Seacil was born to third-generation German parents, Butch and Yolanda Mallard, and grew up in a dilapidated two-story on what had once been the family dairy farm. Poor business decisions and alcoholism had long ago driven Butch into near bankruptcy, but eventually he found and maintained menial labor in town at Revere Copper & Brass. Yolanda named their son Seacil mostly to get back at Butch for their financial difficulties, but also because Butch had landed himself in the hospital the very night she had given birth, January 11, 1952.
Yolanda laid there in bed squirming against propped pillows, her hair done up in something resembling a deserted beehive. Drugged out and barely awake, she was trying to respond to the nurse's question "How do you spell that, Mrs. Mallard?" Thinking "Seacil," would stand out better on paper, Yolanda chose the variant spelling for the birth certificate. Butch wanted his son called something masculine like LeeRoy, Max or, better yet, Butch Jr., but Yolanda figured “to hell with you, buster, knockin’ me up and then seeing to it that you’re not even here to help out with the pain. I ain’t namin’ him no LeeRoy nor Max, and certainly not Butch Jr. I’m namin’ him Seacil, by God.”
Of course, mean as Butch was, Yolanda never said this to his face. Instead, “I like the name Seacil,” she said, "it's different, distinctive even. He'll grow up to be a doctor or something." “Brother,” Butch mumbled, exasperated, "you're such a yo-yo," to which Yolanda, hearing only the word "brother," replied “No more kids, Butch, not now, not ever.” So Seacil was an only child, but hardly what you might call one of a kind.
Some wondered how Butch wound up in the hospital that Friday night Seacil was born. Truth is, he had rushed Yolanda to the hospital, and then to calm his butterflies, had rushed right out to enjoy a beer or three with a couple of World War II buddies he knew would be hanging out at Coal Yard Charlie’s down by the tracks. He walked in the bar wearing baggy pants and work boots, his untucked shirttail flapping in back as he walked. His brushcut was slicked down almost flat with fresh hair cream.
During his fourth beer, a knife fight broke out between two mean-lookin’ women. Butch, being a self-proclaimed ladies man, stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and wound up staggering out of the bar wearing nothing below his shirt except a whole bunch of blood. The knife that got him was so sharp it had cut clear up from the inside of his right thigh, to and through his narrow web belt and across the button at the top of his fly, dropping his pants and skivvies down around his ankles. His big Revere Copper & Brass belt buckle clunked loud as a door knocker against the concrete, calling everyone's attention to the fact that he wasn’t wearing anything below the waist, although they probably would have noticed anyway since his thighs and buttocks displayed several strategically placed tattoos of naked women. It would have actually been funny had he not hit the pavement so darn near dead.
Butch started flashbacking immediately, thinking it was D-Day or something, flailing his arms at shadows and yelling "Krauts in the wire, Krauts in the wire," at the tops of his lungs. The paramedics had to shoot him up good with a tranquilizer before they could get him settled and into the ambulance. Butch swore he'd kill them all as soon as he got back from the rear, "ever muther one a ya," as he put it.
Yolanda figured that without a father any smarter than Butch, life was gonna be tough on the little tike so she wanted Seacil to learn early on how to take care of himself. She understood the importance of names, and knew the other boys would laugh and call him Sissy Seacil or something similar. She hoped to force him to fight back tooth ‘n nail. Seacil cowered in fear, instead, and by fifth grade had established himself as pretty much scared of his own shadow, so much so that he sometimes took to throwing up when facing fear. The kids laughed and called him Seasick all through grade school. Yolanda didn’t exactly boost his self-confidence by sending him mixed signals, sometimes swattin’ him upside the head, sometimes mothering him to death.
“I’m gonna swat you upside the head,” she’d say, “you don’t gitcher ass over here!”
“But Yolanda, I’m in a hurry.”
“Don’t talk back to me thataway,” and she’d cuff him upside the head.
“Yolanda,” he’d whine, holding his ear, “you’ll be sorry you did that. I’ll get you someday.”
"Oh come here, Seacil," she'd coax, "you're such a pain," and she'd smother him up with a broad sweep of her arms and hold him there pressed against the cleavage of her big chest until Seacil thought he would somehow have to scream himself free or pass out from the odor of day-old sweat mixed with stale perfume. He'd have to scream himself silly, is what usually happened, the muffled vibrations sending sexual signals coursing through Yolanda's body until the sweat beaded up on her forehead and ran down her face like tears.
To Yolanda, the apron strings between herself and Seacil were a logical replacement for the umbilical cord that should never have been severed in the first place. Butch sensed this and was angry, for it reduced him to number two male in his own home, so his anger found expression in such abusive phrases as calling Seacil a worthless sack of shit at every opportunity.
"You're a worthless sack a shit, boy, just like your mother. You'll never amount to a goddam thing, probably just some low-life queer."
"Don't say that, Dad, I'd never say anything like that about you."