TO WIT: HI-YO SILVERMAN
Exactly when it was that Silverman fell in love with justice, it’s hard to say. Some say he was like that from birth, others say he achieved that certain eccentricity early on. His mother still believes it was thrust upon him when his rabid and disgruntled uncle the lawyer bit him on the leg at his briss. If so, it would be the first but not the last time Silverman sustained insult and injury on account of his beliefs.
Oh, but he did love justice. Before he knew what it was, he loved it. Before he knew what it meant, he loved it. And before he knew the word, he loved it. It was, to him, like being cradled in his mother’s arms – the way things were meant to be.
How can you be surprised then that, from his earliest times, he was instinctively drawn to the down and out, the orphan, the outcast, the bedwetter. He collected them, befriended them when no one else would, and he brought them all home to meet his Mom. She hated bedwetters, and when he was acting like a magnet for the more curious masses, she was none too keen on Silverman either. She still had an infant son at home and two older daughters, and they all demanded of her time. Silverman and his assorted misbegots were not just then her priority.
“Silverman”, she would say, for even she called him Silverman, “take your friends off the carpet and go outside and play, but no more fireman. Come back for dinner when they’ve all gone away.”
He probably had a first name, but no one ever used it, and fewer still knew it. He was tall, thin, ungainly, and he had all the physical prowess of a midget on stilts. He looked just like a Silverman, not like a Robert or Bob or Bill or Steve, and certainly not like a Skip or Bucky. He could have passed maybe for a Benjamin or Louis, maybe even an Oliver, but as things were, he was just Silverman, and that was all. Once, when he was uncharacteristically curious, he asked his Mom to see his birth certificate, but she had taken to keeping minor documents under the mattress of the guest bed in Silverman’s room, the only spare bed in the house, and the first name on his certificate had been eradicated by repeated weekend exposure to corrosive vapors.
He might have been all right as a shadow in the sun, but he had this one little fatal flaw that etched for him his discontent and incessantly queried of him “shy”? He possessed a good mind, a very good mind, tucked away beneath that inauspicious exterior. He took everything in with very black eyes and he retained it all. He understood more than he should have, but not quite enough to make a first name for himself.
Why are you surprised then that Silverman was drawn into the fantasy of Saturday morning television? Of all the heroes that he loved, mostly he loved the Lone Ranger. The name itself was magic, and he knew about the magic in names. With a cloud of dust and a hearty hi-yo Silver, Silverman returned every week to those thrilling days of yesteryear to watch the masked patron saint of the bewildered affirm and reaffirm always the triumph of good over evil, the way things were meant to be. To his beclouded and beseeching “why”, the Lone Ranger was the resounding and crystal clear “why not!”
Silverman organized the first Lone Ranger Fan Club in town, and he and his club would sit around the television every week to watch justice triumph over evil on the plastic tablecloth his Mom would spread down on the carpet. Soon Silverman took to writing regular letters to his vicarious crusader. “You did good in Jennersville”, he would offer, “but don’t you think Crowley should have personally returned the gold cross to the Padre before you handed him over to the Authorities?
When Silverman was thirteen, the Lone Ranger rode into his town to seek justice and open a shopping center. Silverman was there with his entire club, save one lost soul who had of late become enamored of Superman and had sprained his ankle in a flight off the back porch. Before the ribbon was cut, Silverman climbed onto the rear of the parking lot stage and snuck between the Lone Ranger and the cardboard Tonto cutout. “Kemosabe”, he yelled, “I’m Silverman”, and he grabbed L.R. by his silver bullets. The wounded ranger staggered backwards in complete surprise, grunting a Western expletive which Silverman later explained to his friends was Apache for “May yours be the fate of the buffalo.”
“Oh Silverman”, his Mom said to him that night over his favorite dinner of Cheerios and milk, “why did you do it? You embarrassed your father and me, why did you do it? Why can’t you be like your sisters, why, why, why? Why do you have to be different, why?” But Silverman was someplace else.
Silverman persisted against all odds in his love for heroes and other fantasies until well past puberty. He passed some time with Captain Midnight and he had a brief fling with Sky King, but he always and faithfully returned to the Lone Ranger, and he was always and faithfully satisfied.
“Silverman”, said his father one Saturday when Silverman was fifteen, “what are you going to do with your life? Have you given it a thought?
Yes, Dad”, said Silverman, who hadn’t, “I’ve been thinking about brain surgery.”
“I like it”, said Silverman’s Dad, “or you can go into business with me.” He was in ladies ready to wear and had become something of a local potentate. “It’s dog eat dog in ladies dresses, and you have to be tough, clever, hard, sometimes ruthless. But brain surgery is nice too.” And off he went to eat his dog for the day.
Silverman retreated to the sanctity of his room, where locked away from prying eyes, he put on his mask, and strapped the holsters and guns to his waist, tying them down to his thighs with old red shoelaces. He stood before the relentless mirror, practicing his none too quick draw. He had long ago stopped wearing his uniform in the presence of his family, and only in his room, and locked, would he indulge.
Poor Silverman’s Mom, she just couldn’t abide it. When she could no longer tolerate the tension, she would stand at his door and yell to him across the bridge. “What are you doing in there, Silverman, as if I didn’t know”, though she really didn’t, and the tap tap tap tap tap drilled away at his dreams. Silverman would unstrap the holsters, take off the mask, hide them all away and dutifully open up the door for his Mom. In time, he got faster at taking off the guns than drawing them, but that was of necessity. In she would ride to deliver to Silverman yet another stock tirade while looking for magazines under the beds, and Silverman never understood until much later how practicing a quick draw could possibly give him warts.
To everyone’s amazement, except Silverman’s because he had a very good mind, he continued to grow up, and he even went to college. His college days were fairly uninspired, but he had gone Ivy League, and that was nice too. He learned all about strata, and women and fraternities and organizations, the ones he could have, and the ones he couldn’t. Few fraternities would accept a brother with no first name. Even those that could accept his last name were troubled by his appellation poverty, so he joined one that only cared if he had a hand to write the check.
His grades were passing fair, and he had the obligatory sexual dalliances, and when all was said and done, he took from his Alma Mater about all she had to offer.
It came as no surprise to anyone that Silverman decided to go to law school, except to his rabid and disgruntled uncle the lawyer who knew of his love of justice and tried to talk him out of it.
“Why are you going to law school, Silverman?” asked his last collegiate dalliance two weeks before graduation, while Rossini spun his web from the record player in the corner. Silverman thought fast. He hated to be put on the spot like that. “Safe for democracy”, that was corny. “Better place to live” was trite, though true. “Saviour, Protector, Guardian”, that was close, but a secret, and this was only a dalliance. “Oh”, said Silverman, “I don’t know. It beats living in ladies dresses.”
© 2004, S. Sponte, Esq.