The Thunderbird- english version E-Book

Luciano Federico

• Herausgeber: Youcanprint
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

What would have happened to John Travolta, Bill Clinton and Tina Turner if they hadn't become who we all know? And why is 1974 a year that unites them all? That's what we are about to discover, traveling with them back in time aboard a Ford Thunderbird that belonged to JFK and Marilyn Monroe.

Leseprobe

INDICE

1. Sequoyah

2. The Thunderbird

3. Sam Travolta (1993)

4. Denver (1993)

5. L’orizzonte (1993)

6. La scatola di biscotti (1993)

7. Anna Mae Bullock (1993)

8. Archibald (1993)

9. Déjà vu

10. Hillary Rodham (1974)

11. Over Here! (1974)

12. Club Manhattan (1974)

13. Perdersi (1974)

14. Diana Hyland (1974)

15. Helen Cecilia Burke. (1974)

16. Bob LeMonde. (1974)

17. Ike Turner. (1974)

18. Archibald. (1993)

19. John, Bill e Tina. (1993)

LUCIANO FEDERICO

Title | The Thunderbird

Author | Luciano Federico

ISBN | 9791221471533

Everything that is not taken from the mentioned biographies is the result of the author’s imagination.

© 2022 - All rights reserved to the Author

This work is published directly by the Author through the Youcanprint self-publishing platform and the Author holds exclusively all rights. No part of this book can therefore be reproduced without the prior consent of the Author.

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Made by human

“To my wife Ilaria,

without her I would have

never started writing this book “

Fiction

1. Sequoyah

My name is Archibald Earl Jones, I was born in the spring of 1924 in a small county near Ouachita National Forest, Arkansas. My mom was a young and gritty Native American with Cherokee blood. When she made up her mind nobody could stop her.

She married very young with Robert, a cheerful and proud African American, against the will of her parents.

My dad was madly in love with her and baseball.

His idol was Jackie Robinson, a black player. Or, better to say, the ultimate black player.

He was the first that on April 15, 1947 debuted on the Major League at the Ebbetts Field of Brooklyn in front of more than 20000 people, shattering the racial barrier that relegated black players in the Negro League. That day my parents where hysterical; jumping and screaming and singing and dancing. In the house first, and then in the garden too, so that anyone could hear them.

What united them was the desire to stop racism and injustice, so they opened a small office in one of the room of my grandparents house and started to help the ones in need.

They reunited every black brother in the county and grew a committee for African American rights that fought hundreds of battles. This was their purpose in life, the sense of helplessness if you weren’t white in those years was unbearable.

One night I asked my mom to play a game. She had to think of a word and I had to guess it.

“You are thinking… bread mom?”

“Exactly!”

“And now you are thinking… table”.

“Yes! Well done”.

She said yes to all my answers making me believe that I could read minds. So, just to be sure of my power, I asked her to write the most beautiful word in the world on a piece of paper.

She did it and I, sure of my guessing, immediately said:

“Love!”

She nodded no.

“Life?”

Another negative nod.

“Future?”

She handed me the piece of paper and I understood that the one reading minds was her all along.

She wrote:

“There is no love, no life and no future without freedom”.

She taught me to fight for freedom since I was in her womb.

My mother’s name was Amy. She wanted to have a home birth. My father and grandparents tried to take her to the hospital because it was safer, but she ran away. This wasn’t a whim, she knew that black patients were treated like animals and thrown into basement. So she ran off screaming that her son wouldn’t have been born underground, in the dark, surrounded by the smell of rotten wood, but looking at the sky, smelling the scent of grass and fresh flowers.

And so it was.

Everyone was looking for her. My grandpa was the one who found us, under a tree. It was a sequoia that no one knew it was there because it doesn’t grow in Ouachita Forest. This is the reason why very few people know my real name, most know me as Sequoyah. I’m tall, sturdy and my skin tone reminds the color of bark. Have you ever seen one up close?

Well, look at it at least once in your life. The first thing you will feel is the desire to make that tree your home because it will give you a sense of protection equal to the sense of magnificence looking up at the sky. Sequoia demands silence and gives back peace. Then, if you hug it and bring up close your nose to the bark, on your face will spark a smile and you will feel dizzy because you are experiencing the dizziness of a tree that can look at the world from 300 feet and the peace of those who stand on this earth from more than 2000 years.

