‘Arrow Twisters’

Caleb Ishaya Oseshi is documentary and street photographer. He tells stories through photography, exploring nature's beauty and human diversity. He is a participant of the UNESCO World Heritage Volunteer Program in Nigeria; he also collaborated with Kaduna Fashion and Art Exhibition (KAFART) as a Research Photographer (2023). His photographs are featured in Synchronized Chaos, Watershed Review, Readers boom and other publications, with exhibitions in Nigeria and the United States. He is a member of the African Photojournalism Database (APJD).

Arrow Twisters

He believes it was President John F. Kennedy who said, “Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” That’s the phrase that stuck in Fletcher’s mind. On the ceiling above his bed, he sees the gloating faces of all the people who’d been responsible for running him down, circulating half-truths, innuendos, and complete falsehoods about him. What they always referred to as his “checkered career,” when they’d smile coyly or nod as if they knew something about him, he himself didn’t know. There’s Randolph Farnsworth circling overhead, former president of Canard College; his fat leathery jowls flapping like some ancient church organ, his sleepy half-moon grain-fed eyes bleed daggers of accusations, sending yellow sparks flying, infecting any chance of sleep, releasing him from his nocturnal prison.

At one time, long ago, he’d taken the bumpy, winding road to the academy. He stared up at those smirking faces on the ceiling. He’d diligently studied, as best he could, he told himself, Latin, Ancient Greek and Sanskrit. No small feat. He’d spent many hours with his nose in dusty tomes. And when he finally looked up, he found himself an Assistant Professor of Philology picking over words like old, dried bones when he realized what he really wanted to do was stand- up comedy. A far cry from philology, the study of texts both oral and written, establishing their
origins and their meaning. So why not a philology of comedy?

His friend, perhaps his only friend Halton Camsteed, who teaches stand-up comedy at Kempt College, where they both work, said to him one day as they strolled across the rolling green lawn of the suburban campus: “Last time I checked, you can’t learn to be funny. But I’m hoping I’m wrong.” He guffawed, pleased with himself.

Halton cast a long shadow wearing a wrinkled grey trench coat and black bowler hat. He’d made quite a name for himself on the campus comedy circuit playing a truculent Winston Churchill—the man who only ever wanted to raise calico Maine Coon cats but found himself thrust upon the world stage playing the hero against a mutton faced moustached maniac in jodhpurs and riding boots.

So, when Fletcher Mallory owned up to his secret ambition, it stopped Halton in his tracks. Students glued to mobile phones zipped by them, oblivious to the shifting ground under their feet.

Halton Camsteed clamped down on his rubber cigar, a prop from his act that had become so ingrained in his life he never left home without it. His smooth, round face and bulbous nose brought to mind a bygone era; he looked like a chubby vaudevillian, his clothes slightly too big, with a faint smell of cannabis clinging to him. But deep down, his creative wellspring had run dry. Things that had sparked his inspiration now languished in a jarring void. Even the gentle breeze and the sweet melodies of birdsong, once so soothing, now felt like a discordant cacophony, assaulting his frayed nerves. And the feeling of emptiness settled in, a heavy weight upon his shoulders, suffocating his once-vibrant imagination. But Halton Camsteed likes Fletcher Mallory. Poor Fletch didn’t know when to stay in his own lane. Stand-up? Mal? Fletch Mallory, for his part, felt passionate about stand-up. He came to this realization one rainy day as he was reading Cicero. He brushed his right eyebrow with a little finger. It could have been Pliny the Elder... anyway, he realized life is nothing if not a pantomime of sorts. All those egg-headed colleagues of his in the academy were nothing but posers pretending to be doing something serious when really the only thing that matters is humour, to laugh at yourself and this absurd world. He gazed around at the naked trees.

“Mal.” That’s what Halton Camsteed called his friend Fletcher Mallory. “Mal,” Hal said.

“Be good. Whatever you do.”

Mal’s gaze drifted upward to the fluffy clouds billowing overhead, transforming before his eyes into the sneering faces of his enemies, their expressions as shifty as the wind. Old professor Delby Carmichael, all rosy-cheeked and as round as a washtub, whispering behind that soft white hand of hers into Constance Fulbright’s slightly tilted silver head, her glossy red lips smirking snidely. And her eyes, those greasy lizard slits burning with recrimination, bored deep into his soul.

“If you really are going to start something new, you’ll need to be fearless, not worry about what anyone thinks.”

They strolled across campus on this cloudy day, pleasant enough for this time of year.

The bite of winter was long gone, and the promise of summer lay ahead. The birds nattered in the leafless trees as the two rather strange looking academics meander towards the busy street.

Mal is tall, over six feet, although his stoop betrays an average height. He has smooth rat brown hair receding in a wide balding swath down the centre of his small head. His nose, long and wide, stands out. With a touch of melancholy, his hazel eyes appear tired. His thin lips refrain from smiling. And while not exactly obese, his middle is as soft as a cat’s tummy.

