Chapter 5

It is curious how different New York feels from Oakhurst. One is filled with people and swift movement; the other with hushed remembrance. Yet both are occupied by survivors, the same past weighing on them, though through very different futures. I had promised Shelby copies of any documents concerning Jack that I managed to uncover outside of Oakhurst. True to my word, I returned to New York with reproductions of the Pyroscythe family letters from the British Library. I had hoped they might answer questions that neither the residents of Oakhurst nor the New Yorkers had ever been able to.

They did. Though perhaps not the ones any of us had expected. Shelby read all three letters without interruption. When she finished, she remained silent for some time before setting the final page down. She eventually remarked that she had often wondered where Jack had learned to be so unrelenting whenever he believed something needed to be done. It had never occurred to her that the answer might lie long before Oakhurst. Scott read Franz Pyroscythe's letter after Shelby had finished with it. His only comment was that men such as Jack's father had never been particularly uncommon, regardless of the century. Shelby replied that there was a difference between becoming ruthless to survive and being raised to believe ruthlessness was the only way to survive. Scott listened, but said nothing further.

Drift, on the other hand, spent the greatest amount of time with the report from Harrow School. She seemed to pause and ponder more than once over the passages describing at length Jack's aptitude for languages, literature and history, and over the account of his fascination with English folklore. The diary had already revealed much of what interested him; these letters instead revealed the circumstances in which those interests had developed, and who the younger Jack had been. It struck me then how easy it is to begin a person's story at the point where they enter the history one intends to study. Jack first appeared in mine through the tragedy of Oakhurst. These letters served as a reminder that, before any of that, he had simply been a child. By every surviving account, an exceptionally gifted one, though not necessarily a happy one.

Then, when Shelby handed the copies back to me, she said only that she wished they had found them years ago. I inquired whether she thought they would have changed anything. After some consideration, she answered that they probably would not have, that perhaps they would only have understood him a little sooner.

I suspect that is the greatest value these documents possess. They do not change the history of Oakhurst, nor do they excuse any of the choices that followed. They merely provide context to a life that, until now, had seemed to begin only upon reaching Oakhurst. History is oftentimes guilty of withholding even its smallest minutiae. Whether these letters changed anything at all, I cannot say. They did, however, reveal a part of Jack's life that none of us had been able to see before.

- J.P.

From J.P's journal
by adesa_arts