Our history is tightly bound with earth and nature and my parents made their best effort to raise me acknowledging and respecting our traditions.

One day I got back home with a swollen and bloody lip and torn clothes. I entered a fight just to protect a kid I barely knew, but it was a five to one fight and that didn’t seem right. So, while everyone around me was screaming and laughing, I stepped in.

At fist , the only difference was that there were two of us getting beaten up, but then I realized that stepping up in the fight didn’t bother the white bullies but made everyone that didn’t help feel guilty. Once I made it back home I locked myself in my room. It was the first time I experienced rage, hatred and wickedness. My grandpa came to me e without asking me anything about what had happened he started to tell me the story of a elder Apache and his grandchildren: “There is a raging fight within us, it’s a terrible fight between two wolves.

A wolf represents fear, anger, envy, pain, remorse, greed, arrogance, resentment, lying, rivalry, a sense of superiority and selfishness.

The other wolf represents joy, peace, love, hope, fellowship, humility, kindness, friendship, compassion, generosity, honesty and trust.

The same struggle is going on within you and also within every other person you will ever meet”.

The grandchildren stopped to ponder about these words for a while and then one of them asked:

“Which one will be the winner?”

The old man said:

“The one you will feed”.

My mother and I celebrated all my birthdays under the shade of the redwood.

Years went by and life somehow always brought me back to where it all began.

We spent my 29th birthday under the redwood talking about the future. We did it because the next day was the day of my shipment to Europe, at war against the Nazis. What amazed me was the peace of mind I perceived in my mother’s eyes. Any mother in that situation would have despaired, but not her. She rested her hands, as she always did, on the sequoia and closed her eyes.

“Deaths will be countless, Hitler will die holed up like a rat, killed by his own hatred”.

She told me this and I didn’t reply. We didn’t need to say anything else because there was a bond between us that couldn’t be explained, that we never tried to explain to anyone, so I won’t do it now either.

I left with a reckless calm. I lost it as soon as I arrived on the front in Europe, but this part of my life is so dark and painful that I’ve never been able to tell anyone about it, not even my mother.

When I got home, she was waiting for me, she was sitting on the chair on the porch.

She looked me in the eyes. First she smiled, then she cried as if she could see and feel all the pain of that absurd war. We hugged and then strolled hand in hand through the forest to our tree. My life had started over from there.

I went back to law school and moved to the Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland, one of the few universities that accepted African-American students at that time. After three years, I graduated in law with honors. My mother wrote me a beautiful letter. I still remember how it ended:

“You will be a great lawyer but promise me you will never stop dreaming. Always take time to dream, my son, because only those who have time to dream remain free and find wisdom”.

What concerned her the most was what kind of man I would become.

The last time we went into the forest together was January 30, 1974. The day after my dad died.

There was a wake and a party, along with thousands of people who came to greet him, not only from counties nearby but from all over Arkansas. At the end of the day Amy and I left the house to go to our place.

It had snowed and she was struggling to walk but she didn’t want me to help her, so it took us longer than usual. All you could hear was the crunchy sound of snow under our shoes and our heavy breathing.

We were silent the whole way and it was beautiful.

That silence served both of us to come to terms with the void that my father was leaving.

It’s strange but when I used to look at her sometimes I saw my mother, sometimes Amy. Now she was Amy, a strong and generous woman who had put her life at the disposal of others, leaving the front door open day and night. She and Robert have been a touchstone for everyone in Polk County. If anyone was hungry they could stop by, because there was always food on the stove for at least ten people and when there was something left over they would send me to take it to the home of whoever they knew was in need. At the home of whoever was ashamed to ask.

Sometimes my father would come home with someone I’d never seen before. They weren’t our neighbors or from the county, sometimes they were white but the strangest thing was that they stopped to eat with us. After dinner they used to send me straight to my room to sleep so they could stay up talking all night. The background of Jazz music that the radio transmitted – always tuned to the Delta Network – prevented me from understanding what they were saying.

But the feeling was that they were asking Amy for things. I liked it. It was reassuring to know that I had such an important mother. I saw one of these friends of my dad’s in a newspaper, he was someone famous I think, but one could not speak of the unknown guests. This was the rule. I didn’t have to ask questions. The only person I clearly remember is Madame J. Walker, as she came several times over the years and they became friends. My mom was never short on her magnificent hair creams and her famous hot combs.

