Story #32 - Charleston County

Hi everyone! This story's a bit different than my usual. I had fun with it. It involves a sort of distant, semi-ominescent narrator and a more specific setting than is used in most of my stories. Also, it has only second-hand action and little dialogue, and a very specific voice. I'd love to know what you think about it! :)

Title: Charleston County
Warnings: references to bullying
Summary:  Charleston County - "Where even the squirrels can do no wrong."
Length: ~2,000 words
Notes: First person point of view, past tense. Genre is... um... I'm going to put it as "other" for the moment.


Charleston County

Charleston County had always considered itself to be a moral, upstanding, God-fearing community. The sign welcoming visitors to the place announced, “Welcome to Charleston County, where even the squirrels can do no wrong!” Yes, I’ve thought that maybe they were a little full of themselves, the people of Charleston County. But in their defense, they had good reason to be. They had the lowest crime rates of all the South, and the highest happiness rates. None of them were really sure what “happiness rates” measured exactly, but surely having the highest ones were a good thing.

Charleston County was the kind of place where you could walk down the street and people would tip their hats to you and say hello. The place where you could drop a lemon and someone would pick it up for you. Not that you’d want the lemon after it’d been on the ground, but that wasn’t the point. In Charleston County, you could walk into a church (there were many churches there) and they’d welcome you like you were the second coming of Jesus. Well, that wasn’t a perfect simile, considering the second coming of Jesus technically meant the end of the world, and people might not be super welcoming of that. But the point was that the people of Charleston County made everyone feel very welcome. Everyone, that is, except for Louie Palsco.

I don’t know what it was about Louie. He wasn’t a bad kid. He wasn’t any different from any of them, really. He dressed in khaki pants and a white collared shirt. He never wore jeans. He went to church every Sunday. He enjoyed playing baseball. He seemed like a normal enough kid, but there must have been something off about him, something vulnerable. It was enough to make all of the kids of Charleston County High jump at him every moment of every day.

Some of the stories Louie told me… jeez. All I can say is I’ve never heard of more mischievous, borderline-cruel kids as those who lived in the County Where Even the Squirrels Can Do No Wrong. Louie was the butt of everyone’s practical jokes and pranks. He was the kid that people stuffed into lockers and flushed down toilets. Well, flushed their heads down toilets. I’d never heard of anyone actually doing that, but they did that to Louie. He was their scapegoat, too. Anytime something went wrong, it was all – “Louie did it.”

I think maybe it was because Louie looks a bit like a baby bird. Knobby knees, skinny arms, big brown eyes. Except I don’t think birds have brown eyes, but you get the point. He looks like if he had any feathers they’d be either soft and downy and useless or wet and sopping and sad. He has a sharp small nose. He even sounds a bit like a baby bird. Kids can’t resist heckling baby birds, even moral, upstanding, God-fearing kids.

Louie told me that he spent a lot of his time growing up trying to figure out why everyone was so mean to him. He had a lot of theories. At one point he thought he was a changeling, found somewhere unknown outside of Charleston County and adopted by his parents. That would explain why no one seemed to let him fit in. (This theory was disapproved when he realized how much he looked like his parents.) He had another theory that it was because he collected Pokémon cards like there was no tomorrow. (He soon found out all of his peers did the same, though.) Sometimes he tried telling himself that everyone was jealous of him and wanted to try to break his cool by pranking him, but he could never really make himself believe that. Probably because he never really had much cool in the first place.

Me, I’m not sure why. But like I said, I think it’s probably because he looks like a baby bird. I haven’t known any baby birds who fall out of their nests that don’t get eaten by cats and stuff. And Charleston County High – well, if you were there, you’d fallen out of the nest. And cats like to play with their food. There’s a coherent metaphor in here somewhere.

Now I can’t possibly give you the whole story here. But I want you to know that Charleston County is not a horrible place. I’ve visited there a couple times, and it’s really flattering to just have people curtsy to you and stuff while you walk around. One priest even offered me a bit of lemonade for free on a very hot day. And Louie did not have a terrible childhood. I mean, maybe he did, a little – he got bullied. But that happens to people, and they can still be happy, you know? I’m not saying what those Charleston County High kids did to Louie was okay. No one should tease another kid that much, and more importantly, no one should single out a kid so much. But what I’m trying to say is, Louie could take it. It was all he’d ever known, really. It got to be just how he went about his life – go to school, avoid classmates, dodge practical jokes and pranks, etc. Smile at people as you walk down the street. Play baseball.

Louie said baseball was the only time when all the guys stopped pranking him. I was a bit surprised at this. I mean, wouldn’t that be the perfect time to trip someone, or something? But I guess that’s the good thing about sports. No one would jeopardize a sports game by teasing someone.

