The Schwa Was Here: Chapters 1–5

schwa: The faint vowel sound in many unstressed syllables in the English language. It is signified by the pronunciation "uh" and represented by the symbol ə. For example, the e in overlook, the a in forgettable, and the o in run-of-the-mill.

Because who but a moron would go up to search for Old Man Crawley, who had fingernails like Ginsu knives that could dice, slice, and julienne you, then serve you up in like fourteen thousand plastic dog bowls.

More snooty people might call him a mannequin, or even a prosthetic personage, because nobody calls things what they really are anymore. But to us normal people in Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn, he was a dummy, plain and simple.

I hit the deck, narrowly miss being decapitated, and when I get up again, a headless mannequin lies with his arms strewn on the rocks, just another casualty of the fast life.

His hair was kinda ashen blond—real wispy, like if you held a magnetized balloon over his head, all his hair would stand on end.

"Pyrotechnics,” said Ira. "We try to blow him up."

"So what's up with you?" I asked him.
"It's my opinion. I got a right to an opinion."
"Okay, okay, don't get so touchy."

"That's called 'persistence of vision,"' Howie says, reminding us that behind his veil of idiocy is a keen analytical mind. "That's when your brain fills in the gaps of what it thinks ought to be there."

Once a year we exchange Christmas cookies and potato latkes.

Old Man Schwartz, he's sweating from the heat, and hyperventilating from the excitement.

For an instant I don't recognize the face—like no part of it is distinctive enough to stick to my memory—a face like mental Teflon.

"The reaction between reagents A and B is an exothermic reaction."

"Proven. All the ice melted when you added reagent B, so it's exothermic."

The way I see it, if God meant us to walk on hot coals, He would have given us asbestos hooves instead of feet—but first He probably would have smashed us in the head a couple of times to knock some sense into us, because why would we want to walk on coals in the first place?

Hypothesis: The Schwa will be functionally invisible in your standard classroom.

On this particular day, after the other kids went off to console themselves in their humiliating loss, Howie, the Schwa, and I hung around on the court just shooting around.

"He's not invisible," I reminded him. "He's invisible-ish. Like a stealth fighter."

Clank! Nothing but chain. I reveled in the sound.

The Schwa is unnoticed by your generic security guard unless he's tipped off to his presence by advanced technology like a metal detector.

I can't vouch for the dead-rat theory, but I do know that in our local free-market economy, the Schwa was a high-ticket item—and as his manager, lining up his jobs, I got a decent percentage of the money he made.

"It's a waste of time," Ira said, when I asked him if he and Howie wanted in on our business venture.

Once Mary Ellen MacCaw spread the word, people began to devise more and more uses for the Schwa's unique talent.

A bunch of jocks paid the Schwa ten bucks to eavesdrop on a gaggle of cheerleaders and find out which guys they were talking about.

"We want to put the Schwa on retainer,” our eighth-grade student officers told us barely a week into our little business. In other words, they wanted to pay him a lot of money ahead of time so they could ask him to do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted it.

Still, no matter how much he and Howie frowned on our scheme, it didn't faze the Schwa, so I tried not to let it faze me.

"You oughta go into business school, Antsy," the Schwa told me as we scarfed down fries at Fuggettaburger. "You've got a real knack for it."

"Anybody else care to take the wager?"
The kids who had seen the Schwa in action all looked down and shook their heads. Only those who were not yet believers would bet against the Schwa.

He walked over to the railing that overlooked the murky water of the bay, and stretched like this was an Olympic event.

"Hey, this is a delicate procedure," I tell him. "The Schwa's gotta get himself mentally prepared."

The stench of yesterday's lobster wafted out of the Dumpster behind the restaurant, smelling like a fish market on a hot day, or my aunt Mona (trust me, you don't wanna know).

"You just lost fifty-four dollars."
"Yeah, I guess so. So can I go now? It's punishment enough, right?"
"Fifty-four dollars is hardly a sufficient fine for breaking and entering, attempted theft, and the assault of an elderly man—"

Before I could say any more, the Schwa emerged from behind the curtains, looking sheepish, like a dog who just dirtied the rug.

The Schwa, who's still mostly petrified, hits me to shut me up, but I don't.

"The police will only give you a slap on the wrist, and since you're not crying hysterically in terror right now, I assume your parents will not beat you. Therefore I will administer your punishment personally. You will return here tomorrow by the front door, at three o'clock sharp, and begin working off your transgression. If you fail to come, I will find out what your parents do for a living, and I will have them fired."

"I've found I can do anything I please."
I thought it was just an idle threat, but then I remembered the great egg shortage.