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Ending Song
"Johnny did you hear tell how the church fathers killed all of Christ' relatives so they could say he was The One and Only and don't say you never heard that He had brothers and sisters."
Johnny nodded and said: "Things built on lies usually fall of their own weight."
"You know Johnny, why didn't Christ teach people how to love themselves for even I know that one has to love himself totally and be comfortable inside his own skin before he can begin to love others? You know hate begets hate but only love can create miracles."
Johnny could still feel his father's love for him surging through the song he had played on his accordion at least a half dozen times and as a five year old he would gallop all over the apartment every time when all their relatives and friends would gather to try and forget, for at least one night of the week, the Great Depression that was making a third of the country become what the super elite laughingly called "the dying of hunger people" - that included some of their own lesser puppets who would have to be taken care of by their sons and daughters until social security and Medicare kicked in - and Johnny would only stop his galloping when his father changed tunes bringing forth "The Tarantella" when people danced with fervor and the ones with the most glorious movements were encircled by the others as Johnny joined the clapping making the pain in his hands match the pride in his heart.
"Johnny we have to take responsibility for why much of the world hates us. We need to do a year of atonement for all the wrongs we have done to others and then perhaps we can put away the self-hate and the hating of others that dominates in this could have been a good country doing for the betterment of the whole world. We must become human beings and not think we're better than others."
"I know Pa. If I hear we're the greatest and most powerful country ever invented one more time - I will throw up my stomach, liver, heart and lungs. Why we have to do a nazi swagger and bully the weak goes far beyond my full understanding."
"You know Johnny when I was on my travels as a young man and my ship stopped at Marseilles - you know what the French and Italian fascist would do to suspected communists? The cowards would force them to drink bottles of castor oil and when they came to me asking me what I was - I told them humbly I was for all human kind and not for chickens running about with their heads cut off and Johnny believe it or not they left me alone!"
Probably because, Johnny thought, he would have taken a dozen of them down into the sea with him so strong a man his father was. The chicken word made him recall how once he went to visit his uncle's chicken market on a street that once had been part of the Little Dublin section of Burywater and saw a chicken without a head walking about the place as his father's brother and several customers were laughing at the sight. Johnny never again went back to his uncle's place of business.
"You stood out like the sun, Johnny. You were the best and that's why you became my favorite!"
And Johnny wanted to say: And that's why my brothers and sisters resented me so much but he would not hurt this man's feelings for the pain all that had caused him. He could still hear his father playing the many tunes he still loved: "Gypsy Violins", "My Buddy" "Till We Meet Again" ... and in his mind many years after his father had passed away, he still galloped to that song of long ago and far away.
Jerry Vilhotti graduated from the only college that won the NIT and NCCA basketball tournament in the same year but more importantly than that -
a Jonas Salk who helped rid some of the world of polio with his vaccine and who also was given the opportunity to contribute graduated from the same school.
Jerry Vilhotti has been fortunate to have had stories published in The Dream International, Hob-Nob, Puck&Pluck, The Literary Review and many other
literary magazines. He lives in the Litchfield Hills, in a simpler place in time, with a beautiful wife who treats him well (often he wonders why)
and they both helped in bringing three sort of nice kids into this world who have gone off with three partners, as good, he hopes as the one he
found long ago and far away - just like the song!
Email: Jerry Vilhotti
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