Gargoyle Willie

By Patrick Palmer

Ever since elementary school, Willie thought of himself as a freak of nature. His appearance gave him no reason to think otherwise. According to an elementary school classmate, he looked like a gargoyle. His teacher, a no-nonsense Catholic nun by the name of Sister Beatrice, scolded the class and asked him to stay after school, so she could give him some words of encouragement. If the Lord made him to be a clown, why shouldn't he be the funniest clown ever, so his Lord would applaud his performance?

Years later, after finishing college, he constructed and opened his own bar: Gargoyle Willie's. Over time, he gained a loyal crew of friends and regular customers who were always around to support him.

One day, his assistant manager and fellow barkeep Angie Dulac suffered an instance of harassment from an offensive customer. The fury that Willie poured out on Creepazoid had far-reaching consequences that he may never have foreseen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638449423

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Gargoyle Willie

Patrick Palmer

Copyright © 2021 by Patrick Palmer

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Vidēte enim vocātiōnem vestram, frātrēs, quia nōn multī sapientēs secundum carnem, nōn multī potentēs, nōn multī nōbilēs. Sed quae stulta sunt mundī ēlēgit Deus, ut cōnfundat sapientēs, et īnfirma mundī ēlēgit Deus, ut cōnfundat fortia. Et ignōbilia mundī, et contemptibilia ēlēgit Deus, et ea quae nōn sunt, ut ea quae sunt dēstrueret, ut nōn glōriētur omnis carō in cōnspectū eius.

For see your vocation, brethren, that there are not many wise according to the flesh, not many strong, not many noble. But the foolish things of the world hath God chosen, that He may confound the wise. And the weak things of the world hath God chosen, that He may confound the strong. And the base things of the world, and the things that are contemptible, hath God chosen, and the things that are not, that He may bring to naught the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His sight.

St. Paul, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 1:26–29

On Linguistic Realism

An Introductory Note from the Author

These days, we have come to realize a truth told in a famous song the Sherman Brothers wrote for Walt Disney: It’s a small world after all.

A small world, indeed. Wars have come and gone, nations have formed enmities and buried enmities, and English has made large strides toward beating French in the worldwide competition to become the common tongue of earth—if earth could claim it has a common tongue.

English is the only language worth speaking! This is a common saying among some Americans—I won’t say which ones—as well as the saying, You’re in America, you should be speaking English! I confess myself astonished at the naive ignorance and the arrogance of this English Language Only attitude in our modern world of multiple languages. Yes, English now is an unofficial common tongue here in the United States, but consider this: as a language, it is not even native to the United States. The British colonists that founded Jamestown, Virginia, and Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts, imported the English language with them. Over time, it changed in its own directions, producing the different dialects of American English, from a New Yorker’s Youse guys to a Southerner’s Y’all.

Let’s not doubt for a second the richness of English as a language; we can look at the works of William Shakespeare for a classic example. Though English is close to a position as our planet’s common tongue, it is not the only language we humans speak.

English also has a wide variety of dialects around the world, whether we talk of the United States, the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland), Ireland, Australia, and other nations. This dialectical variety adds to its linguistic richness. For instance, what of a Bostonian’s way of saying, I lost my car keys, which comes out sounding like, I lost my khakis, due to the Boston dialect’s tendency to drop the final Rs of syllables? What of the West Country dialect of Rubeus Hagrid from J.K. Rowling’s famous Harry Potter series? What of the Yorkshire dialect Emily Brontë used in Wuthering Heights? What of Mark Twain’s use of dialect in his works, like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? Okay, sure, those latter two authors are older examples, but my point still stands: Why should English-speaking readers assume everyone in a book—or in real life—speaks the Queen’s English or Standard American English?

I reject the snobbish horse manure that believes characters who speak in a non-standard dialect are uneducated. This is horse manure because it is the surrounding linguistic environment, not the education level, that determines the dialect a person has, if any.

I see no reason to leave out foreign languages from the mix either, but for the sake of my English-speaking readers, I have included English subtitles or an English translation within the text whenever a character speaks in a foreign language. My only exception is in the case of when I translate a song’s lyrics into another language, but the original lyrics of the song are not in the public domain. (In that case, I will mention the title of the song, but that’s all I can provide.) If movies and television can do subtitles for foreign languages in our modern age—such as in Peter Jackson’s famous Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, featuring J.R.R. Tolkien’s Elvish tongues of Sindarin and Quenya, or in the Game of Thrones TV series inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin, featuring Dothraki and High Valyrian—I say, why cannot books do the same?

Sincerely,

Patrick Palmer

Chapter 1

Gargoyle Willie—who invented that name for me? Not my parents, I assure you. They named me William, after the great playwright William Shakespeare. I don’t doubt they had high aspirations for me, but what parents didn’t? While William Shakespeare looked like a handsome man in his portraits, by contrast I looked like a rejected runt. Upon seeing a picture of the gargoyles on the famous Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, one kid, Ryan, had the brilliance to call me a gargoyle, and the rest of the class laughed.

Sister Beatrice, our teacher, slapped her yardstick on the desk to gain silence. Now, class—what be the meanin’ o’ pickin’ on William like this?

Look at him, Sister Beatrice—he looks like a gargoyle! said Ryan.

So? What if he looks like a gargoyle, now? Since we be after startin’ this lesson today, ’tis obvious ye be not aware of why the Catholic Church built gargoyles on Her Church buildings, like on our famous example, but I will tell ye this much on the subject: some people say She did so, the devils to scare away…

Yeah, Gargoyle Willie is so ugly, even the devils run away from him!

I would have expected my classmates to laugh, but Sister Beatrice’s glare scared them into silence. Tell me, now: why will that be so bad for him, hmm? If the devils flee from William’s face because it scares them, he will be all the holier for that, right? William, see me after class.

She turned on Ryan, pointing the yardstick at his chest as she said, Class—and this includes yar bold self as well, Ryan—whisht yereselves a moment and perk open yere ears: if e’er I hear one more peep o’ mockery from anyone directed at William, straightaway I will send ye to Father Thomas for detention, ye hear me?

Even a swat with the yardstick would have been enough to get her message across, I thought. We all feared Sister Beatrice knew how to use it, though she never hit us. As for Father Thomas, his logical mind had the ability to pierce through all of our pitiful attempts to avoid the truth of our deeds, like the Light of God Almighty.

After class, Sister Beatrice smiled at me. Take a seat, William.

Why did you want to see me, Sister Beatrice? Am I in trouble?

Lord bless ya, dear lad, but ya be not in any trouble. Sit down. Methinks ’twould please me some encouragement to give ya.

I’m listening.

She went to the CD shelf on her desk and pulled one out. "Here we go. Pagliacci…’tis an nineteenth century Italian opera by Ruggero Leoncavallo…the title means Clowns."

Okay, I knew my mom enjoyed opera—she had introduced me to some operas—but this was not one I had heard before.

Sister Beatrice inserted the CD into the CD player and selected a track. "This song be named ‘Vesti la Giubba,’ which means ‘Put on the Costume.’ The male singer, Canio, suspects his wife, Nedda, be lovin’ another man, but since he plays a clown—Pagliaccio, the Italian word for clown—in the opera’s play, ’tis on him a smile to keep on his face despite his inner sufferin’."

I listened:

Recitar! Mentre preso dal delirio,

Non so più quel che dico, e quel che faccio!

Eppur è d’uopo—sforzati!

Bah! Sei tu forse un uom’? [Bitter laughter.]

Tu sei Pagliaccio!

Vesti la giubba, e la