The First Trial of Manhood
by samuel sattin
As a dying man, Lenard Sikophsky would often look back upon the night when he was a child, and his father, Fearghas Murdoch Sikophsky—the first generation of Scottish/Jewish/Polish (with a lower case ‘p’) émigrés pilgrimming into America by briny way of the Massachusetts coast — stuffed a sponge soaked with chloroform between his lips, wrapped a sash around his eyes, and got ready to introduce him to a concept he called manhood by way of a speeding train.
“Look up at me, boy,” Lenard remembered his father saying, after permission to lift the blindfold was given. It was late December in 1967, around dinnertime, when the twelve-year-old found himself crouching on the train tracks below the bridge at West Fourth Street, just outside Dorchester.
“Look up at me.”
His father stood, beard forked, above Lenard on the bridge platform’s center. Below him, in stone relief, a porpoise-like creature begirded the bodies of four grinning cherubs holding swords. He walked over them in blasphemous bursts, slapping against the stone with his old-world brogues, while his mohair suit, slithering with pinstripes, struggled to keep up the pace. His beard and muttonchops twinkled with silver. The purple dollop of his boyhood yarmulke bit into his head as if it were a small, angry animal, and he had a look in his eyes, something bacchanal, conveying to his son the simple, sinister phrase:
It is time.
“I thought I couldn’t look up,” said twelve-year-old Lenard, the words whimpering from his massive mouth. The enormous size of that mouth, and head that held it, earned him nicknames from children around his home of Milton, Massachusetts, like queer globe and pregnant face. “No matter what. Like you said back at home.”
“I never said that,” growled Fearghas.
“But I heard you.“
“The words I say are not really words,” he continued, scratching the fabric over his ass with vigor. “Remember that I, unlike you, am a daredevil of language. A regular Evel Knievel on the subject of tongues. You want to see through my syllables, earn the ability to understand the space in between them — soar over them on your own goddamn motorbike! But you can’t just wake up into greatness, see? The history of such happenings is impossible.”
Lenard, with a twitch at his left eye, nodded.
“It’s like asking a horse why it’s a horse,” Fearghas carried on. “Urging me to recount what I previously said. Don’t resign yourself to a life of constant puzzlement, son. There are far better routes to embark upon. Like tonight, for example.” He grinned. “Tonight is both the beginning and end of your once-stupid life. It is tonight that I will tell you: prepare to run, wee fucker.” He bared his teeth. “It is tonight that I will tell you: prepare to fight.”
Earlier Fearghas had forced Lenard to wear the blindfold while giving what he called an explanation for this mayhem. It began with the child’s Bar Mitzvah lessons one month prior at the tucked-away synagogue of Rodef Shalom. Rodef was a granite building, shaped like a nipple, that attendants believed unknown to the goyim. The presiding Rabbi was more than a century old, and when he spoke it was rumored that paint flaked from the doors of the Ark. The congregation was comprised of no more than fifty old-worlders – crestfallen Europeans and scholars from Algeria – and their chipper, American-born children, who had the tendency to sneak out of services to smoke pot.
It was at this tiny synagogue that Lenard began squeaking out his communally task mastered Haphtarah. It was also there that his father prepared his unusual destiny. Under the eyes of theologians with copper-rimmed spectacles, Lenard chiseled away at his people’s text without a single inkling of his fate. He never remembered the names of the ones who watched over him, but remembered the way they smiled, like the vowel-less letters themselves. How sometimes, even if he’d thought he’d pronounced them well, they’d pinch him on the shoulder and scold, “Nu, do it again. These things you say ‘ist mistake!’ ” or “These America-boys—brain is rotten. Intellect for penny candy and Superman.”
