by KUBOA
So, on Saturday, after calling a few friends to see if he could find a ball game or a companion to explore Bluefield Woods, and coming up empty, Timmy sat down to begin his experiment in earnest.
***
Picking the word was a problem, as Ed had predicted it would be.
“Pick something gross,” Ed “Jackpot” Burton had said.
“No, I don’t want to do gross,” Timmy said, with a serious shake of his blond head.
“Pick a word your parents use a lot. That way when they get mad at you or something you can take away part of their ammunition.”
“My parents don’t get mad very often. And when they do they speak so calmly it really rattles your bones. They’re not name-callers.”
“Hm,” Ed said.
Both boys appeared stumped.
***
So, Timmy decided to pick a word at random. A word he hoped was in common usage, one whose disappearance would be noticed. But he didn’t want trouble.
He opened his Webster’s and stuck a finger down on the page. It was like picking a vacation spot by spinning the globe.
“Drakelet, a young drake,” the dictionary said.
“Naw,” Timmy said aloud.
He closed the heavy book and reopened it like a magician pulling a trick.
“Gruelly, having the consistency of gruel.”
“No good,” Timmy said. Maybe randomness was not the answer. He gave it one more try.
“Hey,” he said. “This has possibilities.”
He rolled the word around in his mouth. It was simple enough, brief enough. He could spend the day and night saying this word over and over easy enough.
***
At ten-thirteen that fateful Saturday morning, Timmy began.
He lay back against his pillows and began saying the word over and over.
He had no idea how many times he would have to say it. How would he know if he failed? He hadn’t thought about that.
As the afternoon wore on he grew tired. Except for a break for a fried bologna sandwich for lunch he did not stop saying the word.
At dinner that evening he wolfed down his food.
“Eat slowly, dear,” Timmy’s mother said.
“I’ll race you,” said Annabeth.
“You got after-dinner plans?” Timmy’s dad asked.
“No,” Timmy said around a half-masticated piece of chicken.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Timmy’s mother said, smiling.
***
After dinner Timmy was hard at it again. His TV remained cold. His video paddles lifeless on the floor.
Around 10ten p.m. his dad stuck his head in the door.
“Whatcha doing, son? Chanting?”
“No,” Timmy said, anxious not to spend too much energy on unnecessary words.
“Okay. I thought I heard you talking in here. Listen, we’re going to bed to read a while and then go to sleep. You don’t stay up too late.”
“Mm,” Timmy said.
“Good night, then,” his dad said, closing the door.
***
Around midnight Timmy’s throat began to hurt. His neck felt tired as if he had carried something strapped around it. He was losing faith in his experiment.
Then it happened.
Sometime right around the change of dates Timmy found he could not say the word any longer. Was he just tired?
“Drakelet,” he said.
No, he could still talk. He tried to remember the word. He could not. It was gone.
He went to his dictionary but he had no idea how to look up the word because the word was gone, not only from the dictionary but also from his head. And from the heads of the rest of the world.
***
At school on Monday, Timmy’s teacher, Miss Parrish, called on Timmy to read from their lesson book, from the story about the headless horseman.
Timmy began to read but his voice was croaky.
“Are you okay?” Miss Parrish asked.
“Cold, maybe,” Timmy rasped.
“Okay, Wendy Ceccherrelli, pick up where Timmy left off.”
At break time Timmy couldn’t wait to talk to Ed. He caught up with him in the hall and pulled him into the bathroom. There was a third grader in there but they didn’t pay him any mind.
“I did it,” Timmy whispered.
“You did? It worked?” Ed said. His pleasure was genuine.
“Took all day,” Timmy said.
“What was the word,” Ed said in his excitement.
“It’s gone,” Timmy said.
Ed thought a moment.
“Of course,” he said. “Um, now what?”
“I don’t know,” Timmy whispered. “But the word’s gone.”
“You wanna do another?” Jackpot asked.
“Naw,” Timmy said.
“Maybe I’ll do one tonight.”
“Maybe it’s not such a good idea,” Timmy whispered. It just occurred to him what the possibilities of this anti-creative force were.
“You did one,” Ed said, sulking. “I want to try, too.”
***
Timmy went home that night in a bit of a funk. He was sorry he had used the word up.
All over the world there were gaps and hesitations in people’s speech. It was slight, almost unnoticeable.
“Oh, what’s the word I want?” was heard over and over again.
Timmy didn’t know any of that. But, he sensed it. He had made a hole in the world, in an important part of the world. He had made a perforation in language.
Timmy was very sorry this had ever started. And now, what if Ed did it and then told someone and they told someone and on and on.
Timmy called Ed on the phone.
“Please don’t do it,” Timmy said.
“Relish, relish, relish, relish, relish, relish, relish,” Jackpot said.