We got to the sequoia and Amy’s face cleared. Her breathlessness passed, she placed her hands on the damp bark and closed her eyes. As always, I approached my nose and breathed deeply.

“Can you promise me something?

“Yes”.

“Have you already figured it out?”

“I think so”.

“I won’t live long without your father. When it happens spread my ashes here”.

I didn’t answer.

A gust of icy wind kicked up a light layer of snow. A few flakes landed on my face. The cold went through me as if I had no clothes on, and I felt naked.

The topic of death was not a taboo for us, we had talked about it many times. It was always a time to remember the moments we spent together, without too many tragedies. Sometimes with melancholy, sometimes with joy. For us Natives death is just a stage in the sacred circle. In the plains inhabited by the Natives there are often large circles of stones inside which 28 lines are arranged in a radial pattern. These are the lunar phases. For them, the circle embodies the four directions, the four seasons, the four elements, but above all there represents the four phases of life. Childhood, youth, maturity and old age. Indigenous have a circular idea of life, spent looking for balance and harmony.

The last memory I have of my grandfather is beautiful.

One evening, passing by my grandparents farm on my bicycle, I decided to stop by and say hello to them. I entered the house from the back, given the time I was sure I would find them in the kitchen. Fire lit, my grandmother humming at the stove with her reassuring flower dress, my grandfather sitting in her old worn out and untouchable armchair, with a pipe in his mouth. In the air a unique scent of food, tobacco and wood. This was exactly what I expected to find. I leaned the bicycle against the fence and immediately heard my grandmother’s voice. She wasn’t speaking, all I could hear were muffled moans similar to a cry that then suddenly explodes.

I chocked. Is grandma crying?

The romantic image I had in mind immediately turned into a terrible scenario. My dying grandfather foaming at the mouth and my grandmother on her knees desperately trying to revive him. I had to decide what to do. The first coward temptation was to go away with the excuse of warning my parents. I slowly returned to the bike but a sudden scream from my grandmother froze my blood and I stopped.

I had to go in and help her, I was 14, I was almost a man and I couldn’t back down. As I approached the door, my grandmother’s screams were joined by my grandfather’s!

So he wasn’t dead?!

This were screams that I had never heard before, they almost sounded like laughter but it was a hypothesis that I immediately discarded.

My grandfather didn’t laugh. Never! The most I had seen him do was purse his lips and make a slight guttural sound that could be summed up in three letters: Mhm!

I lightly climbed the three wooden steps without making them creak too much, because I wanted to be sure to have the chance to escape at the last second. As always, the door was open.

“Grandmaaa?!”

No answer, just the grumbling, more and more present. I took a deep breath, held it, and walked into the kitchen. The scene that appeared before my eyes was this: my grandfather collapsed in the armchair, busted under the weight of my grandmother who was stuck on top of him blocked by the armrests, bent to pinch her generous hips. Of course they couldn’t get up or even speak. They just laughed.

I don’t know how long they had been in that situation but I’ve never heard them laugh like that. When they noticed my arrival the laughter became even louder. I remember grandpa laughing and coughing. It was impossible to resist and I started laughing too. I tried to do something but they were too heavy so I left to get help.

I later learned from my father that my grandfather, struck by a sudden impulse of passion, had grabbed my grandmother by the arm as she passed by him and dragged her at him.

The rest was done by the old armchair.

Three people were needed to free them because the grandparents didn’t cooperate, they just laughed.

Grandpa died that night in his sleep.

When I saw my grandmother, she hugged me tightly and said: “Don’t cry son, grandpa died laughing after all”.

The sun was setting, it no longer warmed the air and I told my mom that it was better to go home. She looked up at the sky to see the trunk in all its beauty and so did I.

“We are going…” Amy said softly.

When we got home there was no one else. She took me into the living room, opened a cabinet, took out an old metal cookie box and set it on the table.

“Sit down. Do you remember her?”

“Of course! Have you kept it? It was my secret hideout.”

“I know it…”

“Ah! It wasn’t so secret then.”

She smiled.

“When it stopped being your secret, it became mine”.

She opened the box, inside there were a set of keys and a small totem.

