A Game For Byron
Jerry Vilhotti
The start of the word was like a fetus
struggling to become; to grasp life but often the word was like a deformed
thing to be ridiculed, like he was often due to his stuttering, as it tried
to twist out between lips and the listener with a half hidden grin that
soon became a smirk reached out for the first letter and began to pull
the word out with one sharp jerk - even if it were the wrong one.
Seeing the mouth reaching
toward him would cause Byrom to tense and feel in much
the same way as when he was a four year old and his father with gnarled
fingers reaching for him while saying: "Trying to say the filthiest word
in the English language again, Byrom? A word that harbors deep inside
our minds and deeper still in our souls
- that makes a joke of our existence! Unless of
course we have money to make us feel worth!. Whistle me a tune of
pain, son. Hand out! Hand out - I say! We are about to
play our little game again!" The graduate chemist from Cornell
steadied his stance for the grave task at hand ; still upset with having
to live in his father's house; groveling to an inferior's handout who had
worked as a porter on the Erie for
forty-five years; bowing at every request. It was
all the fault of the cripple in the White House who had taken his self
worth away by trying to give opportunities to those undeserving of any,
Byrom's father would believe for the rest of his life and instill that
belief deep inside of Byrom's mind and he would use his father's and grandfather's
cold art of smoke and mirrors on all non-stutters frightening them to death
by saying: "(Whistle!") you (whistle!) want (whistle) socialized (whistle)
medicine?" and when a non-stammerer would have the audacity to say affirmative
action was an attempt to open doors to people who had carried the burden
of the elite's hate and discrimination against them in the past, Byrom
would retaliate with: "(Whistle!) so (whistle!) you're (whistle) for (whistle!)
quotas!" and then he would throw in whenever people would talk about the
widening gap between the haves and have-nots in his father's most haughty
and dismissive way - "(Whistle) that's (whistle) class (whistle) warfare!"
and often the non-stutterer would fall silent - fully dismayed; forgetting
all about Social Security having once been a socialistic idea.
Byrom extended his hand like a word
and then his father clutched it to hold it lovingly over the flame he had
made with the long wooden match of the kind that was still being used to
light pole lamps in their quaint little New Jersey town where the people
on "The Row" looked down on those wretched ones who could not make as much
money as they ....
Everything turned into black wisps
of smoke for Byrom after his father died. The old man who blamed
- filthy foreigners who spoke "broken Engliish" and Jesus killing Jews -
for bringing on the Great Depression which in turn did cost him his position
as a chemist for the Dupont Chemical. The "Old Warrior", that's what
Byrom called him, admiring him so deeply; sucking in his breath at the
sight of him
and his grand authoritative ways. His father would
die just before Byrom divorced a woman who never respected him nor he her;
leaving her and the four children, of whom two he was sure were his, far
behind as he left for the heartland where people deserved to be shot for
disobedience as they were at Kent State only miles away from where the
old warrior resided. Byrom blamed his misfortune on those
same people for having him not go to the campus and photograph
the crying girl kneeling beside the shot to death student. He had
won a prize from a Buffalo newspaper for photographing a dying tree with
Elms disease - so talent he had. Soon after that Byrom adopted his
speech therapist's suggestion he whistle before attempting to say words
beginning with a consonant, since he had no problem with words beginning
with a vowel.
Byrom put his coat on over his father's
pajamas - that his step-mother insisted he do - the night before they were
to bury the father and raced out into the sleet. He desperately wanted
to get out of himself; out of his being that so much repulsed him.
He would not be able to show the Old Warrior he was making a new life for
himself. How would he be able to make the dead see now? he wondered.
Byrom, whom his mother had named incorrectly
after one of the great poets with a club foot and who had died "of the
vapors" just days after six year old Byrom had wished she would due to
her strapping him for trying to say the "filthiest word in any language",
began to whistle but the sound came out in twisted chunks of farting sounds.
Repeatedly, he told himself he was not in the present and before he could
say his name Byrom Lighthouse Bush he would indeed be in a realm of nothingness
- where no one could find him - but the sleeet stinging his face like so
many flickering flames made it impossible for him to exercise his mind
to win over the night.
"I'm (whistle) not (whistle) here!"
Over and over he repeated this trying to get beyond himself into that state
of nothingness - deep inside the mashed potatoes where he had often hid
from his father's wrath - but finally the words ebbed away and in their
stead came a long continuous screaming whistle that seemed as if it were
destined to never end. Never never end ....
vilhotti@peoplepc.com