Нил Шустерман: The Schwa Was Here

schwa:The faint vowel sound in many unstressed syllables in the English language. It is signified by the pronunciation “uh” and represented by the symbol ə. For example, the e in overlook, the a in forgettable, and the o in run-of-the-mill.

It is the most common vowel sound in the English language.

I don’t really remember when I first met the Schwa, he was just kind of always there, like the killer potholes on Avenue U or the Afghans barking out the windows above Crawley’s restaurant—a whole truck load of ’em, if you be­lieved the rumors. Old Man Crawley, by the way, was a certifiable loony tune. A shut-in, like Brooklyn’s own Howard Hughes, almost as legendary as the lobsters served up in his restaurant below. See, there was this staircase that went up from the restaurant to the residence on the second floor, but with each step it got darker around you, so when you tried to climb it, you kept thinking you heard the horror audience be­hind you yelling, “No, don’t go up the stairs!” Because who but a moron would go up to search for Old Man Crawley, who had fingernails like Ginsu knives that could dice, slice, and julienne you, then serve you up in like fourteen thousand plastic dog bowls. Those bowls, by the way, would probably be made by my father, the Vice-Executive Vice-Vice-President of Product Development for Pisher Plastic Products. If you’re a guy, I’m sure you already know that their most famous product is that little plastic strainer at the bottom of urinals, and you probably still laugh every time you look down while taking a leak and see PISHER written in happy bold letters, like maybe it was to remind you why you were standing there.

But what was I talking about?

Oh, yeah—the Schwa. See, that was the whole point with the Schwa: You couldn’t even think about him without losing track of your own thoughts—like even in your head he was some­how becoming invisible.

Okay, so like I said, I don’t remember when I met him—nobody does—but I can tell you the first time I remembered actually noticing him. It was the day Manny Bullpucky jumped from the Marine Park Bridge.

It was Saturday, and my friends and I were bored, as usual. I was hanging out with Howie Bogerton, whose one goal in life was not to have any goals in life, and Ira Goldfarb, who was a self-proclaimed cinematic genius. With the digital video cam­era his grandparents had gotten him for his bar mitzvah last year, Ira was determined to be Steven Spielberg by the time he got to high school. As for Manny Bullpucky, we kinda dragged him along with us to various places we went. We had to drag him around, on accounta he was a dummy. Not a dummy like Wendell Tiggor, who had to repeat the fifth grade like fourteen thousand times, but a real dummy. More snooty people might call him a mannequin, or even a prosthetic personage, because nobody calls things what they really are anymore. But to us normal people in Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn, he was a dummy, plain and simple.

As for his name, it came in the natural course of human events. Dad had brought him home from work one day. “Look at this guy,” he says proudly, holding him up by the scruff of his neck. “He’s made of a new ultra-high-grade lightweight plastic. Completely unbreakable.”

My older brother Frank looks up from his dinner. “Bull­pucky,” he says—although I’m editing out the bad word here, on accounta my mother might read this, and I don’t like the taste of soap.

As soon as Frankie says it, Mom, without missing a beat, hauls off and whacks him on the head in her own special way, starting low, and swinging up, like a tennis player giving a ball topspin, just grazing the thin spot on his head that’s gonna be bald someday, probably from Mom slapping him there. “You watch ya mout!” Mom says. “Mout,” not “mouth.” We got a problem here with the “th” sound. It’s not just us—it’s all a Brooklyn, maybe Queens, too. My English teacher says I also drop vowels like a bad juggler, and have an infuriating tense problem, whatever that meant. So anyway, if you put the “th” problem and the vowel thing together, our family’s Catlick, in­stead of Catholic, and my name’s Antny instead of Anthony. Somehow that got changed into Antsy when I was little, and they’ve called me Antsy ever since. It don’t bother me no more. Used to, but, y’know, you grow into your name.

Anyway, Dad tosses me the dummy. “Here, take it,” he says.

“Whadaya giving it to me for?”

“Why do you think? I want you to break it.”

“I thought you said it was unbreakable.”

“Yeah, and you’re the test, capische?”

I smile, proud to figure in my father’s product development job. This was the first time in recorded history that either of my parents had singled me out to do anything.

“Do I get to break something?” my little sister Christina asks.

“Yeah,” said Dad. “Wait a few years and you’ll be breaking hearts.”

Christina must have liked the sound of that, because she flips open the journal that’s practically glued to her hand and makes a note of it.

So, Howie, Ira, and me, we started doin’ unpleasant things to Manny that might break him. Ira loves this, because he can get the whole thing on him. We rode our bikes down Flatbush Avenue to the Marine Park Bidge, which is no easy task considering I gotta carry Manny on my handlebars. God forbid Frankie, who just got his license, could give us a ride in the old Toyota he just got. No, he’s too busy hanging out with all the other perfect people—but don’t get me started on Frankie.

We got to the bridge, and the three of us, not including Manny, worked out our game plan.

“I should go down to the rocks to film,” Ira said. “I’ll get a good view of him falling from there.”

“Nah,” says Howie, “let’s go to the middle of the bridge—I wanna see him hit the water.”

“If he hits the water,” I reminded them, “we won’t get him back.”

Howie shrugs. “There’s lots of boats goin’ by, maybe we can time it so he hits a boat.”

“We still won’t get him back,” I said, “and we might sink the boat.”

“That’d look good on film,” Ira said.

Now all this time I got this creepy feeling like we’re being watched. But then of course we are being watched. Everybody driving by has got to be wondering what we’re doing standing with a dummy by the guardrail of the bridge—but this feeling is more than that. Anyway, I ignore the feeling because we had important business here.

“We’ll drop him onto the rocks,” I told them.

“Yeah,” says Howie. “Maximum breakage potential.”

“Great. Howie, you stay up here on the bridge to push him over; Ira and me’ll go down and watch.”

We climbed down to the rocks and looked up to where Howie stood holding Manny by the scruff of the neck—it’s a pretty high drop. I didn’t envy Manny. Still that feeling of being watched just won’t go away.

“Should I push him or should I throw him?” Howie asks.

“Do what comes naturally,” I yelled back.

“I don’t know,” he says. “This is a very unnatural thing.”

“Rolling,” says Ira. “ And ... action.”

Howie backs up for a second, and a moment later Manny Bullpucky comes hurtling over the side of the bridge, arms and legs flailing like he’s really alive, and he does a swan dive headfirst toward the rocks. WHAM! He hits the jagged boul­ders, and it’s all over for him. His bald head goes flying like a cannonball shot straight at me. I hit the deck, narrowly miss being decapitated, and when I get up again, a headless man­nequin lies with his arms strewn on the rocks, just another ca­sualty of the fast life.