The Louisville Review

Transcription

The
Louisville
Review
Volume 66
Fall 2009
The Louisville Review
Editor
Guest Faculty Editors
Sena Jeter Naslund
Kathleen Driskell, Kirby Gann, Charlie
Schulman, Luke Wallin
Guest Editor
Betsy Woods
Managing Editor
Karen J. Mann
Associate Editor
Kathleen Driskell
Student Assistant Editors Colleen Harris, Sandra Havriluk, Chris Helvey,
Maritza Gonzalez, Cindy Lane, JoAnn LoVerdeDropp, Arwen Mitchell, Brian Russell,
Graham Shelby, Katerina Stoykova-Klemer,
Anna West, Charles White
Asst. Managing Editor
Ellyn Lichvar
Editorial Assistants
Jenny Barker, Amanda Forsting
TLR publishes two volumes each year: spring and fall. Submissions of previously
unpublished manuscripts are invited. See www.louisvillereview.org for electronic
submission instructions. Electronic submissions preferred. Mailed submissions must
include a self-addressed, stamped envelope for reply only. Submissions are recycled.
Mail to Prose, Poetry, or Drama Editor, The Louisville Review, 851 S. Fourth St.,
Louisville, KY 40203. Poetry, prose, or drama should be submitted in separate
envelopes. Children/teen (K-12) poetry and short fiction must be accompanied by
parental permission to publish if accepted. Submissions are considered throughout
the year. Reply time is 4-6 months. Email: louisvillereview@spalding.edu. www.
louisvillereview.org
This issue: $8 ppd
Sample copy: $5 ppd
Subscriptions: One year, $14; two years, $27; three years, $40
Student subscription: One year, $12; two years, $20
Foreign subscribers, please add $4/year for shipping.
The text and the cover printed by Thomson Shore of Dexter, Michigan. Cover
picture and design by A.J. Reinhart
TLR gratefully acknowledges the support of the brief-residency Master of Fine Arts
in Writing Program, Spalding University, 851 S. Fourth St., Louisville, KY 40203.
Email mfa@spalding.edu for information about the MFA in Writing Program.
© 2009 by The Louisville Review Corporation. All rights revert to authors.
EDITOR’S NOTE
The Louisville Review extends congratulations to Lucrecia Guerrero; her story titled “A Memory,” originally published in TLR, was
selected from stories in over 250 magazines for the anthology Best of
the West, 2009.
Here in Louisville we held our first Festival of the Written Word
in September, a city-wide event we hope will grow and prosper in
years to come. We were especially excited to offer writing workshops
in fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction to high school students,
teachers, and members of the community on the Spalding University
campus, as well as readings and a luncheon. Many contributors to The
Louisville Review, Fleur-de-Lis authors, and alums of the Spalding
brief-residency Master of Fine Arts in Writing Program participated
in the event.
The Spalding MFA in Writing distinguishes itself in many ways;
in addition to offering a series of activities and presentations concerning publishing, we also encourage cross-genre reading and writing,
and recognize the interrelatedness of all the arts. Students may enter
our program in the fall or spring semester, beginning with a ten-day
residency in Louisville, or in the summer, with the residency in an
international location. For summer 2010, the residency is in Buenos
Aires, June 21-July 3. Our web site is www.spalding.edu/mfa.
For their work as Guest Editors on this issue of The Louisville
Review, I’d especially like to thank the following individuals as well
as all current Spalding MFA students who participate every issue in
the reading of submissions:
Award-winning poet and teacher KATHLEEN DRISKELL serves as
the Associate Program Director of Spalding University’s brief-residency MFA in Writing Program, where she is Associate Professor of
Creative Writing. In addition to her nationally bestselling collection
of poems Seed Across Snow (Red Hen 2009), she is the author of one
previous book of poetry, Laughing Sickness (1999, 2005 second printing), and the editor of two anthologies of creative writing. Her poems
have appeared in many literary magazines including North American
Review, The Southern Review, and The Greensboro Review. Kathleen
lives with her husband and two children in an old country church built
before The American Civil War.
KIRBY GANN is the author of the novels Our Napoleon in Rags
(2005) and The Barbarian Parade (2003), and co-editor (with poet
Kristin Herbert) of the anthology A Fine Excess: Contemporary Literature at Play. He is managing editor at Sarabande Books and teaches
in the brief-residency MFA in Writing Program at Spalding University.
CHARLIE SCHULMAN and composer/lyricist Michael Roberts are
the creators of the musical “The Fartiste” (Best Musical NYCFringe
2006). Their new show “My American Family” will soon be workshopped and recorded. Charlie recently received a commission from
The New Musical Development Foundation. His new play “The Great
Man” received a reading in NYC in May, 2009. His chapter on Playwriting is included in The Portable MFA in Creative Writing (Writers
Digest). He is currently writing “My Big Fat Wedding Movie,” and he
teaches in the Spalding MFA Program.
LUKE WALLIN’s latest nonfiction book is Conservation Writing:
Essays at the Crossroads of Nature and Culture, published in 2006.
He co-edited and contributed to Nature and Identity in Cross-cultural
Perspective, published in 1999. Luke has taught in Spalding’s MFA
Program since its founding in 2001; to read some of his creative nonfiction visit lukewallin.com.
BETSY WOODS, a Spalding MFA alum and guest editor for The
Children’s Corner, is the writer-in-residence at St. Stephen’s Central
School in New Orleans. Her short stories have appeared in The New
Orleans Review, The Louisville Review, The Literary Trunk, and Alive
Now. She is a contributing writer for Sophisticated Woman magazine,
served as the assistant editor for Acres U.S.A., the largest organic
farming journal in North America and was a columnist and feature
writer for The Times Picayune. She teaches at The Writer’s Loft of
Middle Tennessee State University.
–Sena Jeter Naslund, Editor
TABLE OF CONTENTS
POETRY
Gaylord Brewer Dead Metaphor #3: The Rose 9
Dead Metaphor #19: The Champagne Toast
10
Andrew Najberg Listening to Doors 11
Doug Van Gundy Refusing to Wrestle with God 12
Ironing in Vienna 13
Fiona Sze-Lorrain New Growth 15
Daniel Simpson Night Journeys 17
Scott Provence We Weren’t Men to Be 19
Chris Mattingly Come Thaw 20
“Gerlean in the Garden” 21
Richard Newman Lessons from the Garden 23
Jacob Robert Stephens Search Party 24
Tiffany Beechy Connexin 26 25
Cathleen Calbert The Princess Bride 27
Stacia M. Fleegal Virginia to Leonard, Who Means Well 29
Jeff Worley Claudia 30
Savannah Sipple Cheap Dreams 31
Joan Colby Old Woman In A Cold Rain 33
Michael Salcman Bitterroot 34
Ricardo Nazario-Colón Tujcalusa 35
A.J. Naslund Straightening the Pastoral Picture 36
The Great Turtle Is Not a Bore 37
Frederick Smock Personae 39
Frederick Zydek Agate Beach, Lopez Island, Washington 40
Suellen Wedmore The Lighthouse Keeper’s Wife 41
Adam Day Memory’s Work 43
The Starling Cemetery 45
FICTION
Gayle Hanratty Grove City 46
Brian Maxwell Listen As the Bells 67
Mindy Beth Miller Mountain Born 76
Michael Carroll Mosquito Hour 90
NONFICTION
Dianne Aprile Keeping Records 102
Timothy Kenny Unknown Zone: Recollections of a year in
Kosovo 106
Christopher Lirette The Thrill of Choreographed Violence 119
Susan Finch Happy Hour 128
DRAMA
Mark St. Germain Fitzroy 137
Holly L. Jensen Class Act: Version 379
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
144
151
CHILDREN’S CORNER
Danielle Charette
Zooed Manatee 159
Other People’s Lighted Windows
Gated Grammarians 162
Carla Hasson Jail Cell 163
Kian Brouwer Good Night 164
Katie Metzger Rebirth 165
Ema Williamson Thousands 166
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS TO THE CHILDREN’S CORNER
167
160
Gaylord Brewer
DEAD METAPHOR #3: THE ROSE
How the room centers around a vase
centered on a table, narcotic loosening
of petals. My god, how quickly today passes,
beginning containing unfolded finish,
first beauty the solution to our pain,
whether wild thorn of woodside
or tended garden monarch—still dangerous
in her refinements—cut in the budding.
One petal, then another, silken flag,
proffered kerchief, dropped from soft knot,
lifted by hand and discarded upon
dappled stream of the mind, spun and parted.
Finis. For if that, faded lover, is the sort
of nonsense you incline to, please allow this
simple test: lower your blushed face
into what remains of the flower’s invitation,
press nose and lips to fragrant death. Inhale.
By any symbol, it smells as sweet.
The Louisville Review | Page 9
Gaylord Brewer
DEAD METAPHOR #19: THE CHAMPAGNE TOAST
To auld lang syne and good riddance, thirty
slaughtered years for the steady profit of the Company.
To the bride. To 400 million bubbles per bottle,
effervescent river of dreams. To lowered daggers,
hearty wishes, five centuries of evil spirit warned
with a clink of cup. To getting toasted, more next year,
better next time, chartable progress in your long cha-cha
off a short pier. To Frère Jean and Dom Pierre,
orders of Pierry and Epernay. To the 17th century.
To 1836, Method François, mountains of milestones
to pass. To Veuve Cliquot, Tattinger, or a Spanish cheapie,
it’s all good. To your happy, sponging tongue.
To a quick buzz and quick squeeze, not safe nor sorry,
and your complete comeback and recovery.
Palms itchy? You’re falling into some coin, fella.
Feet, as well? Somebody’s two-stepping across a grave.
Well you can’t have it all, all the time. (Can you?)
“May ye live as long as ye want to, and want to
as long as ye live,” waxed your Irish uncle, ubiquitous
glass in hand. Then he walked over all the graves,
all the way to Alaska, and never came back, salud.
Page 10
| The Louisville Review
Andrew Najberg
LISTENING TO DOORS
Concrete stairs to a church in Bath. Doors
Wrought iron ornamented, gilded, fading.
Is it stained glass or bas relief that panes
The paneling? Who sees through the figures
With such a stillness inside? Who is telling
The stories what they’re about?
They, like me, wait
for your red coat to turn the corner—
the shops across the street are all closed
though their mannequins still parade their shawls
and the call of gulls carries from the river—
this is a city I could die among
with its colonnades of chimneys
and rust-hampered hinges down narrow brick alleys
that caw to the ravens perched on the aerials—
the sooty ravens flitter on their wobbling aluminum perches—
answer back in squawks that sound like “help”
and somehow I know they won’t get it—
whatever form of it is that they seek—
because doors are deaf if they’re open to us
and what else do I see in a raven
than to sit for hours in want.
Doug Van Gundy
REFUSING TO WRESTLE WITH GOD
frees you from mouthing a contrite: forgive me
Father, for I have sinned,
from eating Jell-O salad
in mildewed church basements
and singing out-of-pitch hymns.
You spend your Sundays
sleeping, or at raised-bed gardening
or going for long walks
across broad Atlantic beaches,
until comes the shuttering of that small white house;
and, just before tossing the key
into the sea’s foam, finding yourself surprised
by a desire to reopen the door you’ve just locked and
have another look inside.
Page 12
Doug Van Gundy
IRONING IN VIENNA
While I am ironing, I am Glenn Gould, ironing
in front of a balcony window on the fourth floor
of the Hotel Imperial, preparing my shirt
for the evening’s concert while waiting
for room service coffee and a plate
of croissants. I could send the shirts out—
have someone else ease the creases and folds
from their placketed fronts, coax the cool cotton
into wrinkleless white with steam and sweat
and flat metal—but this is a thing I do myself.
I love the linear progress and the smell of linen water
that rises from this early work. Before the Elavil
and Clonapin kick in, before I have to be charming
on the radio or talk to a newspaper
about my latest recording, I like to lose myself
in a timeless quarter-hour, making short work of running
the iron across the fronts and backs
of sleeves that will never be seen
beneath my tuxedo jacket, save for the crisp cuffs
peeking out, rising up and falling down starkly,
crescendo and decrescendo, against
the black lacquered fallboard. And even
after I have renounced the stage to give the whole
of myself to the recording studio, working
and reworking until late into the night,
I will start each day this way: waking up at home
as if I were in a grand hotel, drinking coffee
and ironing; my odd, tuneless humming
drifting like ash onto freshly pressed shirts.
Page 14
Fiona Sze-Lorrain
NEW GROWTH
Still no letter.
Autumn wind, trees toss, their thoughts
are mine, what on earth
is really happening?
I am planting bluebells and chrysanthemums. Forsythias and magnolias, for tomorrow.
But my mind is like a tree of monkeys.
It is not in what my hands prune. Half-crunched peaches
littered on its soils, leaves rain hard when these monkeys gambol.
Why put flowers on flowers’ graves? Koan
you mused when I sung Tom Waits
tilts my mind each time you disappear.
Just like this.
No letter. No phone call.
How many miles from heart to hands?
You’re seldom a deus ex machina. Drums
in my stomach warn me of war, is our Empress Dowager
forbidding you?
Her decreet dictates, No letter. No phone call.
Married daughters are strangers.
Flowers versus flowers’ graves—that was so long ago,
you were five, I was fourteen. Today I plant
with hands I can’t trust. Feel disembodied your koan
haunts me. As I unearth
a row of new weeds, I hold my spade tight,
ready to dig, and undig,
until my hand touches hope.
Page 16
Daniel Simpson
NIGHT JOURNEYS
I: Memory
They are painting my room.
Raggedy sheets and plastic drop cloths cover
my bed and dresser, the record player.
Fumes fog up from the floor
and fill downward from the ceiling.
What else to do but let me,
a ten-year-old boy, sleep
with my fourteen-year-old sister
in her double bed?
On the porch, she had shown me
how movie star men held their lean-back ladies
as they kissed them full on the lips.
Now she lay motionless on her stomach,
the soft puffs on her chest
squished into the springy mattress,
the edge of the left puff
not far from my right wrist.
I wanted to touch her bare foot with mine,
to leave it there, and I did,
with no complaint from her.
I felt a happiness, like traveling.
My father shaved in the bathroom down the hall,
the water splashing like a fish jumping
every time he swished the razor through it.
He spoke to my mother and they closed their bedroom door.
My sister slept. Awake,
I dreamed a journey I would one day take.
II: Dream
It was you, Darling,
oh it was most definitely you.
Even in a dream, I know
the exact angle of our noses in kissing.
I know the fragrant melange
of fish and flower that is
your olfactory fingerprint
in the nakedness of love.
So it was strange, then,
that you were my sister in this dream,
this dream where we giggled and sweated that our father
might innocently, imprudently, peak in.
Not my sister, to be precise,
but in the role of sister.
I’ve been asking myself all day, why.
Why with all the wanting,
no reduction in our usual desire,
would you be made a sister?
To send me back to my real sister
with better than I’ve given her before?
To show me what long-time lived-in love looks like?
And what if we all had sisters
who would fall asleep with us?
Would we learn earlier to love?
Would we lose the taste for outside lovers?
Come, My Love.
Isn’t it time we were family?
Page 18
Scott Provence
WE WEREN’T MEN TO BE
I need a constant
eye, a consolation letter.
I need sometimes
to find you consonant.
It’s no use, it’s me.
Hear the facts:
You have your mother’s
noise. It grounded me.
You never glisten anymore.
I miss the sound,
that’s lost among the others.
You never culled.
Say I come over. Stay
calm back home.
They don’t leave you
like I leave you.
Kiss ‘em schism,
augmented hugs.
You’re breaking up.
I’ll send for my thugs.
Chris Mattingly
COME THAW
Didn’t we know a python
Could open its mouth
That wide? Especially
The woman who,
Because the snake was
Her pet, her friend,
Shared a bed with it?
If she were alive now
She would say how strange
It was the snake quit
Eating & didn’t eat
For three months.
The snake dislocates
Its jaw & the river
Swells 2½ miles wide
With oak trees, corn cribs
& swingsets. It writhes
Onto its side until
Only those things inside
Can move. It will not
Have to do this again
For one full year.
Page 20
Chris Mattingly
“Gerlean in the Garden”
–Jack Kotz
A woman in a nightgown
Is leaning over a row of greens.
There is a silver washtub in her hand.
Judging by the gauze of golden light
Obscuring the field & trees
It is an early summer morning in the South.
Because Gerlean is looking down
Into the greens at something I can’t quite see
I begin to think she has noticed someone,
As a cruel prank, has left a dead cat
In her garden & the tune
In her head ceases & now she is thinking
What in God’s name . . .
Once, I knew a kid who liked to kill cats.
He would tie a brick
To a kitten’s legs then toss it
Into a swimming pool or pond
Never considering who might find it.
So maybe it’s nothing personal
That I see one there now.
It’s possible someone shot the cat with a .22
& it happened to be in Gerlean’s garden
When it died. But maybe it is personal.
This is Mississippi.
She is black. My friend
Ross once told me a story in which
A man in a car that passed him
As he walked down the street
Called him nigger
& I asked if there was even one
African-American who does not share
Some version of his story.
He said it was a good question.
But now that I think about it, I wonder
How many white Americans
Don’t live with the other
Side of the story. After all,
I put the cat there.
While Gerlean’s feet sunk deeper
Into the rich cool soil
& you gazed further into this poem,
I put it there.
Page 22
Richard Newman
LESSONS FROM THE GARDEN
This morning little mushroom heads,
like rusted dimes on toothpick stalks,
sprang up in our flower box.
An hour later they were dead,
withered in the summer heat.
Each spore stretched out its mortal coil
through dried up peat and city soil
to die upon a slab of concrete.
With mouthless moths and butterflies,
the male flies free, no need for food,
and mates to spawn a hungry brood
then lives another hour and dies,
unable even to watch its spawn
chew my tomatoes to the ground.
If they had mouths their song would sound
pointless, pointless over the lawn.
Inside my daughter’s forced to practice.
Her fingers blunder down the keys,
ignoring accidentals. She’s
thirteen, more prickly than a cactus.
Outside the yard is newly mown—
I hear the chirps of brazen birds,
wrong notes accented by swear words,
and realize lately how she’s grown
almost as moody as my ex-wife.
A year ago she loved to play.
She hates it now and pounds away
a stubborn song of loss and life.
Jacob Robert Stephens
SEARCH PARTY
Each day unleashed the hounds
to find the blue-hemmed dress
that should have reached your knees,
white ribbon tied to the strawberry
hair you were said to have.
A wheat field unveiled you,
tattered as a straw-bale untwined.
Conspiracy of ravens staircased away.
Thunder cracked its knuckles above,
but who could pick you up?
Your mother arrived in the rain.
We gathered around her gathering you.
Page 24
Tiffany Beechy
CONNEXIN 26
They gave it to her.
One from my mother, one from my
father,
recessed and hiding.
Almost a meaning, like
Ambien, Paxil.
Recessive, burrowing.
She is the age
to match her gene.
I find
myself ashamed—
the question of children
heavier, my own body
problematic, her wholeness
something
long ingrained, incanted
my anxiety betrays.
Paul said
all is permitted, but not all
is beneficial. The giraffe’s neck stretched
to reach the branches.
Little cold fishes with no eyes. Lucky
to live, that’s all.
When she was small she’d wake up screaming—
accustomed to silence,
her blue eyes open
in the double silence of the dark.
They hang now on her every
communiqué. Her garbled swearwords
precious. Text
messages for money. News for nothing.
Connection.
Page 26
Cathleen Calbert
THE PRINCESS BRIDE
You took pride in being hard-hitting, unsparing, mostly of yourself,
of your complicity
in the daily disasters of marginal lives during the sixties and seventies, that dark carnival of desire and despair,
as you measured Wisconsin’s emptiness, a drunken father, weakened
mother,
bringing together nuns, medieval paintings, and Jane Austen
with the Blues Rock Bar, Pabst Blue Ribbon, all the trappings of bad
girls
through a relentless accumulation of details, from “hand-stacked
wheat” to “homegrown weed heavy with seeds.”
In verse, you’re one tough honey, presiding over the inferno of biker
clubs and misalliances,
yet you agreed to watch The Princess Bride with me.
You said I kept you in touch with the mainstream, but you said it
lightly.
You were forgiving. You were funny. You were in the middle of your
story at forty,
newly blond and sleeping with men again after many years as a
lesbian.
Who knows what you would have done next,
what you would have made of the fluid seeping into your lungs,
limping home to the Midwest, sitting outside on the one warm day in
November and brushing away all the loose strands
of yellow hair.
I’m sorry. I’m not fighting fair. Lynda, indulge me.
As fine as your poems are, they lie, so here I am, shouting, “She was
kind, the best of friends,”
even though you weaseled me into driving from Houston to
San Francisco, mid-June, in an ancient Civic with no AC,
your hair silver then, mine stuck with fifty bobby pins under a red
bandanna (imagine!),
waking to find New Mexico purple in the morning. When we went
to bed
in a cut-rate motel, you rubbed your feet together under the sheets,
like a grasshopper singing, until I told you to knock it off.
Of my long, unhappy liaison with a man, you said, “Miss Calbert,
the truth is we’ll do anything for love.”
This is one that I’ve done.
Page 28
Stacia M. Fleegal
VIRGINIA TO LEONARD, WHO MEANS WELL
You sip the tea, blow gently, sip again,
then place the cup in my cupped, waiting hands
so gingerly I think you must confuse
which one of us is china—cup, or woman?
The shades are drawn by nine, the fire tended.
And breakfast? Bacon fat, this loose-leaf tea.
You’ve followed Doctor’s orders, certainly—
for all your careful fussing, I am rendered
useless. You forgot to fill the inkpot.
You forgot that I’m a person, living
without living in this dark, shivering
in my own unproductive, banal rot.
Do you think you can drive death from my brain,
dear killer, by enforcing quarantine?
Jeff Worley
CLAUDIA
Willard Elementary, 1959
Whatever happened to Claudia,
who in fifth grade limped
down the hall buckled in
to the brown leather football helmet?
She was a spastic, Miss Lytton
told us. Nothing to be ashamed of.
And once, during fractions, the sound
of a cat being skinned alive
reeled out of Claudia’s mouth.
She fell and thrashed like a bee caught
in a web. After the ambulance left,
Miss Lytton explained seizures,
the brain clenching like a fist,
the tumble into blackness. Poor Claudia.
We avoided her like the plague
of good little Methodists we were.
She sat alone at recess, plucking
blades of grass. She never said a word
any of us understood. And in February,
sixth period, after pink crepe paper
and scissors and glue made the rounds
among us, there was no valentine
left on her desk.
Page 30
Savannah Sipple
CHEAP DREAMS
I made a deal with myself
and went to Rome to buy a rosary
for my dead grandmother,
who insisted I become a poet.
The old man at the market
kept kissing my hand,
called me lady,
handed me every
bead-chained cross he
could muster out of his stock.
I only went because she
had been there thirty years before,
and though I found a rosary,
turquoise,
I fell in love with Italy,
the ruins, the beauty
of destruction, the Coliseum,
that pagan arena
complete with a cross in the center,
its dirty streets littered
with cigarette butts and bums
who were happy just to talk,
the cheap hostels and the six-flight hike
to my room, gelato cold on hot days,
nights cool on my sunburnt skin,
the accordion player below on the street,
who played three songs for one euro,
the old man at the market,
kissing my hand while telling me,
I give you a deal, blonde lady,
I give you a deal.
Page 32
Joan Colby
OLD WOMAN IN A COLD RAIN
An old woman in black toils
Along the country road in a cold rain.
She’s dressed for occasion: Persian Lamb buttoned to her throat,
Good shoes, hat coiled with black roses, getting soaked.
It’s as if she expected this downpour, traffic throwing
Sheets of wet at her laboring steps, yes expected this
And bears no resentment. Destination has slipped its black coat
Over her bulk. She’s steadfast, heading where? For what?
Water stands in the gray fields
A convocation of oaks
Thrusts staggery fingers into the rain
Like heretics. Three crows
Desolate as refugees
Hunch on a wire cursing.
Rain sluices windshields. Cars hurtle by, each willed by someone
With an eye fixed on distance. This old woman
What is she doing so far from any homestead,
Trundling along the verge of a road bisecting loneliness.
Her flat gaze halts any thought of stopping
To offer aid. Says unmistakably all you owe her is respect.
