Chester

Is This Someone You Know?

I have forgotten how many times I have fallen asleep with the lights on and the water running in the tub late on a Saturday night with no date.

I have forgotten how many times I sat alone in a cafe dreaming that I was Superman and that I was going to save the world from evil and marry Lois Lane on a warm summer Sunday.

I have forgotten how many times my mother did not kiss me goodnight and I went to bed clinging to my teddy bear who lived in a special world for dumb animals who happen to be stuffed.

But I have not forgotten my teddy bear. His name was Chester and he spent hours beside me absorbing my tears and chasing away my fears. He was a brown bear with black eyes and a thin red mouth. He would talk to me when no one else was around and he would share his innermost thoughts of how he wished he could grow up and become somebody.

Chester wanted to be a movie star and have his face up on the big screen. He thought he was another John Wayne or James Cagney. He could do impressions of both. Once he did an impression of Marilyn Monroe and I almost fell out of bed laughing.

My teddy bear went wherever I went. Even to church on Sunday. He would sit next to me and make wise cracks about what the preacher said. I tried to shut him up but he wouldn’t listen. Once he jumped up in the air and raced toward the pulpit. He landed on a lady’s lap and she let out a scream that almost blew the roof off the church.

My father was very angry with me and took me outside. I tried to explain that it wasn’t my fault. That it was Chester’s fault. But he didn’t listen. He said that bears only respond to the promptings of little boys.

My father sat down in the backseat of our old blue Chevy and told me to lay across his lap. Now, I didn’t want to, but I did it because I knew things would be worse if I didn’t.

Papa took his big iron palm of a hand and brought it down hard on my backside. Not once or twice but fifteen times. By the second whack I was crying my eyes out. But Papa didn’t stop until he hit fifteen. Then he told me to stay in the car and not to move until we went home. He went back into church and I lay there crying, wishing my father was dead and hoping Chester would beat him up.

After church mother brought Chester with her. In many ways, she was angrier than Papa. Papa exploded like a bomb and then everything was over and forgotten. Mama was like a pot of boiling water. First she simmered, then she steamed, and then she boiled. She didn’t let me watch television for a week and didn’t let me take my teddy bear to church for a month.

Chester just laughed when I told him all the trouble he had caused.

Copyright © 2020 by Harley King

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