Faron "Sawyer" Rickard
- Boston 1920- XCOCX - The Gatekeepers
Contacts & Details
Personal Journal: Black Diary
Investigator's Notes: Black & Wise Casebook
Background
Faron Rickard was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1880.
The son of a bootblack and a charwoman, Faron was the first-born son and
as such he was expected to learn his father's trade. Like so many men
regardless of time-period Faron's father was a drunk and often exemplified
the bootblack trade to his son with a harsh word and the back of his hand.
Despite his hatred for his father Faron worked hard to learn the trade on the
blisteringly humid streets of wooden Savannah for the sake of his family who would
have gone hungry on the drunken binges of an absentee father. As Faron grew
older he became less and less the victim for the work he could do and the coins
it provided and his father could scarcely wring every coin from the boy if he
expected his son to pay for his gin.
This arrangement lasted a handful of years until Good Friday of 1893. Faron had
just turned thirteen the day before and the second day of April that year was warm,
filled with springtime brightness, the over-sweet scent of blooming honeysuckle, and
the buzzing of newborn flies. The boy had found profitable work that day from the
men of the church-going crowd, but by noon his father had found him on the streets and
drubbed the young man for drink money.
Battered and bruised Faron wandered the streets aimlessly knowing he could not go home
without something with which to feed his family and filled with vile thoughts for his
own weakness and that of his father. When he looked up with tears in his eyes he noticed
a strange sign before a shop with a bright blue door. In the muggy noonday heat the sign
seemed to shimmer and shift from one blink to the next and in spite of his degradation or
perhaps because of it he pushed the door open to the ringing of golden chimes.
The interior was cool and dim, scented with a strange incense that tickled Faron's nose and
filled with lacquered shelves, each of which held books with tanned leather covers embossed
in gold and silver. The first book he picked up was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by
Mark Twain.
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