Norwegian Woody

Norwegian Woody By J.D. Walker I’d always been seen as a tragic figure in this town. I’d learned to deal with the unwanted stigma that followed me wherever I went, but I hated it. To simply be a person who’d grown up here like everyone else would have been nice. A regular Joe, rather than the boy who pity built. I was a living, breathing urban legend. The boy who lived. Yup, I was Woodrow Anker—the kid who’d witnessed his parents’ death at the age of three and survived. I’d hung upside down in the car as they bled to death in front of me. The person who’d caused the accident was never found, and I could still remember the smell of gasoline and my parents screaming in pain until they stopped, forever. I’d felt like I was floating. It had taken a long time for help to arrive, and not once did I cry or make a sound. In fact, I didn’t speak again until I was ten years old. Lucky for me, lifelong friends of my parents, the Zumpanos, took me in and I became part of their family. I was as different from them as night from day. I had pale gray eyes and white-blond hair—my Norwegian ancestry was front and center—whereas the members of my foster family were dark-haired and brown-eyed Italian Americans going back four generations. The youngest boy, Serge, was the same age as me and became my best friend. Rafe Zumpano, who was eight years older than us, became our self-appointed protector in all things. There was a sister, Helen, who was two years older than Rafe and ended up marrying and moving to Florida later on. She had three kids now. I attended many therapy sessions growing up, and we, as a family, learned sign language to help me communicate and feel confident while I was speech impaired. Mila and Peter Zumpano got me into a school an hour up the coast that would cater to my needs, a place where I now worked as a teacher. The return of my ability to speak had been abrupt. It happened when Rafe turned eighteen and announced to all of us at dinner that he’d been accepted to a university many miles away. I didn’t want him to go, and the anguish I felt at his upcoming departure made me cry out, “No!” My first word in seven years, and it was bittersweet. I had Rafe, painful as it was, to thank for my return to speech, but it wasn’t until my teenage years that I understood why I’d reacted that way. Rafe returned home a few years later after graduating with a criminal science degree. Serge and I were in our mid-teens by then. We mostly ignored his attempts to meddle as “big brother,” and it was at that time that I started to notice boys, and Rafe in particular. He became a cop and was highly respected by all. But he was also a heavy drinker and his binges were legendary. His beer consumption had begun in his teens. Serge and I caught him sneaking bottles out of his dad’s stash and he’d bribe us to keep quiet. Rafe’s descent into alcohol had been sudden, and I had yet to figure out the trigger. And now, I was almost thirty. The townsfolk still treated me with kid gloves and Rafe was still an ass.