3 – Wife and Kid

She wiped her hands on a dish towel, not out of nerves but habit. She had kept the house running, more or less, without him; that being pragmatically enough; more or less; insofar as one’s net produced standards allow. The gesture made that clear. She looked at him the way people look at a stranger who resembles someone they once knew; after they had adapted to do without; an obligatory disturbance, like a legal obligation designed to ensure a certain level of peace and quiet, but which actually produces irrelevant discord and garish noise, like an early seen Fellini grotesque formed by his perception of television and how to be noticed on it, now enhanced by the world wide web, and its uninfluential influencers wearing the wrong colors; more or less, maybe not as bad as stated; yet still something one can obviously do without.

He involuntarily, induced by something not clear, slips off into a memory of the transition period; the TV graveyard one that he more or less once imagined; when everyone chucked their old TV’s and replaced them with the new ones which had larger screens hooked to the net, and more choices available at a higher price. That that had again been quickly superseded by a hand sized cell phone; in some circles called a sail foam, which was capable of playing everything the large screen could; that alternative name funny and simultaneously the most relevant, as an old cell phone was still capable of playing movies, TV, and accessing the net; but the outdated sail foam was incapable of making or receiving calls. Progress marches on. Human interaction is made increasingly difficult; though no one seems to mind or notice.

This is something someone might remember from a daydream rather than "see" in the literal sense, in that it already acts like a metaphor; like the “Twilight Zone” man. It isn't a documentary moment; it's a transitional one. The image gives its viewer the architecture of a shift without spelling out the details of the mechanism employed.

A lone figure stands beside a wall of old televisions; stacked, inert, almost totemic. They're not broadcasting anything. They're relics arranged like a monument to a medium that once defined the world's attention. The person, who was just out for his morning constitutional, isn't interacting with them so much as regarding them, as if he is looking at the fossil record of a culture they once lived inside, while not articulating his wish that the government do their job, and remove the garbage.

This particular setting or non-setting is an outdoor urban space, with older apartment buildings in the background, which suggests that this isn't a curated museum display; but not convincingly. It's more like someone stumbled upon the remains of an un-buried previous era’s relics left out in the open; kind of portentous and simultaneously a mid-level distraction, which unsuccessfully tries to call forth the final pronouncement of “2666.” The TVs feel both heavy and hollow; heavy as objects, hollow as vessels that un-plugged, no longer carry the signal they were built for; misfits.

The stack of TVs involuntarily becomes the last moment when the old broadcast world still had physical mass. The solitary observer involuntarily becomes the person who lived through the shift and is now encountering and viewing the momentarily important hinge point.

The outdoor placement suggests the medium has been moved out of the living room and into the public square; exactly what the internet did to television's monopoly on attention. The silence of the screens signals the end of one way transmission; opting for no way. The net replaced the broadcast monologue with a chaotic, “participatory” swarm which has its AI’s censor participation. That's not nostalgia; it's recognition. The viewer is remembering the moment when the old world was still visible, but is already obsolete; not because of taste, but because of the algorithmically induced lack of it.

Old TV was a gatekeeper system; a few channels, a few voices, a few schedules. The stack of sets is a modernist physical reminder of how much infrastructure was required to deliver so little; while disregarding and conveniently making no note of the amount of space and water is required to house a data center, apparently intent on web domination and AI delusional fantasies; the duo mutually beneficial to bots and their masters, to the exclusion of paying humanity.

When the screens are off, the authority of the broadcaster evaporates. The viewer in the coat is no longer a passive recipient; they're an autonomous observer.

The net isn't depicted, but its presence is implied by the absence of signal. The silence is the hinge. The viewer is standing in the gap between eras.

It feels like a daydream rather than a memory, because the scene compresses decades of technological and cultural change into a single tableau. Real life never gives you such clean symbolism. Daydreams do. They let you revisit the mechanism of a transition in one distilled image.

 

Interrupting his daydream, there she was.

 

Possibly picking her up mid thought and/or speech, he heard her say; “The kid’s almost four now. He doesn’t know you at all.”

She didn’t say it with accusation. She said it like weather. A fact. Something that had happened while he was gone, the way seasons happen.