“You need to consider yourself a pioneer,” Hal said. “Out there alone against the elements, with who knows what danger lurking behind every rock.”

“Or tree,” Mal contributed dully.

“Right,” Hal nodded. “They’re shooting arrows at you, trying to kill you, knock you down.”

“Then they twist the arrows.”

“You’re not listening, are you?” Hal sighed, shoving the rubber cigar back into his mouth. “If you’re going to do comedy, take risks, make mistakes, try new things... be audacious!”

That’s an interesting word, Mal mused, as they strolled across the brown-green turf.

Derived from the Latin ‘Audax’, meaning brave, bold, foolhardy even. And there’s also the 16th century notion of ‘impudence’ in there somewhere, and what about the implications of ‘shameless’ and ‘impropriety’ that still cling to the word like a foul smell?

“If you’re going to be successful... in your own mind,” Hal continued, the rubber cigar flopping between his teeth. “You shouldn’t concern yourself with the opinions of others. Comedy, after all, is about taking risks.”

“But I’ve already made a ton of mistakes. And you saw me last night at the Bull Circle Pub. Those faces haunted me all night, just staring blankly up at me.”

“You haven’t found your groove yet, that’s all. Everyone has setbacks, bumps in the road. In comedy like everything else, stretch yourself, push the limits of your abilities, see failures as temporary, an opportunity to learn and grow.” He stopped, looked into his friend’s sad hazel eyes. “Everyone makes mistakes. It was Einstein who said, ‘a person who never made a mistake, tried nothing new.’”

“People look at me like I’m crazy, leaving philology for stand-up comedy. I’m not like you. You’ve always wanted to be a comedian, ever since you were a kid.” He touched his right eyebrow again with his little finger. “The way they looked at me last night. I could see the recrimination in their eyes. Who does this guy think he is?”

“You can’t let them get to you. The arrow twisters don’t know it. You might not know it. But they’re your best friends. They’re helping you to grow. Get better.” Hal leaned in. “Comedy is a mindset. I keep telling my students that. I believe it was Churchill who said: ‘Success comprises going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.’” He glanced across the sprawling lawn as a little black and tan Yorkie raising a leg against a scrawny maple tree. “Or something like that.”

“So let me get this straight,” Mal said. “So, when that heckler yelled, ‘why is this man smiling?’ he wasn’t criticizing my uneven dentation?”

“Just another arrow twister man! That’s when you must push yourself to the limit.” They stopped at the edge of the lawn. The traffic on the busy road in front of them roared like an angry beast.

“If you want to be a pioneer, accept the arrows coming your way. We all do. That’s the way it is, man.” He placed a firm hand on Mal’s shoulder. “You think it was easy for me, but it wasn’t? Do you think I enjoy dressing like a tramp in this ridiculous outfit? Do you think I relish this stupid rubber cigar or wearing a bowler hat?”

“But that’s who you are,” Mal said, shocked by his friend’s sudden candour. “Everyone
laughs when they look at you.”

“Exactly,” Hal said with a hint of melancholy, glancing back at the busy traffic. “Behind my back I’ve heard them say, ‘those who can do, those who can’t teach.’”

“And those who can’t teach, teach teachers,” Mal added unhelpfully.

“Don’t you see?” Hal pleaded. “You either grow or... you die. These are the only options.” There was a sudden change of expression on his round face. Almost luminous, Mal recalled, just before Hal stepped off the curb and into the path of an oncoming Express bus. Fletcher Mallory adjusted the oversized bowler hat. Since retrieving Hal’s hat from the roadside after the accident, he has worn it to honor his friend and for another reason. He felt as if Halton Camsteed’s flair for comedy clung to it, and so he wore it as a sort of talisman, and with beneficial effect. Ever since, that silly hat, two sizes too large for his puny head, gave him a mysterious connection with his now departed friend. Every time he stepped on stage, the crowd roared with laughter, no matter what he said or did. Could it be this was the philology of comedy he’d been looking for?

He looked up at the ceiling over his bed in the dark, all the faces of the arrow twisters now laughing their heads off—all except one. The beaming moon of a face of his old friend

Halton Camsteed stared down at him. In that twinkling moment, he believed he saw his friend’s lips mouth the words, “Illegitimi non carborundum.”

“Don’t let the bastards grind you down,” Mal said aloud to the crowing night. The secret to success, his friend was telling him, was not to be afraid of the dark, or of making a fool of yourself in public.

P.W. Vaughan dwells intentionally on the shore of a small innocuous lake at the eastern edge of the vast continent known to many of its original inhabitants as Turtle Island. Vaughan has numerous nugatory publications, including two fusty self-published novels on Amazon and original music on SoundCloud, both tagged with the anodyne meme By Rushton Beech. His award-nominated humorous short story Plato’s Flan published in The Danforth Review (2002) was unfairly alleged to have contributed to the online publication’s untimely demise.