The Advocates

Abstract

The Advocates C. P. Boyko (bio) Through slowmoving crowds we hurried toward an advocacy request. You, to indicate your disgust at being impeded, Uvering, threw your arms up and waddled clownishly, miming hopeless unfreedom. I, Iyznik, cleared my throat and said, “Pardon. Advocates coming through.” Soon a path was cleared through the throng. You scowlingly cussed by hand. We, Iyznik and Uvering, stood on busy streetcorners smiling, looking alert, judicious, and friendly. Nobody needed us. Mireez sat dharna that day. It rained. A street poet, seeing us, Uvering and Iyznik, pass by, declaimed, by both hand and voice, an impromptu paean to advocates. We applauded, curtsying, and were curtsyed to and applauded. I, the strangler, itched to be strangling. You, Uvering, and I, Iyznik, responded to a request for advocates. Said the redeyed complainant, pointing, “This lowlife twisted my arm. I’m worried it’s broken.” Cried the defendant, “Nonsense! Else why not go to the sickhouse like I suggested?” Meanwhile, you railed by hand. I explained, by mouth and by hand, “My partner is deaf. Use sign language also, please.” The complainant and the defendant, speaking by hand laboriously, grew calmer. Iyznik, you asked, with silky solicitude, “Would you like to go to the sickhouse?” Uvering scoffed. “Stop puling, you baby. Master yourself, you wretch.” to sit dharna: to protest a wrong by sitting at the wrongdoer’s door without eating until an apology or reparation is made. [End Page 163] The complainant stifled a sniffle. When I, Uvering, in this story am quoted speaking, remember, reader, that I am speaking by hand. “What would you like to happen?” asked Iyznik. Said the complainant, “They should apologize.” The defendant spluttered, “I said already that I was sorry five times, you idiot!” I, Iyznik, spoke also always by hand (if also aloud) for Uvering’s benefit. You, Uvering, asked, “And what did this whiner do to provoke you?” Said the defendant with some reluctance, “Called me a suck.” You made a conclusive gesture and crossed your arms. I, the defendant, had in my childhood often been called a suck by my evenolds. “I am not a suck,” I insisted. “Are you going to make a countercomplaint?” you, Uvering, asked. The eyes of defendant and of complainant fleetingly met. “No, thanks,” the defendant muttered. By footmail one day, you, Iyznik, received a letter on paper. Opening it, you savored its novel tangibleness, its rustle, its iron odor of ink, and sat, with a pleased expectancy, straighter—never imagining that your very life was about to utterly change. I, the defendant, worried, deep down, that, deep down, I was a suck. Iyznik, you’d known, abstractly, that any day this might happen—as it did daily, all round the world, to others. You’d thought, however, that when it happened to you, you’d somehow be different: wiser, or abler—older, at least. You still were too young! Statistically, though, you knew, you had passed already the average age. There had been no error. That distant, notional anyday was today. You muttered, by voice but not yet by hand, “I’m going to be a parent.” I, Leni, and you, Marjoey, together lay by the swimming pond, forging universes of mud—when someone in our direction kicked dirt and ran away laughing. “Hey!” we cried, shaking dirt from our hair. I asked, “Who was that? The strangler?” You doubted it. “Just some shirky coward.” evenold: a person of the same age; a coeval or contemporary. [End Page 164] “I’d like to make them eat puke!” You shrugged. I, Uvering, plucked the letter from Iyznik’s faltering grasp, and read it. A smile stole over my face. “We’re having a baby!” Your, the defendant’s, parents requested advocacy, complaining that you were lazy and selfish. Uvering remonstrated, “Your child is barely an adult. Lower your expectations a little.” “We”? I, Uvering, and you, Iyznik, spotted a person tossing an empty bottle aside one day in the gardenpark. We pursued the culprit. “You dropped your bottle—by accident, I assume,” you said. I said, “That was littering. Pick it up.” Said the culprit, “No, I will not. I’m sorry. I...