Original Prin by Randy Boyagoda

Author:Randy Boyagoda
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Biblioasis
Published: 2018-07-17T16:12:05+00:00

22

The next morning, the Fourth of July, everyone went to the mall. Everything was star spangled and 50 percent off the lowest-ticketed price. Molly and her two sisters and all the girl cousins set out with canvas bags full of canvas bags. Prin, who, with the others out of town, was the ranking uncle, had clearance to take the boys to a matinee. Transformers: Terror Alliance had just opened, and the stars of the WNBA spent much of the movie lunging around in shredded titanium spandex. Nevertheless, Prin was still surprised at the size of the crowd gathered in front of the escalator to the movieplex.

“Hello Milwaukee! Hello America!”

A big man was calling out to the crowd. He had a face like a beefsteak tomato. He was wearing a T-shirt with crescent blades and crescent moons floating around the word HISTORY, which was written across it in Arabic-style letters with a giant STOP sign stamped overtop. He was standing on a small stage set up between two cellphone sales kiosks staffed by swarthy, spiky-haired young men in ill-fitting dress shirts and loose belts and shiny ties. They were watching while eating their lunch from styrofoam containers.

“Hello Schlaffler!” the crowd called back.

“Oh, Uncle Prin, can we watch this?” his nephew Juan-Diego asked.

“What is it?” asked Prin.

“What is it? Seriously? It’s Schlaffler, Uncle Prin! His radio show’s on every night, between Hannity and Rush. They don’t play it in Toronto?” asked his nephew, Xavier.

“No,” said Prin.

“Mom hates him,” said his nephew John-Paul.

“Yeah, but moms only listen to NPR,” said Juan-Diego.

“National Pointless Radio!” said all of his nephews.

“I’m guessing he’s a right-wing radio guy?” Prin asked.

“He’s a reality-check radio guy, Uncle Prin,” Xavier said.

“But Mom complains when he’s on, so we listen while Dad’s driving us to practice or we podcast it in the garage,” John-Paul said.

“Hey folks! Question for ya. Who gets the last laughter?” asked Juan-Diego.

“Schlaffler!” said his other nephews.

A moment later, the man on stage asked the same question and the crowd called out the same answer.

“Guys, we’re going to miss the trailers if we don’t go up to the theater now,” said Prin.

He didn’t like the crowd, which was, for the most part, beefy men in beards and Green Bay Packer caps taking pictures of Schlaffler with phones fitted out in thick rubber cases. The few women in attendance had, in general, no facial hair, and their cases were pink rather than jet black or black and dump-truck yellow; otherwise, they looked and weighed about the same. Prin could say he wanted to leave because he knew his sisters-in-law wouldn’t approve, but he knew his nephews would counter that their dads would have let them stay for the rally before launching into a Come on, Uncle Prin. Their adolescent American voices, golden, pure, and cracking like the Liberty Bell, would have tolled hard in his ears, his professorial, sonless, brotherless, ethnic Toronto ears. Come on, Prin, be a normal guy for once.

“Okay, we can stay for a few minutes and then go to the movie,” said Prin.

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