Sometimes Feathers

Chapter 1
Uncle Jasper


  Fenton awoke from his usual heavy sleep in the middle of the night.  Normally never waking up for anything until he was roused by his mother. The only other time in recent memory that he woke in the middle of the night; was during the fire 2 years ago, he was nine years old.  He still has horrible dreams about the night of the fire, but nothing that wakes him; he always burns in the fire, and wakes up with a relieved feeling. That he believes is the only good thing to come about from the fire.  From the moment that he drifts from sleep into the sullen awake ness of the day, he starts off grateful for the day. He doesn’t remember waking up on mornings before the fire, but he can’t imagine that he awoke up so happy, happy that at least he didn’t burn in the fire.

  Fenton is not your average boy, and most certainly does not have anything that would closely resemble that of a “normal family”.  His father was the only one to suffer any physical harm from the events of that dreadful night. Fenton recalls waking to the smell of smoke and the crackling hiss of burning wood and fabric coming from down the hall.  At first he thought that was a dream, but soon realized that the living room was indeed ablaze.               

  His Uncle Jasper had left a lit cigarette in the ashtray and had set the curtains up in flame. Everything in the living room soon caught fire soon thereafter. He rushed to his parent’s room and violently shook his mother awake. Bette Gilmour in her half sleep indicated for Fenton to tell his father, he rushed and shook his father and screamed “the living room, it’s, it’s.” before he could actually get all the words out, Dewitt Gilmour had figured out what his son was trying to tell him. He yelled as loud as he could to awaken the other two people who were still asleep, Bette got up and immediately began to try to grab whatever worldly possessions that she could think of at that frantic moment. Uncle Jasper came bolting out of the guest room, saw what was happening, ran back into his room grabbed his bags and ran right past the others through to the kitchen and out the door. The rest scrambled out shortly behind him.

  The worldly possessions that Bette was able to save, a picture of her late parents (Fenton’s grandparents that he was never able to meet), a clay ashtray that Fenton had made that year in the second grade, the bible, and a handful of her custom brassieres.


  With the three of them staring in a sort of bewilderment at the blaze that was once their home. Uncle Jasper stood there with his hands on his hips, shaking his head, ”I can’t understand it, I told you, don’t use so much wood when you were building. Plastics I said, this wouldn’t have happened had you been using the plastics!”  This being 1951, Uncle Jasper was a brilliant man, well beyond the point of genius, whose ideas were unconventional to say the least.

  He was well ahead of his time with his surgical procedures, as well as his belief that there was a compound that could replicate just about any need that would ever arise in the normal day-to-day way of life. “Well now, that just means that the three of you are going to have to come and live with me! Yes indeed, I have plenty of room and it will do the boy some good to spend some time out in the country”. The country, meaning Long Island at the time, Northport to be exact.

  A gorgeous town set along the waters of the Long Island Sound. He had a place that used to be a farm, set right along a little rocky slope into a small cove called Crab Meadow. Uncle Jasper had many buildings set up about the place, inside is where he did his research and development. That is right about the time that the staring was broken, broken by the arrival of the fire department. The first truck came to a screeching halt in the front of the house. We didn’t hear or see the second truck as we staggered out of the alley towards the street. It turned sharply and came to a sliding stop, as the rear of the truck slid narrowly by us, a ladder slid and swung away from it’s rack on the truck.

  It struck Dewitt right in the throat, knocking him to the ground. He got up, his neck didn’t appear to have been that severely injured, but he gasped, and tried in vain to speak, nothing would come out, not a whimper nor a word, but his mouth tried to allow words to arrive, but nothing else was complying. A fireman ran over and asked if he was okay, but when he saw Dewitt clutching at his throat, and not a sound coming from him, he ran back to the truck, and radioed for an ambulance. There wasn’t much that they could do about putting the fire out anyway, the house was poorly built, and what wasn’t made of wood was no match for the intensity of the heat that the wood brought. The ambulance came and they all rode to the hospital, his mother still clutching the ashtray, the bible, the photograph, and her handful of custom brassieres.

  Bette Dewitt needed those custom brassieres dearly. They were the first thing that she thought of when she thought of her worldly possessions. Fenton by this age was well aware that his mother was not quite so normal. His mother had three breasts. Uncle Jasper, Dr. Jasper Nystrom, did this as a special surgery. He was Bette’s older brother by two years. Fenton only heard this story through the thin walls of their now ex-house. When Bette had first become pregnant, there were three, she was expecting triplets! Uncle Jasper by that time, at the ripe old age of 26, was already an accomplished surgeon, working mainly in experimental fields of transplants and artificial growth.

