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became scratchy and frayed at the edges, like a prayer fl ag. I was a roaring mouse, afraid to open my mouth lest my big scratchy voice bring the world to its knees trembling. Or worse, laughing. My third grade teacher found my voice so disconcerting that she recommended to Big Bill that I have my throat looked into, to see if there was not some treat-able abnormality: an obstruction, a lymphoma, a hole in the lung.
    Maybe I was possessed; maybe I’d swallowed Billy Barty.
    And so it transpired that a swarthy man with an unpronounceable name who smelled of alfalfa and hot apple cider poked and prodded and generally violated my cranial ori fi ces with lights and swabs and mirrors and tongue depressors, prattling on all the while about great big trucks , and tractors as big as dinosaurs , small talk fi t for a boy half my age.
    When the ordeal was over three days later, after the cultures were cultured and the X-rays inspected, the copper-faced doctor called us back into his of fi ce and explained to my father that he could fi nd no abnormalities.
    “The boy is unique. This is a blessing. With a little luck, he might one day grow into this big scratchy voice of his.”
    Big Bill wanted to know if meat would help.
    “I’m not sure I understand your meaning.”
    “Tell him,” demanded Big Bill. “Explain to my son, the eight-year-old vegetarian, that meat is good for you, that you have to eat meat to grow. How do you think cows got so big?”
    The doctor explained that, while he was not a nutritionist, he himself was a vegetarian and what amounted to a weekend Hindu, and that cows, too, were vegetarians, a fact that seemed to impress Big Bill. He proceeded to enlighten my father regarding some cutting-edge research, which suggested that meat was very high in cholesterol and saturated fat, and might in fact increase the risk of thrombosis and heart disease. Big Bill was stymied. But how can that be, when the heart is made of meat?
    And as ridiculous as it all sounds, Big Bill may have been right about meat. I wore the same school pants for nearly a year and a half after my mother died, and they never became high waters. Even my hair stopped growing. If my voice had changed again, I wouldn’t have known it, because I kept it locked tight inside my chest. And I wouldn’t have known what to say, anyway. I wanted only to grow backwards into something I used to be.
    The twins’ progress was unimpeded; they grew like prize zucchinis. Nearly three years my junior, they had already outsized me by my ninth birthday. They were giants, a full head taller than anyone else in kindergarten. Their brains couldn’t keep up. I’m not going to say they were dull, maybe just unconcerned. They barreled through the buffet of life grabbing drumsticks and fi stfuls of Jell-O, shouting and laughing and making friends without even trying to.
    We commemorated my ninth birthday with a family dinner party at The Captain’s Table, a queasily lit buffet of Homeric proportions across the street from the Howard Johnson’s. Despite the nautical theme, there was plenty of real meat at The Captain’s Table: impossibly big meat—mutant drumsticks, sausages as thick as beer cans, roasts as big as camels.
    To see Big Bill carrying on in a party hat, waving a drumstick about like a ping-pong paddle, even if it was for my bene fi t, was an indignity to my mother’s memory. Thus, I was snake-eyed and sullen on my ninth birthday, and I did my best to make the party a joyless occasion. And that’s how I remember it: just the four of us and my dad’s old training partner Uncle Cliff, a few months before he drove his car off an overpass. He wasn’t really my uncle, of course, more of a stranger, really. According to Big Bill he’d once had the biggest chest in the world. But something was wrong with him. His cheeks were hollow. He looked small inside his hooded sweatshirt.
    Cliff never went to the buffet, not even for fi rsts, which left the two of us