| Thomas
Maltman
FAMINE (AN EXCERPT)
I meet Dylan for the first time at the harvest
festival. He attends the St. Mary’s Catholic, but has been invited along for
tonight’s festivities by a friend. After we’ve been introduced, he looks up
at me and asks, “You heard about my brother?”
“Yes,” I say. It happened only four
days before. My wife was called into the school along with the crisis
counselor and the town priest, Father Bob. “I’m sorry. Our family has been
in our prayers.”
During the pumpkin carving
contest, the two friends dedicate their efforts to Dylan’s older brother.
Neither boy has any artistic skill. Their gourd grows mismatched eyes. A
smile runs like gash through the lower jaw. In the back of the pumpkin’s
head the words for dusty are carved along an uneven line. At school, Dusty’s
eleventh grade classmates wanted a memorial. A shade tree planted out
front. A monument with his name in marble. The crisis counselor advised
against these tributes. In such cases, you cannot appear to reward
suicide with recognition, he says. To do so may invite imitation from
other troubled kids.
At Dustin’s funeral, Father Bob
does not hide behind euphemisms when he gives the sermon. He has also lost a
brother to suicide and this memory darkens his voice during the eulogy. He
speaks the word suicide from the pulpit and there is a sense of relief in
the crowded pews, a lifting. By naming the truth aloud in public assembly he
has not made Dustin’s death any less terrible. Here is the diagnosis. Here
is honesty. Now let there be a chance for healing.
Back at the harvest festival, I have
been nominated to judge the pumpkin contest. Other pumpkins far outshine
Dylan’s. One boy carved a cross with spokes of light that spill outward when
a candle is centered in the pulp. One girl carved a face of haunting
symmetry with precise glaring eyes and a mouth that appears to open in
speech. Her candle is a tongue of fire. Then there is the boys’ jagged
memorial, the words for dusty shining through a hole in the back. Somehow
the pumpkin is both touching and disturbing. There’s the thought behind it,
the hunger for resolution, and there’s the leering face that peers out of
the ruined flesh. “Boy, I don’t know,” tell the crowd of anxious teens
awaiting my decision. “Which one should I choose?”
Read the entire essay in the Fall/Winter 2005 Issue.
Copyright © by Thomas
Maltman 2005. All rights reserved.
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