Your foot presses the accelerator
Until everything out there blurs
And you feel the engine of desire full-throttle within you…
The road ahead: the clouds breaking like scalded milk
And sudden houses sweetening the land
With philodendron in the windows
And a boy riding a bike
With his blue shirt billowing
And a cow pitched on the tent of her bones.
Michael Salcman
BITTERROOT
–for Menke Katz (1906-1991)
A hemophiliac in a razor blade factory,
a wisdom tooth in a small mouth.
They wanted to kill him right here,
far from Lithuania,
strip his great head of its attachments
and joy: unruly eyebrows, flatulent ears.
In his best poem he praised the potato
dark and silent in the ground.
He drew flowers on my every letter,
on rejection slips, on napkins.
He smelled of garlic, its bitter rose
and scallion root, useful
as foxglove’s purple flower
or the silvered bud of belladonna.
Full of possibilities, he rode a headless horseman—
his head on his arm, his hat on his horse.
Page 34
Ricardo Nazario-Colón
TUJCALUSA
In the west side of Tujcalusa
country boys still say howdy and ma’am
and they bow their cowboy hats
to salute a lady.
this morning their daily ritual
was interrupted by a subtle nod
from a vaquero with his family
the Copenhagen smiles disappeared
and memories of the running of the Bull
across the deep South decades ago
brought about a chill
at the country store we call K-Mart
Alabama sounds Spanish to me
And Tujcalusa reminds me
of Yabucoa, Humacao and other
aboriginal names in Puerto Rico
the familiarity of these names
beckons me
But this is the deep South
And no matter how thirsty you are
Or how warm it is outside
it can be cold place to drink water
A.J. Naslund
STRAIGHTENING THE PASTORAL PICTURE
I will inventory it—the pictures on
the wall should be askew, but they
hang square enough. The cows are not
in the pasture anymore, and I don’t
have to worry about them. They were
never mine for all my concern, for
the lasso I kept handy, for the
calluses on my heels where the boots
wore at me because they were the
wrong damn size. I just long to be
on horseback again, feel the surge
of the nag, when it has a will to
go for you. I don’t think I kept all
the books in the library very well,
though a teacher. They seemed a kind
of second to my real self, the worn
out kid, who had the livestock in
his charge. But I don’t have a horse,
never owned one, never got over my
being a child who wanted a horse or a
cow for his own—see what he could do
with it. That big world was a mirage,
not the kind we see on the road, not
shimmering water. The illusion
involved clockwork, the hand that
turned the tightening spring hidden
from the uninitiated. I should have
asked to see the works, should but
did not, thinking I was not supposed
to know. Now it has backfired on me,
that greater world, and I am left
with empty pastures, pictures to keep.
Page 36
A.J. Naslund
THE GREAT TURTLE IS NOT A BORE
This turtle follows the swirl of water
down, quite a deep dive for a land
turtle, in fact, too deep. Turtle
becomes salamander, becomes in a little
while bass then shark, then whale,
then squid where the ocean is so heavy
only jelly bodies can hold up because
of course they are made to hold up
nothing. But how else could land turtle
reach the great turtle, spoken of by
poets and native Americans? On the
back of this turtle rests the world.
Shifting ocean detritus, sand, the
lively currents driving them, obscure
great turtle’s back. Down there, what
is there down there? Can we breathe our
breath to see and report? Sliding stuff,
silent stuff, fluorescent stuff. Are
the skulls of war piled there, gathering
their barnacles? Too deep for barnacles.
Barnacles would be crushed. Are the
scarves of the seven sirens hurrying
there on this eddy of current and on
that? Are they worn to rags on the knobs
and warts of great turtle’s back? Or
do the sharp horns that protect his
eyes pierce the fabric of the beguiling
tempters? This is a deep dive. Is the
casket of the slain hero there, slid to
one side of the mound of great turtle’s
back? Have the troubles of the world
found footing there, or only geology
I mean to say? Before little turtle
rises through his changes, let him know.
Allow him reason or intuition or some
bit of craziness that will tell him. Is
turtle paying attention to the debris
of our world? Oh, yes, is he? Is she?
You know the answer. In your deep heart
all about turtle has been boring you.
Page 38
Frederick Smock
PERSONAE
for the cast of Tennessee Williams’s Candles to the Sun
Released from their personae,
grease-paint and boots,
the actors tumble back into their lives:
The dead miner, Joel, is reborn
as kindly Cort. Tough Sean turns into
sweet Jonnie. Star doffs her night-gown
for Sarah in jeans. Over beers,
they re-live the near-death experience
of acting—the bright lights,
the levitation. . . . Only Bram,
the angry patriarch, sits apart from us,
not yet Ray again.
Frederick Zydek
Agate Beach, Lopez Island, Washington
Agates from all over the world are called by
some mystery to this beach—moss agates
with their delicate fernlike markings, banded
and eye agates, marble agates and those single
translucent stones of sapphire, rose, lapis lazuli
yellow and amber. Even the rare bull’s-eye agates
can be found here. Why they travel the ocean
floors to this beach, no one knows. They are called
by the moon and the ways of deep currents, by what
makes the planet spin and what wind and waves
know about finding a shore. I keep mine in a small
leather pouch once used to hold gold coins. I do
not pretend they are rare diamonds, rubies, emeralds
or stones rare enough to bring a king’s ransom.
These fine-grained bits of quartz have come from
many distant shores. They are ways this planet
manifests its bent toward beauty and sure evidence
that it can be found even in bits of simple stones.
Page 40
Suellen Wedmore
The Lighthouse Keeper’s Wife
“A bitter snowstorm had set in and there was
Maria Bray, alone on Thacher Island
with two babies!”
–The Lighthouses of New England,
Edward Rowe Snow
My husband stranded on the snow-blind shore,
six times a day I feed these flames,
climb one hundred fifty steps
to yet another ravenous child—
this one howling for right whale oil;
I tramp through sleet-struck days,
thunder-black, astringent nights,
wave crash, the wind at once a shriek,
a drumming, low-pitched moan,
my son tugging my wind-torn coat,
the baby trundled safe but crying,
and in my mouth the acrid
taste of fear: the sea heaps with foam,
this nor’east gale white-crested
as the one that flung the Thacher children
like gulls’ eggs against granite shore.
What use is food? My world is oil,
match and wick, scouring the sooted
lantern panes. I’ll not sleep until
I hear above the rush of surf
Alexander’s easy Hollo! When I
can measure his leathered face
with my own cracked lips, my wearied
storm-chafed hands.
Page 42
Adam Day
MEMORY’S WORK
–For Wayne Lord
Cicadas unwind in black viridian above the creek.
Vodka breathes in its glass, heat licking the ice.
The open clapboard house breathes and settles.
Steam-thick June in Kentucky—I help a childhood friend
empty his dead father’s house. We leave bags
filled with pressed shirts and ties still tied
at the foot of the drive for the Salvation Army,
against a piano upright and open
to the harvest sun—stool, sheet music and all. And beside
the buckling galvanized cans: the disembodied
ornamental fishpond full with kitty-litter, and rain water—
a molasses of last year’s locust leaves. In 1883,
Alphonse Bertillon comes every workday to the Laboratoire
Anthropologie’s plaster cast brains, hydrocephalic skulls,
scales, and his father’s skeleton hanging aseptically
from the wall like some great mobile of the Pleiades,
as if the bones’ equilibrium could keep him from slipping
beyond the reach of words. Returning to New York
I sit in the backseat of a car with a bag that holds
a 1975 National Geographic and a Playboy,
the first with an exposé on Twain, the other
an interview with Ali; a pair of oversized sunglasses,
lenses bubbled into islands of discolor; and a biography
of Tennyson. Things kept for their yellow odor, their dust
of him, for what they almost reveal. In 1937,
near Leningrad, freshly-stubbled, David Pelgonen
hunted mushrooms and berries with a girl
on Rzhevsky Artillery Range. On an early autumn morning,
they eased
down together, lazy as curtains. What they saw there,
in the shadows of birches and pines leaning
like bodies tired from dancing, could have been mistaken
for two rows of morels or frost’s boletes.
Sixty-six years later, as if it were made entirely
of toadstools, the soil remains softer where moldering
phalanges once protruded from a freshly filled trench.
David’s recollection guides searchers: “When I was a boy
I told my father what we saw. And my father told me
never to speak of it again, what I saw was nothing.” David
remembers a dirt road and two bogs. Prodding the still
sunken ground like a child searching for a cellar door
in the dark—figuring some ratio of memory.
A shovel strikes a sound like a hoof on gravel.
“When your shovel hits bone it makes a slightly different
sound, you see.” The sound of the fact of the thing.
Dressed in bog moss and bottom slime. Darkened forms
begin to emerge, like fossils imbedded in stone,
though winter’s first snow has already fallen,
and brings the searchers’ work slowly to an end. Soon
the ground will freeze, and snow will cover the graves
for yet another winter.
Page 44
Adam Day
THE STARLING CEMETERY
They come floating over a clearing
in the Jewish Cemetery—
white-flecked hoodlum monks—
drifts of starlings, green-glossed and rolling.
Sixty wheel into ninety— shift and break
into twisting fans that wave down—
wolf-whistle, titter-squeak—slamming
into holly trees that bustle as if split
at the seams. While one great elm fills like a photo
developing, until it explodes, and we float,
one hair above still earth, almost beyond
our bodies, a great heat opening somewhere
inside ourselves, pouring our emptiness out.
Gayle Hanratty
GROVE CITY
People called us trash—all us Whitfields.
Daddy was a sharecropper when he wasn’t drunk. The man didn’t
own so much as a cow. My brothers fought and drank too, and one of
my sisters was well known for her wanton ways. Even the milkweed
and briars that skirted our borrowed house keeled over in disgrace.
If only I could have been like those weeds, as dying seemed easier
than living as a Whitfield. It would take years and too many mistakes
for me to learn that we weren’t all trash.
The worst disgrace happened the morning I was hurrying to
school with everybody else who lived on our side of town. To keep
from being late, we had to leave home in time to get past the tracks
before the eight-twelve roared through. It was the longest train of the
day and had been the cause of many an unjust tardy slip.
A boy named G.W. Shumate was in our group. I’d had an awful
crush on him all through ninth grade, though he didn’t know it. I held
to the back of the crowd so G.W. wouldn’t notice my shabby coat and
shoes. Even though he was poor too, G.W. was well thought of, and
he had a way of making a tattered wool sweater and scarred leather
hat look smart. I possessed no such grace.
When we got near the tracks, somebody yelled, “Look here!”
It wasn’t until I got closer that I saw my own daddy laying there
with one of his legs splayed right across the rail. Everybody started to
laugh; some even kicked at him.
“Let’s take his money,” one kid said.
“Looks like Moony Flynn’s done got it all,” G.W. said, talking
about the local moonshine runner.
I could’ve died then and there, and was wishing for that very thing
when every head in the bunch jerked as the eight-twelve’s whistle began to squall. It was January and cold and the steam from the locomotive left a sideways trail as it lumbered around the curve. I never even
flinched—thinking daddy was about to get exactly what he deserved.
Most nights after I was in bed, I’d lie there listening for the late
Page 46
train to whistle by. It sounded far off and lonesome, and I imagined
it was a passenger train; one that would someday carry me out of this
hell called Grove City. Watching the eight-twelve approach, I thought
how that late train’s whistle will soon carry a different reminder.
I wanted to see it happen; to watch Jake Whitfield, no-good father, husband, son, and brother, get his just desserts. But then G.W.
and some of the others grabbed hold of daddy’s legs and dragged him
to the shoulder.
“Shoo wee,” he said, screwing up his face as he let daddy’s limp
ankles flop against the gravel.
“Did he pee himself?” somebody asked, pointing to the dark
shadow spread across the groin of the old man’s trousers.
“Smells like he done worse than that,” G.W. said as the train rumbled past us. Our eyes met for an instant as he strutted in my direction.
The way he had his hand up to his mouth, I thought he might be about
to whisper something comforting to me or kindly touch my shoulder.
Instead, as G.W. marched past me, he spit right on the toes of my
shoes and then he crowed, “Or maybe that’s just Whitfield perfume.”
Fourteen years old, I quit school right then, too ashamed to go
back, and too mortified to ever see G.W. Shumate again. I figured it
didn’t much matter—educated or not—nobody in Grove City would
ever want a Whitfield for a girlfriend.
I’d known Ivan Barkley my whole life when he showed up at
the barn that day in ’36. He claimed he was looking for my brothers.
A couple of my girl cousins and me were fixing to ride the farmer’s
horses. They’d strapped saddles on theirs, but I didn’t need anything
between me and my sweaty colt. I always rode Demon. That horse
and me shared a starving need—to run as fast and as far as his legs
and my behind could last.
“Jump on,” I called, patting Demon’s rump. “Russell and Anthony are off somewhere with daddy.” I heard one of my cousins suck
in air and the other say, “Saalll,” making my name sound like it had
two syllables.
Maybe it was the way the sun lit a fire around him when he
strolled out of the bright daylight into the dim barn or maybe it was
because I was so desperate to get away. But I decided then and there
that Ivan Barkley would be the one to take me away from Grove City,
and daddy, and the rest of my clan.
Ivan hopped on Demon’s back and loosed his arms around my
waist. I leaned forward like I was telling Demon my secret, shook
the reins, and dug my heels into the horse’s flanks. He reared up and
charged off like the one he was named for. I felt Ivan tighten his hold
as we flew under limbs and over fences and right through the middle
of puddles. When we slowed up at the creek, Ivan jumped off like
his butt was on fire. His hair was blown back, mud was splattered
all over his face, and his legs were wobbly as a new foal’s. He staggered backwards and sputtered, “My God, girl, are you possessed or
something?”
“I’m just trying to get somewhere, fast,” I said, dropping down to
the ground. “Wet your hands here in the creek. Your face looks like
you’ve been rooting slop.” He bent down and politely obeyed my
direction. I untied the bandana from around my neck and offered it to
him to dry off.
Shivers coiled from my tail bone clear out my ears when he laid
his hands on either side of my waist to boost me back atop Demon. I
took it easier on the ride back to enjoy the feel of him behind me.
Nobody called a Barkley trash. Ivan’s papa, Mr. Jim, owned some
kind of going concern that made him about the most prosperous man
in Grove City. The Mayor himself counted Mr. Jim among his personal advisors. But it wasn’t only Ivan’s name and family standing
that I was after, he had good manners; he was handsome, and a good
dresser too—always wore a brown felt hat and matching wool coat
when we went out. Even though he wasn’t too tall, he was well-built
and looked strong. But his eyes—his eyes were the color of Virginia
bluebells in April.
When we’d go dancing, he’d act like I was the only girl in the
room. He preferred the slow dances to the jitterbugs and I did too—
just for the chance to hold each other close and to breathe his clean
smell. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure why such a fine man cared
a whit about me.
On January 27, 1938, we got married. Then, when the army took
him to Alaska for what seemed liked forever, I thought maybe I’d
Page 48
made a mistake and that I’d never get out of this town. But by 1940,
Mr. and Mrs. Ivan Barkley had moved into a house in Louisville—
bought and paid for with Barkley money.
I’d finally done it—gotten out of Grove City, out of Whitfield
hell. In Louisville, nobody would know how my daddy had passed
out on the tracks, or how I’d had to wear ragged clothes. No one here
would ever spit on me or tell me I smelled bad. I would never be
called trash again—thanks to Ivan Barkley.
Before marrying Ivan I didn’t know men could be so kind. I figured they all got mean drunk and then used it as an excuse to beat on
their wives and kids. Unlike the men I was accustomed to, Ivan loved
children—our nieces and nephews, as well as our own two girls. Nicole and Penny were only thirteen months apart. Nicole was born first.
She had dark hair and skin, like me. Her hair curled around her face
like a china doll. Penny was fair and as white-headed as cotton. She
favored Ivan and became Mr. Jim’s darling the minute he glimpsed
her Barkley blue eyes.
About a year after Penny came along, in late 1944, Ivan started
working for Whittenberg Construction—and that’s when all the trouble started. The crew had a habit of stopping off for beers after work
at a place called Ott’s Tavern. Ivan joined right in with them like it’d
been his custom all along. For a long time, it was just on Fridays, then
on Wednesdays too. It was starting to seem like Ivan would sooner go
out drinking with his buddies than be at home—just like my daddy.
Ivan was kicking me right back to Grove City. Just the thought of him
out drinking at a tavern made me feel like I smelled bad, like trash. I
couldn’t stand it if people thought of my girls that way.
“Mama, is there any happy cake left?” Penny asked. It was
Wednesday evening and we’d just celebrated her fourth birthday the
night before. The girls and I’d already eaten supper and Ivan still
wasn’t home.
“I’ll cut you some as soon as you both finish your peas,” I said.
Then right when I was slicing the cake for the girls, in he saunters
like everything was hunky-dory. I grabbed a hunk of icing and threw
it at him. He ducked and the gooey mess smooshed against one of
the white metal kitchen cabinets. The girls laughed hard not knowing
how mad I was, but Ivan knew. He gave everything away with his
eyes. The way they jumped back and forth I could tell he was trying
to figure out a way to keep the peace. Finally he said, “Why don’t you
girls take your cake out to the picnic table.”
They were no sooner out the door when I said, “I won’t have a
husband that can’t stand to come home.” Then I took a swing at him.
He ducked again, but I grazed his lip with my ring.
He wiped his lip on the back of his hand and looked down to see if
there was blood. There was, but not much. He drew his bottom lip into
his mouth and sucked on it a minute while his eyes burned into me.
Instead of the hateful glare I’d expected from such wildness, I saw
only love in his eyes. He picked up a paper napkin to dab at his lip,
speaking between the dabs—finally breaking the impossible silence
that had overtaken my kitchen.
“All I’m doing is unwinding with the crew after a hard day. It
doesn’t have anything to do with you, Sal,” Ivan said, licking blood
off his lip. “There’s nothing I enjoy more than being at home with you
and the girls.”
Despite his words, I knew what he had to be thinking; I’d heard
daddy say it to my mother over and over: You’re the one drives me to
drink—always nagging me about something. No wonder I can’t stand
to come home.
“I’d sooner be alone than with a man won’t come home nights.
You might as well move out of here.” I knew his only choice was to
move in with his mama and papa in Grove City. “We’ll see what your
papa thinks about that,” I said.
“The guys make fun of me if I don’t stop off a night or two with
them; Billy goes too. It’s kind of expected,” Ivan said, trying to convince me.
But neither his reasoning nor the spilling of his blood satisfied
me. The only thing he could have said that would have made it right
was: I won’t be going out with the fellas anymore. Knowing those
words weren’t coming, I crossed my arms to emphasize how determined I was.
Seeing that I was set on it, he said, “If you won’t let me stay, at
least let me take one of the girls with me.”
I had my mouth set to say no when another idea tiptoed into my
Page 50
mind. I wanted Mr. Jim to think I was trying to be fair. So I said, “You
can take Penny with you.” My hope was that if it looked like I was
being reasonable, that Mr. Jim would soon show Ivan the error of his
ways.
Ivan’s shoulders shuddered and his eyes squinted. I suppose he
didn’t think I could be so conniving, that I would use our own daughter for a bargaining chip. It even surprised me how far I’d go to get
my way.
As quickly as I’d said he could take her, homesickness balled up
in my throat. It was a lump that would stay there the entire time Penny
was gone. But, I was not going to live with a man who acted like my
daddy. The only difference between Ivan and Jake Whitfield was that
I knew Ivan would be good to Penny. There was no doubt about that.
“I guess it’s settled then. We’ll leave Friday night,” he said, checking on Nicole and Penny through the screen door.
After our split his sister Rita told me that some evenings Ivan
was too tired to make the drive back to Grove City, so he’d sleep on
her couch. Her husband, Billy, worked the same job as Ivan for Whittenberg. They were building grain silos at Ballard Flour Mills—a job
they were about to finish. Whittenberg always had more work for
them—good carpenters were hard to find.
People told me I ought to be glad Ivan had such a good job, instead of the places a lot of men had to work—like the Falls City Brewery or Brown and Williamson. Those places worked their men half
to death—making them put in extra hours without paying overtime.
Then they tried to buy them off by giving every man a case of beer
or a carton of cigarettes every Friday. Working for Whittenberg might
have been more dangerous than those other places, but they were fair
and square with the men’s time and money.
With Ivan and Penny gone, the house was hauntingly quiet. Cooking was hardly worth the effort for just Nicole and me. So I usually
fixed us cold cereal or eggs or pancakes. But it was the nights that
swallowed me up and there was that nagging lump in my throat for
Penny. Nicole had trouble getting to sleep without Penny there, too.
She’d cry and cry and ask, “Where’s my Penny; when’s Poppy coming home?” It about killed me to see her so sad and lonesome.
Billy and Rita invited Nicole and me to their house for supper one
night. I brought macaroni and cheese and they fixed an oven chicken
and green beans. It was the best meal we’d eaten all week. I asked
how Ivan was doing, and Billy said that Ivan had said he wanted to
come home, but that I wouldn’t let him. I said I’d let him if he’d quit
going to Ott’s.
I was miserable without him. I craved the heat of him in my bed
and the soothe of his snoring on the back of my neck. Plus, if I didn’t
lay eyes on Penny soon, my throat was going to close up all the way.
So after just two Saturdays, I gulped hard and asked Rita and Billy to
drive us to Grove City.
When we got there, Nicole ran to find her sister. She knew where
she’d be—playing dolls with her cousins. Billy and Rita followed
after her with their brood. I wanted to follow them—to see Penny, but
first things first.
In just the short walk from Billy’s car to the house, I could feel
every eye in Grove City studying me—wondering why Ivan Barkley had ever married Salinda Whitfield. I could still picture how that
Clara Pike had elbowed her sister and whispered to her at our wedding. I was walking up the aisle of the church when I had heard her
declare: “What would Ivan want with a stick like her; bosoms the size
of chicken eggs.” Then her sister snickered back, “yeah, fried.” The
whole town whispered it: no such thing as a pretty Whitfield even if
you are good looking.
I talked to myself all the way up the sidewalk trying to put their
ridicule out of my head. “You’re not a Whitfield anymore, your name
is Sal Barkley.” Before I knocked, I smoothed the seams of my hose
and brushed at the lap wrinkles in my dress—all to keep from inspecting my shoes for spit. It wasn’t an easy habit to break.
Mama didn’t live a mile from where I stood, but daddy lived there
too. No matter how much my heart ached to see her sweet face, I
couldn’t take the risk of daddy being there too.
I knocked on the screen door. Ivan seemed surprised to see me.
“Don’t you look fine in your yellow dress,” he said. “You look as
pretty as a bunch of daffodils.” He gave me a quick kiss, grinned,
and walked me toward the back of the house where he and his papa’d
been passing the time in the kitchen. Mr. Jim stood with his back to
Page 52
the sink—arms folded across his rich-man’s belly. Ivan and me sat
next to each other on the far side of the table. It felt right to be sitting
next to him again.
Mr. Jim was taller than his son and he had those same blue eyes,
only his lacked the tender look of Ivan’s. Even though he was past
seventy, Mr. Jim cut a powerful figure. As he glided around the kitchen, a reminder of him seemed to linger in the previous spot.
“What brings you to town, Sal, running low on money?” Mr. Jim
asked as he set two clean glasses on the green speckled counter.
I ignored his insult, sucked in a big swig of air, and started to
explain why I had come. I wanted him to hear my reasons why Ivan
and me had separated. “I don’t know if Ivan’s told you much about
our problems,” I said. “But it’s mainly because of how he stops off
at Ott’s Tavern two times a week with that bunch from work—Billy
goes too. From what I’m used to, it can only get worse.” Even though
I tried to tell it slow and casual, I felt myself getting excited and mad
just talking about it.
The whole time I was talking Mr. Jim was making highballs. He
opened a high cabinet and set the whisky inside. Then he filled the
glasses to the brim with a light colored mixer. I wondered why he’d
be fixing drinks now—not even three o’clock. Was he making fun of
me?
My eyes followed him while I continued to spell it out. “They
leave their wives sitting at home wearing frumpy old house dresses
and can’t even buy shoes for their babies,” I said. “If Ivan keeps this
up, I won’t have any choice but to file for a divorce.” As soon as I’d
said it, a vague chill settled over the room like somebody’d opened a
door somewhere, and Mr. Jim dropped his spoon in the sink, letting it
make a startling clatter.