  He convinced his sister to let him “help with raising the babies in my own way”. He explained to her that with three children at the same time, there was no way that all three would grow up as equals, not with only two breasts. “There will be too much competition, and one may grow at a much slower rate than the other two, thereby producing a runt” Jasper said. “Nobody wants a runt of any kind, and especially not if it can be prevented”. He finally convinced Dewitt and Bette that it would be best for the future kids if she could feed them all at the same time, and all at once, this way all three would grow together.

  So by means of surgery and human growth hormones, Dr. Jasper Nystrom, performed a miracle of science, as well as medicine. He somehow, between an operation and some human growth injections, gave Bette Gilmour a third breast. That is why those brassieres are so precious to her, they were custom made to give her the illusion of having only two, which is what she would have preferred.

  Once Dewitt was in the hospital and the staff found out who he was (Dr. Jasper Nystrom’s brother in law) they whisked him away, and left Fenton and his mother in a waiting room. Fenton thinks to himself about the prospect of moving in with Uncle Jasper. While his little farm does scare him a little bit, it is much better than living in such a crowded neighborhood and having to deal with so many other kids.

  You see Fenton was not your average kid at all either, as he liked to say “I am just a little bit shorter than small”, Fenton was very small for his age, he came just to height of his father’s waist, and his father was not a very tall man, himself standing five foot six. So there they sat he thought, “the three boobed woman and Tom Thumb”. That’s what a lot of the kids teased him with. Only the Tom Thumb, they didn’t know about his mother, if they did he doesn’t think he would be able to bear what would come along with that. But yet when outside with his mother he never felt comfortable, maybe because he thought with one freak, people will look away, but with two together how could they not.  He felt okay when out with Dewitt, that is until what was about to transpire soon in the hospital.

    Fenton fell asleep, and he was woken up by the sound of Uncle Jasper telling his mother about his father. Now, he thought,” the three boobed woman, Tom Thumb and Silent Dewitt”. Little did he know he would feel worse about the Silent Dewitt part. Uncle Jasper explained the extent of the injuries. ”His larynx is absolutely crushed, there is not much damage to the nerves, and the bones are all sound. But as it stands now” he went on, “ there is no chance that he will be able to speak or make a sound again”. Bette began sobbing uncontrollably, that was the thing that she never wanted to lose, her and Dewitt would spend hours in the kitchen chatting, they truly loved each others company. Bette knew how special it was to have someone that she could talk with all the time, so did Dewitt. Uncle Jasper offered up a solution, “I think that I could do something, something that has never been done before”, at that point, Bette snapped out of her crying. “Oh no Jasper, you experimented with me, you are not going to do the same thing to him!”  To which Jasper replied, ”of course not! What use would he have with a third breast? I am going to help him to speak again”. Bette didn’t find this the least bit to her liking; it was the first time that Fenton ever heard his mother call someone a son of a bitch.

    Bette and Fenton went in to see Dewitt a short while after. He lie there sleeping, and they both stood at the end of the bed and cried quietly at the sight of Dewitt in the hospital bed with a large bandage wrapped around his neck. It wasn’t because of how he looked; he didn’t look too bad at all. It was the both of them knowing that beneath that bandage, was what held both of their lives together. For Bette, it was the source of her sense of well-being, the complete ease at which they live with one another. For Fenton, his bridge to feeling normal in the world. Dewitt stirred by the sound of two people sobbing at the foot of the bed, rose and motioned them to come over to his side. He grabbed a notepad from the side table and wrote for what seemed to be an eternity to Fenton.

Please agree to let Jasper help me. I know that your feelings regarding such a matter would be against him doing anything of the experimental nature. But without a sound, I will feel like I have no purpose. I am a teacher, a nurturer of young minds; I need to be able to communicate directly to them. But more importantly I need to be able to speak with you, it is what I look forward to every day, being with you is when I am happiest, without speaking, is almost unthinkable. So please, I have thought this through, I do not feel as if there is anything to lose. I already won’t be able to make a sound.  The worst thing that could happen is that I can make some sound, if not able to speak. To be able to make a sound, at least I would be able to warn someone in case of a fire.


  To this day Fenton is not sure if his father was serious about being able to warn of a fire, or just a subtle stab at humor in a time of crisis. Bette stood there after reading the note for a few moments, gazing down occasionally at her hand still grasping her “worldly possessions”, then back at Dewitt, then back to her hand. Finally she leaned over and kissed him on his forehead, she had small tears welling up in the corner of her eyes again and spoke. “Dewitt honey...if you think it will be okay, I will agree to let him help, but so help me god, if you come out of there with more of anything than you are supposed to have, I will kill him”. Fenton was never exactly sure of how serious his mother had been when making that statement either.

 
  Back out in the waiting room, Jasper and his sister discussed what he planned on doing. “The procedure is not life threatening in the least, the only slight obstacle that I may have will be in acoustics. Mind you, his speech will never be perfect, but most definitely legible and mostly clear”. This turned out to be one of Jasper’s great slight understatements. “I have not completely mastered the sound mechanism as of yet, but it will most certainly work”. Jasper explained, “Dewitt will be in no danger whatsoever, the worst that could happen is that he will wind up capable of some sound”. Jasper trying to inject some levity to the moment added, “at least be able to warn someone out of the way of a speeding fire truck”.

