The following is an excerpt of:
Hiraeth:
The Boy Who Dreamed and the Big Bad Wolf Which He Became
By Tex Batmart
If you haven’t been with us from the start, check out Chapter One here
Chapter Three
It seems as though a bit of levity may now be in order, for our tale grew slightly more somber than was necessarily intended. Have no fear, however, dear reader, for reality and relative chronology are on your side today. If there was a dearth of information regarding Mr. Batmart’s second year, then this author is quite literally at a loss for words to describe what little to nothing remains of the events which transpired during his thirty-seventh to forty-eighth months. Of course, failing reliable intelligence from this era, we may, once more, fall back upon our dearest servants, Gossip and Apocrypha (a pleasant lady of vaguely Greek origin), to help us to fill in the details. As was mentioned in Chapter Two, our hero did not earn the honorific of “the Terrible” until this period in his young life. And, as with all tales regarding the dangers of prepubescent Hubris, the path which he rode to his inevitable fall from grace was littered with small victories and a plethora of unintended humor.
It was during this most formative of years, when the young boy first learned how to curse. Like most skills which he would later come to treasure, this was imparted to him by his grandmother. It was a summer day, the sky blue above, and his grandmother had set him in her car so that they might depart for somewhere marginally more entertaining. Having secured the child in place, she lost control of the heavy door which she’d been holding ajar, and soon felt the fury of its full weight upon her ring and middle fingers as it casually swung back into place before she could think to extricate her hand. A quick exhalation, more reaction to her foolishness than toward the throbbing of her middle digits, and the word had cleared her lips and nestled upon the tiny ears of the young man strapped into his car seat in the back. For a moment, there was an oppressive silence, and his grandmother began to think that perhaps he hadn’t heard. But then, like the whisper of some demented angel, came a tiny voice, whose single word she found she could not bear to hear.
“Damn, Grandma?”
She let out a sigh in hopeless resignation, trying with all her guile to conceal any reaction from the boy, that he might not see the power of this word.
“Damn? Damn, Grandma?”
For the next few minutes, she tried to reason with him, explaining that it wasn’t really all that nice of a word (and then silently cursing herself upon witnessing the gleam within his eye as it dawned upon him that this new word was a word which they didn’t want him to know or say), and that his mother wouldn’t like it all that much if she heard him using it. That, of course, only inspired him onward, a cascade of sing-song epithets now parading out of his mouth. She finally gave up, and just ignored him for a while, at which point, she assumed that he’d lost interest. Truth be told, this new class of word intrigued him, but he saw that after so much repetition, it seemed to lose some of its efficacy. Well, that, and his mouth had begun to tire. A year later, an incident occurred involving this very word and his grandfather wherein he nearly caused a major vehicular collision, but that is a tale for another time.
Having been ambulatory for quite some time, and having also come to terms with the limitations of his toddling form, little Tex had decided that it was time to put aside the pastimes of his infancy and set about conquering the world. As with most of his plans for total conquest, it seems that he did not take fully into account the sheer mass of resistance which he was sure to face. It was logical to him (as it ever would remain) that he knew better than most everybody, and it would be far simpler, and infinitely less painful, would the universe just do him the simple favor of genuflecting at his uttered will. And, while the universe itself may have been inclined to hand him the reins, it seemed that mankind most certainly did not share that same desire. More and more he was punished for demanding that which he felt must surely have been his (as he had seen it, and therefore wanted it), and frankly, that level of unending negativity was his own undoing.
Whereas he had been known, just scant months before, to be a personable sort of fellow, he now could barely be taken out of his own house, for fear that he might attack someone. Not with his fists, of course, as even the young man knew that he possessed not nearly enough upper body strength for it to be worth the expenditure of effort, but with his teeth, which were, though diminutive in appearance, just as strong as anyone around him, and his jaw capable of wielding them with preternatural speed and force. It wasn’t that he went out of his way to sink his teeth into random passersby, but if they were foolish or inconsiderate enough to violate the no-fly zone of his personal space (defined here, for clarity, as anything within his range of motion), he made sure that they wouldn’t be so flippant about it as to try again. This worked fine for the boy, as he had grown quite weary of interpersonal relations, but it was somewhat vexing to his mother, who was unable to remain a hermit and slave to his many whims.
But, like all good tales, this too came to an end when he finally managed to bite the wrong person at precisely the wrong time. His grandfather had warned him away from such an attack, and, out of thanks for having given him those delicious leather slippers, the boy had respected their uneasy truce. But one day, he decided that there was nothing so offensive to him as a rule which stood unbroken, and he marched solemnly upon his dear old grandpa. Again came the warning against an action which he could not hope to win, but little Batmart had girded up his loins, and committed himself to battle. He darted haphazardly within the giant’s reach and managed to land a clean shot upon his hand. Had he been a student of history, he might have drawn parallels to World War II, and the United States’ response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Had he been a more active listener, he would have heard the steely tone devoid of compromise in his grandfather’s warning. Had he been the master tactician which he believed himself to be, he would have delayed his potty training for at least another year.
His grandfather’s counterattack was as swift as it was precise, and, mere seconds after he had notched another victory upon the scored linoleum of the kitchen floor, he was handed his most decisive defeat. It would not be for another dozen years that he would have to face the shame of being on the losing team of such a one-sided victory, but in those wars, the stakes were raised, and all bans against chemical weaponry thrown firmly to the wind (I speak, of course, of the trials of adolescence, and first loves, wherein pheromones are finally introduced into the mix, acting as nerve agents on the minds of all young men). For a moment, he stood where he was, time having stopped in a moment of sheer shocked panic. His grandfather had never hit him! Never! It was completely out of character for the man, and, he told himself, there had been no way for him to have predicted it.
His defensive counter came into action just a moment later, sparing him the necessity of having to consciously call up tears. It wasn’t the pain which had caused the boy to weep, though he was certainly willing to admit that it was not a sensation which he cared for all that much. Nor was it the seeming betrayal of someone he had considered dear to him, for he knew grownups to be treacherous and disturbingly obsessed with carrying out injustices upon him such as bedtimes, broccoli and baths. In his mind, what had truly wounded him was that he hadn’t seen it coming. As the tears continued rolling down his cheeks, and his cries rose in pitch and harmonized with themselves as they bounced around the hallway at right angles, he tried his best to digest this utter failure. Perhaps he would have to find another way, he dared considering, in that dark moment.
An hour later, he had buried his failure deep inside, and, from all outward appearances, seemed to have forgotten the entire incident, save for a small flinch at the sound of his grandfather’s voice, or how he seemed to give everyone a wide berth as he passed by. Appeasement hadn’t worked, and even if it had, he knew that he simply didn’t have the requisite energy for it to be a seriously implemented strategy, nor had direct conflict seemed to work, either. If there was only some other way, he thought furiously to himself, some way to combine the two: launch an assault with the hostility of unadulterated aggression beneath the passive camouflage of acquiescence.
Around the same time, his mother had been forced to find a new prison to hold him while she was away, as his last warden had insisted that he leave, as he had developed a tendency to share intimately his frustrations with anyone around him, which, if allowed to continue, could cost the warden her precious license to operate her pre-Kinder hoosegow. The bitter sting of defeat still lingered in his mouth (as well as firmly upon his tender buttock), and he was determined to find a more sinister, and altogether safer method of attack. There were weeks of trial and error, and a seemingly unending parade of humiliations visited upon him, but eventually, he came up with a plan.
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