jamison wolfram; district seven | fin

an awful noise filled the air
i heard a scream in the woods somewhere
a woman's voice; i quickly ran
into the trees with empty hands

Posh, but not without work. The fur coats they wore in the winter, products of their own hunt. The Wolframs were not of the wasteful sort, and perhaps their frugality was what afforded them a nice home, food on their table.

His hands blistered; flesh torn. Like the whole of District Seven, he was raised with an ax in his hand. An ax with his father's patent lasered into the shiny blade, like most things they owned. Percival Wolfram was an inventor, like his father before him. He designed new forest equipment— better forest equipment. Axes, harnesses, wood chippers, and chainsaws; Percival even had the Wolfram crest carved into a line of safety glasses.

This was the real reason behind his family's wealth, but Jamison's father liked to pretend he had worked hard to get to where he was, and he demanded the same from his children. Percival only raised boys with backbones. Authority demanded it true, and the four children he raised were the evidence.

Every morning Jamison and his brothers woke up before the sun, and, like those whose livelihood actually depended upon it, they delved into the woods by trade.

The wise forest stretched its spindly limbs all around their estate, rooted as one being. It was the home of the nightmares children were warned of, and their wildest dreams. Jamison wondered sometimes if the forest had always known, if it remembered his father playing on the very same trees when he was a child, his father before him.

They always grew up, those Wolfram boys, and then they lost their love of wonder. The magic they once yearned for and appreciated so much would inevitably disappear, replaced by facts of bark and trunk, soil and leaves. Trees were just trees to those who didn't dare to think of them as more.

He buried his innocence somewhere in the woods a long time ago.

As the oldest, it was assumed that he would take his father's place at the head of Wolfram Forestry some day. He would be expected to outdo his father's designs, to create axes with an even better swing, harnesses that allowed even more safe navigation. But the thing was, there would one day come a point when there was no room left to grow for the family business. Things would eventually be as good as they ever were, and Jamison never wanted to be the person trying to convince people his new gloves were even better than those he'd created last year.

Progress for the simple sake of progress never made sense to him.

—————————

"We need answers, kid."

Todd Davenport was supposed to be retired, but there he was, hobbling into the room. It must have been something serious if they had resorted to calling him in to question Jamison, or so he thought, and his palms instantly began to sweat. Stop, he thought to himself, that makes you seem suspicious. Mr. Davenport's prosthetic must not have fit him well, from the way he was walking. Every step caused him to wince.

"I know your son," Jamison said, trying desperately to keep a conversation before adding quickly, "knew him, anyway."

"Mr. Wolfram, you've claimed you found a body in the woods— hell's county, while it was pitch black outside."

Must not remember me, he thought, which was a pity. He had always idolized Mr. Davenport. He'd even had a phase where he seriously considered becoming a peacekeeper some day, before Percival had put an end to it.

"Yes," he replied. He sat on his hands to keep them from fidgeting. This was just routine, surely, a necessary precaution. They probably already knew he had nothing to do with the missing girl.

"So, what were you doing so far out there?"

"I was—" trying to find himself. He held his tongue on the last parts, his eyes making contact with Mr. Davenport's liquidy brown ones. "I was on a walk."

He didn't seem very impressed, leaning over the metal table a bit to size Jamison up for a long, silent moment.

"At 2 am? On a week day?"

Honestly, it did sound unlikely. They were right to be suspicious. The problem was, Jamison was truly innocent. He'd been in a fight with his father, which led to him storming out of the front door at almost midnight, flashlight and blurry red vision his only guides on a particularly starless night. When he first heard her scream, he mistook it for someone who was having fun. Wasn't that awful? He remembered thinking it was probably some lovestruck couple out for a walk where no one could find them, much like he was.

Then he heard the other screams, accompanied by growling; the sloppy sounds of something wet being chewed upon. By the time he found her, or what was left of her, the thing that had attacked her was gone.

Here's the thing, though. Jamison swore he heard an animal, a creature. Maybe, he had thought, it was a bear, or a mountain lion. But all the professionals claimed the marks on the girl's body were too clean and precise to be the bites of a normal animal. A mutt, probably, but they couldn't rule out that a sick teenage boy might have done it, so there he was, hours later, still in interrogation. His parents were probably worried sick about him by then. Hell, they may have even been on their way to that very Justice Building to file a missing person's report.

His father wouldn't have ever approved family business being aired out to the public, so Jamison lied. Strict parents raised the best liars; he was just doing what he was good at.

"I have insomnia. Sometimes walking helps to clear my head."

For whatever reason, this seemed to quench his interest enough that he broke eye contact for the first time.

"Do you know a girl named Evelyn Moss?" he asked, after flipping through some papers.

"No sir."

He was back to studying Jamison. He waited a tense moment, then turned to the younger man next to him.

"Kid's innocent. Let 'em go. Parents are probably worried sick."

As they unhandcuffed him, Mr. Davenport turned to leave, stopping just short of the door, before peering back over his shoulder one last time.

"Stay out of trouble, JJ."

No one had called him that since he was a kid, which must have meant he did remember him.

Jamison nodded quietly, and left without saying another word.

He did not yet know that this would only be the first of many times he wound up in one of those seats. Never for anything illegal, quite, but always as a person who'd seen something they should not have. He was a wonderful example of wrong place, wrong time, and he became convinced that he was cursed.

He went to a party, which was busted for drugs. He was walking home from school and witnessed two men beating each other senseless. One of them ended up needing surgery.

And then there was the big one, the one that no one would have ever seen coming.

Wolfram boys did not cut corners. They saw a job through to its end, made sure everything was as perfectly operational at all. Jamison could so much as miss a strip of grass while mowing and his father acted like it was the end of the world.

When he was sent to the Detention Center, one of the many crimes he was charged with was false advertisement. Apparently, the safety guarantee wasn't quite a guarantee.

For now, Jamison's mother runs Wolfram Forestry, but now, more than ever, he feels an undeniable pressure to take over. This was never what he wanted, but he has learned that sometimes, want is a luxury one cannot afford. He has agreed to sign the papers upon his graduation from High School, where he normally would have been expected to work full time out in the forests. And now, not only was he going to be running a company he did not want to run, but he would also be playing a game of catch-up with what was left of the Wolfram legacy.

Those Wolfram boys, they always grow up, and there is a sadness to that. But they were raised to have a backbone. Authority demanded it true, and the four children Percival raised were the evidence. It would be a challenge, and an unwarranted one at that, but Jamison fully intended on seeing it through to the end.

Like a real Wolfram would.

i clutched my life and wished it kept
my dearest love, i'm not done yet
how many years i know i'll bear
i found something in the woods somewhere

song: in the woods somewhere