I glimpsed Ivan’s distressing stare. This was the first he’d heard
any mention of a divorce and I knew he was as shocked as Mr. Jim.
When Ivan and me got married, I converted from nothing to a
Catholic—the Barkley’s religion. I knew Catholics were against divorce. So I thought by saying that I would file, it would get Mr. Jim
to tell Ivan to shape up.
I wasn’t even close to finished when Mr. Jim butted in. “Ivan
and Bill work hard, Sal,” he said as he dipped a swizzle stick into the
liquid. “There’s nothing wrong with them having a drink some nights
with their pals.” He wiped off the bottom of each glass with a towel.
“Besides, these men have got more serious things to talk about than
dresses and baby shoes. It’s not like he’s running around. He and the
boys are just blowing off a little steam.” He folded the cloth and hung
it back on the towel bar.
I was starting to feel a bit steamed myself. Ivan must have sensed
it too because he’d started to fidget in his chair, rubbing his knee with
his palm. I didn’t understand how Mr. Jim could possibly defend
Ivan’s behavior. I knew for a fact Mr. Jim did his drinking at home.
Mr. Jim walked to the end of table to hand Ivan his highball. When
he reached the tumbler past me, I shot out of my chair and halted Mr.
Jim’s serving hand. Eyeball to eyeball with the most respected man in
Grove City, I spewed a ball of spit directly into that perfectly mixed
and swizzled concoction. Maybe a little bit hit his hand too. Then I
plopped down and held my head high—proud I’d done it. My Whitfield green eyes blazed into Mr. Jim’s Barkley baby blues.
Mr. Jim towered at the end of the table like a judge in a court of
law. I saw him raise his arm up past his shoulder and I stiffened for
the sound of his hand smacking the table like a gavel. Instead, the man
known for his tolerance and charity hauled off and slapped me right
across the face. Ivan jumped half a foot, like he’d been the one hit.
“Papa!” Ivan hollered. And I heard myself let out a tiny “uhh,”
even though I tried to sit quiet and not give him the satisfaction of
knowing how bad he’d hurt me. But with the sting of it and the shock,
a little air must have seeped out.
He could’ve been God standing there—judging what to do next.
Nobody talked. It was like we were measuring each other’s breathing.
I looked at Ivan and saw a tear roll down his cheek. I felt his hand on
my leg and wondered when he’d put it there. My spine wanted to bend
and curl in shame, but I forced myself to sit up straight. I wondered
how Ivan could just sit there hunkered over and let his papa treat me
worse than a dog—like a Whitfield.
Finally, Mr. Jim spoke. And this time, he let us both have it.
“Catholics do not get divorced!” His voice boomed like a preacher’s as he paced the pine floor and gestured with his arms. “And wives
ought to do right by their husbands. I’ll not have some yellow-dressed
Page 54
hellion storm into my house threatening a divorce, when it seems
to me like you ought to be glad you got a man comes from a good
family, not some drunken bastard like your daddy and the rest of the
Whitfields.”
The table moaned as he leaned in to get a close fix on Ivan and me.
He shook a finger in our faces and said, “I hear any more talk about
a divorce and I guarantee you’ll both have hell to pay.” He walked
away, then turned and added, “I’ll leave the two of you to chew on just
exactly how it is that hell gets paid.” Then, he was out the door.
I wanted to vomit.
Ivan moved his grip from my knee to my hand. “Sal, let’s go
home,” he said. “I’ll try harder.” He wet a towel in the sink, then
pressed its warmth against the red blotch left on my cheek by Mr.
Jim’s mitt of a hand. I felt more gentleness in the blue-eyed son’s
touch than his papa possessed in a lifetime. I wanted to think that Ivan
could try harder, but I knew better. Even if he promised he would stay
away from Ott’s, I knew saying no face-to-face with his heckling buddies was more than he would be able to bear. It’s how he is—wanting
to please everybody.
“Where’s Nicole and Penny?” I asked, dislodging his hand and
the cloth from my jaw. “Neither of them was in here were they?” I
asked in fear they might have seen me be humiliated.
“They’re still off playing,” Ivan said. He put his hand under my
elbow to lift me out of the chair and repeated, “Let’s go home; we’ll
be all right.” Letting Ivan guide me, I knew I’d lost. This whole separation had gained me nothing and only worsened my favor with Mr.
Jim. Still, I let Ivan steer me.
Feeling dazed, I gathered up the girls and scooted them into the
backseat of the car. Ivan held the front door open for me. He held my
hand as I folded onto the flannel seat. He tucked the hem of my yellow
dress inside and gently pushed the door shut.
The trip home was quiet, and I shivered more than once at the
memory of Mr. Jim’s slap and his threat that there’d “be hell to pay.”
The smoke from our cigarettes mingled with the shame and the guilt
and flooded the Ford with a foggy, unnatural peace.
“How about we stop up here at the A&W for root beers?” I ignored the fake excitement in Ivan’s voice. “You want one, Sal?” I
shook my head. He ordered four drinks anyway.
“Poppy, I want a hot dog,” Nicole said.
“Me too,” Penny added.
The girls played in the back seat—Penny with her dolls, and Nicole coloring in her book, while they quietly downed their drinks and
dogs. They’d already learned to keep still during times like these.
Later when we passed the twin spires of the horsetrack, Nicole failed
to toot the “Call to The Post” and Penny didn’t bother singing “the sun
shines bright,” the way they usually did.
Derby week soon rolled round. Ivan had bought us a radio so we
could listen to the horse races and broadcasts of Pee Wee Reese’s
ballgames. After the Dodgers played, I turned the dial to WHAS and
listened to them interview the Andrews Sisters, who’d come to town
to see the seventy-fifth run for the roses.
Everybody in Louisville celebrated some during Derby week. So
on Wednesday afternoon, I scooped Nicole and Penny up in my arms
and whispered, “How about we play dress-up?” I let them pick out
what they wanted to wear. They pulled out their Easter dresses and I
put on my good dress too and smeared on some lipstick, a color called
Coral-bells. I even found a yellow scarf to match my dress and tied
it around my hair like I’d seen Maxine Andrews do in the Screen Romances magazine. We thought it would be great fun to surprise their
poppy.
“Mama, Gina wants lipstick too,” Nicole said, holding up her
doll. We must have spent over two hours primping and preening.
The girls didn’t seem to mind, or even notice, when Ivan was late,
but I felt such rage building, I thought I’d burst. It was the first time
he’d stayed out since we’d gotten back together. At their bedtime, I
was rough-handed putting Penny’s pajamas on her—jerking her little
arms through the sleeves harder than I needed to. Nicole had a worried frown and got into hers by herself. Why weren’t they as disappointed as I was, I wondered? Wasn’t the fun in seeing how he’d act
when he saw the three of us wearing our Derby outfits? I kept it inside
just long enough to kiss the girls goodnight.
I studied my reflection in the hall mirror. The twig of a woman
imaged there with the full lips and deep-set green eyes stared back
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at me. Ivan once told me there were times when he thought my eyes
looked as ferocious as a wild cat’s. I could see that very thing now,
mocking me in the mirror. “He’d come straight home if you weren’t
so ugly,” I said to the image.
The scarf I’d tied around my hair looked silly now. I yanked it
off and tore toward the kitchen. I hiked myself up on the table and sat
cross-legged smack in the middle of it with that yellow dress stretched
across my knees, and I waited fifteen minutes, then thirty, and at about
eight I heard the front door creak.
Inside me someone said: if daddy’s drunk, he’ll beat the first one
he sees.
“Quick, hide!” I heard myself say out loud. That’s the way it
would have been when I was little, but not now.
“Hidy Sal,” Ivan beamed. “What’re you doing all dressed up in
the middle of the kitchen table on a Wednesday night?” He hung his
hat on the hall tree and flashed me his best Bogart grin.
I leapt off the table panting and clawing so hard that I split my
dress up the side. “Supper ruined while you were out drinking,” I
growled. “You’re the one acting like trash.” I sprayed words and
threats like I had a mouthful of tacks.
“Jesus, Sal, I’m sorry about supper, but you don’t have to go wild
over it,” he said and headed toward the sink. “I told you this morning
I’d be late, that we were all going to Ott’s.” His face was as pained as
I’d seen it with furrows plowed deep between his eyes. “Look what
you done to your dress.”
“What I’ve done? You’re the one who’s done it.” And when I
swung around to hit him, he grabbed both my wrists. This just gave
me time and leverage to kick him hard in the shin above his boot. He
let me go and bent over to rub his leg, and I grabbed the hair on either
side of his head and pulled his face so close to mine I could see spit
freckling on his cheeks. Through gritted teeth, I snarled, “We’d all be
better off without you.”
He seized my wrists once more, pulling my hands off his hair.
Dark brown strands were strung through my fingers. This time hurt,
more than anything else, showed in his eyes. He heaved a sigh and
said, “If you’d be so much better off without me, then maybe you
ought to be the one to leave. Move in with your mama and daddy back
in Grove City. See how much better off you’d be there.” He released
my wrists and then clutched the back of a kitchen chair like he might
have fallen over if he hadn’t. “I’m going to bed, Sal. I can’t take no
more of this,” he said, letting go of the chair and lumbering out of the
kitchen slumped and heavy like he had just been given bad news.
I followed him, flailing my arms and saying, “What you mean is
you can’t stand to be around me, can you? You think you’re too good
for a Whitfield, don’t you? Well, I’m not going anywhere, mister.”
I started to follow him into the bedroom, but one time after we’d
fought I’d been so worked up I ripped open his shirt, pushed him onto
the bed, and climbed on top. Next morning the sheets and our clothes
were so tangled, looked like it would’ve taken four bodies—or just
one Whitfield hell cat— to twist them up that bad.
This time, I grabbed a Coke and a pack of Viceroys and went outside. I paced the porch like that wild cat until my legs and my temper
gave out. That was the meanest he’d ever been to me and the harshest
words he’d ever uttered. He knew I couldn’t live in Grove City and
that I couldn’t go back to being a Whitfield. I sat down on the swing,
leaned my head back, and closed my eyes. My ears pricked to the faroff and lonesome whistle of a late train.
I’d missed my period again, and still hadn’t told him. We’d only
spoken when we had to since our fight last Wednesday. His job at
the flour mill was scheduled to finish up tomorrow—marking the
end of more than two years of back-breaking labor. “Friday,” he said,
“there’ll be little more to do than clean up—besides a few finishing
touches on the upper level.”
He turned the volume down on the radio. “Is that all they can talk
about, that damn Ponder,” he said, referring to the long shot that’d
won the Derby last Saturday. He’d bet on the favorite, Olympia. She’d
placed, but on a two-dollar bet, “It’s hardly worth the bus fare to collect my winnings,” he said. Running late, he grabbed his lunch bucket,
kissed us all, and raced out the door.
Rita dropped by later that day. She plopped herself down on the
most substantial piece of furniture in the room. That couch creaked
and groaned over her every word. I tried not to notice how it sagged
from her weight. What Ivan’s baby sister gave up in looks, she more
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than made up for in humor. She could get a hound dog to laugh. We
had the best time talking about our kids and husbands and telling dirty
jokes.
Her Billy was a smallish man with hands and feet the size of a
woman’s. And Rita, she just got bigger with every baby. Ivan’d told
me they teased Billy at work that if Rita was ever on top, he’d never
live to brag about it. It seemed to me that despite her size, Rita slid
through life like she was greased. If she had problems, she didn’t tell
them.
I walked over and sat on the maroon couch next to her and was
just about ready to confide that I was expecting again when she got to
the real reason she’d come.
“You should’ve heard Billy carrying on last night,” she said as
she slapped her thigh. “He was singing, ‘we are gonna cut loose Friday night,’ talking about the celebration that Whittenberg and Ballard’s throwing for the men. Bill’s wishing more for this job to be over
than he is for Pee Wee and the Dodgers to win the pennant. I know
Ivan must be too. He is going to the party tomorrow night, isn’t he?
They’ll probably listen to the ballgame and start more rumors about
the next assignment. Billy heard that the air board wants to add on to
Standiford Field.”
Rita talked a blue streak, like she was afraid to stop, and she had
an unnatural look on her face like she was trying too hard to look natural. It all made me think that Ivan had put her up to it, coming over
here trying to get me to okay him going to this party. I don’t know if
it was my condition or my anger, but I barely made it to the bathroom
in time for the toilet to catch my lunch. Every smell was exaggerated.
I could have sworn somebody was cooking cabbage.
Back in the living room I bent over to pick up the magazine that’d
fallen off my lap when I was sent running. My stomach and my head
still swam.
“Are you okay Sal? I don’t smell any cabbage.”
“Well, maybe it’s a rat I smell then.” I said, picking invisible lint
off the couch. “Was it Ivan or Billy who sent you over here to soften
me up? If that’s why you came, you’d just as well leave right now.” I
stood and walked to the back door to check on Nicole and Penny.
“Nobody put me up to nothing,” Rita said, sounding hurt and
following me with her eyes as I bustled from room to room. “I just
thought you might not know about the party yet.”
I rested against the doorway between the kitchen and living room
and wiped my face with a cold wash rag. “Doesn’t it about kill you for
Billy to go out like they do after work?”
“It’s not like I want him to go,” Rita said, squinting at me like I’d
asked her how much she weighed, “but I don’t really mind a time or
two a week. He doesn’t stay late and never comes home drunk. So, I
figure what’s the harm in him blowing off a little steam.”
“Well, I can surely tell that you are Mr. Jim Barkley’s daughter.
Those are almost his exact words.” I watched Rita use both fists to
push herself up off the couch—it took two tries. I might have even
seen a tear in her eye. She hooked her pocketbook over her arm and
looked in every direction, except mine.
Then, her hand pushing open the front door, she paused and asked,
“Is everybody else wrong and you’re the only one right?” With that,
Rita waddled off in as much of a huff as she could muster, and I wondered if Ivan would tell me about the party.
Out on the front porch later that afternoon, the girls snipped paper
dolls out of the McCall’s while I pulled weeds from a bed of fading
daffodils. Nicole had Cyd Charisse and Penny dressed Fred Astaire in
a tuxedo and tried to get the paper man to hold onto his cane. I looked
up and spotted Ivan walking up the sidewalk. It was only the middle
of May and his skin was already dark from working outside in the
blazing Kentucky sun. It made his eyes show up like patches of blue
in a stormy sky. He strode like he was carrying around something a
lot heavier than that empty lunch box. I cut a handful of the daffodils
and took them inside.
From the kitchen, I saw him open the door. He had a girl in each
arm, their gangly ribbons of peach silk encircling his neck. He was
Fred and the girls were Ginger and Cyd. He whirled them round and
around the living room to giggles for music. They danced into the
kitchen where I heard him take a deep breath. I hoped he was just
sniffing the fried-chicken-soaked air. I put a heaping bowl of dumplings on the table and pulled the coleslaw out of the Frigidaire.
“I smell fried chicken?” He said to his dance partners. “I swear
your mama’s the best cook there is.”
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I knew what he was doing. He was testing my mood, because, as
he sat Penny in her highchair and Nicole in the one with the telephone
book, he said, “I’m going to be running late tomorrow night. Whittenberg and Ballard’s buying burgers for the crew to celebrate after
work.”
He put a chicken leg on each girl’s plate along with some slaw
and dumplings. Penny whined about the slaw, so he scraped it onto his
own dish. One time when I’d told Nicole to clean up her plate, I saw
Ivan sneak bites to help her get rid of it. When Nicole giggled, he’d
put his finger to his lips to shush her. He might as well’ve said: you
don’t have to do what mama says.
“I guess you sent Rita over here today,” I said. “So you can go out
drinking Friday night with your real friends.”
His mood faded just like that plot of yellow daffodils. “If Rita
came over here today, she came because she wanted to visit and that’s
all,” he said. “You know I’m going to be home all day for the next
entire week, maybe more, until they give us our new assignment. I
was thinking on the bus home about the two of us going out Saturday
night for our own celebration—go to that Kaelin’s Restaurant up in
the Highlands? We could drop the girls off at Bill and Rita’s for the
night. That way, I can celebrate with the crew on Friday and we can
have our own fun Saturday night—all the way to Sunday.”
I wanted to believe he meant what he was saying but all I could
think was that he was only trying to get me off his back—so he could
go to Ott’s without a fight.
I felt cold inside, like some maniac who kills people for the fun of
it. First he sends Rita over here, and now he’s trying to bribe me. He
must really think I’m stupid, I thought.
Ivan sat down to take off his work boots. The girls came over to
help with the laces.
“If you’re done eating,” I said, “go clean up your paper dolls.”
Nic and Penny scurried off, likely sensing that I was upset.
Those bluebell eyes focused their gaze on me for what felt like
forever. Then, without blinking, he said, “I’m going to the celebration tomorrow night, Sal—you let me know if you want to go out on
Saturday.”
The girls came back in with armloads of magazines and shoeThe Louisville Review | Page 61
boxes of paper.
“It’s only a matter of time before we find you passed out and peed
on by some railroad tracks, anyway,” I said. “Men are all the same.”
It was all I could do to keep from going after him, but I couldn’t let
the girls see me like that. I felt ashamed—ashamed that he would go
to the celebration, knowing the way I felt, ashamed of how much I
wanted to hurt him, and ashamed of who I was—Whitfield trash.
“Let’s take these to your room,” Ivan said to Penny and Nicole,
ignoring what I’d said to him. Afterwards the three of them cleaned
up the dishes. He let them play in the dishwater, squeezing soap suds
through their hands—something I never let them do.
I fixed myself a cold plate and eavesdropped on them from the
front porch. I heard him ask them about their day—had they remembered to feed their dolls, were they the ones who’d fried the chicken,
had they petted the kitty next door? He took his time and read each
girl her favorite B’rer Rabbit story and even stayed in their room until
they fell asleep.
I heard him walk to the front door. I guess I should’ve turned
around and looked at him or said something, or taken back my words.
But before I could say anything, I saw the light go on in the bedroom.
I waited for him to fall asleep before I went to bed. My side was
already turned down when I crawled in after midnight. He wasn’t
breathing like he was asleep. I felt mad and sorry all at the same time.
I thought about a time four years back when we’d gone to the movies
with Billy and Rita. We had held hands on the bus there and through
the whole show at the Ohio Theater. We watched The African Queen
with Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. Ivan had always told
me he thought I looked like Katherine Hepburn.
In the wood-carved Brown Hotel bar afterwards, we had a time
drinking beers and cokes and eating burgers. The four of us were talking about how Miss Priss Kate had gotten all wet and muddy in that
river, and Ivan had told us a story about when the army’d sent him to
Alaska to work on the Alcan Highway. In the spring when the weather
warmed up, the ground had thawed and turned to mush almost a foot
deep. At the end of the day, they’d have mud in places you’d never
dream mud could get.
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“I thought I’d be smart and asked my buddy, Foster, if I could
borrow his extra pair of boots,” Ivan had said. “I told him mine were
about to wear through. Truth was I just wanted to give them a chance
to dry out. The leather never dried all the way overnight.
“Well, it turned out Foster was a size twelve and here I am a nine.
So the entire day every time I’d take a step, damned if that slushy mud
didn’t suck those boots right off my feet, first one, and then the other.
I ended up spending more time on my butt than my feet—muddy and
soppy as old Kate.”
We hooted and howled at how Ivan’s trick had backfired on him.
He was never ashamed to tell on himself, especially if it got a laugh.
Maybe I should have awakened him and told him I was sorry
about what I’d said. I knew he wasn’t a bad man. But I wasn’t sure if
I’d be able to stand it if he went to Ott’s on Friday night.
The next morning while he got ready for work, I fixed his lunch—
cold chicken and a thermos of tea—and put it in his lunch box. He tied
up his work boots and planted his regular goodbye kisses on Nicole’s
and Penny’s foreheads before heading out the front door and on to the
bus stop on Broadway.
I followed to watch him go. He bent over to open the gate latch
and then straightened up like somebody had called his name. He
walked back toward the house, and I hurried into the kitchen.
“Poppy!” Penny gurgled, her mouth full of milk.
“Forgot my cigarettes,” he said, stuffing a fresh pack of Viceroys
into his shirt pocket.
I bit my lip hard to keep from saying anything ugly.
He walked over to the sink and put a palm on either side of my
waist. I got those same shivers like the day he’d boosted me up on
Demon. I smelled his Halo shampoo and Old Spice. His warm lips
bussed my cheek, then he headed off again.
In unison, the girls trilled, “Bye bye, Poppy,” and I waited for the
front door to slam.
Later, the girls were playing in the backyard, searching for new
places to hide from the ragman who drove his horse cart up our alley
every Friday afternoon. Nic and Pen would lie in the grass on their
bellies, waiting and listening for the clip-clop of the two sway-back
grays on the brick alley. At the first sound, they’d squeal and hide
behind bushes or trees, then peek around to see him. They were fascinated by the spirited, deep-voiced colored man who boomed out his
own name, over and over. “Ragman,” he would roar, making it sound
more like prayer when he’d sing it slow and low, “RRRRagmon,” like
a spiritual from Porgy and Bess.
I’d settled into a stuffed chair in the living room with my bare
feet resting on the ottoman, drinking a Coca-Cola, smoking my Viceroy, and searching through the JC Penney catalog. The girls needed
summer shoes and I was going to need a couple of new dresses—
maternity dresses. I’d decided to tell Ivan tonight that I was expecting
again. He would be so excited. After Penny, he’d said if we ever had
another girl, he had wanted to name her Heddy, after his grandmother. The way that man loved kids could sometimes make everything
wrong about him seem right.
I heard their footsteps and smelled the familiar sweat and sawdust
before I saw them. I breathed in the scent, the smell of Ivan. “Well,
look what the cat dragged in. You all get done early?” I said as I
turned toward the odor. Billy had pulled open the screen door and I
could see the foreman coming up behind him. I was so tickled they’d
come to my house instead of going to Ott’s, that I didn’t even say
anything about them wearing their dusty boots indoors.
I pulled myself out of the chair to go to the kitchen to fetch four
Falls City beers—for the celebration. That was when Billy laid his
hand on my arm. He motioned toward the chair and told me to sit back
down. His brown eyes were red and swollen.
“What for?” I asked, feeling a little worried by the look of his eyes
and by an unfamiliar crack in his voice. “Where’s Ivan?” I looked past
him to see if my husband was in sight.
“There’s been a fall,” Billy said. “Sit back down there; I’ve got
some real bad news.” He put his palms together like he might be asking for help and then he looked square at me. “Ivan’s gone, Sal.”
I staggered and the foreman took my hand and helped me to the
chair.
“You’re not funny, Billy Crawley. He’s not gone. Now, stop it!”
I said.
“I’d never joke like that. It’s so, Sal.”
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“Then you tell me . . . how a man like Ivan could fall.”
Billy seemed like he was trying to pull himself together. “We ate
lunch together like always. Ivan’d had to trade his fried chicken for
one of the Protestant’s grilled cheese sandwiches. We laughed at how
you keep forgetting and give him meat on Fridays. Afterwards, we
headed back up the inside ladder to the top of the silo. The foreman
picked us to bolt the last cap on the last silo.”
I knew not to fix him meat on Fridays. The girls and I were always
careful, but I couldn’t seem to remember about his lunches.
Billy had paused, but I said, “Keep going; I’m listening.”
“Ivan saw it first. The crew before us had left their walk board up
there, which was a code violation. It was what they’d used to get back
and forth across the top of the open shaft. Ivan pointed to it and told
me to watch out, that it wasn’t nailed down.
“I told him I saw it and turned around to pull up the bucket of
bolts we needed for the cap.”
Billy started to cry, but I made him keep telling it. The foreman
had squatted beside my chair and was patting my hand.
“Then, Lord help me, the next thing I heard was the sound of
something smacking against the silo. I wheeled around and saw that
Ivan had stepped on the outside part of that board—on the part that
hung over the edge. I can’t figure how he did it, after he’d just warned
me about it.” Billy stared off like he was watching it happen. “He fell,
Sal.”
“Seeing him from the top of the silo, he looked like a child laying there on the ground—the way kids sometimes curl up funny when
they fall asleep.”
Billy knelt down on the other side of my chair; he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to me. “I dread telling Rita,”
he said, rubbing his forehead, “and Mr. Jim.”
I wove the handkerchief in and out of my fingers.
I looked at Billy again to make sure he wasn’t lying to me—
but his face told me the truth. Feeling angry and betrayed, I wanted
somebody to blame. I twisted and twirled that bandana as Mr. Jim’s
old threat that “there’d be hell to pay” echoed in my mind alongside
Billy’s words.
