Niles’s first words were oeghene lachen. And from there, he let loose with a string of vowel sounds, grunts, and guttural whines released at an imperceptible and near constant speed. “The sound of it hurt our ears,” his father said. It would be another three years before his parents would learn that his first words, when translated into English, were eyes laughing. Some believe this to have been Niles’s first poem.
According to James Avara (Journal of Linguistic Studies, 1971, 46–52), Wulfila Jutes was the last speaker of the Germanic language Ostrogothic, and it is from Jutes that linguists were able to piece together the small and incomplete list of one hundred vocabulary words that we recognize and can translate today. Wulfila Jutes died sometime in the early nineteen hundreds and was by no means a fluent speaker. The last fully fluent speaker of Ostrogothic is presumed to have died over a century ago. It is now widely assumed that Henry Richard Niles is the only living fluent speaker of Ostrogothic and the first person to speak this dead language in over one hundred years.
Once the root of Niles’s speaking problem had been discovered, his parents placed him with well-respected and renowned linguists in hopes that they could 1) discover the origins of the language that he spoke, and 2) teach Henry Richard how to speak properly and in English, if possible, but at the very least in French. Niles remained with the linguists from his seventh until his eighteenth birthday. Despite intensive lessons in English, Spanish, and French, and although perfectly fluent in each (he is more than able to read and understand technical manuals, financial reports, and newspaper headlines), Niles cannot express himself (poetically) in any language other than Ostrogothic.
Armed with a vocabulary that grows daily, Niles has produced some six hundred poems, ranging in length from a two-word verse to a one thousand — line canto, of which only segments can be translated through the use of the one hundred — word vocabulary list once provided by Wulfila Jutes. Much of his poetry, when translated, looks bullet-ridden, torn, and scooped out, though when heard in their original language, read aloud by the author — there exists but one recording of Niles reading a series of short poems made twenty years ago — these same poems, while unintelligible, have been known to make the listener weep and thereafter dwell on a history of lost opportunities.
Cash to a Killing
We had spent the past hour burying the body and were on our way to grab a hamburger. I had been worried at first that the body would be too difficult to lift. I’d only had Roger with me, and he’d never done this sort of thing before; usually I’ve got two other guys, big guys, for the heavy lifting. I’m not a big guy and neither is Roger, and I’ve heard that deadweight is really heavy. When Roger moved, then, to the midsection of the body, wrapped his arms around the guy’s waist, I told him, No way, man, you’ve got to pick him up from one of the ends, head end or foot end, not the middle, but Roger’s always been good at ignoring whatever he doesn’t want to hear, and so, when he continued with his flawed plan, straddling the body, wrapping his arms around the waist before changing his mind and grabbing the guy by his belt loops, then bending his knees — he had a bad back from when he worked at an ice-cream shop — and heaved, I expected him to topple forward, maybe land inappropriately, but humorously, on top of the guy, in a lover’s embrace, you might say, or at least flip over and land flat on his back on the ground. But either Roger had been working out and was much stronger than he looked, or dead bodies are a lot lighter than everybody says they are, because Roger pulled the guy right between his legs and flipped him up over his shoulder before turning to me and asking, So, where are we going to put this guy?
I wish I could say that killing the guy was an accident, and maybe if you were to take the long view of the situation, take into account the events of his life, those of my life, of Roger’s, the arbitrary successes and failures that befell the three of us, or, even further back, befell our parents and grandparents, great grands, back to our oldest ancestors, and determined that it was some accident of fate that he ended up who he was and I ended up who I am, and Roger ended up as Roger, you might say it was an accident. But taking the short view of things, we killed him deliberately and for a specific purpose. And despite Roger’s argument, just because we killed the wrong guy doesn’t change, for me, the fact of the matter. He was the guy we intended to kill, we killed him, end of story.
What pissed me off more than the wasted time — staking him out, waiting in hiding, killing the guy, and then burying him — was the fact that now I’d not only killed the wrong guy, but that I still had to kill the right guy, as well as the guy who gave me the bogus information about the guy I just killed. That’s three guys, when I’d only planned on one, at most two, depending on how I decided to handle Roger after it was all said and done, effectively tripling my work, which was all I could think about as we walked back to the van, that and how hungry I was, which is why I suggested we grab a burger, maybe a soft serve, too, on the way back home.
It was about the time that Roger pulled into the Whataburger that he realized he’d dropped his wallet. Uh-oh, he said. Uh-oh what? I said. No wallet, he said. Don’t sweat it, I said. I’ll cover you. No, he said. That’s not what I mean.
I’m not sure why the jerk brought his wallet to a killing in the first place, as it seems common sense to me: Bring cash to a killing. No credit cards, no license, no ID, unless it’s fake and it’s got a bogus picture on it. But your entire wallet? Roger’s always been a nice guy, but was never much for common sense. So we drove back to where we buried the body, hunted around for Roger’s wallet for about twenty minutes, until he comes to the conclusion that he must have dropped it into the hole. Into the hole, I said. You’re positive? I’ll go get the shovels, he said, instead of answering my question. After another hour of slow digging, slow because we didn’t want to accidentally dig up and throw back Roger’s wallet with the dirt and muck, we hit the body, only for me to then realize that it was the wrong body, entirely the wrong body, at which point, so we didn’t keep digging pointlessly and so Roger wouldn’t hop into the hole himself, I said, This ain’t him.
What? Are you kidding me? Roger said. How many bodies you think are out here? he said, not really believing me, hopping down into the hole to make sure I hadn’t made a mistake, which I hadn’t, or, rather, I had.
The thing is, the entire field’s on a grid system, the entire plot of land, my great grandfather’s, all laid out on this grid, not written down, of course, but kept in my head, with the locations of all the different guys, each buried in his own logical way — it’s a mathematical system, foolproof — but I must have been flustered, pissed as I was, and hungry, and so I must have transposed a couple of the locations, which, fine, no big deal, just refigure it out, cover this guy up, go find the right guy, and there you have it, right? Sure. But for the monstrously fucked-up fact that the wrong guy we dug up was Roger’s brother, Roger not knowing he was dead and buried in my grandfather’s land, thinking, in fact, that he’d skipped off to Vegas to become a blackjack dealer, due in part to the forged letter I’d left for him that said I’ve skipped off to Vegas to become a blackjack dealer.