He’d majored in history at the university and later taught the subject at Goblin High, pulling off the very tricky task of making the subject fun. In those days students clamored to get into his classes. They could spot an enthusiast a hall away. Kamp spent so much time reading up on the city’s history that the editor of The Green Goblin, the biggest newspaper in town, showed up at one of his classes to ask Professor Kamp if he might proofread an article about the Original 60.

“The Original Sixty,” Kamp said. For the first time all night, he smiled. He unlocked the front door and entered the hall. Mrs. Doris was peering out her apartment.

“You wanna put some pants on?” she asked him.

Walter looked down. Saw he was still in his tank top and undershorts.

“Oh.”

“Well, I don’t care if you don’t. I live half my life in a bathrobe.”

Walter smiled again. He locked his door.

“The Original Sixty,” he said.

Now Mrs. Doris smiled.

“One of my favorite subjects. Come on in for some wine, Walter. Let’s see if we can put our ghosts to bed.”

7

“It’s my favorite stretch of Goblin history,” Walter said, sitting at Mrs. Doris’s small kitchen table.

“I like it, too.”

“And what are you doing up so late?”

“So late? It’s early is what it is. And what can I say? I heard you rummaging about.”

“Was I?”

“Yes, Walter. It was you. I heard you, I came and knocked, and you answered.”

Kamp seemed satisfied with this answer.

“Now,” Mrs. Doris said. “The Original Sixty.”

Kamp had a sip of wine. “They were the first to fall in love with all this shit,” he said. He fanned a hand toward her open windows, where the heavy rain came in. “As if they were some variety of snowbird. Like…like…”

“Rainbirds.”

Walter shrugged. “The word has long eluded me. But rainbirds will do.”

They cheered their glasses.

“This land had long been watched over by a community of indigenous people who turned out to be not so much indomitable as they were justifiably unwilling to assent. They didn’t think anybody should occupy this land. Not even themselves! They were a tribe run by a very strong, very smart man named Chief Blackwater, the very ancestor of our current mayor.”

“I love him.”

“So do I.”

“But I worry.”

“Worry about Mayor Blackwater?”

“Sure. A lot of unrest in Goblin. Not the people necessarily, not in that way, but the…”

“The land.”

“Yes. The land.”

“Yes, well, Chief Blackwater recognized that same ‘unrest.’ He called it ‘dark land,’ and was protective enough of all this”—he fanned a hand to the window again—“and wise enough to refuse all negotiations with the white man and made it a tribal law to scare off any who stayed too long.”

“Or talked too much.”

“That’s right. It was obvious to Chief Blackwater, from the start, that the white man had one thing in mind.”