Apr. 11, 2003 - 4:39 p.m.
Dear Meghan:
This is an impromptu idea for the skeleton of the Color Story.
American Psychological Association Report. Comments obtained from residents of Bath, South Dakota. April 2003. Events in question: October 2002-January 2003.
Carol Miller, 39, homemaker: “I didn’t notice anything at first. I don’t think anyone did. It was only when my cousin Delores came to stay with me and asked me why I was blue. I told her I wasn’t sad, and she said, “No, not sad – blue. Why are you blue?” It hadn’t occurred to me that she meant it literally.”
Jonathan Wainwright, 67, construction supervisor: “I’ll tell you the first time I noticed something was strange. October 2, 2002. One of my men was late for work for six or seven days in a row – and I had talked to him, but to no avail. So, since I hate firing anyone, especially in a small town like Bath, I decided to suspend him for a week without pay. [I] thought that would get the message across that I was serious. So I brought him in and said, “Well, you’re suspended.” And I looked down at the papers on my desk and they had this real queer glow to them. Then I looked up – and Paul was standing there, beet red. And not beet red, like embarrassed. Beet red – literally. Like he was glowing from the insides.”
Delores Furgeson, 34, new age specialist: “Of course, Carol is family so you know I would do anything for her. And her precious little boy is the apple of her eye. Anyway, Carol was just in a bad place, karmically speaking, you know. She had entered a dark realm. So I quit my part-time job at the Montessori school in Kansas City and moved in with Carol. I imagine that must have been mid-October or so. I’m not rightly sure. I don’t own a clock.”
Baxter Wilhemi, 16, student: “Of course I heard stories – everybody hears stories. I taught Jacob the piano. The strangest story I heard was how Jacob could lift a table from across the room. But his weird aunt told me that one; I don’t really listen to freaks all that much. Another story was how he would paint and his paintings would, like, come to life or something. So his mom made his flush all his watercolors down the drain. And, like, that’s what happened.”
Carol Miller: “Jacob is a beautiful, gifted boy. I love him so much. The stories that go around about him… are ridiculous. I would never make him angry. I mean, some of the stories made him angry.”
Paul Miller, 42, construction worker: “I thought I was acting pretty cool. I mean, if Wainwright wanted to suspend me, fine. I knew he never had kids – he doesn’t know the daily emergencies that come up. So if that made him happy, fine. But I swear, after he told me, he looked really angry or frightened or something – but I swear I didn’t say a word, I didn’t express any emotion whatsoever. It was very strange. Then things soured at home. Very quickly, as I recall.”
Caitlin McCarthy, 24, art teacher: “I started to notice the change in the children after Jacob started ditching class. Very subtle, but I could tell how they were feeling but this very dull, hardly noticeable, shade that appeared on their face. When they were happy, there was a luminescence, almost as if a light was literally shining from within. When they were angry, I would see red, literally, right there on their face. Then I started noticing it in the teacher’s lounge. Lots of colors would fade in and fade out… I thought I was going mad. But everyone was seeing the same thing.”
Delores Furgeson: “I’ve never respected the Church anyway. I don’t think like that. The first Sunday I was there, after Paul moved out, I was really kind of pleased to see the priest start to turn colors right before our eyes… every line he spoke invoked a different response from him, it appeared. Then it seemed whenever he looked at me, he turned a lime-green… lusty… but then who could blame him? I was from a city, after all.”
Carol Miller: “I noticed Father McKenzie turn colors. Delores said it was when he looked at her, but I don’t think that was the case. I think he was scared, personally. I think we were seeing how nervous he was up there; I never even thought about that before. Now, I talked to him afterwards and he finally admitted he had a bit of stage fright every time he spoke to the congregation.”
Paul Miller: “Everything I said, my wife and her sister thought it was a lie. Because, to them, I’d turn a shade of this or a shade of that. They didn’t seem to have any coloring going on, or whatever you want to call it. They were beet red, like they laid in a tanning booth for 24 hours straight or something. Then I moved out. I couldn’t take it – and I didn’t want Jacob to see it.”
“Yours”,
Vincent
what they said - what they will say