“Sal,” Billy said. “I’ll talk to Mr. Jim about making the arrangeThe Louisville Review | Page 65
ments in Grove City.”
“Grove City,” I said. I knew the voice I heard was mine, but the
sound of it was flat and cold like some of the soldiers when they came
home from the war; the ones they called shell-shocked.
Little girl squeals sifted through the screen door from the backyard. Hooves clip-clopped up the alley. “RRRRaagmon,” the old man
chanted.
I heard them, but I didn’t care—not about the girls’ cries, the ragman’s call, nor anything else. I just kept saying the name of that place,
the one that Ivan had rescued me from, uttering it over and over, maybe to hear my voice again or maybe to bear out the truth of it.
I chewed the skin on my lower lip, not satisfied until I tasted
blood, “Grove City,” I said.
Page 66
Brian Maxwell
LISTEN AS THE BELLS
Gusev doesn’t remember them at all, not seeing them, not hearing them. The morning the ship pushed off, he only remembers being
cold. They were leaving the wreckage behind—the war, the dry air,
even the fat, whispering mosquitoes. A group of men stood ahead
of him in line, and he heard one say the sky would be very blue at
sea, that the wind would send the clouds tumbling east to west across
the heavens like balls on a billiard’s table. Smooth and blue, another
agreed. So blank and empty that the night becomes enormous, an impossible void. Gusev remembers all of this and remembers not caring.
But he doesn’t remember any bells.
Now they are everywhere. He leans against a slick wood rail as
the ship caroms and his body trembles. An inch of water covers the
floor, runs left to right and back again, reeling lazily underfoot. The
men sit cross-legged by the bunks, playing dice. They ignore the wetness and the ringing of the bells. Gusev tries to concentrate on the rattle of the cup, but his head feels heavy, his thoughts an echo between
his ears. He recalls viewing the enormous hull from the shore the day
they left, thick gray cloud in foreground, covering the horizon like a
shroud. He sees the gulls in the air, arched as eyebrows, the engines
that belch smoke, and the great bustle of soldiers on the dock, frantic
to begin the voyage home. But the sky reminded him of nothing. He
knew that he was afraid to sail, to live in the belly of a ship, and now
he wants only to see land again and to know the source of this steady
sound of bells.
The going is hard and he keeps to himself. It must be night because the men are below, and he wraps himself tight in his bunk. He
hasn’t seen much—no stars, no clouds, or setting sun. Instead he remains here, shivering from the chill and bartering for blankets. He
traded his boots first. Then his cap and stockings. He is always cold
and his bones rotate beneath his skin. The sound is irritating. They
turn and turn, a song like crumpling paper, and he lays naked beneath
a mound of blankets, staring at the porthole. It’s impossible to see
out—the pane is crusted over with salt and sea starch. But there’s
nothing to do but look, listen to the bells, and wonder about the invisible ocean tumbling on the other side.
The men talk. They are going home, but they’ve been going home
for a very long time. There are no calendars on board, or clocks, and
it’s hard to tell how far they are, or how close. From the bunk below,
Pere often says that the sky has begun to change color. The way to
keep track is to watch for seams. They run across the sky, he says,
holding it together. You can see them when the colors change—which
means you’re close to land. Gusev never asks, but Pere goes on and
on, though he’s been talking about the sky for a very long time.
The men, too, go on about the sky, and about their homes, but
never the war they have left. They pass around a knife and cut apples
into quarters until there are no more apples. They talk about wives,
girls from home, about being young, drinking and chasing through
town. They talk until they are out of breath. The men wonder what
the world will be like when they return. No one has an answer, but it’s
hard to imagine things won’t be the same. Home is a gentle thought,
a bird trapped in a glass, and they tell jokes without endings and fill
the time with words, roaming the ship as the bells announce the hours.
They go above and return, talking about houses and streets they remember. They follow the horizon, looking for seams, and tell Gusev
he should join them. But he doesn’t answer. What good is it to try and
talk over the noise, he thinks.
They go on until there are no more stories. Most have left something behind in the fighting—toes, ears, or fingers. This sort of talk
sobers them. Gusev is intact, but he worries that deep inside there
is something wrong. His bones rotate and no one speaks about such
a condition. The only family he can picture is his mother. She wore
rags when she saw him off, and probably she is still in rags, burning
a candle in the kitchen, filling the room with shine. These are Gusev’s memories: her face in the light full of age branches, his rotating
bones, and the silence that comes before the bells.
Someone calls supper. Gusev opens his eyes but doesn’t move.
Beneath him, he hears Pere as he stands to stretch. He has thin shoulders and wears a heavy bandage below his left elbow where he lost
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some of the arm.
“Gusev,” he says. “Do you want supper?” Pere touches his lip
with his good hand. A few whiskers protrude from his cheeks. Otherwise he is a boy.
Gusev doesn’t answer. His head aches, his tongue fills his mouth
and threatens to pour from his lips.
“Then I’ll bring you a roll.” Pere wears Gusev’s trousers, but
they’re too large and he has twine wrapped around his hips to keep
them up.
“We’re close,” he says. “I’ve seen them flying—that means they
have to land.”
Gusev hears, but the bones squirm in his legs, and he concentrates
on that. When Pere leaves, he looks at the tiny porthole. Behind the
glass is gray, like the edge of a storm cloud, and if he puts his face
close, he can only see his reflection. Still, he wonders if Pere is right,
about the birds overhead, about being close to home.
Soon the men talk only about women. In their stories there are
hundreds of women, thousands: women with breasts like gallon jugs,
legs long as trees, women who perspire morning mist. They talk of
wives and mistresses, even widows, but never mothers. Theirs is a
world of impossible women—all shapes and sizes, women made of
bronze. No one speaks of the war, and Gusev wonders if he made it
up. The future makes him uncertain—how can anyone know? It’s better to be here, he thinks. He doesn’t believe in the seams in the sky and
his mother is the only woman he knows. The candle burned beside her
while she waited, eyes narrowed. Around him the men slice apples
and talk, and when the apples are gone they eat cans of peaches, and
when there are no more peaches, they sit on the floor, talking still,
about their bronze women, hunched over games of dice, their pockets
full of rice for bartering.
It is mostly dark when Gusev wakes up coughing. The room feels
empty, and he coughs until he has to roll on his side and lean his head
over the bunk. One of the blankets falls to the floor in the commotion. Below, Pere sits on his bunk, holding a candle. He stares at the
porthole in silence.
After a bit Gusev stops coughing. His friend is shirtless.
“I suppose you want me to get that for you,” Pere says, but he
doesn’t move. His bare chest is also like a boy’s, two or three black
hairs across the neck. “I could, you know.” He smiles then, a quick
smile. Just the edge of his lips. “I could,” he says. “But I don’t feel
like it.”
Gusev leans over the bunk. It’s too much trouble to right himself—if he does, he’ll be giving up the blanket. There will be no reason for Pere to retrieve it.
“Are you cold, Gusev? Without your extra cover?” The smile
gone, Pere stares at Gusev.
His mouth is pursed, the expression sour.
“No,” Gusev answers, and it’s true. The air in the room is thick
and muggy.
Finally, Pere stands. He turns his back to the porthole, as if he can
no longer stand to look. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I had a dream.”
Gusev watches the candle burn. “At first it was beautiful,” Pere
says. “It was night.” Shadows dance around the room, but Pere looks
straight ahead and begins to narrate. It is night, and a clean silver
light comes over the horizon and the sea itself is glowing silver. The
colors are terrific; Gusev can almost imagine himself on the deck. But
then the sky goes black and fills with constellations. The men grope
for each other in the dark as the wind dies suddenly and the ship runs
aground. “At first we cheer,” Pere says. “But something is wrong.
There is only the sea, empty and crawling with movement. Then the
seals began to call.
“They begin to crawl aboard. Fresh meat, someone says. And
laughter. We laugh and slaughter a few, but they won’t stop coming.”
He pauses between breathes. “We cut their throats as fast as we can,
one, two, again, again, toss them back. But we’re stuck, run aground
on a mountain of seals and the sea keeps vomiting them up. They’re
on the deck, in the halls, crying like mad children. The hull is full of
blubber and blood, and the ship rocks from the weight until water is
rushing the portholes. And we are sinking. We are sinking.” He drops
the candle and the flame snuffs out.
The shadows stop dancing and Gusev can hear whimpering.
“Pere,” he says. “Get in bed.” The boat moves then, a gentle push
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over a crest of wave. Gusev sighs. “Leave the candle.”
Pere obeys. He slides under his covers and cries, short sobs that
shake the bunk.
“Think of tomorrow, Pere.” Then he begins to sing, an old song
about a man who lived in the mountains. The words are familiar,
though he can’t remember learning them. While he sings, he thinks
about the war. What was the name of the other side? He knows their
faces—their light eyes and sharp features. But even this small understanding is hazy. He remembers when the orders came down and they
were told to go home, to return to the ships. His men dropped rank
and walked freely across the desert. Only a few kept guns. The world
had become so quiet, and everything had grown heavy on their backs.
They stripped off their sacks, their boots. After a while it was shirts,
then pants. They were men by the hundreds, shedding clothes, walking slowly through the sand while stars twinkled overhead.
One soldier had walked behind, naked, shitting himself without
care. “What is death?” he asked aloud. Someone came back to see
after a while, embarrassed for him. “What is it,” he implored again.
Shit stained his thighs and his legs. Sand stuck to him in clumps, and
as he stood he began to urinate.
“Death,” said the helper, “is an anecdote for beggars.” There was
a rifle shot, but no one looked back.
When the song is finished, Pere slips out of his bunk and retrieves
the blanket. He stands for a moment, in offering, as if to say something. Gusev takes it greedily, wraps it tight around his legs. The
memories are more than he wants, even if he has to admit that he is
one of the lucky ones.
The first day aboard, men found clothes and blankets and retreated
to their bunks, slumbering like dead things. But Gusev stayed awake,
head full of visions, his bones aching beneath his skin. He could still
see the empty uniforms pressed into the sand, torn socks, boots, articles of clothing left behind that the earth was already beginning to
claim. Ahead he saw endless footprints, and the silhouettes of his fellow soldiers against the horizon. Gusev walked behind, looking over
the dunes. He wanted time to collect his thoughts. There were peasants
crossing the plateau as well, and as he passed, they said, “God bless
you,” and he answered them back: “Bless you, bless you,” because
he didn’t know what to say. By a clump of reedy bushes and small
mounds that weren’t hills he found a soldier in the dirt whose face he
remembered. He’d been a prankster, setting his order at ease—Gusev
had admired the soldier. But here he was, alive, and hideously so. His
arms were torn away at the shoulder. Legs mangled. He’d been crawling, an inch at a time, through a patch of wildflowers, leaving a trail
of blood thick as sunset in the dirt. There were flowers in his mouth,
sticking to his chin, and he continued to nibble at the petals. The color
had left his eyes. He made animal sounds and Gusev, stepping carefully around him, fled, unable to stop his grunting with a bullet.
Once, it seemed only possible to think of the future. But since
the first day on the ship, Gusev can only consider what lies behind.
The others snore while the bells sound, and he wonders how they can
stand it. “Pere,” he says. He feels dizzy behind the eyes, cold all over.
“How do you sleep through the bells?”
“Oh, my friend,” he answers. “This is a bad sign.” Pere shakes his
head and asks about dinner but Gusev grows quiet. He wraps up in
his blankets and ignores the commotion and the sound of the bells as
well.
At first, a man in stiff uniform came into the sleeping quarters
every day, rattling a cup against the wall. “Come boys,” he said. “The
rosy morning calls you up!” Gusev would raise his head, disorientated. He felt as if there was no sleep—only periods of time when he hid
behind his eye lids. It was only the rattling of the cup that reminded
him days were turning into nights, that the ship was moving through
time as easily as a fish cutting through water.
Gusev would wake in a sweat, startled, and pull the blankets tight
against his face. The bells would sound overhead though he couldn’t
remember any bell towers on the deck of the ship, no bells hanging
from the masts or side walls. There was no chapel—he knew that—
and they remained a stubborn mystery.
But now a crisp line of sunlight pours in through the porthole and
he realizes that there is no sound. No men rise grumpily from their
bunks; no bells ring overhead. The man in uniform and his rattling
cup are nowhere to be found. When he leans over the rail, he finds
Pere’s bed made, the sheets tight against the metal as if they’ve never
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been slept in. He pulls himself into a sitting position, his legs dangling
off the top bunk. He worries that he doesn’t have shoes or pants, that
he’ll catch cold. But the room is warm and the sun so bright through
the porthole that he can’t sit still.
He drops to the floor. It feels solid—no rowing back and forth,
no water. His legs feel strong. He lifts his arms over his head as the
joints make noises like sticks breaking, but there is no pain. He stifles
a yawn and leaves the room in the nude.
The hall is long and narrow, more so than he remembers. The
metal walls are warm beneath his palms and he wonders if there’s a
fire somewhere. It doesn’t make sense, the quiet.
No one seems to be around and he continues.
The heat is intense and he can make out what seems to be bird
song. At the top of the stairs the sun shines down and he follows
the warmth. Each step is grated for water to pass over and the sharp
metal hurts his feet. As he progresses, the bird noise grows louder. He
shields his eyes against the light.
It’s the sky he notices first—a perfect, endless pale blue that halts
him. The sun hangs high to his left, steep and glowing over the mast.
He is right about the birds—they tear across the air, circling through
the sails as he stands half submerged. The deck appears empty. It
seems bigger, expansive and deep to the rails, but empty. He can hear
men’s voices in the distance. There is a clanging that sounds like
tools, and more voices, but only the sky and the sun and the birds are
visible. Gusev takes it all in for a moment before pulling himself fully
from the hull.
The deck burns his feet. A layer of dust covers everything, but the
wood burns with each step. He takes refuge in the shade of a landing
and waits for the pain to dull. It’s then that he hears laughter and more
voices from the edge of the railing, and then finally, the bells.
It has been forever, he thinks. But wasn’t it just yesterday? Or this
morning? The ringing echoes over the deck and the wood quivers with
vibration. He moves out of the shade and notices the dust is moving—
vibrating—and that the dust isn’t dust. It’s sand. The deck is covered
in sand, a thin shore of sorts, a splintered surface that moves as the
bells roll over it, and the sand shifts a grain at a time as everything
shakes. He sees the ship is in tatters, everything a state of dry disreThe Louisville Review | Page 73
pair. The sun has bleached the wooden hull, the white paint on the
masts. The sheds are scorched and blistered; his mouth feels dry. The
air is heavy and he covers his eyes from the sun. Then the ship goes
still, as if time has stopped. There are no vibrations and no rocking, no
bells. Nothing but bird noise and the voices in the background.
Gusev hobbles to the edge, feet burning with each step. The deck
stretches out and his progress is slow. It would be wonderful to glide
instead, he thinks. To swim through the air without touching anything.
He’s about to run out of steps when he remembers his nakedness and
has another thought: he could glide on a bicycle. “Yes,” he says. “A
bicycle.” As a child he used to ride. He remembers the rubber wheels
bouncing over the cobblestones, how the women shouted from the
shop fronts as he zipped by, scolding him for stirring up dust. Invariably, the chain would come loose. Sooner or later he’d be hunched
in the dirt, his hands slick with grease, working the chain back into
place. No matter how he tried to keep it tight against the teeth, it
would pop off again and send him to his knees while the old women
nodded in approval.
The noise of men springs over the rail, and Gusev, without bothering to cover himself, puts both hands on the piping and leans over.
Below, the drop seems to go forever, as if he were peering over a great
cliff. At the bottom, men scurry in waves, moving like ants. The ship
is but a skeleton, held up by enormous poles the size of trees, and
there are ladders leaning against the wood ribs. Men climb up and
down, shouldering cuts of tin, passing them along with outstretched
arms. Beneath the poles and the ladders there is only sand. As far as
he can see, just sand.
Gusev opens his mouth to shout, but no sound comes, and when
he gestures, no one notices. Instead they labor on, pulling slats from
the ship’s frame, exposing more and more of the inside, as if skinning a whale. They shout in unison with each new chunk, yanking
with hammers and chisels as nails pop and the hull groans and gives
way to their efforts. Gusev takes it all in, the waves of men and the
disassembling, the ribs of the ship exposed for all to see. Beyond that,
there is no ocean to speak of, no horizon line, just miles of sand and
sand dune, sun light and clear day, and more sand. Behind him, the
bells sound again, and though he can’t find the source, he claps his
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hands together and closes his eyes as the sun beats down on his face.
He leans out over the rail, wondering how long it would take for the
sand to swallow him, or if he might glide instead, glide through the
miles of empty desert until he reaches the ocean or the place where
the sky begins.
Then he’s riding, pumping his short legs against the cobblestones
and the cold air, fighting the slope of the hills, riding home as his
mother calls his name, over and over, riding as fast as he can past the
women in the shop fronts, past the empty chairs where their husbands
once sat, smoking pipes and playing dice as the moon rises over the
mountains, riding while his mother clangs the bronze bell and stands
like a statue in the evening light.
Mindy Beth Miller
MOUNTAIN BORN
As the light from the outside world grew fainter in the belly of the
mine, Cat thought she would die. She figured she ought to be used to
the darkness and the shrinking space by now, but she still felt it—that
awful rise at the back of her throat and the stab of a scream that she
held her tongue against. The repetitive squeak of the mantrip calmed
her nerves a little, and she shifted in the seat, knocking her thin shoulder into the hard arm of Dexter, who sat beside her. He didn’t look
over at her but kept his eyes fixed straight ahead on the disappearing
hole of daylight. Dexter was always quiet like that, setting his jaw
firm and tight. Grateful that he hadn’t seen the fear on her face, Cat
sucked in the odors of hot brakes and oil slicks. The walls of the mine
glistened with rock dust and closed in around her like hands preparing
to pray.
Straighten up now, she thought. Images raced through her mind:
coal pillars collapsing, arms and legs ground into stringy meat in malfunctioning machines, and rock falls thundering down to bury them
all. The deeper she felt her body descend under that mountain, the
more she closed her eyes to dream of living things. Cat couldn’t help
but think about how far down inside the earth she was, farther down
than the dead. She steeled her body, feeling the pinch of tightening
muscles everywhere, and made herself believe that she would come
out of that hole again, alive.
This was her second week on the job as a general laborer, but she
couldn’t shake the horrible feelings that twisted down in her guts. She
reckoned that if Rodney hadn’t left her, she could still be working in
the kitchen at Chunky Jerry’s Quick Stop. Instead, she ended up doing
the very thing her own brothers had avoided by fleeing the mountains.
But the pay was more than enough to keep her in her house and to keep
her from having to stoop so low as to ask Rodney for the money.
Her body jerked forward when the mantrip stopped. She stepped
off, gripping the handle of her metal lunchbox so hard she thought it’d
broke the skin. Her mouth was dry as sandstone.
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A hand dropped onto her shoulder, holding her in place.
“You give me any sass today, old woman,” her partner Trick said,
poking his finger at her face, “I’ll turn you over my knee and give
you a good’n.” He laughed with his shoulders pumping up and down.
“Hell,” he said, attracting a crowd of miners whose white teeth shone
in the dark, “might enjoy yourself.”
It was Trick’s way, she knew. He was nothing but an old cut-up,
and she’d decided that he lived simply to tease the life out of her
every single day. He wasn’t much more than twenty, so she ignored
most of what he said. But she couldn’t help smarting a little at him
calling her “old woman.” She wouldn’t deny that her best working
years were far behind her, attested to by the aching bones and muscles
of her near-forty years. She could work as hard as him, though, if not
harder. She never doubted that she could keep up.
Trick took her lunchbox with his to the dinner hole, setting them
in their spot.
“Looks like they could’ve paired me up with a sexy little thing
from one of these hollers somewhere, not Cat,” Trick said, gesturing toward her with an open hand. A few men near him slapped their
thighs, laughing. “I worked with her for three whole days before I
even knowed she was a woman.”
A smile cracked her face and she shook her head, staring down at
her steel-toed mining boots sunk into the watery mud. She’d gotten
used to his insults and all of the nasty talk that shot out of his mouth,
and even though it stung sometimes, she still thought the world of
him. She slipped on her rubber gloves and safety goggles and stood
waiting for him, ready to get through another long day of work and
survival in a dark world.
“Now you know I was just blowing smoke, don’t you?” Trick
tried to talk over the humming and whirring of the machines and large
fans. He locked her in the crook of his arm and pulled her into his
side. “You’re the closest thing we have to Angelina Jolie down here.
And say, when’s the last time you been out with a feller?”
“I ain’t got a man right now,” Cat said, matching Trick’s stride
step for step, heading back towards their section of the mine. She
lifted her chin to push herself up a little bit taller. “I don’t have a need
for one, neither.”
“Why, hush your mouth,” Trick said, smiling. He let his arm fall
from around her body and hollered at two men getting ready to set
roof bolts. “You’d better be glad you took this job, woman. Just look
around you,” he said, spreading his arms out from his sides. The two
miners stepped closer to them. “I’m going to take you out this weekend and give it to you good. Then, John Roy here’s taking you next
weekend.” Trick rested his hand on the man’s shoulder; all of the men
laughed. “And then, Gordy’s going to lay into you after that.”
“I ain’t doing nothing with her,” Gordy said, big-eyed, not getting
the joke. They all laughed then, Cat the loudest.
“He don’t mean it,” she said, thumping her hand onto Gordy’s
back. “He’s just trying to get me all riled up, even though he knows it
don’t ever work.”
She and Trick trudged on over to the pit, a deep hole cut out in
the mine floor. They were to work the beltline at the tailpiece. The rattling sound of the coal on the slide and the screech of the large metal
rollers made it impossible to hear each other without hollering. Cat
stood on the other side of the beltline, just across from Trick, glancing
at him from time to time in case he flashed his cap light at her. She
watched the shuttle car drone up with a load of coal. And often, Cat
turned a searching eye to the mine roof, hoping it would hold firm and
not give way.
Trick’s light spun around in the darkness. “Cut the belt off. It’s
bogging down,” he said, loud. “Get your shovel and let’s get this
cleared up.”
She punched a red button that stopped the moving belt, and then,
dropped to her knees with her shovel. She scooped up the loose coal
onto the wide blade, chucking it onto the beltline. Trick did his part,
too, and soon their arms moved at the same speed, lifting and depositing the glittering coal. The tiny muscles in her arms and back twitched
and ached, bearing the strain of every heap that threatened to topple
from the shovel. She breathed in sharp and deep, feeling the grit of
coal dust slide down her throat. The beam from her cap light shimmered on the ground in front of her like a pool of lit water, reminding
her of days spent in the garden she’d shared with her husband. She
caught a glimpse of herself in her mind when she’d crouched low
along the long rows of earth for hours, covering seeds with her soilPage 78
stained hands, asking God for them to grow tall.
“Just about through,” Trick said, nodding his head. “Start that belt
back.”
Cat reached over to touch the green button and brought the belt
back to life, hearing it hum. She looked over at Trick; his face was
black as a skillet in places, especially on his nose and cheeks. They’d
been partnered up since her first day, so she felt responsible for him in
some way, even worried about him at night when she thought about
the mine. She wished so much better for him, more than this dangerous life and living from paycheck to paycheck. Cat thought about her
own life and figured that such a place was all right for her. Her life had
been one of barrenness and things that withered away. It didn’t matter
if she became trapped in that emptiness there.
“That gets it,” she said, loud, pushing up off of the shovel and
onto her feet. She slid a sleeve across her hot forehead.
“Now that’s how she’s done, partner,” Trick said, and smacked
his hands together. “That’s a damn sight better than you did your first
day.”
Cat cleaned the lenses of her goggles and nodded her head. She
could tell that Trick’s excitement was genuine and knowing that he
was proud of her made her want to shut the belt off again so she could
step across and hug him. But she didn’t. The very fact that she’d even
thought about such a thing made her face heat up. She wanted the men
in that mine to respect her. She wanted to show them all, and herself,
that she could do it. She and Trick stayed at it through the long hours
before lunch, shoveling so much coal that she could feel the accumulation of coal dust on her face.
“I packed an extra Moon Pie for you,” Cat said, hustling toward
the dinner hole with Trick. Her laugh was tinged with a past smoker’s
low, husky, and broken breaths. “You like ’em better than any youngun does.”