So Louie lived okay. Charleston County carried on okay. But what I really want to tell you about is the day everything changed.

It was all thanks to this kid named Peter Johnson. He was the one to reach out to Louie. I’d like to say that Louie and Johnson are great friends now and go out for tea every Saturday or something, but that’s not true. They went to different colleges, or maybe Johnson didn’t even go to college, but anyways they went their separate ways. No tea parties or anything. But Louie and I will always be grateful to him, and to Father Petty come to think of it, for what he did.

So apparently not everyone could stomach all the teasing of Louie that went on in Charleston County High. I’ve already mentioned that the squirrels could definitely do wrong in Charleston County, despite what the sign said. But I think if they changed that sign to “Welcome to Charleston County, where even the squirrels feel remorse for teasing kids!” they might be a bit more accurate.

Basically, Peter Johnson felt bad about teasing Louie. He realized that there was no reason everyone was picking on him, except that he looked like a baby bird, and baby birds ought to be protected, not eaten. So anyways the guilt ate Johnson up. (Pun intended. Oh maybe that’s not a pun, exactly. Play on words intended? But what is a pun, besides a play on words?) So one day Johnson went to the church (one of them, there were like five or seven, I forget which, but there definitely wasn’t six). He found Father Petty and confessed to him. He probably confessed other stuff too, but I think he mostly confessed about how all of the kids were so mean to Louie who had never done anything to them. Did I mention that? He never did anything to them, although he told me that sometimes he really wanted to.

But anyways. I bet Johnson thought he could just get away with a few Hail Marys and go scot-free and remorse-free too. He probably had brought his rosary and was all set to say a few good ones. But instead, great ole Father Petty (you gotta love that guy, even if he’s got the most unfortunate name on this side of the planet), he told Johnson to apologize to Louie, and ask for his forgiveness.

How do I know this stuff? C’mon, you don’t get as old as I have and not find out the stories behind things. More accurately, you don’t get as bored as I have sometimes and not find out the stories behind things. Especially when sometimes Louie tries to be so secretive. Baby birds can’t keep secrets; he shouldn’t even try. But anyways, back to this story.

So Johnson had to apologize to Louie. The next day he went up to Louie. He was all like, “Hey, Louie, I need to talk to you!” But understandably, Louie wanted nothing to do with him. Louie told me that he thought Johnson was tricking him, getting him to come over so he could throw spitballs at him or something. Except throwing spitballs would actually require a distance, so he wouldn’t get Louie to come close, but anyways you get the point.

Eventually Johnson convinced Louie to talk to him. Louie was still a bit wary (even more so when Johnson said “I’m sorry” and “Can you forgive me?”) but eventually he began to believe that Johnson meant what he said. So Louie, good ole Louie, looked Johnson in the eye even though he had to crane his neck a bit to do it. He looked his tormentor of who-knows-how-many years in the eye and said, “I forgive you.”

And that was that. Johnson nattered on about sports and Louie let him. They never really talked that much again. Like I said, no tea parties. But after that, people stopped making fun of Louie. I don’t really know why. Maybe they realized that forgiveness isn’t really a quality that you find in a baby bird. So they stopped treating him like a baby bird. Louie said he thought that Johnson had his back, after that. That could be it too, maybe. I think maybe the kids were impressed with him. A guy who can forgive another guy who’s been nothing been mean to him for no reason for years – well, that guy’s got to have a big heart. As cheesy as it sounds, I think guys respect guys with big hearts. Guys will respect anything that’s bigger than them.

So Charleston County went on. The guys tipped their hats, the girls curtsied. The churches donated to charity and prayed for people’s souls. And the kids of Charleston County High left Louie alone. Some of them actually became friends with him.

Listen, no one’s perfect, and no place is perfect. I think that’s part of what went wrong, for a bit, with Charleston County. They tried too hard to pretend like they were perfect, and that put pressure on the kids. Pressure they had to take out on someone. But confession, Father Petty, Johnson, guilt and shame, God – they helped put things to rights. Better than put things to rights – they helped Charleston County grow.

No one’s perfect. But I think Louie’s as close as anyone can get. The day that he forgave Peter Johnson, I think he finally grew wings. I think he finally got feathers that weren’t soft or wet. He got primary, patterned feathers that he could use to fly.

And he has flown, many times, since then. He flew out of Charleston County. He flew to me. He’s flown over me, sometimes, with his ability to forgive and forgive and forgive (but never, really, forget). He flew back to Charleston County just last year. He told me the sign still says that thing about the squirrels.

I think they should change it to “Welcome to Charleston County, where through dubious measures we help baby birds grow feathers so they can fly.”

Hey, it’s better than the holy squirrels, right?

Right.

THE END J