At the time, Lenard supposed they griped for his perfection, as well as for the perfection of every child of American soil, because his country would never resemble the land where they were born. How could he have anticipated anything else? He saw how they constantly kvetched of how nothing was as good here as it was at home. The citizens themselves, they’d say, were spoiled, and the neighborhoods, crowded; the American Dream, they’d say, was far too implausible, almost in the way of a myth. They never mentioned anything about the dark and scaly windmill of Lenard’s future, and so never gave him reason to worry. Actually, the more they belayed him with their daily grumbles, the more the boy began to forget about his studies and feel sorry for them. It was easy to see that Rodef Shalom of Milton, Massachusetts, was not something they were used to. It was most certainly not Har Zion of Itchki, Poland (a wondrous shtetl of winding brooks, silver flowers, and traditional ideas) where Fearghas, many years ago, had been lined up for greatness by his father, Apollonius Sikophsky. On the fateful day of his own Bar Mitzvah, the feral youth had been ushered from the pews wearing a Tallis reined with Yemenite gold. Approaching what was rumored to be the most important ceremony of a Jewish boy’s life, rather than being mesmerized by The Twilight Zone or Hogan’s Heroes, in the manner of his son, he learned of a sacred tome passed down through his family for generations. A book considered more sacred to the male Sikophskies than their very own people’s Torah. In Lenard’s twelfth year, while he studied away, thinking nothing of his life was any more extraordinary than it was for any child his age, he was secretly being prepared to assume a position of a most dangerous persuasion. For it was in his father’s fathers’ book that his life would take its stake. He wouldn’t learn about the book until after tonight, until after he was stolen from his room and thrown in the back of his family’s Cutlass and told to stay quiet until otherwise notified.
The Manful Exercises of Aesop Mac’Cool, it was called. Or, as it was deemed to those familiar: The Manaton.
“The rule tonight is you don’t look up, unless I tell you to look up,” Fearghas said now, glowering down at his son. “So, if I tell you to look up, then…”
“I look up,” Lenard completed tentatively.
From behind Fearghas’s back came a cane, black as an oil stick, and he used it to murder the ground.
“Ready?” the Scotsman growled, bearing a canine.
“Yessir,” lied Lenard.
“Then look up.”
“No, sir.”
“Why? What are you waiting for?”
“I’m scared, sir.”
“Why are you scared?”
“I’ve never seen you like this before.”
Lenard watched his father smile. He wondered how he could do so, considering where they were. With the Scotsman looming on the bridge above him, there seemed to be no escape. Two concrete walls grown over with ivy rose above Lenard on his left and right side, and behind him, just like in front, tracks carried on with no end. Adolescent graffiti was scrawled amongst the vines, curse-words and drawings of body parts whose meaning he could not fathom, but about which, even under the circumstances, he still wanted to learn. Every few seconds he thought he felt something nipping at his shoes, but tried not to think about it. There was already enough to be frightened of as far as he was concerned.
“Come on, son,” his father said, sweetly and softly, as had been typical before tonight. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. Just meet me eye to eye, as men are meant to do.”
Lenard chanced a gaze at his father. Slow and careful. His eyes were still sticky from the blindfold.
“Bad decision,” Fearghas muttered, and from his fist a small kettle potato flew straight at Lenard’s head.
“Idiot!” he yelled. “Never look in me eyes when you’re on the tracks of life.” He might have gotten out all his words before the potato beaned Lenard on the left temple.
“Ow,” he yelped – though it hadn’t hurt that much at all, only left him confused at being assaulted with what usually became dinner.
“Ow,” Fearghas sniggered, hands up in mock-alarm. “Halt your yapping. There’ll be plenty of pain to deal with later in life, you hear? Plenty of ouches. You haven’t seen nothing yet. No you haven’t, Bar Mitzvah boy. Here’s an idea for you – these tracks.” His hand scoured over the entire expanse of railway. “Think of them like life, from beginning to end. And you never let your guard down on life’s tracks. Do you?” He dipped his ear forward for a response. After hearing nothing from his son, who was still a bit stunned, he answered himself with, “No. Not for a second.”
Lenard, just as clinically passive as he was terrified, said, “Sorry, I won’t do it again, dad.” He’d never seen his father full of such animus before, and witnessing it felt surreal and, strangely, exciting.
“Damned right you won’t,” said Fearghas in response. “And don’t ever say you’re sorry. And don’t call me dad, either. Tonight, you will refer to me as Fearghas. Fearghas, hear?”