“Ah, shit, wait there a minute,” he said, wincing. “My back’s trying to go out on me.”
He slapped his hands onto his knees and turned his head to the
side, drawing in a slice of air between his teeth. Cat grabbed him
around the waist and tried to steady him. She leaned against him and
caught him jiggling his light into the dimness ahead.
“All right boys,” Trick hollered, sliding away from her.
Thick, fleshy arms yanked her off of her feet from behind. A
group of men, five or six of them, swarmed around her, reaching out
to take hold of her feet and hands. Her heart thumped hard in her
chest. A surge of air rushed into her lungs, and a scream threatened
to explode from her throat. She rolled her eyes in all directions, yelling at them, not understanding the why of what they were doing. Her
light skimmed across all of their bodies. One of them grabbed a piece
of clapboard from the foot of a mining timber. She stiffened her body
and kicked her boots, thrusting her body forward while the man behind her refused to let go.
“Get her,” someone said.
“Keep her from moving around like that,” said another.
“She’s trying to bite,” the man holding her hollered out.
She broke free and wildly clawed and shoved and struck at the
men, even tried to crawl and bust through their legs like a hog escaping slaughter. Cold mud splattered everywhere. The darkness made
it hard for her to tell where she could go, and when she looked up
at them, their black-smeared faces peered down at her. Not a one of
them had his pants pulled down. She recognized the man with the
clapboard by his thick jaw line. It was Dexter; she’d sat next to him
on the mantrip that morning. A strong arm stifled her from moving
anymore.
“Just give into it, Cat,” Trick said, keeping her still and positioning her so that her rear end stuck out. “Nobody ain’t doing nothing
wrong.”
She stopped wriggling, but kept slinging her arm back behind
her head, trying to smack Trick’s face. The clapboard spanked her
rear end over and over, stinging and burning. She could hear the men
carrying on in laughing and encouragement. Dexter kept swatting her
rump and counting off how many licks it took to bring her down.
Her knees hit the rock floor hard and she was glad for her knee pads.
When he finally stopped, she felt numb and could barely stand up and
turn around to face them.
“Sorry I had to blister your ass,” Dexter said. “But after two
weeks, it was about time you got broke in proper. That’s our way of
saying we like you.” He patted her cheek with two quick taps.
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“This wasn’t nothing,” Trick said, giving her a side hug. “They
poured hot grease down my britches to break me in.”
“Yeah,” one of the men said, “and he cussed and cried for an
hour.”
Their laughter boomed in the tight space, and then they clapped
for her, making a racket, whistling. She pulled in a heavy breath and
straightened her shoulders. She didn’t know how to act. This was her
moment of belonging. She just hoped that they all confused her tears
with the sweat that streaked her coal-colored jaws.
The next morning, she coughed up a whole handful of coal
dust—a slimy circle of goo that made her think of a black moon. She
was afraid she’d smother to death, so she sat out on the front porch
steps and pulled in mouthfuls of the cool mountain breezes. A stack
of mail, mostly bills, cluttered her lap. She looked at the tinkling wind
chimes and watched the oaks and maples sway; the rush of the wind
sounded like a rain shower coming up the creek. This was her favorite
time of day. Her bare feet were warm as gingerbread cakes on the cement steps, and she enjoyed looking out on her little yard that opened
up wide and welcoming. She’d never needed to fill up the place with
mulch beds or birdbaths or swing sets.
All of the houses were crowded close together in Low Gap. Cat
thought about how the coal company had built these houses decades
ago. Three generations of mining families were packed into that narrow valley between the mountain and the creek. Sometimes she could
hear the noise of her neighbor’s television set or a telephone ringing
in another house just across the holler road. She wondered about all of
the people who lived in the holler—what their secrets were.
The breeze played with the empty porch swing and rocked it back
and forth with its metal springs creaking and popping. She stared at
the swing’s glossy varnished surface, missing the form of her husband’s body all sprawled out across it. And she looked at the narrow
dirt road, wondering if his beat-up Chevy truck would ever cough
its way back home. She shook her head. Bastard can stay gone, she
thought. And she knew he would. A year was too long to believe anything else. But not believing it anymore was about the hardest thing
she’d ever done. She’d just cleared out what remained in his dresser
drawers last week, tossing the few pairs of socks and underwear into
the trash.
“Howdy there,” a man’s voice said.
She raised her hand up to her neighbor, Hollis, who was lifting a
post hole digger and shovel into the back of his truck. She liked his
look, especially the brown tufts of hair that curled over the lip of his
white t-shirt. It made him seem like something wild, like an animal
that belonged out in the hills. She wondered if he had hair like that
everywhere, and it just about killed her to think of it. He always had a
grin on his face every time she saw him, so she reckoned he had spotted her spying on him from her living room window a few times. The
very idea of him knowing made her cheeks burn.
“You believe it’s going to rain?” Cat made sure that her blue cotton housecoat covered her knees.
He pointed to his ear and took long steps across the road. She
didn’t expect him to come over, so she twisted on the step a bit and
straightened her back. She flicked some strands of her blonde hair out
of her eyes, aware that the sulfur water had burnt the ends, causing it
to look frizzy and in need of another washing.
“I said do you think it’ll rain today.”
“Doubt it,” Hollis said, hooking his thumbs in the belt loops on
his jeans. “It’s been so dry and hot that everything in my garden’s
plumb burnt up. Gonna be a sorry looking crop this year, I reckon.”
“It’s sure a shame,” she said, not even certain what came out of
her mouth.
“Well,” he said and put his hand up to shield the sun’s early glow
from his eyes. When he did, the scent of his skin—the smell of Dial
soap—washed over her, and she smiled. “I’d better get down the
road.”
He turned toward his house and ambled through the yard. Cat
glanced over her shoulder at the porch swing still gliding in the wind.
She looked from the swing to Hollis and stood, pitching the papers off
her lap, and reached her hand out in his direction.
“Wait now,” she said. He stopped next to the road and set his eyes
on her. “You ought to come in.” She fumbled with the sash on her
housecoat, pulling it tight. “Set awhile with me. I was fixing to make
a little something for breakfast.”
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Hollis didn’t say anything right at first, so she wished she’d just
kept her mouth shut.
“I’ve got to go,” he said, stumbling a little with the words, poking
his thumb at the road. “Any other time I probably would, but I’ve got
to set posts for a new fence line today.”
“Yeah, that’s all right,” she said, moving her hands just about any
way she could think to. “I didn’t think about you having to do any
work.”
He smiled, nodded. Left. Cat crossed her arms, feeling the soft
roundness of her breasts sitting on them. She felt just the slightest bit
embarrassed. His smell still lingered in the air. She figured he’d just
had a quick shower that morning, and it thrilled her to think that she
knew something so intimate about him. She must have looked a sight
standing there in front of him. Her hair was a mess, her pale face forgettable. The coal dust that rimmed her eyes looked like three-day-old
eyeliner. She didn’t think she was the kind of woman that would perk
his interest. But she still longed to hold a man like him to her chest,
feel his heartbeat thud against her own, catch onto the life that pulsed
beneath her fingertips.
Cat lifted her face to the sunlight and closed her eyes. The brightness seeped into her flesh, and she imagined that her whole body lit
up. It would be a long day down in the mine.
“You’re one of us now,” Trick said to her out in the parking lot
later that day. He finished the last of his Marlboro, looking as if he
savored every swirl of smoke. The dark speckles of a growing beard
on his jaws and chin made him seem much older, and the coal dust
and cigarettes had etched lines into his skin. “You ain’t like any kind
of woman I ever seen before.”
Cat leaned back against her pickup truck, feeling the pinch of
rusted metal through her coveralls. “We all don’t get to pick our life,
I guess,” she said, smiling a little.
Trick flipped the still-smoking butt to the ground. “It was either
this or leave for me,” he said, gray wisps still puffing from his moving
mouth. “Either way, I wanted to be buried right here.” He laughed,
but it sounded more like a thing that comforted him. She could tell
from the hollow look in his eyes that he thought about this often. And
she knew at that very moment that this was why Trick was always
acting-a-fool.
“It’s like a whole other world under there, ain’t it?” Cat said, tying
her hair back beneath her hard mining cap.
“Well, when we’re underneath that mountain,” he said, staring
into the gaping mouth of that dark hole, “we’re all brothers and sisters, down there together.”
She smiled at being called a sister. She sighed and studied his
features, sorry that she’d never have a son like him. Her life’s blood
would never pass to another, and she thought about the emptiness of
that coal mine as like the dead womb she cradled inside of her. They
were all children of the mountain.
“My damn face is flat killing me,” Trick said, nudging the bloody
mark on his face with his fingers.
“That rock got you pretty good, huh,” she said, cupping his chin
with her hand and turning his face from side to side. She was gentle.
She patted his shoulder and made over him a little bit, telling him
what a fine young man his mother had brought into the world. That
always worked with Trick. He scooted off soon after, stepping light
on his toes like he had bells on.
Everybody seemed to be in better spirits, probably from the feel
of the checks they held in their hands. Cat was saving up for city water, so she couldn’t have been more tickled with the money she made
at Low Gap Mining. She jerked the truck door open and slipped her
check behind the sun visor. She noticed some of the miners’ wives
coming out of the mine office and a few other women that hung
around just to run after the men. They got all sugared up, wearing low
cut blouses or dresses with lots of big hair and makeup. The sight of
them made Cat want to spit. That kind of women had always intimidated her, made her want to hide her face from them. And when they
did trot past her, they looked her up and down like she was some ugly
thing that had just sprouted from the earth.
“I guess that’s the kind where you’ve got to turn their tail up and
have a look,” a tall redhead said.
Cat met her gaze and didn’t flinch. She pushed the truck door
wider so she could get in, listening to it pop and whine as she closed
it, hard. She took off her mining hat and placed it in the seat next
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to her, picking at her hair a little after she’d started the engine and
pumped the gas. A fossilized fern that she’d found in the mine poked
out from the ashtray. Cat ran her finger across it, thinking about how
one tiny thing like that could survive that long. That everything, no
matter how insignificant, was important and had its own kind of fantastic beauty.
She slid the silk straps of the light green nightgown off her shoulders. The gown brushed her body on its way to the floor, feeling like
the fine tickle of goose feathers. It made a shiny wreath around her
feet. Moonlight spread across the wood floor and glowed on her body
as she stood before the long oval mirror that night, staring at her reflection. Her skin looked as if it were glazed with frost. Her bare breasts
plumped up like mushmelons and little chill bumps covered her all
over. She didn’t mind that the blinds were up, and she didn’t care if
anyone was out walking down the road. She wanted to see herself this
way—whole, visible, and unashamed.
The pinging of a banjo filled the night outside, a sound that always made her body wish to move. She saw Hollis out her bedroom
window, picking the strings. He sat on his front porch, and she held
her eyes on him for a minute. Every part of him seemed free, and Cat
could have loved him for that alone. He looked like someone who
would get up and dance if the mood struck him just right, and the
kind that didn’t make a big deal out of little things. She saw all of
that when she looked at him under the yellow brightness of the porch
light. Her flesh tingled, almost as if the song he played was his own
hand touching her.
Not you, she thought. She couldn’t accept the idea of a man like
Hollis lying next to her, even though she imagined it. There were a
few stretch marks on her hips and her flesh seemed pale as an onion
bulb. Coal had settled underneath her fingernails. Her thinness exaggerated the sharp nature of her nose and chin. But she believed there
was something saving about her mouth and eyes, a hint of desire that
made her far from ordinary.
Cat stepped away from the mirror, striding across the floor to the
lit bathroom. She filled the tub with warm bath water and immersed
herself in it. A bath was such a religious thing, she felt, and it had to be
the part of her day that she relished the most. She scrubbed and sniffed
her skin to make sure that the lavender scent remained. She got out
and dried off, lathering her legs with lotion. And then she spent a
whole hour primping—rolling her hair layer by thin layer, smoothing
on makeup, and painting her fingernails redder than pickled beets.
She returned to the mirror and admired what she’d done. And she
pulled on a beige cotton dress that had specks of red flowers everywhere. She checked the window again, relieved to see that Hollis had
not gone. Her creamy-colored dress shoes clicked across the hardwood, stepping quick towards the door. She’d made up her mind. And
she knew it even more once she’d cleared the last porch step.
When she planted her feet in Hollis’s yard, she thought about
spinning around fast on her heels. All she could think was that he’d
laugh at her and comment on how she’d become a new woman, unrecognizable. But she reckoned it would be best for her to go and talk
to him anyway, instead of just standing there like something crazy.
She held her back up straight and approached the porch. She enjoyed the feel of her blonde curls bobbing up and down with each step
and the warmth of the air that slid across her naked legs. The lively
chatter of the banjo was gone, but she did hear Hollis whistling. She
found him on the far end and didn’t speak, choosing to watch him
whittle a rounded shape out of cedar. He brushed the squiggly shavings out onto the grass and turned his body a bit, snapping the pocketknife closed on his thigh. She thought about saying something, but it
just came out in a whisper. But that was enough for him to notice her
there, and when he did, he stood straight up.
“Cat?” Hollis said, sounding doubtful.
“I was out walking,” she said, cupping her hands together with a
tiny smack. “Figured I’d be neighborly.”
He took a measured stride across the porch as if he were making
his way across creek stones. Cat waited for him to look her over, to
pass some kind of mocking judgment upon her appearance. But he
didn’t say a word. She worked up enough courage to lift her eyes and
discovered that he didn’t seem shocked at all. That mischievous grin
dimpled the corners of his mouth, though, and she believed that he
had her plumb figured out.
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“That dress sure shows off your figure,” he said. “I might need to
make sure you make it back to your front door all right.”
She laughed with an open mouth and placed a hand on her chest.
“Well, look,” Hollis said, grabbing an oak chair, “set down and
let’s talk.”
Cat smiled. “I need to go,” she said.
“Oh,” he said. “You one of them women that likes to do their
housecleaning at night?”
“No, I mean I want to go someplace.” She tried to read his face.
“Anyplace. I want to do something nobody in their right mind would
do.” Cat waved her hands around as she talked.
Hollis pinched the bill of his camouflaged ball cap and tipped it,
scratching his fingers in his crackling hair. “Well,” he said, “I’d have
to think on that a minute. There ain’t much to get into around here, but
I don’t know. . . . with a woman like you.”
Cat saw a kind of playfulness in his eyes.
“You wanna go for a drive?” he said.
The jeep bumped along the gravel road, dragging in a few steep
spots. Hollis winked at her and pressed his foot hard on the gas, sending them zooming forward and spewing mists of dust into the weeds.
The wind beat almost all of the curl out of Cat’s hair, but she didn’t
gripe about it. This felt like living. And she laughed until her throat
felt sore.
“Where are we going?” she said, pressing her hand down on the
top of her head to keep her hair from blinding her.
“You’ll like it,” he said with a big nod.
She felt something stir between her lungs, something so large that
she wondered if she shouldn’t clamp her hand over her mouth. It felt
like her very soul would come leaping out of her. She latched onto the
thick roll bar above her head and pulled up on it, settling down on the
top of the bench seat. Hollis swatted at the bottom of her dress, trying
to keep it from flying up. But Cat just raised her arms in the air and
laughed.
“Buck wild,” Hollis shouted, looking up at her and shaking his
head.
“Always was,” she said, just as loud.
Hollis made a sharp left and turned into an open field, just off the
road. Cat smacked her hands around the bar to keep from falling and
laughed again, holding on tight. She heard the high grass swish as the
tires rolled through. They came to a slow stop. There were no pole
lights in that place, and once the headlights went out, she had to give
her eyes time to adjust to the blackness. It was darker there than it was
down inside the earth. But gobs of stars were sprinkled across the slit
of sky. They were so bright and seemed so close that she feared her
breath would put them out.
She glanced down at Hollis who eased his way up to sit atop the
seat. “You want to call me Cathleen?” she said. “I don’t much care for
it, but it’s my real name.”
He paused and thought. “I like Cat,” he said. “Fits you somehow.”
A hush fell over the place, except for the crickets and the jarflies
that shook in the hills. And then she saw them. The thing she could
tell he most wanted her to see. The black night glittered with the green
flashes of lightning bugs. She’d never seen so many in the whole of
her life. It looked like someone had thrown a giant plume of sparkles
into the air. This is real, she thought, half of her in awe and half disbelieving. She didn’t have any choice but to cover his hand with her
own.
“Ah,” Hollis said, “it’s just a little thing.”
He grinned at her again. Cat loved his quietness. She leaned into
him and joined her lips to his. His breath smelled sweet as fried apples. He kissed her back, moving his mouth real soft on hers. And she
rested her hand on his firm chest, cherishing the pounding of his heart
against her fingers.
Another long day at the mine ended, and Cat marched through
the darkness, her steps lighter and with a stronger purpose. She felt
the presence of a group of miners, including Trick, behind her. Their
boots thudded against the stone floor, and they talked amongst themselves. She figured it was something about her, but never let on about
it. They were the boys, she reckoned, and she was like the mother of
them all.
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“Look at her,” one of them said. “She’s plumb glowing in the
dark.”
“Hell, yeah,” Trick said. “I bet she’s giving some old boy all he
wants.”
“She probably poked his eyes out before she jumped on him,”
another said.
They all laughed. Cat just shrugged.
“You know what this woman is?” Trick said, stepping in front of
her. He grabbed her chin.
“Now, come on,” Cat said, swatting at his hand. She smiled. “Let
it rest for one day.”
“She’s our own blue diamond,” he said.
He put his arm around her shoulders, and they ambled off in the
direction of faint light.
She boarded the mantrip, drawing in a deep breath. The vehicle
jostled her body on the trip back up out of the mine. She faced the
darkness, stared straight into it. The cable pulled them forward as
if they were being rescued and were returning from a hidden place
where they’d been lost. None of the miners spoke but sat waiting for
the light. Cat closed her eyes. She sensed daylight and saw the insides
of her eyelids turn red. Light, powerful and intense, broke across her
face, and when she opened her eyes, the final shadows from the mine
washed over her. They exited the hole in the mountain. She smiled as
the cool air dried her damp face and felt free and alive. Just like being
born.
Michael Carroll
MOSQUITO HOUR
–from The Returners, a novel-in-progress
Vampirism down here wasn’t some joke. It was hard work, and
not for the faint of heart, though the thing about daylight was a myth.
Still, there was too much of that. Too much hard hammering sun
among the longer days this far south. Direct light, or light refracted
from beneath doorsills, irritated like smog to an asthmatic, chafing
their ivory Slavic skins. He’d chipped in with the others and somebody bought weather stripping and that night they’d sat up, Vilda and
his housemates, not going off to their graveyard-shift jobs or out partying, but sealing up the place as though keeping the sun out was Step
One of a larger plan, a greater warding-off. There were those out there
who were on to them, they knew; religious maniacs. Together Vilda
and his housemates performed their solemn chore with a sense of
shared purpose, as though barricading themselves against the coming
barbarians and terrible times of chaos and pillage and rape to follow.
Essentially they had formed a commune, and yet—considering
where they’d all come from—Vilda was sick of hearing the others’
nostalgic maunderings on socialism. That system had not worked.
Communism had killed his father, and Vilda would never get his father back, though actually it was his grandfather who’d raised him.
This was his maternal grandfather, a widower: Vilda could barely remember his Baba, the unhealthy living and sacrifices inherent to the
Soviet-style system in a way having taken her, too. His father had
gone north toward the factory jobs, only to die in an industrial accident, getting crushed or decapitated, no one knew which. All the
family knew was that he had worked in a metal-stamping plant, and
they suspected the state-owned company of a cover-up. A year later,
the ashes had been returned to them labeled but without courtesy of
explanation or apology, accompanied by a note typed on yellowing
letterhead from a bureau they’d never heard of. It expressed not so
much regret as congratulations, since officially Vilda’s father had giv-
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en his life to keep revolutionary ideology going strong internationally.
Vilda’s mother, who believed in the ideology but not her countrymen, had already taken off for East Germany by then, following love.
Leipzig, not that far over the Czech border: a problem developed with
her papers, and then the man left her and she’d had difficulty getting
back home—some diplomatic snafu having to do with the scandal of
Solidarity’s rise in Poland; she had written about it in a letter. At some
point, however, she resettled in Berlin, finding work as a charwoman
in a scientific lab. After that he hadn’t heard from her at all until recently, when she called from Berlin to ask him his advice about coming to America. And also for money. Vilda had not heard his mother’s
voice in thirty years.
She’d always loved a good time, as had Baba. Had his Matka
met a fate similar to his Baba’s? To be sure, as a girl, a young woman
(though she had always preferred “girl”), Baba had smoked and drunk
her way through better times, the years of republican independence
under Masaryk. Between the wars Baba had worked as a can-can girl
or some other exotic dancer, and she had seen the world, or those
parts of it that counted back then, London and Paris, Biarritz, Nice,
Bucharest. It was a small world and then it had gotten bigger—the
Cold War split it in half, expanding each of the two halves. By the
time Baba had taken off for the spa, she’d never gotten around to seeing New York or Buenos Aires, both her dreams. She’d been sent to
the spa in West Bohemia to undergo treatment for a weak heart and
poor circulation. The helpless medical officials hadn’t known what
else to do with her, likening her veins to metal pipes—only the corrosion was holding them together—and they’d sent her to Karlovy Vary,
where she’d died. This time the officials were quicker to inform his
grandfather, who had not wept but who’d noted aloud to young Vilda
the coincidence of the announcement’s arrival less than a week after
they’d received Baba’s first postcard. I could get used to this, she’d
written, crowding the space with miniscule handwriting. She wrote of
how much she enjoyed the local Becherovka liqueur, a therapeutically
distilled formula made from bitter herbal essences. On the card’s flipside was a photo, rendered in the cheap, lifeless color available only
from photo labs operating exclusively behind the Iron Curtain, of
the “beautiful” Orthodox church of St. Peter and St. Paul. The many
turreted onion domes of the church were painted garish blues and
pasted over with stars, big ridiculous cartoon stars drawn by children,
it looked like—or variously foiled in gold, a dull, filmy, weathered
layer of nonetheless real gold. Baba’s note closed with an observation
of the Yuri Gagarin statue displayed in the Colonnade across from
the “glorious” Imperial Hotel—Yuri Gagarin, they’d deciphered (for
she’d packed it in at the bottom, as though she’d just spotted, live,
Yuri Gagarin), the Soviet cosmonaut, the first man to orbit the Earth.
Fucking Russians.
Considering this, it was near-effrontery having to be subjected
to his housemates’ whining—a sound that, Vilda observed, now that
he was in a land of laconic diphthongs, seemed built-in to his language’s adenoidal vowels. It was usually due to drink, these bouts of
sentimentality. Vilda would return to his bed, though trying to read
or think at such an hour was pointless, and his quest for sleep would
be riled by the stamping and shouting from the next room. The walls
of the house were like pressboard, so flimsy and negligible that any
gospel-afflicted nut job or rogue posse of vigilantes might drive by
letting loose with automatic weapons and ventilate the place. In vacation homes around here Vilda had seen many impressive gun collections. One cable-TV entrepreneur with a house overlooking the Strait
had devoted a whole room of locked glass cases to displaying his
wall-to-wall arsenal of Glock nine millimeters and Walther MPK and
MPL compact submachines, stealthy conveyors of broad destruction.
Swinging a ring of short, snub-nosed keys on his finger, the owner
had offered to outfit Vilda and then take him out to the end of his
private pier for a personal demonstration of his latest purchase, an
MPSD pistolet he’d acquired on his own antique collectibles shopping channel. The pistolet was fitted with a detachable silencer the
size of a knockwurst. To insure Vilda’s target practice would fall on
deaf ears, the man had said.
“Always a goddamn bunch of seagulls shitting on my dock. I
don’t get them, DDT will. I do not touch the pelicans. Magnificent
creatures, how they glide. Special fibers in their pecs steady the wings
for long fishing glides. Do you know the story about the pelican? Ancient cultural and liturgical symbols of self-sacrifice. The female tears
her breast open to feed her starving chicks. ‘Mamma, more blood!’
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Medievals called it vulning. . . .”
“Vulning” turned out to mean wounding. Vilda hadn’t taken
him up on his offer. He’d elected not to open up with military-grade
ordnance and start vulning marine fowl. The man, whom Vilda had
known for less than half an hour, clearly wasn’t right in his head,
although neither was he a threat: “red incest” was mal vu. This man
was offering to welcome and briefly shelter Vilda, who was then new
to the area, and indeed to the United States.
