, flinching and withdrawing from the fire at the mental image. "Abraham's son, Zachary, confided in Grant one night at a bar, said he wanted to do something about it. To bust into their bigoted boys club and wreck the place, put the same fear in those monsters that they had put into his family and anyone else that wasn't like them. My ancestor, Grant, agreed." he said, tossing another bit of wood onto the fire, jumpscaring his insectoid daughter with the sudden thud and crackle of the flames.
"Grant helped Zachary train for months, turned his hands into weapons, and even more dangerous ones with an Ax between them." He held up his hands, casting a long, dark shadow behind himself as he closed his fingers around a phantom ax handle. "That night, the lodge where the "good old boys" spent their days drinking and simmering in their hatred was smashed open by a single man in a black sack hood with an ax by his side. Nobody died, but nobody ever bothered the Baermanns again either. People began to whisper, and the hateful folk began to shake. Whispering to one another in their lodges and camps about a man they called "Jack the Ax"." He said, again looking at her through the flames, the shadows dancing across his face almost becoming a pantomime of the black sack hood that Zachary Baermann had once worn all those years ago.
"And ever after that, anyone who took to that kind of talk or action on our streets lived his life in fear of that man. The police, the newspapers, the government said he was a terrorist. An anarchist, attacking good, clean, christian America. Not hard to read between the lines on that particular score." He said, a grin of satisfaction spreading from one side of his face to the other as he neared the point of this story, the thing he wanted to impress onto his young daughter. "But they were wrong. Sometimes, what's right is right, and protecting people is more important than following the letter of the law. Sometimes, especially when the people in charge are corrupt, you have to hold in your heart the things that you know to be right." He said, letting his hand run over his collarbone and then placing his palm over his heart, feeling a kinship with the two men of his tale across a century of time and thousands of miles of space. "They never did find the man in that black sack hood. They never found out who it was either. Bigots in my town still whisper to themselves superstitiously about being haunted by the ghost of Jack the Ax. Because even with Zachary Baermann and Grant Zello long in the ground, when you erect a symbol like that. It has a tendancy to outlive you." He said, finally standing up from the fire place, upending a prepared bucket of water onto the crackling wooden blaze, though not before the visor of his helmet caught the roaring orange and crimson light taking on the sparkling gaze of a grinning Jack-o-Lantern.
There it was. The old mantra. The truth of the matter. A hero is something more than a man. And their shadows look as large as his did, casting itself over the grass in the last dying embers.