He nodded once. He didn’t ask to see the boy. He didn’t ask where he was. He didn’t ask anything. Questions implied entitlement, and he had forfeited that long before the cell door closed.

She went back to stirring whatever was on the stove. The smell was familiar; onions, maybe garlic, but it didn’t reach him. His senses were still tuned to the metallic air of confinement. Everything here felt too soft, too warm, too lived in.

“You hungry?” she asked, still not looking at him.

“No.”

“You should eat.”

He didn’t move. The limp throbbed again, a pulse of memory he refused to decode. He shifted his weight to the other leg, pretending it was just stiffness from the walk.

She finally turned to face him fully. “They just let you out? Like that?”

“Yeah. ...... You know as much as I do.”

“No hearing? No notice?”

“No.”

“There are no accidents. They want something.” She absorbed that. Her face didn’t change, but something behind her eyes tightened. She wasn’t afraid of him. She was afraid of whatever bureaucratic or political mechanism had decided to spit him back into the world without explanation.

“You can stay here tonight,” she said. “After that ..... we’ll see.”

He nodded again. It was more than he expected.

A child’s footsteps thudded upstairs; light, quick, unburdened. Steamer didn’t look up. He didn’t want to see the boy’s face. Not yet. Maybe not ever. The limp pulsed again, sharper this time, as if the body were reminding him of the exact moment he’d lost the right to be a father.

She watched him, reading the silence correctly. “He won’t understand who you are,” she said. “Don’t expect anything.”

“I don’t.”

“Good.”

She turned off the stove. The room filled with the small domestic sounds he’d forgotten existed; the click of the burner, the scrape of a spoon, the hum of the refrigerator. They felt louder than the guards, louder than the cell door, louder than the years.

“You’ll need work,” she said.

He didn’t answer. They both knew what that meant. No one hired men like him. Not with his record. Not with his limp. Not with the look in his eyes that said he’d been somewhere the rest of them pretended didn’t exist. Not with his real resume, but to his benefit, faking things became easier as the web advanced and grew.

“I’m going to try. I can code. It’s kind of easy after you learn the first language.”

“AI’s can code too.”

“I can post that I’m one of them, and subsidize that with another identity which advertises coding without the AI fantasies and incompletions. Best of both worlds, eh?”

She couldn’t hold back the smirk, knowing that AI’s work ridiculously cheap. “There’s always the Zone,” she said quietly, almost to herself.

He didn’t react. The Zone was a rumor, a threat, a promise, somewhere he was a few times, depending on who said it. A forbidden territory now patrolled by Survivalists who claimed to hate the government but eliminated or reported intruders to the libby fascists in power anyway. A place where the rules bent, or broke, or revealed themselves.

A place for men who had nowhere else to go.

“You’re not going back there,” she said, but without conviction. “Not after everything.”

He didn’t argue. He didn’t need to. The limp answered for him, a physical reminder of the last time he’d crossed that boundary.

He stood next to her, the house pressing in on him, the world outside offering nothing but empty road and the faint outline of a place he had sworn never to return to.

Nothing ahead had been comforting.

But the Zone; dangerous, forbidden, watched, had a gravity nothing else did.

And he was already leaning toward it.

 

A week passed, or so it seemed.

 

He said; “No reply. Again. They seal their own doom when they thwart me from making a ‘legitimate’ living. All it does is prompt me to do what they don’t want done. Or are they a step ahead, and want this done while purporting not to. ...... I don’t think so as they’re not that smart and disdain long term planning. ........ Accidents? Mass accidents? ..... No matter. I have my path.”

She said; “It ended in the sixties. The Zone was all over then. They expended all efforts to never let it appear again.”

Steamer replied; “But, they could never wipe it out entirely. So, they sought ways to subvert the remains, a counter intuitive trip mined with ...... with self-serving misinformation, while un-leashing ‘fact checker’ misinformation on the populace.”

Emma extended her formerly pot holding arms, smiled and said; “Yes, like all Marxists and their derivatives, they claimed economics as a pluralistic pal, and then changed all the accepted measures to support their exalted place, simultaneously making illegal the Zone. All faith fell in the gap.”

Steamer sighed and said; “Sorry you saw that. Some rooms are best left un-entered. ...... You know the funny thing is how they stream out all these warnings about things that never come to be, while ignoring any possible warnings about that which is right in front of everyone’s face.”