The man’s name was Larry, and he was one of them. Despite
obvious contradiction he’d just been made a deacon in the Lutheran
Church, Missouri Synod. The Missouri Synod, Larry explained, had
made its transition to an English-speaking denomination very slowly,
and then only because of World War I. For Larry, the First World War,
or the Great War as he’d insistently called it, was the true watershed
of the twentieth century and the reason everyone, Vilda included, was
here or wanted to be here speaking English. What if Sarajevo had
never happened? What if the archduke had not been assassinated? If
Austria had not gone to war in spite of their mutual-aggression pact
with Germany? And what if England and France hadn’t been so uppity, always so uppity, those two, but instead had been willing to share,
colony-wise, and left Italy out of it entirely? Too many complicit to
number and name, but Larry wished that cracker Woodrow Wilson
had minded his own business and allowed the little guys the chance to
flower. To express themselves.
“Call me crazy, but these are salient questions,” urged Larry. “I
know because I come from a part of Louisiana settled by Germans in
the eighteenth century, and early in the eighteenth century at that.”
Vilda was still learning all kinds of idioms and sentence constructions. “La côte des allemands. For the record, we got along famously
with the French back then. We helped fight the Spanish and got the
fuckers out of New Orleans. Culturally, we’ve contributed richly.
Take the accordion. Take it, please. That’s a joke. But the tuba? Brass
bands? Where do you think jazz came from?”
Vilda’s grandfather had liked jazz, but what he’d liked most was
Glen Campbell.
“Take a hymn, an old hymn,” Larry sped on, “and sing it. Stomp
your feet. Play that thing. Jazz, man. Blues even.”
Vilda stuck on Larry’s previous comment about the French, his
“back then” part. Vilda wondered if Larry, who spoke so knowingly about the past, wasn’t one of the legends, who were said to exist
still. The legends were around, he’d been told, but were supposed
to be as rare as certain birds, an endangered species. As he spoke,
Larry moved fluidly and hilariously about his home with the preening confidence of an exotic specimen oblivious to its captivity in a
conserving aviary. Surrounding picture windows featured a dramatic
evening, striations of dark blue and darker blue, a waterline necklaced
with the lights of other islands. A long neck of moon reflected on the
sea expanded toward them, dissipating. Larry would stop and tilt his
head and blink, alert to the slightest sound or movement from another
sector of the compound. He would forget his thought and nod expectantly at Vilda.
Vilda told him about the Glen Campbell record, a sheet of discarded X-ray paper grooved like a record so you could play it on an
ordinary phonograph. Surely a black market had grown up around the
commodity of used X-ray paper. Vilda’s grandfather, a plumber, had
gotten the old Victrola in trade for doing a job on a party functionary’s
summer cottage, and he would sit up nights hearing “Wichita Lineman” and appreciate the simple working-class poetry of a working
man’s longing for love, thinking of Baba or a girl he’d known before
Baba. The song was full of syrupy strings obscured by the ghosty,
third-removed quality of the bootleg, but the smooth hillbilly plaints
wrenched. The man in the song worked for the phone company, and
could hear his girlfriend singing over the wire. It was good to think of
Wichita in outer space, radioing in via Sputnik.
Larry closed his eyes, consulting mental files on Sputnik, on
Wichita. He turned to lock up the pistolet and mumbled humorously, as though Vilda had attempted to nail a joke with a clunker of a
punchline: “Fine, that’s fine.” He turned from the last vitrine, knitting
his brow, thumping a forbearing clasp on Vilda’s shoulder. “Drink,
son?”
To become a deacon, Larry had to go to Concordia University
in Chicago or St. Louis or somewhere for his training—which must
have been where he’d picked up his assortment of arcane facts. There
was more on pelicans. In India, followers of whatever faith had seen
Page 94
red spots on the pelicans’ breasts and thought it was blood. This coupled with what they—not just Indians but Europeans as well—had believed was pelicans pecking themselves in the chest. As it turned out,
the spots were from some disease, and what the birds were doing all
along wasn’t pecking but gulping fish down their long bulky gullets.
As a genre, Larry held forth, the redemption story was key to
understanding the universal human mystery. Vilda was aware of the
low affect he felt a desire to maintain. Larry’s manner, dryly jolly
while academically offhand, fascinated him. He thought back to a
week ago, to his sleepless afternoon in the Miami Airport Sheraton.
He’d just gotten off the only overnight flight from Frankfurt arriving
in Miami early in the morning and gone directly to the Sheraton. He
had ahead of him the short connecting flight down that evening, and
in his room he kept the thick curtains shut. Lights off, he pulled the
wood-veneered armchair away from the window and over toward the
bathroom and flicked on the TV and was inexorably drawn to a channel where they sold jewelry. Some kind of live auction. The lady hosting came across as impossibly cheerful. But the man brought on as
an expert—who stood next to her as she said “Wow” to everything he
said and looked inelegantly buxom and morally unclean, like a hired
doll in a Moscow nightclub—this man had explained the aesthetically gratifying craft of faceting diamonds. They were both actors,
of course, but the man’s performance was riveting. Called a gemologist, he did not wear the lab coat of a researcher but rather the tweeds
and bowtie of a professor of the mineral sciences, and it made for
compelling theater when he unscrewed the jeweler’s scope from his
wryly fixed left eye and declared the dazzling and mysterious Rose
of Sharon in every way not merely perfect but exquisite. It was this
man’s smile that Larry himself seemed to duplicate, off one of his own
networks, as he’d explained that in the Indian redemption story the
mother pelican had killed her young, then—out of horror and in an act
of penance for what she’d done—resurrected her babies by pecking
her breast to feed them her own blood.
“The pecking,” Larry said, “figures into a lot of medieval heraldry, as you know.”
It was almost as if the shopping hostess, adorned in heavily shellacked platinum hair and curt evening wear, could next appear with
jump-cut timing and drawl, “All right, ladies! Get out those credit
cards. Pick up those phones. Start dialing. We’ve got an offer to end
all offers, the exciting, the mysterious, the colorful and distant, slightly forbidding historic Middle Ages!”
Apart from the Grand Canyon, India was the only place Vilda
had any interest left in seeing. Of course India was unimaginably
crowded, the poverty so depressing visitors from the West invariably
returned claiming they’d been transformed. Anyone he’d ever known
to go there came back looking thinner than before they’d left. Vilda
assumed he’d be one of the few to return considerably plumper.
Larry had been to India. About his pilgrimage to Benares—he
considered himself ecumenically conversant and made few distinctions among the global faiths—he said, “I stepped up to my ghat on
the Ganges, and I was about to go in and bathe. I made a pact with
myself I’d at least wade in. I looked down and saw a big old long
turd floating up to greet me, bobbing impudently. I turned right back
around.”
They were enjoying highballs and still had most of the house to
tour. Vilda had to be careful with his blood sugar. The sylphic girl in
Karlovy Vary had warned him about hypoglycemia, the bane of their
kind. Then she’d drunken liberally from him, pretty much vanishing
after that. He’d probably never see his grandfather again, either. What
had made it worse was the gazebo, in the park of bare willows where
he’d met her. How could he fall for something so corny and familiar,
or as Baba had liked to say, recherché?
Larry seemed less concerned about the safety of his gun collection than of what was in the next room—his cache of Sound of Music
and Cabaret memorabilia. “Oh sure, get your hands on a Nazi P38,”
he said, “no problem. I got mine off a website called Left4Dead. Get
it?” He held up four fingers and gave them a waggle. The memorabilia
room was larger than the arsenal, arrayed with Thonet chairs, dirndls
sewn from flower-print curtains, black bowlers, eight-by-ten glossies
of dazzle-smiled stars autographed in fat black Magic Marker. While
the gun cases were lit discreetly from within, in here the paraphernalia
took on a lurid hue from the overhead track lighting, each bulb filtered
with a tomato-colored gel.
Ever since the brandishing of the MPSD pistolet, Vilda had sensed
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Larry hovering toward him, pressing closer in.
“Here’s something you’ll appreciate,” said Larry. “The original
poster for what is perhaps Fosse’s finest—no, I’ll just say it. Bob
Fosse’s best film is Cabaret. He only left us with five to choose from.
Ever see All That Jazz, Sweet Charity? Neither? Good God, son, we’ll
have to educate you!”
Leaning back, Larry pinched the brim of an imaginary hat. Old
but lithe, he lifted the hat and pumped it as he toed forward, shoulders
braced, elbows akimbo as he picked along at an alley-cat slant, then
stopped in front of a gilt-framed movie poster.
“Chapeau! This was for the first run in Ukrainian. They only
printed like twenty-five. Had to move heaven and earth then go all
the way up to New York, scumsuckers. Got it off these fancy Chelsea
fairy antiquariats.” He licked the tip of his pinky and ran it along one
eyebrow. “Love those old Constructivist-style Cyrillic letters. I love
that K.”
Dignified, Larry studied Vilda for his reaction. He nuzzled in
inches from Vilda’s face and said, “Y’all’ve always used the Roman
alphabet in your country, haven’t you?”
Vilda nodded. “But we had to learn Rossian in school, so to me
Cyrillic alphabet is familiar.” He spoke English better than he let on.
All those tourists. From time to time he’d just Slav it up. “I like it, I
think she’s very, very beautiful woman . . .”
“You’re kidding,” said Larry. “Liza?”
One thing he’d learned by being around Americans was that he
didn’t need to do anything with his expression. Doing nothing with
his mouth or eyes, saying nothing, said something. It cracked them
up. They winked conspiratorially, or abated in chuckles.
“Son, I’m going to level with you,” Larry persisted, “I’d like to
pull your pud.”
“ . . .”
“In the worst way, as a matter of fact.”
In time, Vilda was only ever to love one man. Ross rode a motorcycle and tended bar in a dive that featured upstairs drag shows
nightly. That he served broke-dick drunks and had a chopper he could
be proud of made Ross sound like a Grateful Dead groupie, a stalker of Cher or one of Cher’s regional mimics, but Ross was that and
more. He slung drinks shirtless with the shoulders of a hockey forward, keeping a lid on his temper from the Irish side, smiling with
Cherokee cheekbones, shaking his head of black hair. Forty summers,
and gone. But then nearly every day here was summer and Ross, in
due course the bulk of him scraped up from the westbound lane of Atlantic Boulevard, and the rest of him hosed away—Ross would have
plenty, more than his share in fact, of summer.
They’d reached the orchid room. “All right,” Larry transitioned,
just before they went in. He handed Vilda a floppy-brimmed hat and
black wraparound shades and stuck his hand through and flicked on
the ultraviolets. “Don’t look into the light, children!”
“I’m sorry?”
“Inverted quote from a crappy movie. Seriously. Abide the horizon line.”
Vilda wasn’t especially interested in plants. He was tired and
hungry. His friend Zdenka from trade school back in Jihlava had put
him up at the Tiltin’ Hilton downtown and then made scarce, leaving
Vilda a note at the frayed desk telling him about Larry and how to
find him. Vilda had always been fortunate in contacts. It was Zdenka
who’d encouraged him to move to Prague and then, after Vilda had
finally arrived, announced he was applying for a visa to the States—
and Vilda should, too. But that was Zdenka. The Tiltin’ Hilton, its real
name, was a hostel for backpackers signing on for work cruises to
the Yucatan, youths dropping out at tender ages, and end-of-the-line
winos. Vilda’s first few sleepless days on the third floor of the crumbling Queen Anne with black trash bags taped to the windows, watching the black-and-white TV and learning more phrases, had scared
the bejesus out of him. Out in the hallway, off on the stairs, were
terrible noises: bodily bumbling, heart-rending arguments; even, he
could distinguish quite clearly, actual crying. “My gut’s on fire, licked
by God’s hell-flames!”
Out on Simonton, near the edge of the Greyhound depot lot, a
man hollered and declaimed to himself, to another, several others or
no one: “Hey! You want to know why you can’t find a damn job? It’s
all these undocumented workers pulling in two hundred, three hundred dollars a day under the table, fucking catering!”
At night when the subtropical heat and humidity were thickPage 98
est, not even tearing the trash bags down and opening the windows
helped. He’d go out, squinting against the neon and marquee lights,
milling among the tourists and hoping to catch sight of Zdenka. What
had he done? Left his grandfather, the only person who’d ever cared
about him; forsaken his homeland, which was just now getting under
way with a democratic revival, who knew but maybe a renaissance.
For this?
“Why do you want to go to Prague with those snobs?” his grandfather had said.
“Go to bed, old man. I’ll think about it and tell you my decision
in the morning.”
“Go to Brno, city of Masaryk, of Janacek.”
“Be reasonable. Masaryk and Janacek started in Brno, but then
went to Prague.”
“You have to start somewhere! Where have you started, and with
what?”
They’d quarreled horribly, and now it had appeared that his grandfather was right.
Prague had been the beginning of this, Karlovy Vary the fateful
prelude, and now the concealed switchblade at the tip of the boot of
Florida was going to finish it. America was the end of things, for sure.
It was loud and unhinged only because it was so uptight and ashamed
of itself. Or so Zdenka had said coming to meet Vilda’s flight from
Miami.
Vilda decided he was out on a stroll. Between the subtropical
lushness and the air of abject holiday desperation, the town presented
every form of wanton self-deprecation. On Duval Street, a woman
told her husband to fuck himself and leaned over a trash barrel, spewing a column of vomit. She came up, wiping her mouth. “I mean it.”
He continued on. At the other end, toward the Atlantic side of the
island, a cement-block building issued riotous music, its doors thrown
open to the night. He stopped in a doorway and saw Zdenka, stripped
to the chest, his t-shirt pulled up and tied around his head like a King
Tut headdress, dancing a disco hootchie-kootchie with his head back
having shots of alcohol poured from little plastic medical cups down
his throat by younger men in underwear or their bathing suits. Clearly
he was not now minding his blood sugar. Vilda didn’t wish to disturb
him; neither did he need to go on wondering why in Prague Zdenka
had not minded Vilda’s sleeping in the room with Barbora, his roommate.
Vilda would have been a bad guest back then to complain that
he’d been led down the garden path—how, for instance, could he expect to make a living in Prague as a trade-school dropout?—and he’d
be a piss-poor friend now for judging Zdenka harshly on how Zdenka
found his joy. Larry was scheduled to take off the next day for Tampa,
center of his cable operations—at “the crack of dusk,” as he put it.
There was a guest blackout room.
“This is my rarest rarity, Palm Polly. Gorgeous specimen of epiphyte, original home the Everglades. Isn’t she darling? I do not, repeat, I do not accept cultivars.”
Eventually Larry would be busted by the Feds for trafficking
in protected species. The Everglades, after all, were a sanctuary for
the threatened and the embattled, freaks of nature. He of all people
should’ve known better. Ironically, it was Larry, getting his most intimate there in the orchid room, who had reminded Vilda that it was
a small island, two miles by four, and word here traveled fast—and
never so fast as through the underground. Was the enemy of my enemy my friend or just some starving pre-op?
Vilda was having a hard time concentrating. Larry turned to him
and said, “You look pale, boy. You haven’t fed. What kind of a sorry
host am I? Let’s feed.”
They headed toward Christmas Tree Island, six hundred yards off
the main key, created by the Navy’s dredging the harbor to make way
for trade. Once formed, Christmas Tree Island had originally been
used for a shark-skinning factory, so it was originally Shark Island.
Recently the owners of the tiny bit of land had tried to develop it,
but signatures from all over the city had said no and its beaches were
anchorage for pleasure crafters. Off in the Australian pines, the exotic
that gave it its name, gypsy kids camped there at night, and boated
over at daybreak to beg.
Not Gypsy-gypsies, Larry clarified. The term was a catch-all for
the runaways and rejects Vilda had already been seeing, tribes of them
in the streets. Back home Gypsies were to be despised, but ignored
here. They were young people easy to shun because they looked so
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innocent and seemed to have a future, with fresh hearts beating.
“You’ll see,” Larry said on the way to his tie-up, “the economy of
love in families is like the economy. These kids are the reality, the sad
eventuality of a Ponzi scheme.”
Vilda could smell the putrid grease used to fry seafood and potatoes, hear the Gulf and Western rhythms, good-times music played by
live bands issuing from restaurants.
“Parents talk a good line, why they’re full of love.” Larry strained
down into the skiff, untied it from the cleats. “But, soon as they get
into trouble, they’re pregnant or get AIDS, go to jail, precious goes
out. Where’s precious to go but the road? Half the time the parents of
precious are drunk, hooked, or just too busy. Precious gets tough, and
you’ll see it in their eyes. Looking up at you. Make it about love then.
Why not?”
On the way back, over the drone of the Evinrude through the
old-moon waves, Vilda could just make out Larry’s final admonishments.
“Anything happens after I’m gone,” he’d said, “I’d go for the
pistolet.
“Poignant,” Larry had then added, “that way she trusted you. It
was almost like she got it, like no problem. Yonder’s the backcountry.
Good bonefishing, they say.”
Dianne Aprile
KEEPING RECORDS
The last time we moved the old corrugated boxes, heaving and
hauling them down and up stairs, scooting their weight across carpets
and hardwood floors, it finally hit me.
Marriage is like my mother’s old 78s.
Circular. Fragile. Heavy. Old-fashioned.
Lyrical. Sexy. Scratchy.
Laden with memories. Filled with the blues. All that jazz.
My mother bought her records in the ’40s, before The War, before
marriage and children, before suburbs and subdivisions and stereos
entered her life. She bought them while employed at a music store in
downtown Louisville. More precisely, it was a store that sold records
and men’s ties and silk stockings. It was her livelihood as a single
woman, dating my father, living with her parents, paying her way.
She liked selling records; she liked listening to them and meeting
other people who shared her growing passion for jazz. She bought records the way her girlfriends bought Hershey bars or high heels. She
couldn’t get home fast enough to try them out, devour them.
The ones she liked most were the off-the-record records, the music recorded by black musicians, not usually played in white establishments. “Race records” is what they called them in those days. The
voices spinning off those shimmering discs spoke to her in a language
she was inexorably drawn to: suffering and sorrow, love and loss,
lust and injustice, and at the heart of it all, a full-throttle, fathomless
faith. In the divine, perhaps, but even stronger faith in the body and its
power to wound and heal, like the music called jazz.
When she married, my mother quit working. My dad didn’t like
the idea of her holding a job, paying her way, making acquaintances
he didn’t know. Maybe she was tired of it, too, although I don’t believe she was asked.
Still, she never tired of the music that had seduced her, so early,
so fiercely. She played it throughout my growing up years. It was the
soundtrack to my childhood.
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When 33s replaced 78s, she bought a HiFi, a rich satiny cube of
wood that opened like a jewelry box, whose turntable could accommodate the old heavyweights as well as 33s and the newer, smaller,
lighter 45s.
She played “Strange Fruit” and “St. Louis Blues” and told me
about the juke box operators who leaned against the record-store counter, trying to pick her up, show her a good time. She talked about the
music, the people who sang it, and how the singers of the era—who
all sounded the same to me at the time—were each one distinct from
the other. Scatters. Swingers. The great blues singers. She wanted me
to love the music she loved.
But I liked other singers, simpler tunes. I wasn’t ready for complexity. And then she died.
And no one wanted the records. Not my father. Not my brothers. Each caught up in his own private grief. I asked a friend to help
me haul them out of my father’s house to my apartment. My mother
had stacked them precariously in boxes—some in hard covers, some
in flimsy paper jackets, some as naked and vulnerable as I felt after
she was gone. I can’t remember much about the day we moved the
records from her house to mine.
But I can tell you this: the most common wound to a 78 is the
loss of a chunk of itself from its clean round edge. Like a bite from a
cookie. Like a circle broken.
At my apartment, I kept my mother’s records in a wide hallway
closet and in my basement storage locker. They seemed heavier now
that she was gone, more cumbersome, and yet holding them in my
hands, touching the grooves that still bore her fingerprints, was, I
knew, as close as I could come to grasping who she was.
When I was a child, I liked to open the doors of my mother’s
china cabinets, the ones that housed the dishes she brought out only
on special occasions. The ruby-red decanter, smooth glass etched
in roses, and its six small matching cups. What clues did that longnecked carafe offer to my mother’s hidden self. I opened those doors,
just to stare inside, never to touch, never to hold, simply to witness. A
kind of meditation.
The records were the same for me. But I handled them: so cool to
the touch, that deep dark swirling center I couldn’t fathom. The label
with its mysterious musical icons.
A bluebird. A listening dog. I would look and touch but never
play.
A few years after my mother died, I met the man I later married. He loved jazz, too. I learned that right away. I showed him my
mother’s 78s in the storage locker and in the closet. He shook his head
at my hidden treasure. He drew one unblemished 78 from its brown
wrapper, held it thoughtfully in his hand, let his index finger gently
trace its smooth, curving circumference.
I sensed that he knew then that those records would be a part of
every progression in the lifesong we would create together. I took it
as a sign: he understood I could never part with them; he understood
me.
But a year later, when we moved together to an ancient, elegant
six-plex a mile or so away, he cursed the boxes and the 78s teetering
inside them all the way up from the basement locker, out to the trunk
of the car and up three more flights of stairs to our new place. Less
than two years later, as we packed for a move to our first house, he
balked at the prospect of again hauling boxes of records we hadn’t
touched since the last time we moved them. It was true, I never played
them. But that was not the point. Disheartened, I vowed I would move
them myself. But he joined me in the silent ritual. Down three flights
of stairs to the car, and then up three more flights to the attic of our
“new” Victorian-era house.
I was happy each time the records made the journey safely to
whatever space we were inhabiting.
Two years and a son later, we moved again. The 78s were borne
down from the attic to the car with minimal grumbling, then to the
dark, dank basement of our robin’s egg blue bungalow.
Where they stayed, unplayed, until we remodeled and they had
to be moved.
My mother’s records. They are his history now too. They are my
past become his. They are like marriage, these spinning black holes
of harmony, melody, crescendo and rest. These burdensome brittle
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artifacts of love, of family, of local history, of distant drum beats, of
connections to earth and animal, sorrow and sex, money and passion,
jealousy and betrayal and time spinning spinning spinning.
Our last move was to five wooded acres on a rocky ridge, above
a winding country road—a house blessed with a ground-floor storage
room. It was easy, this time, stowing my mother’s records in a place
of safe-keeping. Our son was old enough by then to help with the
hauling, shouldering his share of the freight.
Before my mother left her record-store job, she saved enough
money to buy bedroom furniture for her marriage to my father. They
slept in her solid maple four-poster all their lives together. They hid
their valuables and stored their secrets in the drawers of the tall bureau. They kept an eye on one another in the mirror above the dresser.
When she died and my father started over again at marriage, no one
wanted the bedroom furniture. I took it to my apartment for safekeeping. Later a brother divorced and found himself in need and took the
bed back. Then my father divorced and remarried and asked to have it
back from my brother who by then was himself remarried.
The bed had value. But no one wanted the records.
Outdated. Old-fashioned. Scratchy. Cumbersome. Laden with
memories. Filled with blues.
I sit sometimes in the house where my twenty-seven-year marriage, in its latest habitat, has been unfolding now for more than a
decade; a house of glass whose windows open up, in waves, to extremes of darkness and light, thunderhead and moonshadow; a home
that, despite its relative youth, sags and tilts and slants and dips and—
who knows—perhaps at night when we’re sleeping, swirls and spins,
trading licks with our dreams, improvising new harmonies, mixing
memory with melody.
Like my mother’s records.
Like marriage.
Timothy Kenny
UNKNOWN ZONE:
RECOLLECTIONS OF A YEAR IN KOSOVO
[i] Blackbirds, 2002
A November dusk in Pristina falls with the certainty of a safe
tossed off a ten-story building. Darkness suddenly snaps down tight,
embedded in the ground. This makes me uneasy as I pick my way
through the broken back streets of Kosovo’s capital, walking under
low-limbed oaks and acacia trees. The quiet is shattered by squawking blackbirds, the “kos” in Serbian that names Kosovo. They clatter
a foot or two above my head. No matter how many times I hear it I am
startled by the rustle of wings so close.
These rowdy blackbirds are descended from those that witnessed
Serbia’s defeat at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in “Kosovo polje,”
the “field of blackbirds” just outside the city. The year was 1389. I
remain half convinced that these birds, waiting with growing impatience in Pristina’s trees, were there and remember it all.
