The
GARGOYLE speaks
“Giffs. Giffs.”
32
E. Carson Brisson
I heard him patter in and come to a stop. I couldn’t see him over the morning paper, but it sounded like he was wearing his footed pajamas, sky-blue, zipper up the front. The late fall morning sun crowded into the tiny room. The weekend coffee was much more fragrant than the same coffee on a Monday. The article I was reading was interesting. Therefore, I ignored him. But he was patient. I could feel him standing there. Utterly quiet. Utterly earnest. After a bit, I gave in and slowly lowered the paper, peeking over its wordy edge. Sunbeams cut across his torso at an angle, highlighting the appliqué giraffes parading across his protruding tummy area. A veil of dancing dust particles surrounded him. His arms were completely still against his sides. His eyes were the shape of his mother’s, and the color of her father’s. “Der monstah in woods,” he announced, in a matter-of-fact cadence and tone. “Monstah want come eat me.” He stopped at that. He stood there. He did not move. He did not flinch. He talked only with his voice, leaving his face and body out of it. I was immediately intrigued by his use of language, especially the second predication: “Monstah want come eat me.” His employment of three verbs without any conjunctions separating them simultaneously strengthened and amplified the urgency of his message. It was also not lost on me that each of the three verbs were monosyllabic, a technique that reinforced through economy of sound the gravity signaled by his unorthodox syntax. Goodness, I thought, how interesting! “Well,” I responded, quickly intuiting that I could reflect on grammar and syntax a bit later but should handle the “monstah”situation immediately — and before the other parent also enjoying a morning coffee in the same room took up the matter. “Well! Let me tell you something. There is no monstah” (And I was careful to use his word for monster.) “in the woods. No monstah at all. Therefore, no monstah is coming to eat you.” Then I added, and congratulated myself for it, a corresponding triangle of verbs without conjunctions, each strengthening the other, intended to parallel and yet reverse the tripartite diction of his three-verbs-of-doom: “Go, play, be happy,” I said. It was a benediction, and clever I might add. He was bright. He got it. He turned, and waddled out of the room, his footsies making a swishing sound as he faded down the hall. “He’ll be back,” I heard the other parent in the room say from behind her section of the paper. I didn’t appreciate the remark, but I simply ignored it, deciding to be big about things all around. I rustled my paper vigorously and continued my morning reverie. The angle of sunlight had shifted only a little and I was still on the same cup of coffee when he returned. “Der monstah in woods” he announced. “Monstah want come eat me.” This time I felt like there was a bit more on the line. What we had here, clearly, was a failure to communicate. I set the paper aside, with a flourish I think. I assumed the down-on-my-knees-to-get-direct-eye-contactposition like all the parenting books, and being boomers my wife and I had bought and read all the parenting books, said a father or mother should. “Look,” I began with an attention-gathering verb. “Look,” I repeated for reinforcement. “There is no monstah in the woods. No monstah at all. These woods are a monstah-free woods. Your mother talked to the lady who lived here before we did. She would have told us about any monstahs in the woods.” (Reference to others, I thought, was a wise move. It called upon witnesses, not the least of whom was someone of great importance to him, to validate my testimony, and it brought history and tradition in to support my position.) “So, listen carefully,” I continued. (At this point it occurred to me to take his hands in mine. I was “on a roll” as they say.) “There is no monstah in the woods, no monstah, no monstah, I’m tell’n you, no monstah! Therefore, go, play, be happy.”
S PRING 2006
focus He exited. I made my next move; it was preemptive. “He won’t be back this time,” I said quickly, dropping my voice down on the word “won’t” because it was fun to say it that way. “He won’t be back.” “He will be back,” came the reply from behind Section C of the paper from the other side of the room. “He will be back until you begin where he is, not where you are. Maybe there are no monsters in your world, or maybe you don’t notice them. But in his world there are monsters, and there is one in the woods right now. And it is hungry. Need my help?” Help? Dear reader, I was outraged. I stomped out of the room, which turned out to be a mistake in more ways than I have time to include in this brief essay. Not the least of my errors was that I forgot to take my coffee. In a bit, I came to my senses and returned to the room and to my coffee. “What should I do?” I asked. “Look over on the counter,” came the calm reply from behind Section D of the paper. “While you were away pouting, I took the liberty to set out a plate with peanuts and raisins on it. Go out into the backyard with him. Go over to the woods. Talk to the monster. Set some boundaries for it. Then offer to be friends, and leave it a gift to show you mean it…I warmed your coffee.” Within minutes he was back, and of course there was still a hungry monster lurking outside just beyond the backyard. “Let’s go,” I said. We changed out of our pajamas. (Mine did not have footsies, or a zipper that I was aware of, and were navy blue.) We took the plate and each other in hand. We went outside. We walked together right to the place where the backyard becomes the woods. We set the plate down exactly where that happens. Holding hands, standing there facing the woods, I glanced at him. Then I lifted up my voice and said: “Monstah, all you monstahs, with all your fangs and scales and claws, listen to this.” “Monstahs! Monstahs!” he cried out. “You are not allowed to eat this boy. You are not allowed to eat any boys or any girls anymore.” “Not eat! Not eat!” he cried out. “It is the rule forever. Now, if you cannot follow this rule, always, any one of you, come out and say so right now. Right this minute!” “Dis minutes! Dis minutes!” he cried out. “But, but on the other claw” (I thought using “claw” was quite a nice touch.) “if you want to be friends forever, and stay in the woods and mind to your own monstah-business things, and not eat anyone ever, ever, here is a gift for you.” “Giffs! Giffs!” he cried out. “It’s peanuts and raisins…and the peanuts are salted,” I added because full-disclosure is important. “Tomorrow we’ll be back to see if you have accepted the gift.” “Giffs! Giffs!” he cried out, and repeated himself as we turned toward the house, “Giffs! Giffs!” I saw someone in the bay window, left corner, sipping coffee and watching. Quite early the next morning we arose, got ourselves changed into warm clothes, and, hand in hand, went out back. Without speaking we crept toward the woods and the plate. The rising sun, still shy in the east, cast its face through the noble trees as a rare dawn breeze made them shimmer. They swayed and creaked and drank in the new day. They brooded over us. Showers of fall leaves trickled down silently. And there, in the midst of everything, shadow and light playing tag back and forth across its gleaming surface, sat the plate, right where we had left it, precisely on the line where the yard becomes the woods. And there was not a peanut or a raisin left on it, nor one to be seen anywhere in any direction. I heard the child gasp; I felt his grip on my hand loosen suddenly and considerably. “Giffs! Giffs!” I heard him whisper. Then he trembled in full wonder and exhaled the word again, “Giffs.” I glanced back toward the house. There was someone standing in the left corner of the bay window, smiling, cup of coffee in one hand, and yet a second cup, titled toward me in invitation in the other. Giffs, I thought. Giffs indeed. Ω E. Carson Brisson is associate professor of biblical languages and associate dean for academic programs.
33