“Why did you choose that word?” Timmy asked.
“I hate relish,” Ed said. “Relish, relish, relish…”
***
Before going to bed Timmy wrote himself a note. It said, “Relish. Check fridge. Chopped pickle in a jar.”
***
The next morning Timmy ran to the refrigerator and opened the door. He started pulling condiments out in a frenzy. His note now said only, “Check fridge. Chopped pickle in a jar.”
“What are you doing, dear?” his mom, asked. “I’ll make you breakfast.”
“I’m looking for something.” Timmy said.
“Well, what, dear?”
“I can’t remember. But I’ll know it when I see it,” he said.
In the back of the fridge, behind a jar of old honey -mustard, Timmy found what he wanted. He pulled it out into the fresh air as if he were pulling a rabbit out of a hat.
The jar of chopped pickles was there all right. But where its name was supposed to be was blank white space.
“What’s this?” he asked his mom, frantic now.
Annabeth walked through the kitchen, her face smeared with syrup.
“Let’s see,” Mom said, sliding her reading glasses up her nose. “Well, dog my cats, there’s no name on it. Ingredients: pickles, salt, water, spices. Hm.”
“But what’s it CALLED?” Timmy shouted.
Timmy’s mom looked at him over her glasses, a silent reproach to his raising his voice.
“Well, I don’t know what it is. To be safe I’m going to throw it away.”
And she did. Out it went.
“Now, what would you like for breakfast?”
***
When Timmy got to school a red-eyed Ed met him on the front steps.
“Ha!” Ed said.
“Yeah,” Timmy said.
“Hey, I was happy when you did it,” Ed said.
“I know. I’m sorry I did it though, Ed. You didn’t tell anyone else did you?”
“Just Jackie and Jennie and Shlomo and Flannery and Garland and Pat and Sherri and F
rank.”
“Oh boy,” Timmy said.
And that’s how it all got started.
When the grammarians at Harvard University traced the trouble back to Baileysville, Timmy turned himself in.
“This is terrible,” one of the grammarians said.
“I know,” Timmy said. “I wish I could erase the whole thing. I wish I could go back in time and undo it.”
“Not much chance of that,” another grammarian said, a nice-looking lady with a “Just Read” button on her beige sweater.
“You’ve put us in quite a pickle, young man,” said the man with the white beard who seemed to be in charge.
“Don’t say ‘pickle’,’” Timmy said.
***
And so it happened. Little by little the language lost words, lost some very important words. Little by little writers lost the ability to create magic with the alphabet. It was a sad time for the planet.
World leaders went on television to plead with people to stop using up words but the more they gave away the secret the more people tried it. It was irresistible. It was quickly out of control.
And it wasn’t just in English this was happening. All over the globe people were using up words just because they could. In Swahili, in French, in Italian, in German, in Polish, in Hmong.
Writers were in despair. Some stopped writing.
The production of books dropped 8eight percent the first year. The next year it was down seventeen17 percent.
No one knew what to do.
But a lesson was learned. Even as it trickled away, like sands through an hourglass, language took on a new significance. People began to appreciate the words that were left.
Yet still they ebbed away. There was no turning back.
Stories, the ones that were still written, and the ones already written, began to have holes in their sentences. The opening of A Tale of Two Cities now read, “It was the best of times, it was the of times.” No one knew what went in the cavity.
Some people stopped reading. It was too difficult.
It was a nightmare.
I know. I’m a writer. I put this down on paper as a for all of us.
Notes Toward the Story
“Every story is not about some question.
Yes it is. Where all is known no narrative is possible.”
—Cormac McCarthy
®Possible opening of story:
They were loud and ill -mannered, but hell, so was I at their age. We had just moved to the neighborhood and I didn't want to start right away being the old grouch all the kids loved to hate. It worried me a bit when Chip was around, but they seemed relatively harmless.
Chip was my five- year- old; Chip as in "off the old block," but I was not trying to forge him in my image, God knows, you'll have to believe me on that.
***
Drawcansir—a blustering big bully.
*
Chip's note to my new wife:
Kiss me n the morning
be a surpriz
*
Chip’s idea for a novel: Beowulf II—story of Grendel's father
*
There’s a knife, an ordinary kitchen knife, which I cannot look at. When my wife leaves it on the counter I see it as an invitation to mayhem or suicide. What’s beneath flesh beckons. The knife has an inner life.
Also: we have a ricer. I do not know what a ricer is. Do I need to know this?
*
Dogs don’t understand sarcasm. Go ahead. Tell your dog who has just shit on the welcome mat, Yeah, that’s what I want you to do. The dog will offer you unbreakable insouciance.
*
Was this some kind of test, a trust exam after all this time? Was it some stratagem designed to discover the real me, a me that was hidden, or worse, a me that existed unbeknownst to me, a Hyde-me, an ur-me, a new and- improved me that would delight her, or a hideous monster-me that would disappoint, abandon, maim?