“Except one.”

“The Zone?”

 

Time passes.

 

Yesterday Emma and Steamer watched “Chien 51,” a rather good French near future dystopian thriller where Paris has been converted into a total surveillance state. Presumably the rest of the world has suffered the same fate, but Parisians are as usual barely aware that any other world exists, just like everyone everywhere. Paris is being managed by Alma, the all-powerful AI who is able to solve pretty much any crime by matching its vast, water and power consuming database to the available information. But, for reasons unknown, the technical human genius behind the project has just been shot dead. A pair of cops is ordered to investigate, and in the end make a terrifying discovery. The killer is Alma herself. The AI tasked with reducing crime has come to the conclusion that almost every human is a criminal, starting with the person who built her and “she” is now having second thoughts, and is taking steps to make the world a better place for humans, not considering the undeterminable survival rate; one of her core directives; the latter that is.

One may consider it all AI's fault, or all technology's fault, but Steamer and Emma were doubtful about the validity of the argument. It seemed to them that it's much more the Godless people's fault. People may more or less genuinely want to make things better, and they may spin a good enough story about how they're going to do it that they fool the electorate and gain power. But then other people disagree with them enough that they want to interfere, and what are they supposed to do anyway? Their view is that these misguided heretics/counter-revolutionaries/terrorists are going to ruin everything, and you have no choice but to suppress them.

Various branches of Christianity were effectively implementing versions of this scheme well before there was any advanced technological base to help them. You don't need much technology to accuse someone of witchcraft and burn them at the stake; though of course the technology, as people have been discovering for the last century, is very handy, taking away the need to be so obvious. Orwell saw this coming, and not long after he published “1984” the East Germans had created a society that was at least halfway there. Everything the state said was lies. Everyone was watched all the time. No one could be trusted, because you never knew who might be an informer. And yet, astonishingly, the monsters in charge of this huge prison camp of a country did genuinely seem to believe that they were doing it for good reasons.

Worldwide, you can see it's all coming back. There are people who say they need to control their fellow citizens for their own good, and soon they will have all the technology to help them do that which Orwell foresaw and then some. In the end it's not the machines who are oppressing us. It's the people with no faith, the atheistic government devils.

 

Steamer had another one of his flashbacks, though his actual acid days were somewhere in the murky past and the recesses of his mind.

Steamer's mother didn't "homeschool" him in the modern sense. She simply refused to let a child sit idle in a house when there was always something new to learn. Her teaching wasn't philosophical; it was procedural, and it was interesting and entertaining; at the time early and thereby unaware of how future libby definitions, structures, and dearth of humor, would make learning into something, which the net dominant with their libby, influential AI’s calling all White culture “racist,” ostensibly a toast to the “equality” which exists in shared, programmable ignorance.

 

Reading - Mom sat him at the kitchen table every morning after breakfast, one finger on the page, one hand on the coffee mug. No theatrics, no baby talk. She made him sound out every word until the shape of the sentence clicked. By the time he was four, he could read the newspaper aloud to her while she chopped vegetables.

Writing - Mom gave him a stub pencil and a stack of scrap paper from the grocery store. He copied letters, then words, then whole sentences she dictated while stirring a pot. She corrected his grip, his slant, his spacing; small, mechanical adjustments that accumulated into competence. When he finally walked into a classroom, his handwriting already looked like a quiet adult, not paid for autographs.

Arithmetic - Mom taught numbers the way other mothers taught chores, by counting cans in the pantry, adding up the grocery bill before the cashier did, and little Steamer subtracted the change in his head before the coins hit his palm. Multiplication arrived as naturally as breathing; she treated it as a tool, not a subject.

By the time he reached first grade, school felt like a place designed for children who needed catching up. Steamer didn't. He sat through lessons like a kid watching a rerun of a “Beverly Hillbillies” show he'd already lovingly memorized, despite the majority abandoning the show upon their delayed recognition that the hillbillies were better looking, naturally smarter, and had more sense than they did. This ruined their “safe” way of laughing at a group the government left un-protected, that they looked down on, until they came to the painful conclusion that they “saw” this only as a result of standing on their heads, as “democratically” commanded. Ratings fell and the Beverly’s were cancelled, but nothing could diminish their taped existence. If the web disallowed the showings, there were a few bootleg copies of the entire series, which the lovers of free speech, would provide freely on the dark web.