Power cuts will keep the city dark tonight and cold until morning.
Rain threatens to become snow as the temperature drops. Two days
ago on the walk home in the pitch black, I lurched into a piece of
construction rebar sticking out of the sidewalk, some three feet off the
ground. I wear a deep purplish bruise on my stomach. I remain thankful I am not the young man I saw who stumbled into an open manhole
along this same, unnamed street, just catty corner from the unfortunately named Grand Hotel. He glanced over his shoulder at the same
time his right foot stepped into the place where the manhole used to
be, in the middle of a trash-filled traffic median. He threw his arms out
as he fell, saving his face. I have decided to remember the spot.
Two blocks farther on blackbirds now circle overhead in uncountable numbers, dangerous-looking and loud. They fly in that flat, skittish way of birds forming a flock, jerking sideways, then leveling off
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before turning abruptly again, roiling the sky. The sidewalks are full
of people walking quickly, homeward bound; no one looks up at the
unceasing flap overhead. The birds can weigh a pound and look like
ravens or crows but are not, say orthinologists. I stop to buy a twoday-old International Herald Tribune at a kiosk along Apg Street,
across from UN headquarters, hunched behind ten-foot concrete Jersey barriers and razor wire.
On a bright morning not long ago I saw three blackbirds swoop
down on my neighbor from Portugal as she was about to step into
her white Toyota SUV, emblazoned with the letters “UN” in black,
two-foot strokes along the truck’s door. One bird’s wing struck the
top of her head, startling her. As she patted her mussed hair, looking confused and slightly dazed, two other birds swooped low across
the top of her truck, forcing her to duck into her vehicle. She drove
quickly down the hill, the rear wheels of her truck slipping on the wet
cobblestones. She looked shaken.
In Bucharest, where I lived in the early 1990s, the detritus from
tens of thousands of feral dogs had woven a sardonic bon mot into the
city’s social fabric. Romanians laughed at unwary pedestrians who
stepped in the dog crap that littered the city, making sure to say it was
“good luck” as they did so. Kosovars say it is “good luck” to be attacked by blackbirds; I never hear anyone laugh when they say this.
[ii] The thin edge of the wedge
Linda calls my clients at the non-profit organization where I work
and says the following into the telephone:
“This is Linda calling. You must be here at the office at ten o’clock
tomorrow. No later. It cannot be later. You will meet with Tim. You
must come. He is expecting you.”
She hangs up, dials again and repeats the conversation with someone else. She does this five times, then swivels her chair to face me.
She looks satisfied and flashes a tight smile. I’m confused; I’m sure I
look a bit stunned.
“Maybe you should just ask them when they can come. What if
they’re busy at ten?”
Linda, who is twenty-three, lives with her parents and brothers and
sisters in Vushtri, a town just north of Pristina. She smokes cigarettes
and so looks five years older. She wears her hair short and bleaches it
blonde. She has freckles and a sweet, round face and when she laughs,
which is rare, people in the office smile as if they are reminded of a
first kiss. It seems to be music. Linda is five feet, four inches or so and
weighs perhaps 120 pounds. Her name is pronounced “Leenda” and
she is an actress; currently she is playing the part of a secretary.
“They don’t come unless you tell them like this,” she tells me.
“Do you want them to come?” She sounds peeved and has raised her
voice. Shouting is not uncommon in Kosovo. Conversational volume,
which seems to soar the longer people talk, is not done out of anger
but social habit. Linda is talking semi-loudly at the moment.
“We need them to come. I want to get this association started.”
“Well this is the way to do it. Otherwise, they will not come. And
they will all come now because I told them when to come.
“But they will all be late.”
She laughs. Heads turn; people smile.
Linda’s figure makes her unlike most Albanian Kosovar women
her age, who are typically small-boned, short and rail thin. They wear
tight pants, never skirts. I notice this and begin to count the Kosovar
women I see wearing skirts on the streets of Pristina, the most open of
Kosovo’s cities and its largest at 500,000 people.
I see perhaps five women wearing skirts over a period of four
months, summer to early winter. I stop counting there are so few. I
mention this phenomenon to Linda and Lena, another young woman;
both scoff and say I exaggerate. The next day, they are wearing skirts
that come to the top of their knees; they also wear high boots that
come to the bottom of their knees. Nothing but a kneecap shows on
either woman. I tell them this outfit does not count because while it is
technically a skirt they have undermined everything but the utilitarian
value of a skirt.
“Of course it counts,” says Lena, loudly. “It is a skirt!”
We are well into a conversation of rising shouts and rebuttal when
I begin to realize that what started as a small, slightly smart-ass cultural observation on my part is no longer wry or amusing. I am being
a lout. They are losing face, these women who have done nothing to
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me. I am making them look bad in public. I shut up and turn away,
regretting the damage I have done. It is too late.
Long memory is a cultural certainty in Kosovo.
[iii] Peeling the onion
[The average age in Kosovo is twenty-five; the average income is
eighteen hundred dollars a year. Unemployment is forty-five percent,
but estimated at twenty points higher among people fifteen to thirty
years old. Kosovars live on money sent from relatives working abroad
and the underground economy. “Look,” Ibrahim Rexhepi, economics
editor for the newspaper “Koha Ditore” told me, “we have people
who rent their houses. We have alcohol smuggling, we have cigarette
smuggling, arms smuggling, the transit of drugs through Kosovo,
gasoline smuggling and the trafficking of people. This is the underground economy.”]
Tonight’s gloom brings a determined silence to Pristina. The rain
has turned to a light driving snow that glitters in the headlights of
passing traffic; it stings our faces as we wait for the bus, coat collars
turned against a sharp wind. Kiosk men stand nearby in the doorways of their stalls, built of corrugated sheet metal along the edge
of the broken sidewalk. The small spaces hold shelves of bootlegged
CDs, DVDs and black market cigarettes smuggled into Kosovo from
Macedonia and Albania and beyond. Business is slow in this early
evening; what few customers there are seem more intent on staying
dry than shopping as they wait for the bus.
Tomorrow is a holiday, the day before Ramadan begins, and no
one will work. My bus is late, which is rare. I step across the street
for a macchiato full of sugar and whipped milk, a reprieve from the
blowing snow.
The first child to approach me is a girl of perhaps 8; she has dark
brown hair and dark eyes and cheeks that are pink from the cold.
She has learned the value of a smile and a bit of English. She wears
a sweater but no coat or hat and carries four packages of gum in her
right hand. She thrusts it at me: “Gum?”
Usually when this happens, which is all the time, I shake my head
no. Lord knows where this gum came from or who made it, even
though it may look German or English or American. Today, I buy
two of her four packages for half a euro. She does not smile after the
sale or say thank you, but methodically walks through the restaurant,
holding her remaining gum at eye level in front of the men smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee; no one else buys. She slips out
the door, letting in the cold, dank air and the roar and smell of the
gasoline-powered generator that sits on the sidewalk outside, keeping
this small place alive.
A boy of about ten steps inside, walking from table to table carrying an open cardboard box on his hip, filled with cigarettes. He says
nothing but looks me in the eye. He knows instantly that I do not want
his Marlboros. Before I can say, “I don’t smoke,” he is on his way,
keeping a smooth and steady rhythm as he walks to the next table and
the next and is ignored or waved off each time before he moves out
the door, expressionless.
These children have come and gone in perhaps forty-five seconds.
Short minutes later another boy about the same age comes in selling
cigarettes, repeating the pattern once again in the fifteen minutes I
wait for the bus.
Children spend hours every day walking across the city, selling. So do teenage boys and young men who make their own endless rounds across Pristina from restaurant to bar and café and back,
peddling plastic cards that carry telephone minutes for local mobile
phones. I never see girls older than perhaps ten selling anything in
this way.
Kosovo is a secular Muslim place with inviolate rules.
Teuta is my landlady. She lives downstairs with her husband, two
sons and mother-in-law. I cannot convince her to turn on the heat in
my apartment. The temperature hovers near the thirties at night. The
windowpanes are frosted some mornings and occasionally, just before
dawn, I think I can see my breath when I wake up. I am warm under
blankets at night but at nineteen hundred dollars a month in rent I
want heat. Still, Teuta will not budge. It is not time to turn on the heat
in Pristina, Teuta explains patiently. She will not be swayed. I meet
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with Dafina, the young rental agent who found my apartment. I tell
her the problem.
“I see. Talk to the husband, Ylber.”
“Ylber? Teuta is the one who rents the apartment. I have never
spoken to Ylber, other than to say hello.”
“Talk to Ylber. Explain it to him. He will tell her to turn on the
heat.”
“You think this will work?”
“Of course. She will obey him. She must.”
“She must?”
“He is the man.”
Dafina looks at me with a mixture of curiosity and surprise. She
cocks her head slightly, wrinkling her otherwise smooth brow. Dafina
is twenty-one and has always lived in Pristina. We shake hands before
she walks away. It is a polite, businesslike handshake.
Dafina lives nearby and I see her frequently at the foot of the
long and gradual hill that runs to my apartment, waiting to catch the
bus to the OSCE office where she translates documents from English
into Albanian. As time goes on, she greets me with a wide smile and
a handshake that I have seen repeated each day in Kosovo. With her
right arm pulled back parallel to the ground, she opens her hand and
brings it forward quickly, so her hand makes a sharp, slapping sound
as it meets mine. We do not hold this handshake, but drop it immediately after one tight pump. Young men greet each other this way; so
do women and men of any age. I once saw a woman of seventy or so
shake hands this way with a boy who was perhaps twelve, slapping
hands with a loud and determined effort. They stood and chatted in
the street for long minutes and seemed to know each other well. The
boy sauntered off later with a wave. They never touched each other
again.
[iv] Comfort in a town of lonely men
In the outer waiting room of the Thai massage parlor three women in their twenties sit and chat quietly. There are always three young
women sitting in the corner, waiting for another international to walk
in and ask for a massage. Only internationals can afford to come
here.
The massage parlor sits on the top floor of a two-story, Sovietstyle building that houses the gym where I work out. I found it by
accident one evening, stumbling up broken concrete steps just off the
street, looking for a restaurant. I caught myself as I pitched forward
near the top step; in front of me was a small sign someone had painted
on a closed and locked glass door: Thai Massage. It gave the hours
and days of operation in English, 10 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a
week. The waiting room, visible through the door, was Spartan but
looked clean. I asked the young Kosovar man who runs the gym about
the massage place.
“It is ok, don’t worry,” he says, smiling.
“It looks like a cat house. You know, prostitutes. Why are you
laughing?”
“No, no, no. It is fine.” He laughs harder.
“Have you been there?”
“No, it is too expensive.”
“Then how do you know it is ok?”
“These guys,” he says, holding his hands out, palms up, gesturing
with an expansive flourish at the ten or so cops from across Western
Europe and the United States who are lifting weights in the gym, cold
and unheated except for two space heaters at each end.
“Did they ever investigate? Look into it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Check to see if the massage place is a whore house.”
“No, no, no. These guys they say they want a whore house.” He
laughs again and rubs his hands together. “Then they say it is not a
whore house. They are not happy.” More laughter.
This guy has no reason to lie to me. He also knows I know where
to find him.
The waiting room at the Thai massage parlor has couches along
two walls and a coat rack in a corner and a long, low box that is sectioned off to hold shoes. The walls are empty; two of them are glass
and separate the mall corridor from the waiting room. There is a small
desk with a drawer that holds money. A young Asian woman wearing
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sweat pants and a t-shirt sits behind the desk. She looks up when I
knock to get her attention and comes over and looks at me through the
glass door. She does not smile but unlocks the door.
“Massage?”
“Yes.”
She opens the door and points to the shoebox, which holds two
large pairs of men’s shoes. The place is silent. Two other young women look up with the feigned disinterest of Asian women who have
perfected the art of seeing without looking.
“Take off shoes.”
I stack mine in an empty spot in the box.
“You come.”
She gestures with her hand, this slight woman who is neither
pretty nor ugly, more childish than womanly. I follow her down a
narrow hallway that has been created from a larger room, her sandals
slapping loudly against the tile floor and the soles of her bare feet. On
either side of this corridor are cubicles perhaps eight feet by ten feet,
partitioned by dark curtains. They sit on a platform about eighteen
inches off the floor. There is no smell here. Light shines from a small,
bare bulb at the end of the hallway. The unremitting whine of a generator bounces off the concrete walls outside the lobby.
My escort pulls back the curtain from one of the cubicles and
points to dark cotton pajamas, freshly laundered and neatly folded.
“Put on,” she says, and walks slowly and loudly to the front lobby. An
eruption of high, girlish giggling explodes after the door closes. The
giggling makes me less anxious; giggling means mockery, not plans
to rob me.
I step up into the cubicle, which glows from a night light at the
back. I take off my clothes and slip on the pajamas, which smell like
laundry soap and are roomy. I wait. I do not know the rules here,
which keeps me off balance and alert in this sparse, darkened place
that is silent except for a radio down the hall playing eighties music.
My wallet is wrapped tightly inside my jeans and placed near my
head. The curtains slide apart and another young woman, not the one
who brought me here, looks up and smiles.
She holds a bowl of water and a towel and soap and gestures for
me to put my feet into the bowl. She washes them in the warm water,
running her soapy fingers between my toes and massages the soles of
my feet a bit, then dries them on the small towel. She orders me to the
back of the cubicle with a distracted wave.
“Where are you from?” I ask compulsively.
“Um, okay . . . where I from now?” She laughs. She says Bangkok and tells me her name is Noi.
“How did you get to be here? In Kosovo, I mean?” As I ask these
pointless questions, this small young woman is twisting my legs in
slightly painful ways that later prove relaxing.
“You relax,” she orders. “Relax now. It okay.”
No one has touched me for weeks except to shake hands. It is
comforting to be coddled and stroked again, as if I mattered. I ask her
again about coming to Pristina.
“My brother here.” She giggles.
Noi and I establish an understanding as time goes on, founded on
the strict rules of commerce and comfort. We ask each other no questions. She remembers who I am after several visits. I never tell her my
name; she does not ask. I begin to tip well. She massages carefully
and is far stronger than she appears. Her hands do not stray or linger
where they should not; she never asks if I want special services.
From across the corridor one early evening, no more than four
feet away, we hear for long minutes a young woman’s voice, flirting,
cajoling, insistent. She speaks uncertain English to someone we do
not hear respond. I suppose it is a man. I have only seen men here,
if I see anyone at all. Long minutes of silence are finally broken by
a woman’s rhythmic panting. It is the unmistakable sound of quickening sexual activity, a growing crescendo that turns louder by the
second. It sounds to me like someone pretending. It is Sunday, a dark,
late-fall afternoon.
“What is that?” I ask Noi.
“What?”
“You know what.”
She giggles, then falls silent. Noi is pounding my back, her hands
held together in what might, under other circumstances, appear to be
prayer. Her hands make a clapping sound when she strikes me.
“You need a woman.”
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A single man living alone, I do not deny this; I say nothing.
[v.] Avoid Novosibirsk in late fall
An American cop from St. Louis lifts weights with fearful effort
at my gym. He is five feet, nine inches or so but exceedingly strong.
I see him bench press 250 pounds and squat 325 pounds, as much
weight as the gym has available. We grunt “hey” at each other as time
goes on, occasionally exchanging brief remarks of no importance. He
lifts alone. His disposition, never sunny but at least civil, is turning
tighter as the days shorten.
Unlike most other cops here—and there are hundreds working
for the United Nations as trainers for the Kosovo police force—he
never comes in with anyone. He asks me one evening to take photos
of him as he strikes bodybuilder poses. I feel odd but don’t want to
say no. First he strikes a “Mr. Atlas,” the classic pose first made popular by bodybuilder Charles Atlas, as advertised in the back of Boys
Life magazine. His arms stretch wide, parallel to the ground, bent at
the elbows; his biceps strain. This pose is followed by a leg shot that
stresses his quads and finally, the Hulk Hogan, which pops out his
massive chest and shoulder muscles, bulging the carotid vein on his
neck and turning his face a bright scarlet.
I’d say he’s an average-looking man, perhaps thirty-six or thirtyseven years old, balding with a shaved head. He looks ridiculous in
the photos, which are not very good. I don’t know what to say now
that we’re through. People in the gym have stopped shooting sideways glances at us.
“Any particular reason you want these?”
“I’m sending them to this girl. She’s Russian.”
“Really? She’s here? In Kosovo?”
“No, Russia. From Novobirsky.”
“Novobirsky?”
“Something like that.”
“Novosibirsk?”
“Yeah. That’s it. I’m going to go see her. I’ll bring her picture next
time and show it to you. She’s seriously hot.”
To get to Novosibirsk from Pristina means a flight to western EuThe Louisville Review | Page 115
rope, probably Frankfurt or Zurich, then onto Moscow, then Novosibirsk. With layovers it’s probably a twenty-hour trip from here and
will cost something on the order of fifteen hundred dollars.
“How do you know this girl?”
“Internet. We’ve been e-mailing for a while. She just sent me her
picture.”
“So these pictures are for her?”
“Yeah.”
I don’t know what to say, so I say nothing and we go our separate
ways. When I see him again at the gym weeks later he looks drawn,
thinner.
“Hey, how was the trip?” I have to ask him because of the photos.
Besides, this thing was a train wreck waiting to happen. I want to
know.
“Ah, you know. It was all right.”
I can’t help myself: “Did you go to Novosibirsk?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“And…?”
“Eh, you know. It didn’t work out that well. Turns out she was
married.”
He turns his back to me and puts more weight on the bar.
I grunt, grimace, nod, then wander off to work out. I see this policeman once or twice more. I find out later he returned to St. Louis
before his year was up.
[vi.] Balkan street theater
OSCE headquarters stands up the street from the café where I am
finishing my coffee, across from the bus stop and the empty kiosks. I
watch as Serbs from Mitrovica, a northern city split by the Iber River,
file onto a bus just outside the headquarters. They are mostly women,
a bit taller and heavier than Albanian Kosovars. They have come to
Pristina to work for good salaries in clean offices. They are carefully
guarded, tended to, brought safely by bus to and from their homes in
the northern part of Kosovo where Serbs can live without razor wire
or armed men around their houses.
It is Balkan street theater that reminds me of the Deep South in
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the 1960s, when black and white Freedom Riders from the North sat
through long bus rides to integrate the American South. But these
people, these Serbs, are only workers going home, commuters afraid
to drive alone in their own cars from one end of the Kosovo countryside to the other. Their bus leaves. My bus arrives. I scramble across
the street in time to board. It’s crowded and I stand the two miles or
so to my stop, at the foot of the hill that runs up to the Taslixhe district
where I live. The blackbirds are silent, gone to roost in the untended
woods of a park about a quarter of a mile below my house. This onceloud November night has quieted, muffled by falling snow. Pristina is
peaceful, almost pretty.
[vii] Taslixhe at night
From the balcony of my apartment I can see the Sar Mountains
that separate Kosovo from Albania and Macedonia, running just to
the south. At night, feral dogs roam the cobbled streets of my district
in the hills. They snarl and fight in packs outside my apartment, triggering wild barking from neighborhood dogs set out each night to
keep their homeowners safe.
“Dogs?” says Teuta, my landlady. “I do not hear them at all. No.
Not at all.”
I find this hard to believe and fill a paper bag with fist-sized rocks
that I keep on my balcony. When the barking wakes me in the middle
of the night I rush to the balcony and hurl rocks down at the pack of
dogs like Zeus letting loose thunderbolts. The rocks usually clatter
harmlessly off the cobblestones of the street and rattle down the hill,
but scatter the dogs. Once I heard a dog yelp in pain after I threw a
rock into the street below.
Ylber and Teuta, who have two boys 11 and 8 years old, never
say a word to me about the ruckus they must surely hear at night.
Occasionally, when I go away for a weekend, the boys sneak into
my apartment and rummage around. They go through my drawers
and listen to Moby on my CD player and snap pictures of each other
with my disposable camera. When the prints come back I find shots
of them mugging in photos I had not taken. Nothing ever seemed to
be missing except the rocks, which always disappear. I believe Teuta
brings the boys up when she comes to check on the place. I do not
mention this to her or ask about the rocks, which I replace.
[viii] Cluster bombs hang from trees
Germia Park sits just three miles or so up the road from my apartment; this autumn it looks dry and dusty, its empty half-acre swimming pool broken by cracks, the grime of wear. On weekends when
I walked through the park’s hills I occasionally come across a team
of former British soldiers who tell me they have disarmed eighty-two
landmines and cluster bombs left from the 1999 NATO air attack.
Signs in Albanian and English warn hikers about the danger of unexploded ordinance, urging the good sense to stay on cleared paths. I
find myself turned around once in a while, walking on paths deep in
the woods that may not be cleared.
Very little of a landmine sticks up above the ground, which worries me. I see what I think are cluster bombs hanging in trees and
promise to tell the Brits next time I see them.
I come upon a man firing a handgun at a target he had set up several yards away. He is large and imposing. He looks at first like one
of the scores of Europeans and Americans who work as UN police
officers. His nationality is unclear. We look at each other from fifteen
yards. He holds the handgun in his right hand and says nothing. With
the back of his left, he slowly motions me to walk away, a man used
to giving orders.
It is not clear whether he is concerned for my safety or ordering
me away.
But then, nothing is ever very clear in Kosovo.
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Christopher Lirette
THE THRILL OF CHOREOGRAPHED VIOLENCE
Lights out. Two monster men and a masked luchador in the ring.
Although we know what’s next, we giddily hold our breath. A flutter
of ecstatic and female moans comes over the speakers and a voice
we have been listening to for twenty years: I think I’m cute. I know
I’m sexy. He enters with his music. Without warning I am on my feet,
and the crowd surrounding me drowns out Shawn Michael’s entrance
theme. Because this is a non-televised show, a house show, there are
no pyrotechnics. But we know his entrance swagger the way we know
the particular gestures of family members. He jogs to the beginning
of the main aisle through the seats and drops to his knees as soundless
words trickle through his lips. He jumps into a pose, sitting deep in
a straddle lunge, chest puffed out, biceps in a contortion of strength.
Then he rises, clasping hands with the crowd on the way to the ring in
a strut to shame Mick Jagger. This is what we paid to see.
We had been watching midcard talent all night. In other words,
wrestlers who would never wear the coveted World title, who filled
the show with feuds and grudge matches and squabbles over the less
prestigious championships. Because this show was not televised, the
only story arcs were within the wrestlers’ bodies, their movements
piling against one another in a demolition ballet. The babyface heroes sustain damage until their bodies crumple under the weight of
the villains. The hero, amped up by the crowd’s enthusiasm, makes
a triumphant comeback despite all odds. Finally a tragic or valiant
finish arrives that is as spectacular as it is brutal—the loser prone
and manhandled, concussed, winded, surprised, the victor bold or
crafty, but always swollen with victory. The outcomes are decided in
advance by bookers and storytellers, so when a wrestler wins, he is
actually “booked” to win. But this fact no more dissolves our suspension of disbelief than does the knowledge that a Shakespearian play
is scripted. At least wrestling does not expose the outcome before the
matches.
Shawn Michaels, who began his career in singles competition
(one on one matches) in the early 90s, stole the show. Twenty-five
years ago, he began as a cocky pretty boy, a type of conniving hair
rocker that any testosterone-drunk teenage male, not to mention all
the blue collar men who made up wrestling’s demographic in the early nineties, would want to beat the snot out of. Or at least, that’s what
Michaels’s company, the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment,
then known as the WWF), thought. And over twenty years, he has
played both good guy and bad, but his gimmick has been more or less
the same: prankster, ladies’ man, underdog scrapper, showstopper.
Throughout, we never stopped loving him. Even when he was stoned
on percocets and trashing hotel rooms, we loved him. Even when he
betrayed wrestling’s most upright good guy, Bret Hart, by changing
a booking midmatch to cost Hart the title, we wanted him. And here,
forty-three years old and bare-chested, in front of a thousand fans on
a Sunday night, he was our hero.
When I was a kid, there was nothing so fun and fulfilling as beating the shit out of my younger brother. Sure, he was half my age and
size, but that didn’t stop me from suffering him to sustain suplex after
suplex. He’d have done the same to me if I’d been the smaller one,
and he bore me no malice for my aggression. Occasionally, I would
book him to win, enlivening our feuds. And when we would switch
to projectile weapons—Nerf and the like—we were equals. Our father gave no privilege to age when teaching us how to aim household
arms: bb guns, bows, shotguns.
