Johnny couldn't stop crying. He called himself a big baby. He did sort of know the why of his crying and then tried to deny it by poking fun at the squirrels who were looking one way and then another frightened-like. He wondered if they thought he were going to take their peanuts away from them. For sure he knew he felt something heavy on him. He sat on a huge rock near the clearing he had made in the once long ago forest where Mattatuck Indians had been massacred that was now called just "the woods". Now, he felt they were too crowded down and the birds were making too much noise. They were shouting what his oldest sister Tina would shout at him always: "Big ears! Big ears!" And then she would add more torment by saying,"You were left back - dumbbell! You were left back in second grade - dumbbell!" She had two children by Al, with whom she had run away as a nineteen year old when Johnny was three years old, to get away from a mother who kept accusing her of trying to tempt her father into a Biblical scene with a daughter. Tina would not let Johnny play with them believing he had stolen her father's love from her by becoming his favorite. She would tell Al that Johnny was too rough with them. Johnny liked Larry and Clara. He often had shown them his woods. He protected them; making sure all dangers were frightened away but now he watched for snakes. Tina would yell to their father to beat Johnny but his father loved him too much to beat him for protecting children. This would make Tina, when they were alone, to spew forth more words: "Big ears! Fucking big ears!" Her mouth was for him a pretty red-bordered black hole - that ancient Egyptian women had rouged to make it become a visible vulva to staring men.

He picked up a stone and threw it at a space between two trees and as he did he told himself he would hit that very spot but he missed. He repeated this many times but only when he said he would miss was when he hit the spot! He repeated this doing several more time. He began walking for the road but it still was a great distance away and so he told himself he would indeed meet a snake before he reached the safety of the road. He did not encounter a snake; reaching the road unscathed. His mind, like minds in ancient caves, had learned something and as the huddled primitives hiding in long ago caves he also began sculpting jinx gods in order to ward off any evil lurking about.

"My parents won't still be home," he insisted as he continued to walk the road. "Tonight Tina will be over and when we're alone she'll tell me about my big ears and how I stayed back." He could see their one family Cape Cod home still a distance away and he imagined Tina's mouth engulfing it all. "Leny will be home and he'll say the room. Come on Johnny please! I just want to try and put it up your ass again!" Johnny had noticed the clothespin bag slightly agar from the position he had placed it in that morning so he knew Leny was in the house when he decided to go for a walk in his woods; instead of going inside.

He could see his father's car turning into their driveway. Now he could go home and he began to gallop toward the car that had hobbled into the driveway. It looked like his older brother Tom ,the creator of the green-eyed monster who he said often lived in the cellar where Johnny had often played basketball. Tom had polio and walked like a flat tire.

That very night all the purblind doomsters were dissembled by his jinx gods: Tina did not visit. She instead chose to go out with her girlfriends to bars to meet guys while their husbands worked night shifts in Burywater factories. Tom told his parents that he was going off to New York City where he was going to go to Brokenland College and years later Johnny would graduate Harlem College and beat Tom in discussions of which one was better saying the brother who wrote the lyrics had gone to his college long before his brother - who was all ready famous - attended Tom's college and anyway Johnny would say: both Gershwins did well for their music which would have fallen short of its greatness if one didn't have the other joining music and lyrics into many beautiful songs. Leny One n was arrested that evening for trying to stick up a smoke shop in midtown Burywater and would be sent away to the same "reform" school for three year where Lepke had graduated from many years before and learned from beatings by some sadistic guards to hate more and kill easier.

Ten year old Johnny's jinx gods had protected him but he knew they would not always work. He knew. he knew .... END