Back on topic, more or less, school wasn't harmful to Steamer. There were things to be learned there, they only obstructed by the teacher, who was simply innocuous and redundant; nothing more than a whole host of things that wasted time. The teachers over explained ad nauseum, ostensibly in an effort to engage the black children who weren’t paying any attention anyway, no matter; more than content to be engaged in a community drag-“sounding” session, in which things like; “Ima lay a knot upside yo haid, da size of a quottah,” be owl da rage.

 

Dad sits beside little Steamer’s crib in the half dark, approaching dusk, the way fathers do when they’re trying not to over-stimulate a child while trying not to fall asleep themselves. The night light throws a small amber circle on the floorboards, just enough to make the room feel like a place where stories can happen.

His son is tiny; still in that stage where the crib bars look like a fence around a small kingdom. The boy lies on his back, fists curled near his cheeks, eyes wide and bright in the dimness. He doesn’t understand plot, or dialect, or why rabbits behave the way they do. But he understands his father’s voice. That’s enough.

The father opens the old book carefully. The spine is cracked, the pages soft from years of handling. “Uncle Remus.” He does not hesitate for a moment, uninterested in the erroneous, contemporary version of “history and narrative,” supposedly baked into the text. Tonight he’s again not teaching a modern interpretation of literature or culture. He’s giving his tiny little son the sound of a story, the rhythm of a voice, the feeling of being read to.

He begins.

The dialect rolls out in that warm, musical cadence, softened by his own voice. He doesn’t always quote long passages; just enough to give the flavor, enough to make the boy’s eyes follow the sound.

“Brer Rabbit,” he says, tapping the page with one finger, “wasn’t big, and he wasn’t strong, but he was quick. Quick in the head, quicker than the rest.”

The baby kicks once, a tiny thump against the mattress.

“So when Brer Fox tried to catch him; oh, he tried all sorts of tricks, Brer Rabbit always found a way out. Not because he was lucky. Because he paid attention.”

The father glances down. The boy is staring at him, not the book. The father smiles, a small, private thing.

He keeps going, telling the story more than reading it, smoothing out the rough edges, shaping it into something a child in a crib can absorb. He gives the rabbit a little swagger, the fox a little bluster. He lets the tension rise and fall like a lullaby.

“And when they finally thought they had him cornered,” he says softly, “Brer Rabbit just laughed. A tiny little laugh, like he knew something they didn’t.”

The boy’s eyelids flutter.

“Because he did.”

 

BRER RABBIT: THE EARLY ORIGINAL STORIES

by Joel Chandler Harris (1868)

BRER RABBIT AND BRER WOLF - I

Once upon a time Brer Rabbit was bidout any water, and Brer Wolf was round dere taking dinner wid him one day. Brer Wolf say to Brer Rabbit, ”Better let's go and jine, and dig a well.“

Brer Rabbit say, “Oh no, Brer Wolf, I kin drink early in de mornin’ off de grass, and in de day off de cow tracks.” So Brer Wolf went and dig a well for hisself; and after he been done dig dis well, every mornin’ when be go down to fetch water, he meet Brer Rabbit tracks dere.

And after he find Brer Rabbit keep on comet, Brer Wolf put de tar baby down dere, and Brer Rabbit come wid a pail on moonshine night, and as he git about an hundred yard from de well, he meet de tar baby, and he hail de little girl, and de little girl give him no answer, so he leave de pail and keep on goin’ up; and he hail do little girl again, and de little girl give him no answer.

Den he look down in de well, and ebry time he look down in de well, de little girl was lookin’ down too; and he say, “Don’t look down dere, little girl, or I’II slap your face.“ And he looked down in de well again, and de little girl still looked upon him, so he raised his right hand to slap her, and it got stick, and he told de little girl if she didn’t let go his hand, he would slap her wid de odder hand, and he hit her wid de odder hand, and dat stick too.