“Okay. Fearghas.”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t want They to stand a chance.”
“Who’s They?” asked Lenard.
“What?” asked Fearghas.
“What?” asked Lenard.
“I love you, boy.” Fearghas made himself stand proudly. All the wild hair below his yarmulke yawned in a mane down his cheeks. “Oh,” he mused, “I do. And it’s for love and only love that I’ve brought you here tonight. Whatever happens, and though you might be angry, know you’ll thank me for it all one day. When you pass it on to your own wee ones, and to their own wee ones after that. And to their own wee ones, the weeest, weeest of ones. And the weeest of the weeest of wee ones they end up having.”
Fearghas had crouched closer to the ground with each and every enunciated “wee,” and their eventual superlatives, which were spoken in a loud voice as he sat into a squat.
“You catch?” he asked, leaving Lenard to guess as to whether or not his father knew the appropriate way to use Scottish adjectives (or if anybody did, for that manner).
“Love,” said Lenard. He said just that one word. Stated it. It got caught in his mouth for a second, but then simply fell out. He thought of how he would never have been able, in his wildest imagination, to throw any of his “weeest ones” onto the railway tracks outside of Dorchester, or any Chester for that matter, or to launch potatoes at them, all out of the desire to see them, well… what was it they were doing?
“Love,” said Lenard again, as if it were a conclusion. Some argument he’d stopped with a gunshot. “Yes. I do understand that.”
“I’m glad you do,” said Fearghas. “For it is my biological responsibility as your father to drag you, screaming, into the hungry sea of enlightenment. Now, wee fucker.” He wiped his hands, placed them on his cane, and wiggled his Hungarian-styled moustache. “Let’s try this again. Look up at me.”
“Nu-uh,” said Lenard, as he tightened his fists. “Not this time. I learned my lesson.”
Another potato whizzed out and struck him on the head.
“Always expect the unexpected when walking the tracks of life,” laughed Fearghas. He shouldered up a green burlap sack filled with golden, red, and white spuds – one he wore sprightly in the manner of a purse. “Here, the approaching train isn’t your only enemy. No.” His eyes scooped the air. “Here, there are many other villains of whom you should keep constantly aware.”
“Like flying potatoes?” asked Lenard, rubbing his head. He was impressed at his own first attempt at sarcasm, but couldn’t ignore the meekness it accompanied.
“Yes, like potatoes.” Fearghas paused. He postured one of his fingers against his chin in demonstration of how easy it was for a male Sikophsky to actively, if not visually, become stupider. “Or, as I like to put it, in more adult terms: distractions. Distractions, with a capital ‘D.’ Like They, for example, that’s a distraction. Or women… oh yes.” He paused. “And what sorcery ebbs from their vulvas.”
“What’s a vulva?” asked Lenard, for some reason visualizing a whale-like creature in his mind.
“Quiet, sparrow droppings,” yelled Fearghas, raising his cane.
“Sorry.”
“Prepare yourself!”
A bell tolled in the distance and Lenard stayed silent, touching at his product-hardened hair. He looked so out of place upon the tracks. He’d become well known around town for the naivete he demonstrated towards American fashion as it warp-sped through time. For him, the word “clueless” would have been an insult to the entire body of human decorum. As a way to bond with his father and the obsession the man had with Rudolph Valentino, Lenard sloped back his hair back with globs of pomade, making him easily spotted from land, air, or sea like a dollop of mobile tar. His clothes were too big. His shoes were too small, and he moved in the manner of a hiccup.
“Prepare yourself,” Fearghas screamed again. “You’re world is already at its end!”
Lenard felt the ground rumble. He heard the windbag of his father’s voice inflate into the fog. Though he couldn’t see it, he knew the train was somewhere in the distance. He didn’t want to face it yet, but knew eventually he would have to. The red brick walls were high and narrow. Yards before him a stream of smoke hissed out a manhole below a grate.