  Bette got the glare again in her eye; she knew that Jasper had been the one to put that thought into Dewitt’s head. Her face got all contorted and Fenton thought that Jasper was going to be called a son of a you know what again. But she took a moment before she spoke. “Jasper, I know you will not hurt him in any way, I know that technically there is nothing wrong with me...other than my, uh, addition. I don’t feel like there is nothing wrong with me.” Bette continued, ”I don’t want Dewitt to wind up feeling like me, like there is always something wrong, like I am always hiding something”, she said this and help up her brassieres and waved them in his face. To which Jasper replied, “My dear sister, as it stands now, he may wind up feeling like that. I offer him the chance to continue his life as he knew before, and you as well”.


  The thought of not being able to converse with her husband was not something that Bette wanted to think about. He would be able to convey thoughts by writing them out, but Dewitt was right. He was a teacher, and he could not expect to go back to being one without his speech. “Okay Jasper, you do what you think you have to, and make Dewey able to speak again”. They hugged one another, as Jasper whispered; “you have nothing to concern yourself with here any longer. Tell them at the desk to get a car ready. We will go to my home tonight, and I will get Dewitt tomorrow”. Bette wasn’t sure exactly whet he meant about him getting Dewitt, but it was late, and she was not in any state of mind to be asking any more questions. 

  Fenton fell asleep on his mother’s lap as soon as they got into the cab, Bette followed off to sleep shortly after. Jasper spoke to the driver the entire trip to Northport, the driver just nodding his head along as if he understood a word about anything that Jasper was speaking off. Medicinal and chemical theories were subjects that Jasper would speak of to anyone who would listen, or at least feign listening to. It was just Jasper’s way of working out his own theories, to be able to speak them through. He full well knew that the other party had no idea what he was talking about, but he had an amusing manner about him and he was easy to hear.  Although not to understand.


  Fenton woke up early the next morning, Bette was still sleeping, he found Mrs. Wagonblast alone in the kitchen. She informed Fenton that his Uncle Jasper was off already to go and retrieve his father from the hospital, and that she had been instructed to prepare a room for everyone. Fenton and Bette inside the main house; while Dewitt would originally be situated in one of the outer buildings. Fenton inquired as to why his father would not be staying in the house,” How come my dad is going to be out there, why not inside with us?” “Don’t ask so many questions, you are a young boy and should listen to what the good doctor tells you. He is a wonderful man, your Uncle Jasper is”.

  Fenton imagined if Mrs. Wagonblast had three, or maybe even four breasts, or something even more bizarre, like and extra arm under her apron to help her with taking care of the place. He imagined her kneading dough with her two regular hands, and stirring a pot on the stove with the extra. Or possibly lifting up the rug with two hands while the third swept underneath. Fenton also noticed something else about Mrs. Wagonblast; she seemed to look at him like there was nothing wrong with him. They had never met before, and she didn’t look startled at all by his small stature. This made him even a little more sure that she might have a third arm or worse, he figured that other freaks didn’t ogle other freaks.

  Bette also made her way downstairs, she wasn’t expecting Mrs. Wagonblast to be there, otherwise she would have dressed more appropriately. She came down in her nightgown and a loose bathrobe, which no matter how much she fidgeted and tugged, her having three breasts was apparent. Mrs. Wagonblast had heard Jasper speak of his sister, but surely he had made no mention of her added appendage. Fenton noticed Mrs. Wagonblast occasionally glancing down at them in some disbelief, and then quickly turning away as she prepared their breakfast. She served breakfast and sat down in front her plate. She apologized, “I am sorry that all we have for breastfast,uh, umm, breakfast is eggs and toast”. She turned a crimson red at her gaffe, only to be exceeded by the deep red that Bette turned.

  Fenton however, much to his delight, thought it was quite funny, although he had to use every ounce of contraction in his body to hold the laughter in. For he did not want further embarrass his mother. “I understand you had a very difficult evening. I am so sorry to hear about your home. It will be nice though to have some fresh faces out here.” She continued,” Jasper is always out tending to his work, and I am often alone the entire time out here, it will be wonderful to have company”.

  “Where is my brother?” Bette inquired. “He’s gone to fetch your husband from the hospital, we expect him to be back this evening” Mrs. Wagonblast said. She went on,” Jasper told me to set you both up in the room that you slept in, and the one adjacent to it for the boy here”. Fenton had not yet been inside the other room yet, and he wondered what would be inside. Every room in Uncle Jasper’s house seemed to be occupied by some invention or another. Things that Fenton had never seen, nor could he imagine.