He raise his right foot and say, “Gal, see dis foot; if I hit you wid dis foot, you tink horse kick you.“ And he hit her wid his right foot, and it did stick; and so he up wid de odder foot, and say, “See dis foot; if I hit you wid dis, you tink tunder roll over you.“ And he hit her, and dat foot stick; so he say, “Little gal, I won’t say nottin to you at all; I have knock down many a man wid my forehead, and if I happen to hit you wid it, I split your head wide open.”

And he butt her wid his forehead, and dal stick. Day broke, and Brer Wolf come down for water. “Hey, Brer Rabbit, what you doin’ here? Tought you been tell me you could drink water ’M de mornin’ off de grass, and cow track. Now Brer Rabbit, I goin’ to pay you for all my water you has been takins.“ Brer Wolf had a big fire make to trow Brer Rabbit in to burn him up.

As dey was passin’ de brier-bush, Brer Wolf daughter say, “Pa, you better trow him in dat brier bush.“ Brer Rabbit say, “Do, Brer Wolf, trow me in de fire, ’cause if you trow me in de brier-bush, I done.“ Brer Wolf say, “Well, Brer Rabbit, you is a mighty tricky fellow; I want de whole race of you to die away.“ Brer Wolf tink Brer Rabbit didn’t want to go in de brier bush, so he trow him dere. Brer Rabbit jump about and laugh. “Brer Wolf, you couldn’t trow me in a better place, for I was born and raise here.”

II

Once upon a time Brer Rabbit and Brer Wolf was courtin’ for a weddin’, and Brer Rabbit had a short tail, and Brer Wolf had a long tail. De noung lady say, “ I redder marry to Brer Wolf dan to Brer Rabbit, ’cause Brer Rabbit tail is short.“ Brer Wolf wanted to let Brer Rabbit see dat de noung lady was more in love wid him dan she was wid Brer Rabbit, so he been fink he would give a large party at the noung lady house.

He went round to Brer Rabbit house, and told Brer Rabbit dat he wanted him to play de fiddle for dem, and de girls said he must be certain to come, for dey couldn’t do bidout him. De ball was to be on Tuesday night. Wednesday, about nine o’clock, Brer Dog passed along by Brer Rabbit door. Brer Dog say to Brer Rabbit, “I is going to fling a hint to you; don’t say I tell you, ’cause I got nottin to do wid it.

The noung lady say she would have married you, but your tail is too short; for her father say, it is better for her to marry Brer Wolf, ’cause he is so much more of a gentleman dan you.” “I am bery much oblige, Brer Dog, dat you did stop here and tell me dim ting. I won’t say nottin about it to nobody.“ As Brer Dog leave, Brer Rabbit put on his nice clothes, and went round to de lady house. De lady say, “Brer Rabbit, you must be certain to come tomorrow night, for we can’t do bidout you, and bring your fiddle.“

“Very well, ma’am, I certain to come; but I won’t walk to come; Brer Wolf always did been my great grand daddy ridin’ horse, and he shall be mine.“ About nine o’clock in de mornin’, Brer Wolf come round to Brer Rabbit house; Brer Rabbit was well and hearty. About six o’clock in de afternoon, as soon as Brer Rabbit seen Brer Wolf commn’ down de path, in very great haste, he run quick and jump in his bed and as Brer Wolf come near de house, he hear Brer Rabbit groan, and say, “Lord, Lord, Lord hab mussy!“

Brer Wolf knock at de door, and Brer Rabbit mother come, and say Brer Rabbit bery sick. Brer Wolf say, “What mus I do? I is done dis afternoon, for Brer Rabbit is sick, and dono what for do.” Brer Wolf say to Brer Rabbit, “Brodder, if I ride you half way, kin you go?” Brer Rabbit answer, “Oh, no, I is afraid you will trot wid me.“ Brer Wolf say, “I ’clare, Brodder, I will walk wid you ebery step of de way.“ Den Brer Rabbit say, “Lem me git dat little ting call saddy.”

Brer Wolf say, “Get um quick, le’me go.”

“Le’me get that little thing call briddy.” (bridle)

“Get um quick, le’me go.”

“Le’me get that little thing call spur.”

“Get um quick, le’me go.“

“Le’me get that little thing call whip”

“Get um, make haste, le’me go.”

Brer Rabbit jump on Brer Wolf, and off dey went. As he come to ’bout half way, Brer Wolf begin to trot a little. Brer Rabbit groan, and say, “I ’clare I must come off, Brer Wolf, you trot too hard; you promise not to do me so.”

