Johnny would say nothing; concerned he would be taunted by his older brothers Leny One N and polio-legged Tommy Tom Tom who told him he didn’t have a for real birthday like other humans did. They resented Alice informing their father that day when four-year-old Johnny had discovered the father’s eighty proof bottle of Strega and had drank almost all of it telling him Johnny was acting strange and drowsy. The father carried Johnny like a lamb to the Fordham Poe Folk Hospital where the good people with compassion, a lost art buried in the future where god was called Money Greed, fixed him all up and made him as good as new again – never asking if the father had any money – which he did not.
Jerry Vilhotti – Compassion What
