Time: Early 1980s.
Place: Village of Angry Sparrow – scratched by someone or other more than a century earlier into the bleak wild of the New Jersey Pine Barrens.
Action: Carl Untermeyer is suing the Ferret Boy and the entire Romchuk family over the death of his dog, Sparky.
It is with great excitement that most everybody who’s there at that moment that summer rushes over to the Angry Sparrow Village Courthouse and packs it, instantly turning the singular jurisprudential venue into the stifling and hot courtroom scene from dozens of old black-and-white American movies they’d all seen.
Someone flicks on the switch for the overhead fan.
For what could be more exciting – and unusual and bizarre at the same time? Carl’s dog Sparky – drowned? By a raccoon? And now Carl Untermeyer is suing the middle Ferret child for being complicit in the murder? By warning the raccoon to get away so that Carl couldn’t shoot him – and thereby save the life of his beloved dog?
Even big-bellied Judge Pritchard, who has just brought his court to order, could hardly contain his excitement when he heard he’d have to go running to the courthouse to open it up for a case he’d hardly gotten the major facts and narrative of, except for a quick readout by the sheriff from his sheet of a most unusual occurrence and alleged crime that’d taken place down at the pond the other day.
Present Situs Locus: Angry Sparrow Village Courthouse… the Boychild Ferret is on the witness stand, fearlessly parrying the vicious thrusts and cruel, legally baseless insinuations of Carl Untermeyer’s smart-alecky and thorny private attorney he’d plucked out of Bean Ridge [the biggest commercial town next to Angry Sparrow – Ed.], Steve Briarpatch, whose nigh-maniacal attacks upon the Ferret Boy are not being stopped, but rather enjoyed, by Judge Pritchard, since there is no one on the Boychild Ferret’s side to defend him and raise the appropriate objections, as his father couldn’t afford an attorney, and the Boychild insisted that he didn’t want the court appointing one for him – that he would represent and defend himself…
“Heh – what does it matter what my name is?! Romchuk*… heh-heh… Romchuk – I already told you! I’ve already been sworn in!” [*The Ferret’s name of Romchuk is first attested in Vol. 1, No. 130 “Fathers and Sons”, and not mentioned again until now. We don’t know why – Ed.]
“Yes, of course you did. And, of course you have. But the question goes to the veracity of your believability, because a normal person usually has a first name and a last name…and not just one – like you claim to have… So, what is it? Give it up, damn it! What’s your second name?!”
“Heh… heh… I already told you!”
“Your honor!” The Boychild Ferret’s mother breaks down in the public gallery. Her doctor husband immediately throws a comforting arm around her shaking frame.
“Please, stop now this cruel torture! I beg you! He is my child! He already give his name – ooh… ooh…” The Boychild Ferret’s mother hides her wet face in cupped hands, almost as if in shame, as her husband pats her consolingly and tragically on the back. Their heads touch and pendulate downward in unison.
“All right, Briarpatch – knock it off and just get to the heart of the matter, already, will ya? I mean, I thought this would be interesting, but it’s beginning to get a little… Oh, will you just move on, please? After all, he’s just a kid…”
“Certainly, Your Honor. So, ah, Romchuk, as that’s what you say’s your name… just admit to the court that with your actions, together with your concurrent vocalizations of – and I here refer to the already established court record, as well as to your own already confessed testimony, as well as to the aggrieved plaintiff’s duly recorded witness of the aforesaid and herewith referenced vocalizations of, and I quote, ‘Hey… hey… HEY!!!’ you intentionally warned, and meant to warn, the raccoon about the man with the rifle in order that the raccoon timely notice the man, understand the danger it was in, and therefore get away! Just admit it to the court, right now, what you did, and why you did it, and this will all be over for you in a matter of –”
“Heh! I already told you! That’s a lie! I just got there, kind of at the same time as the man. I was trying to yell and wave at the raccoon to stop him from killing the man’s dog, because I liked the dog. He was my friend. I wasn’t trying to warn the raccoon about the man so that he could get away – heh!”
“Your Honor, he’s lying to the court, he’s lying! I saw what I saw, and he was definitely warning the –”
“Mr. Untermeyer… unlike little Romchuk here, who is valiantly fighting for his honor and reputation, defending himself because his poor family could not afford their own attorney for him, you have representation. Which makes your unsanctioned outburst just now completely out of line, potentially finable, and, at the very least, totally unacceptable.