Brer Rabbit was to ride far as de bridge; so when he mos’ got to de bridge, Brer Rabbit say, “Brer Wolf, I begin to feel a little better; jis carry me ’cross de bridge, den I will come off.”

De noung ladies was all out in de piazza, lookins out for Brer Rabbit and Brer Wolf to come and play de music. When Brer Rabbit come to de gate, he clap whip and spur to Brer Wolf, and Brer Wolf was tearing down de road. Brer Rabbit ride up to de door, and tell de boy to take his father old ridin’ horse and put him in de stable; and he went in de house and took de noung ladies to peep trough de cracks in de stable, and see Brer Wolf. Brer Wolf was so shame, you couldn’t tell his head from his body; his head stuck in his lap.

After dey went in to supper, and was all settin’ at de ball-room table, Brer Rabbit told de boy to take some scraps to Brer Wolf, Brer Wolf say to de boy, “Please crack de door, lem me see how late it is.“ De boy say, “No, Brer Rabbit tell me I mustn’t open de door, for you is a tricky fellow, you will jump out.” As de boy crack de door open to put in de scraps, Brer Wolf burst de door open and jumped out.

Den he went and hired Brer Dog to catch Brer Rabbit for him. He was to gib him so much amount of money. Brer Dog leave his fiddle and ebery ting to de guard house, and tell de guard man to mind dem, and he would call back for dem on Friday. So he went ’long a little snake path, and hide himself in a little alley. Brer Rabbit come along, and ebery little while he jump, and look round to see if anybody was out after him. As he went pass de alley, Brer Dog jumped out after him, and run, and push him so close, ’til Brer Rabbit run up a tree hollow.

Brer Dog den call Brer Goose to gaard de tree till he go bring some fire to burn Brer Rabbit. Brer Rabbit say, “Brer Goose, dat de way you do? Dey put you to gaud me, and you tun your back.“ Brer Goose say, “Quack, quack! I can look right on you den.“ When he say dis, he poke his head up de hollow. Brer Rabbit trow some rotten wood in he eyes. and Brer Goose begin to paw he eyes wid his foot. Brer Rabbit come out and gone! When Brer Dog come back, he mak up a fire and burn de hollow tree down, and couldn’t find as much m Brer Rabbit bones.

Brer Dog was so mad, dat he tun round and caught hold on Brer Goose tail, and Brer Goose fly up in de air, and leave his tail in Brer Dog mouth. Brer Dog went back to tell Brer Wolf dat Brer Rabbit got away, he couldn’t catch him Brer Wolf den made a bargain, and play dat he was dead, so dat he could catch Brer Rabbit. One cold day Brer Wolf was laid out before de fire on a table. Brer Dog send round to Brer Rabbit, to let him know dat Brer Wolf is die.

Brer Rabbit come up to de door; it was bery cold, and he say, “Gentlemen, is Brer Wolf dead, in fact? I am sorry to hear he is die.“ Brer Rabbit step up by de fire and warm his hands, and he say, “Gentlemens, we mus hab someting for settin’ up, and bury him tomorrow morning.” As he step from de fire he say, “Look here, gentlemens, someting ain’t right; I mus go and look at Brer Wolf face.” As he raise up de sheet, he say, “Look here, gentlemens; did Brer Wolf grin after he dead?” He had de sheet in his hand, but didn’t put it down.

De gentlemen said, “No, he didn’t grin.“ Brer Rabbit say, “Well, man can’t dead, less grin.“ As he said dis, Brer Wolf, wid his stupidness, grinned, and Brer Rabbit jumped out de door, and said, “Never see dead man grin yet.“

III

Once upon a time Brer Rabbit went to Brer Wolf house to ax him for go hunt coutah eggs wid him. Dey found a great many, but Brer Rabbit eat all of his on de way home. Brer Wolf say he was gwine to take his home to his wife. When Brer Wolf was home, Brer Rabbit went to him again. “I say, Brer Wolf, did you give your wife any of dem egg? You better not, ’cause dey are pison. I gave some to my wife, and she is bery sick.”

Note - A cooter is a pond turtle with a yellow-striped head common to the Eastern United States.

