Trashers:
Post Past
Reintarnation
January
2013
Scrappy
Story from Foster Foto File
“I've
almost got it!” exclaimed Running Waters. “I could feel the
suspension. I was up! Well, for a second anyway." He shook his head.
At the Compound rreal names were prohibited. Code names ran to the Native American:
Running Waters. Waits Like a Bird. No one had a past, only the
interactions of the day's workout. They knew one another only by
their gifts.
A secret file emerged for each child, unknown even to them. They were
unaware of their former days, the horror of rejection having been
blocked out by their own survival amnesia. As the files grew, so did their existences, so did their powers. They came from oblivion into the world by virtue of Story.
Each of
these children had been rescued by the Trashers, as they were called,
homeless and resourceful young people who picked through garbage
bins that lined urban streets before sunrise, before the grinding
trucks came. The Trashers could sense a treasure
in a particular bin and would dive in to recover the unexamined and
unrecognized refuse of the city. They had an eye.
“Good
heavens! Half a skein of yarn. And it's not tangled!” Marlena
exclaimed, waving a stream of red yarn for the others to see and draw
hope from.
“OMG!”
Bethany breathed a few minutes later. “A stack, a whole stack of
file folders. They've barely been used.”
“I
think...I think...I hope. Yes!” Bill leapt down into a green bin across the street.
“Ribbons! Still on the spool, a dozen of them!”
Their
enthusiastic calls joined those of the early-morning birds.
Fourteen-year old Frankie,
whose limp kept him from keeping up with the others, never found
much, not having the sense or really even the appreciation for the
potential of these goods. But he enjoyed joining his friends in the
hunt, lagging behind with the rusty red wagon to collect their finds.
Today, he pulled a child's tattered pink suitcase overflowing with discarded
snapshots spilling out onto the street. Brushing back his tangled locks, Frank paused to pick them up,
making sure every bit of the booty got back to the store.
If you
wanted to call it a store. The place had a website and a phone number, some
volunteers and regular hours. It accepted money. But its
merchandise consisted of these bin collections, somewhat organized
into categories and shelves that filled a 10 x 30 basement room,
hardly big enough for more that three customers at a time. There,
other scavengers came from all around to pick through the collected
bounty to enrich their own possibilities. These people were makers and other artists
who knew how to make use of the tile samples, old tempera paint,
markers, and game boards without pieces. Or pieces without game
boards. And the continually growing pile of old snapshots,
uninteresting without the challenge of innovation.
Elizabeth
and her grandmama stumbled upon the flat of photos at the end of a
morning spent sifting through every nook and cranny of the
cluttered room.
Elizabeth
held up a picture of a young woman tending to an elderly dog, “These
would make great story starters,” she suggested, not unlike a real
Trasher. They rummaged through the box, rejecting some, remarking on
others, gathering ideas, finally winnowing down to twenty
provocative images and ten more
just because.
“You
know, these photos meant something to someone at one time,”
Elizabeth mused on the way back to ghe car. “They were valued. And
then, like unwanted children, they became neglected and finally
thrown away.”
“Foster
photos,” her grandmama agreed.
Elizabeth
brightened. “And now we will be giving them a second chance.”
"Tarnation! A
second chance!” Grandmama exclaimed. We'll take them home and give
them another life.”
“My
blog!” Elizabeth was off and running. “We will choose one
picture a month to feature and write about. We will include our own
stories and invite others to write their own stories with us. The
pictures and their people will become internationally famous, once we put them on the
web.”
Later,
that same day the grandmother, dutifully, and Elizabeth gathered writing materials:
a smoothly-flowing pen, a yellow tablet and a found photo. They
propped themselves with several pillows onto the guest bed, and took a
good look at the photo, an accidental shot that captured a pair of
young bare legs leaping across the room with a couple of other young people
in the background. Their heads had been cut off by the camera.
They sat in silence for a few reflective minutes. The grandmother thought, A
secret Black Ops group is learning to fly. These
students go by nicknames to protect their identities. I don't know
why. That's classified. Each is working on a different flight skill. In the back is Bees Knees maintaining
a lift hold. In the foreground Running Waters is practicing long leaps before graduating to levitation and actual flight. Off to one side is Laughing Eyes, who is
observing and working on the most fundamental skill of all for
personal flight, relaxation.
She set
the pentip on the page to let it go to work:
“I've
almost got it!” exclaimed Running Waters. “I could feel the
suspension. I was up! Well, for a second anyway.”
The
story took legs, along with Running Waters, with Grandmama barely managing to hold onto the pen as the characters emerged. Lizzie posted it that
evening on the blog.
From
that day, other story writers supplied various pasts for the foster
photos. Frozen people in the pictures were provided names
and contexts that brought meaning back to their forgotten and discarded
moments. They did indeed live again to tell the tale.