“I’ve heard enough already. I’ve had enough, too. And I have to tell you, I believe the words of the boy, and not your vile accusations and characterizations of him as one who would come upon the described, admittedly tragic development, instantaneously and in sinister manner assess it, and then, based on a presumed darkly and cunningly arrived-at calculation, proceed to intentionally try to rig the outcome of the unfolding scenario so that your dog would die – in effect, murdered by a raccoon, with little Romchuk here as the raccoon’s crafty and creepy accomplice…
“I think that’s preposterous, quite frankly, and I’m almost ashamed for you for having even brought this suit – against a kid, completely lacking mens rea, and too young, in my experienced, learned, and professional opinion, to even form it, much less carry out a murderous plot based on its formation, but just out to skip stones, like all the other kids around here do… and so, you lost your dog. Well, that’s too bad, Mr. Untermeyer. Things happen. That’s what you get for having a dumb dog, one of your own make and manufacture, because you never wanted to bother to train him…”
“But, Your Honor, I did train him, I –”
“That’ll be all, Carl. This trial’s over, and you lose. I find for the defendant. And if you don’t like it, I’ll take that gun away from you, too. You’ve got rights, you say? Second Amendment? And what are you going to do – take it to the U.S. Supreme Court? Ha!
“So, Mr. Untermeyer, you’ll pay any fines and costs that guy over there will assess against you, for wasting all our time with this frivolous and mean-spirited suit you brought into this peaceful court, and village, today, as well as attorney’s fees for the other side. What you owe your private attorney, well, that’s obviously your problem. Ah, Romchuk, how much for your services defending yourself so well as your own attorney in this court today?”
“Heh… ah… ah… seventy-eight dollars… heh…”
“You heard him, Carl. Pay the kid. And now everyone, go home…”
Bangeth the judge the gavel. Quickly doth empty the court.
xxx
The Boychild Ferret and his parents are the last to leave the courthouse. Having just the day before secretly held their own son in contempt between them, wondering and bemoaning why God had sent them such a curse, they are now irrepressibly buoyed by pride in their son.
As they walk down the aisle between the bench rows either side of them toward the central exit door, the trio stop to marvel at a man in late-middle-age and of short stature who is suddenly sitting in the next-to-last bench on their lefthand side.
On the man’s lap is a raccoon – no collar, no chain, no nothing – chittering merrily and eating oven-roasted peanuts out of an oil-stained brown paper bag, deliberately dropping the husks on the floor, like it’s the funniest thing.
The man smiles up at them with what the Romchuk couple sense is disingenuous good will. His pale blue eyes blink and twinkle at them through the disorienting glint and gleam of his gold-framed granny glasses, which inexplicably sends a shiver of fear down their spines, though the Boychild Ferret seems unaffected, even amused.
The doctor and his wife find the man’s broad and dwarfishly protuberant forehead – the unnatural largeness of which is literally heightened by the two rapidly receding triangles of exposed skin at the temples – alarming. For no reason they can name, they are disconcerted and put off by the man’s scalp, which is suffering the beginning ravages of balding, though it still manages to feature oily hair of black peppery waviness, show-offishly back-brushed and in need of some cutting, which they find a little disgusting, though Dr. Romchuk himself is almost entirely, and repulsively bald, with only some close-cropped frizzy and wicklike black and gray hair around his waxy, hairy-eared fringes.
The raccoon, meanwhile, upon seeing the Ferret, immediately drops the bag of nuts and with arms outstretched toward the Boychild begins jumping down and up on the man’s lap as though its heart were bursting with love and joy.
“That’s quite a talented and gifted young man you’ve got there,” to the couple says the man.
“Heh,” the Ferret replies, intentionally ignoring the raccoon, “you look kind of young, in a weird way, for an old man… But your neck’s really wrinkly – heh…”
Josh Davies darkens in shadow. The moment passes. He smiles again.
“Dr. and Mrs. Romchuk? I know you’re good people,” he says, “but you’re struggling… and I think maybe I can help. Shall we talk about his education?”
Like a turkey, Josh Davies twists his neck and cranes his upsetting face ingratiatingly toward them.
The raccoon sits still in the man’s lap, its little shoulders shaking, crying, for its consideration of the Ferret Boy has gone unrequited.
Filed by Saint Stephan, August 22, 2025