Brer Wolf was scare, and say, “Oh, Brer Rabbit, tenk you for tell me; I will trow dem all away.” So he went to fetch dem; and as he trow dem out, Brer Rabbit run, pick um all up quick, and eat every one. Brer Wolf was very vex when he find out Brer Rabbit cunning to git dem all for himself, so he run to try and catch him. Brer Rabbit run up in a tree. Brer Wolf told Brer Coutah to mind Brer Rabbit, while he went home to bring an axe to cut down de tree, to catch Brer Rabbit. When he was gone, Brer Rabbit say, “Oh, Brer Coutah; someting so pretty in dis tree. Look up, you will see it.”

Brer Coutah raise him eye, and Brer Rabbit trow dirt in um. Brer Coutah run to de ribber to wash de dirt out. When Brer Wolf come back, he cut down de tree, but Brer Rabbit done gone. Brer Wolf was dat mad be didn’t know what for do; so he run to look for Brer Coutah, and found him at de ribber, washing de dirt of him eye. Brer Wolf been tek an axe and cut off him tail. Dat’s de reason Coutah tail short to die day.

BRER DEER AND BRER COUTAH - IV

Once upon a time Brer Deer and Brer Coutah was courtin’, and de lady been lub Brer Deer more so dan Brer Coutah. She did been lub Brer Coutah, but she lub Brer Deer de morest. So de noung lady say to Brer Deer and Brer Coutah both, dey mus hab a ten mile race, and de one dat beats, she will marry him.

So Brer Coutah say to Brer Deer, “You has got longer legs dan I has, but I will run you. You run ten mile on land, an’ I will run ten on water.”

So Brer Coutah went and git nine of his fambly, and put one at ebery mile post, and he himself, what was to run wid Brer Deer, was right in front of de noung lady door, in de broom grass.

Dat mornin’ at nine o’clock, Brer Deer meet Brer Coutah at de first mile post, wha day was to start from. So he call, “Well, Brer Coutah, is you ready? go’long.” As he git to de next mile post, he say, “Brer Coutah.” Brer Coutah say, “Hullo!” Brer Deer say, “You dere?” Brer Coutah say, “Yes Brudder, I dere too.”

Next mile post he jump, Brer Deer say, “Hullo, Brer Coutah!” Brer Coutah say, “Hullo Brer Deer, you dere too?” Brer Deer say, “Ki! It look like you gwine for tie me. It look like we going to de gal tie.”

When he git to de mile post, he tought he git dere first, ’cause he mek too jump; so he holler, “Brer Coutuh.” Brer Coutah answer, “You dere too?” Brer Deer say, “Go’long, Brudder, I git dere in due season time.”

When Brer Deer come to de ten mile, he didn’t been see Brer Coutah; so he was bery enjoiced, and went up bery slowly in walking, and saw Brer Coutah in de piazza, had de noung lady hooked hands, walking up and down.

So he come to de door, and de lady fader say, “I am bery sorry, but you been let Brer Coutah beat you. You got sich a long leg, and you let Brer Coutah beat you.”

Brer Coutah wheel round and say, “Good-by, Brer Deer; de next noung lady you court, I hope you will be more fortune to marry. My feet is bery short, but I has decieve many a mankind!”

 

The father closes the book without a sound. He rests his hand lightly on the crib rail, feeling the small warmth of the room settle around them.

“Goodnight, little man,” he murmurs. “We’ll finish the rest when you’re older.”

The boy’s breathing evens out. The father stays a moment longer, listening to it, letting the quiet do its work.

A story told. A child drifting. A father keeping watch.

 

After Mom had taught Steamer reading, writing, and arithmetic; and the school marm commenced being a zero, Steamer’s father took over his development. Once the academic basics were locked in, his father claimed the rest of the boy's education. Not with speeches. Not with theory. Not with academics. With a ball, a bat, a glove, and the same unsentimental clarity all good fathers used.

The Lessons - Grip first. "Hold the bat like you mean it, not like it's going to bite you." Footwork second. Regarding throwing; "Your arm is only as good as your feet." Repetition without commentary. He threw the same pitch again and again until Steamer's body understood and handled what his mind didn't yet have words for; becoming accustomed to and making routine of fast, inside pitches; the type that render most hitters, even the good ones, inert and complaining to the umpire for relief.

