A Future Foretold

I’ve always felt that the best stories aren’t too far from the truth. There’s a quality to the truth that is equal parts beguiling and enthralling. Seemingly simple yet so often vexing, the capricious mind led astray by whimsical flights of fancy. Life’s ultimate objective is to find the truth. But what do you do with it? Especially when it is found to be so utterly perplexing that you can’t resist the Nihilistic urge to throw up your hands and shrug your shoulders. Such is fate. The idea of a preordained destiny. Life’s happenings having long been queued leaving man helpless; a marionette on a string, a mere stooge to the mandates of fate . And so it was the case for me something incredible I, Robert Stuyvesant the fourth, learned at the age of fifteen. 

The year was 1963 and I was spending the Spring and Summer working part time in the movie theater a few blocks away from our high school in LaFollette Tennessee. 

“Did you see the way Rex looked at Megan in Sternberger’s class today? He’s completely head over heels. It was cute at first but now it's getting ridiculous. We may need to stage an intervention.” 

I smiled and laughed. “No I’m afraid I missed it. I was too busy sleeping.” 

Mr. Sternberger was a long tenured teacher now well into his seventies. He refused to retire and his “riveting” tales of American History were famous the world over for putting eager young minds to sleep. We called him Mr. Sandman. 

“Anyways, so what’s playing this weekend?”, my friend Stan asked. 

“Oh, a Wayne Western I think and the new James Bond movie, something from Russia” 

“Sounds snooze-worthy if you ask me. You should come to the party this weekend at Dave’s. His folks are out of town. It could be fun.”

“I can’t. I’ve got to give the people their popcorn, you know how it is. And plus I’ve got to help my old man with something. He’s been really ornery lately so I can’t shrug him off.” My father worked in construction and every so often he’d ask me to come help. This was one of the times. He was clearing out some junk from a small, condemned house on the far side of town.

“Oh come on! Well, if you change your mind, and I think you should. Definitely come on over this weekend.”

“Alright, well I’ll see ya tomorrow. I can’t be late home tonight.” 

I hurriedly walked home alone. The streets were lively, it was a beautiful late afternoon in May, the sky clear with a gentle breeze. It was about a twenty minute walk home. I picked up the mail in the box and headed inside, noticing that the old man’s red pickup wasn’t in the driveway. A long day evidently. I shan’t expect the orneriness to cease. My younger brother Kyle wasn’t home either, probably at the park with his friends I guessed. I entered the door and could hear my mother’s voice from the kitchen, “Hi Rob how was school?” 

“Oh, same old. The mail is here on the table. Dad’s late I guess?” 

“Yeah, they’re clearing out that dilapidated house and putting up a new office building. He told you about it didn’t he?” 

“Yeah, several times already. I’m helping him this weekend to clear out some junk.” 

“Oh that sounds like fun!” My mom’s face beamed with a wry, sarcastic grin. 

“Yes, it does, doesn’t it?”

The car door slammed. The old man had arrived. Robert Stuyvesant, third of his name. He was in his fifties, tall, slim, and bald like our country’s preferred bird of prey. 

“Tomorrow. Right after school. No dilly-dallying. Don’t forget!” He grunted as he marched up the stairs to his lair to change. 

“I’ll be there”, I said. And I gave him a faux salute after he disappeared upstairs. 

The next day, right after school let out at two I headed to the ancient house on Baker Street. An old lady had lived there, Moira Breckinridge, she was well over one hundred years of age when she had passed some ten odd years ago. She evidently didn’t have any living relatives so the house fell victim to nature’s entropy and had fallen into dishevelment rather seamlessly. My father, as was his want, often liked to poke around for anything worth salvaging. I had walked by the house a few times but had never been inside it. From the outside, it was a small two-floor house with peeling green paint with a big, equally ancient willow tree in the front yard. 

I walked through the backdoor which led into the kitchen. Inside it was as if a maelstrom had touched down. The drawers in the kitchen cabinet were removed and had been placed atop the table, or what looked like a table at least. There were some pieces of antiquated silverware and an old coffee pot, likely a relic from the Civil War by the looks of it. I could make out the silhouette of my father in what I gathered to be the living room just ahead. The lighting was dim on the count of most of the windows being boarded up. I took a few steps forward, the old floorboards creaking underfoot, and found him rummaging through some antique chairs while holding a small flashlight in his mouth.

 “Here help me get these out of here.” 

He pointed to three dusty chairs, stacked on top of each other next to an old broken bookshelf. After helping him load them into the pickup, we went back inside once more, this time to salvage a mahogany rocking chair. 

Squeezing through the clutter my gaze was drawn to a large wood crate by the foot of a broken bookshelf. My father had set aside some things inside there, an antique lamp and a few books among other things. I dusted off a few of the old tomes, most of them were damaged irreparably by mold but there was one that looked readable. I took a flashlight out of my pocket to get a better look. The illumination revealed a cracked leather-bound cover entitled, “History of Family Breckinridge.” The pages were stiff so I had to turn them carefully. I knew next to nothing about old books but could gather right away that the thing was easily two hundred years old. A few of the pages were torn but from what I could surmise the history of the Breckinridge clan began in the late 1600s near Jamestown. What old Mr. Sandman would do to get his hands on this I thought. I didn’t think much of the first few pages but as I quickly made my way through the last third, something caught my eye. “Robert Stuyvesant the third, married Elizabeth Breckenridge on the third of April, 1946. They would have two sons, Robert born on the 27th of March 1948…would graduate from the University of Georgia and wed Margaret Thompson. They would have two sons Tyler born on the 9th of September 1975 and Samuel born on the 4th of April 1977. Samuel would perish at the age of twelve in a skiing accident…A crash and all of a sudden I could barely see more than a foot or so in front of me. I had dropped the flashlight and my head was spinning. “The hell is going on over there? I thought I told you to be careful!” 