“Wee fucker,” commanded Fearghas, glowering down from the bridge. “Listen to me good. This is only the beginning of your many endeavors to come. Only the start. So now, on this night two months before your Bar Mitzvah, you must be strong, fast, and outrun the train. Tonight’s overarching theme: life always gives you a way out. Understand? Cause if you don’t,” he said, as if he hadn’t realized the following fact himself, tongue against his cheek, “You’ll get your gut box ripped out.”
Lenard took a deep breath. He thought squeamishly about his only (difficult to imagine) “gut box,” and turned around. Even as he wondered if this entire scheme had been a response to something he’d done wrong during his studies, if he was being punished for singing off pitch, or not being enthusiastic enough about his Torah portion. He would do this for his father, just this once.
“Prepare yourself!” Fearghas yelled again. He brought Lenard into the present by drumming his cane against the ground. “Prepare yourself for the test of a lifetime. There’s no turning back now. The train approaches.”
“I don’t see any train, sir,” said Lenard, watching the lightless tracks carry on into the distance.
“But you feel it?” Fearghas smiled.
It was true, Lenard did feel it. He’d felt it since he set foot on the rail.
Fearghas licked his lips and looked down the ends of the tracks where, finally, a tiny light appeared. “Fear is what makes us unlock the impossible,” he said, as it extended its range. “Can’t you see? You, boy, are going to live an extraordinary life. And you must not allow fear to suppress your future. Look into the distance. Prepare to fight. Make those eeny weeny testes of yours beat for survival in the face of your zeitgeist–or, what I like to call… your Kraken!”
Kraken. Just saying that name, slurring it from thick, sloppy lips, set a dark bedtime story into motion.
“Dad,” Lenard pleaded, looking over his shoulder. “I’m scared.”
“Scared?” said Fearghas, crossing his arms and laughing. “Consider yourself lucky you’re scared. There’d be no civilization without fear.”
“No civilization without fear?”
“No fear without the breath of life.”
“No fear without the breath of life?”
“The crap in our pants is what guides us.”
“The crap in our pants is what guides—”
“Shut it, boy, and watch for the train.”
Fearghas had chosen 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne’s epic of underwater adventure, to read to the boy every night, over and over, in order to secretly spark, as his own father had failed to spark in him, a potential for heroism and greatness. Though cruel, whatever Fearghas did to Lenard he believed was done in the name of an ancestral duty the boy couldn’t possibly have known about. The fact that fear was necessary to encourage strength was a terrifying prospect, but something Fearghas believed this special, chosen child would have to learn. He often embellished the novel itself, making the beast’s tentacles blacker, slimier, more resilient to defeat. After years of inundation, the Kraken was set so deep into Lenard’s psyche that he would never escape his fear of it, no matter how old or wise he became, for the two of them, human and beast, had formed an inky, cellular relationship. When he was a child, the mighty squid, in one foul swoop, conquered the proscenium of his dreams. Lenard was defeated before he was strong enough to fight, and so defeated for the rest of his life. Such thrashings nurtured violent existences in heroes introduced to their nightmares early. Noble, maybe, but nonetheless violent. Something Fearghas acknowledged with glee.
“Look to the yonder,” the Scotsman screamed, arms wiggling like the Kraken’s tentacles themselves. “It approaches.”
Lenard did look yonder now, not that yonder, for the train was closer than yonder, and gaining quickly. A storm was coming with it. Clouds swelled in the sky. A bit of thunder boomed in the distance.
“Run,” screamed Fearghas. His eyes were spotted and round like quail eggs as he stomped one brogue against the ground. The brass buckle that overlay the heel went click, click, click, and lightning dissevered the clouds. “Run, you wee, daffy fucker. Run for your stupid wee, daffy fucking life!”
Samuel Sattin is a graduate of the Mills College MFA in creative writing and the recipient of NYS and SLS Fellowships. His work has appeared in The Cobalt Review, J Weekly, Cent Magazine, Out of the Gutter Online, Ink Well, Generations, and Kotaku. He is The Minister of Propaganda at the pop-culture magazine The Weeklings. This piece is excerpted from his debut novel, League of Somebodies, which will be released by Dark Coast Press in April 2013. He lives in Oakland, California, with his wife and a beagle.