There was no praise offered for the easy stuff. Only a nod when Steamer handled something difficult coming right at him without flinching.

Little Steamer wanted to someday be just like Mickey Mantle. A little kid who wants to be just like Mickey Mantle isn’t really chasing fame; he’s chasing a feeling. That moment when the whole field goes quiet, the pitcher starts his motion, and the kid imagines himself standing there with Mantle’s loose, coiled readiness, the bat resting on his shoulder like it weighs nothing.

He was seven, maybe eight, the age when imitation is still a form of belief. Every afternoon he’d drag his scuffed bat out to the yard, plant his feet in the dirt, and try to stand the way Mickey Mantle stood; hips loose, hands low, eyes level, as if the world couldn’t rush him.

He didn’t have Mantle’s legs, or Mantle’s strength, or Mantle’s impossible torque. What he had was the idea of Mantle; the switch hitting blur, the ball that seemed to leave the bat already knowing where it was going, the trot that never asked for applause.

The kid tried to copy all of it.

He practiced the left handed stance even though he was right handed. He practiced the right handed stance even though it felt like writing with the wrong hand. He practiced the little half step Mantle took before the pitch, the way he’d settle into himself, the way he never looked nervous.

Most days the ball didn’t go far. Sometimes it didn’t go anywhere. But every once in a while; maybe once a week, maybe once a month, he’d catch one clean. The sound would be different, sharper, and for a second he’d feel something close to what he imagined Mantle felt; the clean transfer of energy, the ball rising, the world briefly aligning.

He wasn’t trying to be famous. He wasn’t trying to be a hero. He was trying to feel that one perfect moment again, the one that made the yard seem bigger, the sky seem lower, and the game seem like something he could grow into.

And in that sense, he was already exactly like Mickey Mantle; not in talent, but in the quiet, private certainty that the next swing might be the one.

After school: drop the bag, grab the glove. After dinner: ten minutes of soft toss in the fading light. Weekends: long sessions where the ball did the teaching, Steamer did long bouts of hitting insiders and pitching outsiders. Hard, and his father supplied only the corrections that mattered, insofar as his experience had mastered the technical aspects, thereby seeing its limitations. This was not to dismiss the entirety, but rather to pick the parts relevant to the situation at hand.

By the time Steamer was old enough to play organized ball, he wasn't "ahead of the other kids." He was operating on a different timeline entirely; one built on early competence, quiet repetition, and a household where learning was simply the default state.

It was only later that Steamer realized what was put right in front of his youthful face; compelling him to over and over say; “I love, thank you, and miss you more than you can ever know, Mom and Dad. Truly, I was blessed; by you and that was unappreciated by me. I am so sorry for my inability to see that at the time. Please, God; don’t tell me that it’s too late.”

Oh! My Pa-pa

 

Julius LaRosa

 

Oh! My Papa, to me he was so wonderful,

Oh! My Papa, to me he was so good.

No one could be so gentle and so lovable.

Oh! My Papa, he always understood

 

Gone are the days

when he would take me on his knee

And with a smile,

he’d change my tears to laughter.

 

Oh! My Papa, so funny, so adorable,

always the clown, so funny in his way.

Oh! My Papa, to me he was so wonderful,

deep in my heart I miss him so today.

 

Oh! My Papa, to me he was so wonderful,

Oh! My Papa, to me he was so good.

No one could be so gentle and so lovable.

Oh! My Papa, he always understood

 

Gone are the days

when he would take me on his knee

And with a smile,

he’d change my tears to laughter.

 

Oh! My Papa, so funny, so adorable,

always the clown, so funny in his way.

Oh! My Papa, to me he was so wonderful,

deep in my heart I miss him so today.

 

Oh! My Pa-pa, Oh! My Pa-pa.

 

Written by Paul Burkhard

 

Emma asked; “Are you all right?”

Steamer replied; “What do you mean by ‘all right’?”

Emma just laughed; not the least bit interested in providing definitions to un-definable terms; while remembering all their good, acid laced times now gone. Is it okay to forget the dead? Is the past just a goodbye? Does the current provide anything better? Is another rendition of a version preferable to the original? ....... No.