It’s New Jersey, 1984, and a fat-calved kid wearing dark short pants and a striped propeller cap, is playing in the park.
His father, who’s just convinced him that he is in no way the son of a Jewish immigrant but a modern-day Cossack with a brilliant potential – indeed an obligation – to become a well-paid U.S. doctor one day, has shuffled off to catch a sale on liver sausage at the local deli.
From a nearby bench, a middle-aged man in jeans that are already beginning to sag at the seat is whistling Dixie with his eyes smiling up into the afternoon sky.
“Hey, are you a Confederate, heh, heh?” the kid asks, kind of turning his nose up like a rat sniffing a kitchen table leg.
“Well, ho, ho, you might say I’m a rebel of sorts. How about you son? You’re not by any chance the offspring of that liver-sausage-smelling man that just shuffled away from here.
“Maybe I am. What’s it to you, mister?”
“Well, I certainly don’t mean to pry, but I was just thinking here to myself: what’s a good-looking kid like that doing here all alone in this park…”
“Heh, heh. Are you a pedophile?”
“Oh, heavens no, although I’ve known a few in my day – particularly in the ice-cream vending business. But that’s neither here nor there, my furry little friend.”
“What do you mean ‘furry,’ mister? I’ve got pale green skin, heh, heh. That’s what everyone tells me. And I’m a Ukrainian nationalist who will one day be a high-paid American doctor, while playing professional hockey… and er.”
The middle-aged gentleman has now craned his still wrinkleless but already turkey-like neck forward from the park bench in eerie resemblance to a scene from a Norman Rockwell painting. His thin lips are curved into a carefree smile (almost painted into one, actually), but the eyes are now searching, examining, dissecting the fat little brat posed before him.
“Wanna be a real Cossack?”
“Heh, heh. Hey dude, are you on drugs or something?”
“How about a lollypop, boy?”
“I suck on sissy cigarettes. But I didn’t tell you that … heh heh. Dude, are you sure you’re not a pedophile?”
Changing tack, but not the least bit put off by the fat-calved kid’s obnoxious responses, the middle-aged gentleman cranes his turkey neck 30 degrees higher, thereby looking over and beyond the somewhat deformed head of his ten-year-old interlocutor, and shouts, kind of sweet-like: “Stephan!! Could you step over here for a minute, my boy?”
On another park bench, opposite the new acquaintances, sits a nervous young man with prematurely thinning blond hair. He looks like a college kid – the kind that has to study hard to get good grades because that’s the way life’s been explained to him. He’s reading one of those big fat law books and so appears to be a law student. And he’s dressed kind of preppy, although (again) apparently under someone else’s scrutiny or admonishments. Upon hearing his name, Stephan looks up absentmindedly and then with annoyance after realizing who’s called him.
“What do you want?”
“Could you come over here for a minute, son? I’d like to introduce you to my new friend… Uh, what’s your name, boy, anyway?”
“Heh, heh. None of your business. Who wants to know? Heh, heh?”
“Can’t you see that I’m busy, old man? Leave me alone. I’ve got an earache…”
“Heh, heh. He called you an old man, dude.”
“Now Stephan, I thought that you and I spoke about that surly attitude of yours, son. Have I not been your benefactor of some sorts, speaking on your behalf to certain faculty at the law school you attend…?”
“Heh, heh! Law school – what a loser! I’m gonna be a doctor, and a hockey player…”
Thrusting down his big, fat hardcover law book, Stephan sullenly gets up from the bench and drags his feet over to the middle-aged man and his new acquaintance, remaining standing with his hands in his pockets while avoiding looking at either of them.
“Now son, I don’t often ask you for favors, and consider it a simple matter of courtesy to introduce you to new and interesting characters whom I from time to time encounter in this park…”
“Yeah, right!”
“Dude,” now speaking to Stephan, “He’s talking to you like a little kid, but you’re already in college. What’s up with that? Are you a pedophile, too, heh, heh?”
“Actually, Stephan and I go way back. One might say way forward – to Kyiv in the 1990s…”
“Dude, what are you talking about? This is 1984. And Kyiv is in Ukraine – I know that, because my father is going to take me and my sister there on a visit to meet our relatives, who aren’t Jews, by the way… And then my sister, who is really good looking, will get undressed by Soviet border guards, heh heh… (eyes grow big and frightened)… Hey, what am I saying? How do I know that? This is weird. That’s still several years away. And even at 10 years old, I know that my sister is butt-ugly like everyone else in my family, heh, heh…”
“Stephan?”
Suddenly, without notice, and seemingly completely out of place with the hostile indifference that he’d been showing to both the middle-aged man and the fat-calved kid, Stephan produces a dark, industrial-sized garbage bag from his prep-school pants back pocket and swiftly slips it over the kid’s head and entire body, then swings the struggling bundle over his back like Santa Claus minus the red suit.
“That a boy, son. Easy now. Let’s just make our way to my facilities, quietly, steady on. That’s it, just follow me. That a boy.”
“You dirty old son of bitch. This is the last time. I’m telling you. The last time. I won’t do it anymore. Do you hear me? I don’t care what you tell my professors. I don’t want to be a lawyer, anyway. DO YOU HEAR ME, OLD MAN?
(Sung to the tune of Dixie) “I wish I were in the land of Cossacks, good times there are not forgotten, look away, look away, look away back East. It’s time to make a Ferret, away, away…”
Filed by Dirk Dickerson, May 20, 2013