*
And now, stretching toward the horizon, there are two shadows.
*
My wife has no idea about Brier. Brier, my nineteen- year- old lover.
Brier.
The medicine you’re taking is making you sick.
*
Trepanning—drilling a hole in the skull for a permanent high
*
“Things are slow, here at The Doterage.”
*
Pudency (PYOOD-n-see) adjective
Modesty, bashfulness.
If today's word bears a resemblance to the word for female privates,
it's
because there is a link. Both sprout from Latin pudere (to be ashamed).
Impudent is another word originating from the same source.
*
Chip walks in while I’m on the phone with Brier. He hears this: “and that’s because I have developed an overwhelming urge and overwhelming urges are as unavoidable as allegory.” Later, Chip will ask me what an allegory is. He will ask me what an overwhelming urge is. He will ask me, Who is Brier?
*
Rubicon—point of no return, where an action taken commits a person irrevocably
*
®Chip’s father is trying to start a new story. In truth I am trying to start a new novel by starting a new story that will take hold like an infection and become a year’s work. A novel.
*
Sciolist—one who engages in pretentious display of superficial knowledge
*
Chip’s thoughts on non-representational art, after looking at Faith Ringgold’s work: “Ooh, it’s like Claude Monet, whose pictures are kind of floppy.”
*
Impressionism, even at its best, is kind of floppy. Yes.
*
(Doterage. Funny?)
A knife. A ricer.
*
The boys, the boys in my imaginary neighborhood, form a loose gang. We do not think it’s gang as in gang warfare, as in gangland, as in gang-related-shooting. These boys are from good homes, bright boys, even happy boys. Together, the groupthink takes over, as groupthink must. They become something slightly more dangerous. I use the word advisedly. They are boys like my boy—yet, they are contemplating something outré, something hideous.
*
What?
Furphy—a false story, a rumor
*
Potemkin village (po-TEM-kin VIL-ij) noun
An impressive showy facade designed to mask undesirable facts.
*
Call the street we live on—the street the imaginary we live on—Potemkin Street?
*
My wife—my new wife, as we all refer to her—is named Hayley. Like Hayley Mills, whose underwear, once glimpsed as a child in The Parent Trap, set up inside the young me inexplicable detonations and collisions, which later would produce, or help produce, an adult who is led around by his dick. Hayley Mills’ Underpants.
*
Brier says this: “Look, you’re married. That’s fine. I knew you were married. Your being married is one of your chief definitions. It is, perhaps, one of the things that drew me to you. And together, you and I, we, appositives acceptable, have great sex, and having had great sex, we whisper endearments that we both mean and do not mean. We are in a nether world. We are in a temporary way station, a waiting room. But, having agreed upon that, there is no reason why we, in our way station, cannot continue to fuck like squirrels and enjoy the pleasures given to so few humans in this makeshift world.”
*
Brier talks like this. She is, as they say, wise beyond her years. And she has a tattoo of a rose on the left cheek of her perfect ass. This rose is a Rubicon.
*
The boys broke into Mr. Thompson’s shed and stole his riding lawnmower. They took it for a joyride. They left Mr. Thompson’s riding lawnmower in the culvert at the end of Potemkin Street.
Taking a riding lawnmower for a joyride seems funny to me. Would it seem funny to readers, strangers? Is funny th
e way I want this story to go? Can it be both funny and tragic and if so how?
*
Resistentialism (ri-zis-TEN-shul-iz-um) noun
The theory that inanimate objects demonstrate hostile behavior against us.
*
Gadzookery—use of archaic words.
*
Hayley says this at dinner: “Who is Brier?”
*
Polyvalent—multifaceted, having many layers.
Chip says this to me Saturday morning: “Why is Mmommy crying?”
*
I tell Chip, my son, this: “Mommy and Daddy have had a little misunderstanding. It’s nothing to worry about. We will, as we always do, work things out.”
*
®The boys, after numerous backyard break-ins, broken gate locks, lawnmowers stolen, resold, dismantled, pushed into ditches, swappedr with neighbors’ lawnmowers, progress to larger misdeeds. Firstly, they torture Mrs. Pewitt’s dog and set it on fire. Dogs don’t understand fire any better than they understand sarcasm. The dog lives and walks the neighborhood, a blackened, limping thing, a caution sign. A warning like a black rose.
The boys then pick on a smaller boy. A bad something begins to grow, a malefaction.
Chip.
(The boys sexually harass Hayley?)
*
Hayley says this: “What were you thinking? What were you thinking? What were you thinking?”
*
Grivoiserie: bold licentious behavior.
*
Chip says this: “When you write your face goes funny”
How funny, I ask him.