She caressed me, taking my hand. I really don’t know how to describe you the sweetness of her gaze. In that moment, a strange but beautiful thing happened. The successful 50-year-old lawyer had suddenly returned to being a young teenager, I turned around and I also saw that boy reflected in the mirror behind me. Time no longer flowed at the same speed, everything was slower. I could see the flutter of my eyelids, the motes of dust circling in the last ray of sunshine. I felt the vigor and lightheartedness of that young age. I stared at myself in disbelief in the mirror until I saw my mom’s young face smiling at me and her hand holding mine.

I jumped back in fear and turned to her. She was splendid, as young as I didn’t even remember.

“Mom! What is happening?”

“Don’t be scared Archie. The time has come for you to know. Now it’s up to you…”

2. The Thunderbird

(January 20, 1993)

It’s a rainy day in Fayetteville. Inside the city court at the end of a long and polished corridor, outside the hearing room two men are sitting on a bench having an animated discussion. They are Roger and William, the Clinton brothers.

Roger is 37 years old, after having tried in vain to break into the world of cinema in Los Angeles, he went back to Arkansas and with his brother put together a music band, The Thunderbird. Bill, as everyone calls him, is a lawyer. He gave the group this name because he has always dreamed of owning a Ford Thunderbird. He graduated in law in 1973 from Yale University where he met Hillary. With her by her side to support him, he attempted a career in politics and in 1974 he ran for the House of Representatives but lost to Republican John Paul Hammerschmidt. It was a terrible year. He and Hillary had already settled on the wedding date but, after that defeat, Bill left Hillary and abandoned his political career forever. He recovered slowly thanks to a friend who included him in his law firm and thanka to the only passion that still accompanies him: the saxophone. Maceo Parker, James Brown’s saxophonist, is his absolute point of reference.

Bill has always taken care of his brother. When they were children on more than one occasion he had to protect him from his drunk and abusive stepfather. He also agreed to be part of the band just to be able to control him and try to prevent him from getting into trouble, Roger’s specialty.

“This is the last time! I swear this is the last time I am bailing you out”.

“You know they targeted me Bill, I only had a couple of beers!”

“What beers? Do you want me to read you the file with the charges against you and that other asshole… by the way, where is that asshole? Is it possible that he is late on the day of the trial too?”

From the end of the corridor John approaches, slouching. He is wearing a black double-breasted jacket with gold buttons that doesn’t hide well the signs of aging. His hair hasn’t been shampooed in several days and is held in place by gelatin. John greets everyone he meets as if he were at home in court, then when he sees the Clinton brothers down the hall, he raises his hand and flashes his best smile.

“Hurry up. Don’t fool around, walk faster!” Bill tells him.

“Don’t worry... I wouldn’t have missed this morning with you for anything in the world!”

“You are late!”

“Wasn’t our hearing pushed back an hour?

“Yes, but you couldn’t have known, the secretary called me this morning...”

“From my home… actually from my bed”.

A crooked giggle followed by a wink from John enrages Bill.

“Next time they arrest you, I’ll let you rot in your cell! And make sure to find the money I had to come up with for your bail.”

“Well, you could keep the money from the Thunderbird nights until you reach the amount… what do you think Rog?”

“It’s OK for me”.

“Okay what? To get all the money back we would have to go on a world tour!”

“Well… We’re working on it, right Rog?

“Let’s kick everybody’s ass John!”

Roger tries to high-five his brother who doesn’t reciprocate because he gets distracted by a brunette in a blue suit.

“Hey… we know each other, right?”

“We will meet very soon Mr. Travolta! Attorney Clinton, keep your client’s hormones at bay. I’ll be in room three in ten minutes, don’t make me wait!” Replies the judge.

“Of course Your Honor”.

Then he turns to John.

“You are an imbecile, flirting with the judge before the hearing!”

“What do I know, she didn’t have judge wrote on his forehead”.

Bill takes the file with the allegations out of his bag.

“Let’s see if, by reading the accusations, I can get that cheap latin lover smile off your face, because today there is your freedom at risk, I don’t know if this concept is clear to the both of you!

“Drunk driving and driving without a license. Roger! Why didn’t you let him drive?!”

“It was John’s idea since I didn’t have a driving licence.”

“What kind of a crazy idea is that? For you, instead, we have pimping…”