“Yeah, I dropped the flashlight. It slipped.”  

“Alright, well we’re just about done here. You go on ahead and take that crate into the truck. I’ll take this and we’ll leave this place.” 

The crate was probably ticketed to sit in our garage for a while I figured but just in case, I took one of the loose pages and shoved it into my pocket as a memento. 

That night I couldn’t sleep. So many questions whirled around inside my head. How could a book that looked as if it had seen the Pilgrims land at Plymouth possibly contain what I saw? And another thing that struck my consciousness was my mother’s name. To my knowledge, her maiden name had been Morrow. Yet there in that infernal tome of destiny lay the name Breckinridge. Come to think of it, I had really known next to nothing about my mother’s side of the family. As far as I knew she was an only child and both her mother and father died when she was still very young. We had never visited anybody on her side of the family. I hadn’t really thought much of it at the time. I guess it’s just one of those things you take for granted as a kid. 

The following Monday I brought the loose page with me to school and showed it to my friend Stan. The page was from the front of the book and didn’t have anything on it about the future or present-day so I wouldn’t have to try and explain that side of the craziness. 

“Do you remember this weekend I told you I had to go help the old man clear out the Old Breckinridge house on Baker Street?” 

“Yeah, what about it?” 

“I found this really old book there. And was able to take a page from it. Here have a look.” 

I brandished the piece of parchment from my pocket and slid it over to him. 

“Jesus, man. What is this? A first account of the Salem witch trials?” 

“Ha. That’s a good guess. But no it’s from a book recording the history of the Breckinridge family. Seriously though, how old do you reckon this thing is?” 

“Oh, it’s old that’s for sure. I guess it could’ve been forged or something but then again why go through all that trouble for a book about an old, boring family? I’d say it has to be at least the 1600s. Look here there’s a date you can just barely make out. William Breckenridge… 1680 to 17 something. At least that old. It has to be. It’s kind of hard to fake this sort of age in a book. Anyways, what are you going to do with it? You know Mr. Sandman would love it.” 

“I thought the same. I’ll keep it I guess. Kind of an interesting old relic at least. It’s probably not worth anything to anyone else. Anyways, so how was the party?” 

“Oh it was fun you should have seen it…”

I nodded along and laughed, faking my interest, my head was elsewhere like you'd expect. The whole time I was thinking how I would broach this subject with my mother. 

That evening I decided to look for the book in the garage. I wanted to see what else was written in my passage. I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I was in a way also hoping to not find it there. There I found our cat Baxter sniffing around the familiar wooden crate in the back of the garage. I grimaced but went over to it. The book was nowhere to be found. I went to sleep that night with a greater appreciation of that old adage extolling blissful ignorance. 

Some days passed and I finally resolved to ask my mother about the truth. What was really written in that old book. I waited one night for my father to go up to his room so I could ask my mother in private. 

“Do you remember a couple of weeks ago when I went to clear out the old Breckinridge house?” I asked her. 

“Yes.” There was a look of mental anguish etched upon my mother’s face as if a secret, deep-seated dreading was about to be unearthed. 

“I found a book there and well, this is going to sound crazy because it is…”

“I know about the book. I had hoped this day wouldn’t come.” 

“But, your name..” 

“Yes, it is or rather was Breckinridge. Moira Breckenridge was my great-aunt. Its time you know the true story. Hundreds of years ago when that family first settled here in America they ravaged Native American land and the shaman of that tribe placed a curse upon their name. That every member of that clan would know their future and how they would die and how their children would perish too and it would be etched on the pages of a book that could not be destroyed. I changed my name when I was young foolishly thinking that that would make a difference.”

“You said it can’t be destroyed? But I have a page from it.” 

“Yes, but the pages themselves can’t be destroyed in the sense that the truth they carry cannot be altered. Burning the pages does no good.” 

“So dad knew about this too. I figured as much, why else would he have been there?” 

“Yes, he knew about it. I told him about it when I found out that the city had condemned the building. It had been there for years but since we are the end of the line for the family, no one else knew about it.” 

“It’s true then. Everything in it?” 

“Yes, everything in it has happened. And will..well look it's a book. Just a book.” 

“Have you.. Read it? The whole thing?” I asked her.

“No..not the whole thing at least, I can’t bear to know what’s going to happen. It would be too painful. And for you or anyone else. Did you..what did you read from it?”

“Only a part, but even that part was more than I could handle.” 

“Well, now you know. If you want to see it again I will show it to you. You deserve to know if you want to. All I ask is that you think about it. You can never unsee it. And don't mention to your brother just yet. He's too young I think” 

Now decades later I sit here and gaze at a picture of my son Samuel. Not a day or moment goes by where I don’t think of that book. Shamelessly, I refuse to accept its sentence. The cruelties of the truth, the fact that we all spend night and day searching for it. What will happen in the future? And if you do find out. The helplessness that there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Some things might just be better left unknown.