We never boxed each other with bare fists; we never had a real
gunfight. When wrestling, we never sought to hurt each other, except
to give the impression we had. These matches were always contrived,
were never based on “real life” animosity. That could get you hurt and
punished. Most of our bouts headlined the trampoline in our backyard
or our secondhand, sandy pool. Neither of us were prodigies in terms
of strength or athletic precision, but with gravity taken out of the picture, we were technical gods. Aided by the buoyancy of the swimming pool, I could lift my brother over my head, flipping him so that
his back was facing forward, and crash him to the water back-first, a
perfect imitation of the “powerbombs” I saw on TV. When I carried
my brother on my shoulder, however, he could counter with a head
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scissors lock into a hurricanrama, flipping me by the neck into the
water while he landed and resurfaced gracefully. Although we never
consciously denounced wrestling as fake, we intuited it, knowing that
these moves were only possible in extreme circumstances: for us, the
pool was a strength equalizer. In professional wrestling, the opponent
must allow these moves and cooperate in their execution for them to
work.
Our fights were rehearsals of violence, pantomimes we could enact to release aggression. There was always a narrative, both in the
suite of actions and the context in which a bout progressed. Narrative
played master to all our activities as children. We would slam plastic
action figures into themselves while croaking pithy lines, imitating
the movies we were allowed to watch if we had done a week’s worth
of chores. We played video games and became engrossed in those
fictional worlds, even when away from the screen. Likewise, our
matches were always grudge matches, filthy with history. It would be
heels and babyfaces, scoundrels and heroes. Although on home turf
we were always rivals, when neighborhood kids and cousins visited,
we were a highflying tag-team, taking all comers in our territory.
Today, you hear of kids paralyzing each other, piledriving themselves into permanent spinal chord injury and jumping off of roofs
during their reenactments of professional wrestling. For us, it was
never like that. As when playing with action figures, our moves were
improvised but nevertheless relied on cooperation and communication to tell a story. In fact, there was no way for my ten year old body
to execute a correct and harmless snap suplex to a writhing, unwilling
six year old. I simply wasn’t that tough. We arranged cues, certain
holds or code words that I fed him so that he could prepare himself.
Very rarely, when in the pool or trampoline, were there injuries. If we
took the brawl to the living room or our bunk beds, that was a different story. Bony kid elbows invariably knocked against the frames of
furniture. Our fingers would be jammed falling the wrong way into a
pile of cushions. It was easier to accidentally deliver a crippling low
blow.
Physical violence was never the goal for our play. Instead it was a
medium for the stories our prepubescent bodies longed to tell: stories
of triumph and defeat, of honor and villainy, of trust and betrayal—
stories that resonate with boys of a certain age. To partake in the narrative, we had to rely on each other to make what we were doing seem
as real and probable as possible. We also had to make sure no one got
hurt. I am certainly not saying that wrestling taught us trust at such an
age. We fought like any other sibling pair separated by four years but
sharing quarters. And I’m sure my brother resented me for knocking
him around and forcing him to participate in my obsession with wrestling. I also did not grow up to be a trusting or cooperative person. I
don’t work well in groups at all. But for us to not alert our parents by
way of a pained cry, we had to get along in our stylized violence.
As in jazz, where musicians know how a solo will begin and end
but must improvise between according to conventions and taste, professional wrestlers know the context of a match and how the match
will end. But the rest—the ups and downs of a physical contest that
will result in a certain fashion—is decided by the performers themselves, mostly during the actual match. Sequences the wrestlers map
out in advance are called spots; they are points in the match that require precise timing, seem coincidental, and are usually moments of
extreme and enthralling athleticism. When a wrestler counters a throw
with a gravity-defying drop kick that comes from nowhere, you can
be sure it was talked about before the match. But getting to that point
is nimble work. The two competitors must know the other’s body, its
tendencies, and the traditional way a match is structured. These factors must come together seamlessly to preserve believability.
The phrase “choreographed violence” is somewhat misleading.
The choreography of wrestling is a free-floating set of moves that
can follow other moves. It is the shifting palette of the artist, the mutable vocabularies and grammars of the writer. The rules must be internalized and often broken. This is evident in watching a “by-thebooks” match: the moves are entirely predictable. After watching a
few matches, it becomes clear what the rules of wrestling are, what
fashions reign.
A notable example of a by-the-books wrestler, and probably the
most famous wrestler of all time, is Hulk Hogan. He comes out fierce
in his clothes-ripping physique and his terrifying height. At some
point in the match, his opponent catches or counters him and delivPage 122
ers a mind-blowing beating, a beating so bad you wonder why you
were a Hulk fan to begin with. After this goes on for some time, Hulk
finds himself in a submission move, usually a sleeper hold, where the
energy of the crowd begins to course through his veins as he vibrates
himself back to his feet. Hulk then points at his opponent as the crowd
shouts with him: You! Then, without further ado, he counters a few
punches from the now flabbergasted opponent and finishes him off
with a leg drop.
While this match is fun in a nostalgic way and it surely tells a
story, it is about as compelling as a computer-written detective novel.
But Hulk can get away with it. No one can top his charisma, his zany
speeches given during “promos” (the monologues of shit-talking a
wrestler does to hype his match), or his ridiculous genetics. As in
all genres of art, some pieces are comforting in their conservatism.
Others, however, can transcend the rules in which they were written, creating something new, traversing the limits of imagination. And
wrestling’s top man in this category is Shawn Michaels.
Foremost, Michaels is well-versed in wrestling convention. He
has a fit, muscular body, and though he is probably under six feet tall
and hovering just over two hundred pounds (announcers tend to “bill”
wrestlers about three or four inches taller than they are and at whatever weight is trendy), he never seems too small to take on the big men
like Hulk (who is over six feet six and nearing three hundred pounds).
This is because he is gracefully aggressive, proficient in a variety of
wrestling styles: amateur (mat wrestling, what you see at the Olympics), lucha libre (a variety from Mexico that features acrobat jumps
and sensational throws such as the hurricanrama), brawling, mixed
martial arts (caged prize fighting, abbreviated MMA, and exemplified
by the company Ultimate Fighting Championship), as well as classic
old school professional wrestling (flying elbows and piledrivers and
clothesline punches). In addition, Michaels is a great actor. When he
lands on his back after getting caught in a back body drop, you are
never sure that he didn’t actually break himself and that wrestling
wasn’t real violence all along. When blood drips down his face, you
can never be certain whether he jigged himself—cut his forehead with
a tiny bit of a razor taped to his wrist for that occasion—or whether
he busted himself open on the fist of his opponent. And when his opThe Louisville Review | Page 123
ponent walks into Michaels’s finisher, a superkick that lands beneath
the jaw, it is as if justice has finally been meted out. On the mic,
he is smooth and charismatic, never hilariously incoherent like Hulk
Hogan or the Ultimate Warrior, but never as righteous and stiff as
his long term rival (both in real life and in the wrestling world), Bret
Hart. When Michaels plays the good guy, there is no one to root for
but him. And when he turns heel, Michaels becomes so despicable
you want to rise out of your seat yourself and set him straight with a
steel chair. The combination of these skills and their natural execution
makes you wonder whether the man in the ring is not Shawn Michaels
masquerading as himself.
If his virtuosic talent weren’t enough, Shawn Michaels is also
wrestling’s great innovator. In 1993, while holding the Intercontinental Championship, Michaels tested positive for steroids (which
he maintains is bullshit). As a result, he was stripped of his title. He
refused to return the gold studded belt to Vince McMahon, the owner
of the WWE. In effect, he forced the company to mint a new belt for
the new champion, Razor Ramon. When his suspension was lifted,
Michaels returned to action carrying his old championship belt. Eventually, after a six month feud, Michaels and Ramon fought in a ladder
match: the two belts were hung above the ring, and whoever could
reach the top of the ladder and remove the belts first was declared
the undisputed champion. This match, held at Wrestlemania X (pro
wrestling’s answer to the Superbowl), is now regarded as one of the
best of all time. After watching its twenty minutes of cringe inducing falls from tall ladders and constant false finishes, you see why. It
was something the crowd had never witnessed—believable and rich
in the traditions of wrestling, but simultaneously different, entirely
different.
Michaels was also the main perpetrator of the most notorious
event in wrestling history, the Montreal Screwjob. The heavyweight
champion was Bret Hart. Hart is stiff on the mic, but in terms of inring ability and the mastery of match psychology, there may never be
another wrestler as talented. In the midnineties, with the trend toward
a more adult-oriented product, he fell out of favor with the audience.
He negotiated a contract with WWE’s chief rival at the time, WCW
(World Championship Wrestling, then owned by Ted Turner, now by
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the WWE). Traditionally, a departing wrestler will drop the championship before jumping ship, no hard feelings. There were, however,
hard feelings back stage between Michaels and Hart. Michaels was
arrogant and young and basically refused to lose to Hart. Hart, on
the other hand, refused to lose in Canada, though he was booked to
drop the title to Shawn in Montreal. After hearing his case, Vince
McMahon agreed to let Hart keep the title, provided he drop it before
leaving the company. McMahon and Michaels, however, had a secret
agreement to go along with the original plan. So in 1996, as Shawn
Michaels applied a submission maneuver, the sharpshooter (which
was Hart’s signature move), to Bret Hart, the referee rang the bell.
Hart had not submitted, but the referee handed Michaels the title, then
promptly hauled ass out of town. Michaels denied responsibility for
this until Hart was out of the company, as instructed by McMahon,
who wanted all the immediate blame for himself. This event marked
the entry of wrestling into the postmodern.
Michaels had to continually one-up himself in terms of performance and narrative to maintain his role as an innovator. And he rose
to the challenge mightily. From forming a renegade stable of wrestlers
known as D-Generation X who sophomorically made fun of the business of wrestling and refused to take themselves seriously, to landing
lionsaults and sunset flips despite his doctors’ claims that he would
never wrestle again due to severe back and knee injuries, Michaels
refused to sacrifice his integrity as a wrestling artist.
In a match in 2006 at Wrestlemania XXII, Michaels faced his
own boss, Vince McMahon, in a no-holds-barred match. After an up
and down bout with outside interference from other wrestlers, kendo
sticks, McMahon’s son Shane, and steel chairs, the crowd, swollen
with tension after finally seeing McMahon (the boss is always a villain) get his desserts, would have been satisfied to see Michaels’s finisher followed by a pin. Instead, Michaels stuffed Vince into a steel
garbage can and laid him on a table (conveniently in the ring at the
moment). He pulled out a ten foot ladder, set it up, and climbed to
the top. As he looked out at the crowd on its feet, he shook his head.
Thinking he had a change of heart, that he must have decided this
action is way too extreme, the crowd sighed as Michaels descended
the ladder and left the ring. But then, Michaels pulled another ladder
from beneath the ring and set it up. This one sixteen feet tall. As he
looked around before making his climb, a glint of clarity shone from
his eyes, and his lips broke into a strange smile: Yes, I can’t believe
I’m doing this either.
Wrestling may be the only remaining child of the performing arts
that still enjoys a wide, live audience. Theatre has been all but replaced by cinema. Performances of dance are limited to big cities
and children’s academies. The record for the most people gathered at
an indoor event is held by Wrestlemania III in Detroit where 93,173
people watched Hulk Hogan body slam André the Giant. The most
recent Wrestlemania, number twenty-five, brought over seventy-five
thousand people into Reliant Stadium in Houston. Those people are
certainly coming to watch something.
This is the element of spectacle, but also the blend of scripted outcomes with ad-libbed, creative violence. Though wrestling is as artificial as the sentiments expressed in a poem, relying on structures and
tropes to communicate, there is something undeniably human about
the struggle between two bodies in contest with one another. Perhaps
it is because the mind-body duality disappears in a struggle. Perhaps
it is because the basic narrative is simple. Perhaps it is because that
simple framework knows no bounds in expression, that it is endlessly
possible to innovate, to experiment in front of fans who will immediately tell you if what you are doing pleases them. And it is all this
under the guise of rehearsed violence, a type that is impractical and
surreal, but a violence that can drag an audience to its feet.
You may still be skeptical about professional wrestling. I am a reserved person and rarely flinch or well up with emotion for the things
I see. But when I watched Shawn Michaels mouth, I’m sorry. I love
you, as he ended the thirty-year career of Ric Flair with two kicks
to the face at Wrestlemania XXIV, I nearly cried. The live events I
have attended in my life include plays, poetry readings, ballets, concerts, and recitals, but mostly, my standing ovations were after the
performance and, more often than not, were forced. Even watching
live sports, I am rarely affected by the hysteria of team loyalty and
competition. But that night in Baton Rouge, as Shawn Michaels and
his partner Rey Mysterio finally caught the upper hand over their opPage 126
ponents and set them up for their well choreographed sequence of
finishing moves, I stood in concert with the crowd. Until that moment,
never in my life was I moved to stand on my folding chair in the midst
of the performance and scream until I was afraid of bleeding.
Susan Finch
HAPPY HOUR
“We are in a state of honeymoon, in our honey month. These words
are so sweet: honey, moon. This bed is so big we could live on it. We have
been happily marooned—honey marooned—on this bed for days.”
–Kelly Link, Stranger Things Happen
The Imperials are only free for an hour, and we’re determined to
take advantage. We drink like survivors, the greedy, like we’re tottering on the edge of a bender. Bottles hide our table, tallying our scores,
until the waitress takes them away and we lose count. We clink the
brown glass together, and we toast anything—we’re in a toasting
mood; it’s the last night of our honeymoon, after all.
We’ve spent two weeks in Costa Rica, and tomorrow we fly home
to collect our new dishware, write thank you notes, and begin official
married life. We’ve traveled well, planned little, stopped where we
pleased. Tonight we opt for convenience, a hotel close to the airport,
one with a familiar name—the Best Western. The hotel offers these
amenities free-of-charge: an airport shuttle, a breakfast at the adjacent
Denny’s, and a happy hour from five to six in the hotel bar. We’re paying more to stay at this hotel than we have for any other, and we’re
determined to get our money’s worth.
The bar is in the lobby, bordering the gift shop and the shuttle
stop, and every wall around us boasts flyers for an 80’s night beginning at eight. It’s a horseshoe bar with two enormous televisions and
a dozen or so tables scattered around it. We sit at one of the satellite
tables nearly in the corridor. Guests walk past us, my idea of typical American tourists: caucasian, chubby, sporting comfortable white
sneakers and Costa Rican mementos. Their shirts have the Imperial
beer logo stitched to the front and the back, Costa Rica’s finest lager, and their hats say, “Pura Vida!” the motto the guidebooks claim
the local Ticas live by. Tourists file into the hotel, dragging bags and
children behind them, and I feel like we’re already back in the United
States, that our honeymoon is over. I begin to wonder whether this
hotel was a mistake.
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We people-watch in our aluminum seats and recline with our
bottles dangling from drowsy fingertips. I’m more drunk than I think
I am, and I’m feeling judgmental, feisty. On the television over the
bar, a documentary about America’s tallest buildings focuses on the
Sears Tower. The program is in English with Spanish subtitles, and I
can barely hear it. We’re not the only ones taking advantage of happy
hour. Two kinds of couples fill the tables next to us: business travelers in crisp, tailored suits or frumpy tourists in their wrinkled t-shirts
and shorts. The documentary gets me thinking about America, too-tall
buildings, tomorrow’s flight, and September 11. I’m thinking about
plane crashes. I’m free-associating, but my husband is drunk too and
somehow he understands.
“God, what an awful way to die,” I say. “They must have been
so scared.” We discuss United Flight 93, the one that crashed in an
empty cornfield in Pennsylvania.
“Don’t you think the government had something to do with it?”
my husband asks. He suggests the military shot the plane down to
protect the White House and that the heroic Americans who overtook
the terrorists were an exaggerated fantasy spun by the media. “At
least consider the possibility,” he insists.
But I don’t want to consider it, I don’t want to imagine it, and I
don’t want to listen. “Here we go. It’s all a conspiracy.” I roll my eyes.
“You read so much into everything.”
Our conversation bucks and rolls, sometimes jumping from one
point to another with no logical thought. Sometimes we listen but
more often we shout over one another. The tables around us clear
out one-by-one as our voices become more slurred, more hysterically
loud.
“You can be so naïve,” my husband tells me, leaning back in his
chair.
“Well, you sound like a crazy person on the street corner!” I wave
my pointed finger in his face. I’m not joking. I’m filled with rage in
this moment as if I even know what I’m defending—American heroes, our government, a side of an argument I didn’t really believe?
“I think happy hour is over,” he says. We look around; the other
tables are empty silver circles. My husband suggests we go to dinner,
but I’m still angry. Angry for a reason I can’t express. It could be the
beer or my frustration at not being agreed with or understood. Either
way, I want to cry, and I can’t explain it.
My mother claims that certain things will put a marriage to the
test: picking out a Christmas tree, moving in together, and travelling,
especially with children. Our fight on the last night of our honeymoon
makes me feel panicked, makes me wonder how we’ll ever get along
if we can’t in the presence of free drinks.
My husband and I walk out into the cool night in search of food.
He’s calm, joking, laughing at my wobbly walk. He takes my arm to
help me down the stairs; whenever I’m drunk, he’s terrified I’ll fall. I
want to jerk my elbow out of his grip. I want to run out into the darkness, petulant and spoiled. I want to be right.
“I hate it when we fight,” I say.
“I’m not mad at you.” He smiles and pulls me closer to him. “I
didn’t even know we were fighting.”
I never learned how to argue. My parents were married for twenty-three years, eighteen of which we lived under the same roof, and I
never saw them fight. My parents occasionally disagreed at the dinner
table, but only in French. They’d lived in Paris for the first two years
of their marriage. I never knew what they were fighting about unless
an English word or phrase unexpectedly appeared, oil change, retirement, MasterCard. The secrecy was deliberate on my mother’s part—
she had an abusive stepfather growing up who yelled and cursed and
overturned the kitchen table when he felt the inclination. She didn’t
want to upset us. She claims my father and she fought behind closed
doors, but I never heard a disagreement, and honestly I can’t imagine what they would’ve sounded like, looked like. Did they raise
their voices? Did they point fingers? Did they talk in the same tense,
pursed-lipped French?
I never knew anything was wrong in their marriage, and I was
completely unprepared for their divorce. Two weeks into my freshman year at college, my parents announced they were splitting up. It
was a Saturday in early September, and that morning I’d walked to
the town post office with my new hallmate, Aimee. As we walked,
she told me about her parents’ divorce when she was ten, how both
her parents had remarried, and now she had nine siblings with which
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to share holidays. She said it hadn’t been easy watching her parents
break up, and I told her, “I can’t ever imagine my parents divorcing.”
They called two hours later.
Years later, my sisters and I would laugh at our naivete. Our family’s past is littered with signs—couples counseling, anti-depressants,
even a few weeks our parents spent in separate bedrooms. We just
didn’t want to see their unhappiness.
My husband and I fight mostly about housework and money. We
don’t fight often, but we usually argue when we’re drinking. If he
raises his voice at all, I think he’s yelling. I yell back and occasionally
throw things. We slam doors.
We do not resolve things before we go to bed. I wake up with
stiff knots in my shoulders and neck; the sheets wrapped around and
around me like a sari. My husband wakes up and tells me he loves me.
He doesn’t hold grudges. I do.
Sometimes when we fight, I feel like a teenager. I want to break
things, to overreact, to storm to my car and peel out of the driveway.
I’m instantly regretful, but I don’t know how to go back home.
My mother once told me that sibling rivalry was good, that it
teaches us how to communicate with others and how to deal with
conflict. If this is true, I should be a master negotiator. My older sister
Julie and I fought for over twenty-five years. It started when I was an
infant. I had the audacity to be born on Julie’s birthday. For my welcome home, she threw her two-year-old toddler body into the side of
my crib, banging it against the wall again and again, until my parents
came to see what the noise was about.
When I was old enough to keep a diary, I measured whether or
not it was a good day, depending on how mean my sister was. Years
later, when I ran across Julie’s diary in a closet, I was shocked to see I
was mentioned only once as “annoying.” My diary was obsessed with
what I thought of as our on-going war, but apparently, I was the only
one keeping score.
The last time I physically fought my sister I was twenty-three or
twenty-four. I was standing in the kitchen after dinner talking to our
cousin when Julie walked by and punched me in the stomach. I have
no idea what was at stake. But I remember the punch, the quick and
empty loss of breath. I remember looking up into our cousin’s face and
thinking I had to retaliate. I stomped on Julie’s bare toes as hard as I
could, crushing them beneath the hard rubber of my sandals. I wanted
revenge, an eye for an eye, but it never made me feel any better.
Occasionally, I still resort to physical violence. Over the past five
years, in the handful of times I’ve really lost my temper, I’ve hit my
husband. Mainly to stop him from tickling me. Recently, during a
fight, I threw my keys at my husband and, luckily, I missed. Then
I threw the remote. I was aiming to hurt him. I wish I could say I
wasn’t. There have been times that I’ve hit him much harder than I
should.
In the morning, I’m sorry for the childish way I’ve behaved but
I’m always still pissed off. My husband is seldom angry in the daylight. He’ll roll over to kiss my shoulder, rub my belly, and tell me he
loves me. I say it back and I mean it, but I always bring up the fight
again. I pester the wound. I pretend I just want to get things sorted
out, but maybe I want to keep count, to keep the tally running, to tell
myself I was right all along.
Shortly after my parents’ divorce, my mother fell in love with a
woman. This romance solves the mystery of her unhappiness, but her
orientation doesn’t explain the way she tried to live with my father or
their secretive fighting. My mother and her girlfriend seem to have
enjoyed each other’s company for the past ten years. I’m out of the
house now, but I wonder if my mother still insists on arguing behind
closed doors. I don’t think her girlfriend speaks French.
My father has not remarried, but he’s had a series of serious relationships. He’s dated a lot; apparently the field is wide-open for
outdoorsy and sensitive retired surgeons. He says he’d like to be married again one day, but my mother might argue that he chooses unavailable women—closeted lesbians, younger women, long-distance
friends. I’ve never witnessed him argue with any of his girlfriends.
When we disagree, my father is quick with an apology. Sometimes he
asks forgiveness for things he hasn’t even done—a conversation I cut
short or an irritated tone I initiated. After we hang up, he’ll call right
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back. “Sorry to bother you,” he says.
My parents still get along when they see each other. They live
only a mile apart. Whenever we visit, my father has an open invitation to my mother’s for dinner, but my parents are primarily cordial
for our sakes.
The day before our barroom brawl at the Best Western my husband and I were in Monteverde, Costa Rica. It took us four hours to
reach the small mountain town on a jeep-boat-jeep ride, winding up
the steep roads. Trim green rows of coffee plants clung to the edges
of cliffs, bending in arcs, broken only by bits of jungle and patches of
white mist drifting up from the valley.
Monteverde is a cloud forest and a national reserve, and two
small communities, Santa Elena and Monteverde, share the mountain
and are connected by twisted, muddy roads. Despite the number of
tourists these towns can support, none of the roads are paved. My
husband and I had not made any reservations, but our driver wanted to
know where to take us, so when the couple next to us said, “La Colina
Lodge,” we said, “Take us there too.”
La Colina is a two-story mountain lodge with the trimmings of a
gingerbread house, yellow shutters, an orange door, and bright purple
and red rocking chairs on the porches. Two speckled cats lounged on
the bench out front, and three small mutts circled our jeep, sniffing
at our luggage and shoes. The owners were Kim, a California native, and her husband, John, a bearded bohemian who shuffled around
in loose clothes and bare feet. When we mentioned we were on our
honeymoon, Kim said she’d been happily married for nearly twenty
years. Over lunch, she told us stories about how content they were,
and their three young girls poked their heads in from the kitchen as
if to provide proof. I liked the idea of their life, ex-patriots living in
the rainforest, making whimsical furniture and raising chickens and
children.
After licking our plates, my husband and I went to our room to
nap before exploring the town. We rested with our legs side by side,
our hands cradling our full bellies, and talked about our luck in finding a place so beautiful, so perfectly suited to our needs. Our room
was just above the kitchen and downstairs we could hear the mumbled
rhythm of conversation, the thumps of cats jumping from windowsills, and the girls’ squealing, delighted with a new game involving
tourists’ cars and spitballs. We were about to rustle our way out of
bed, slip on our shoes for a walk into town, when a fight broke out.
Kim screamed at John, the shrillness of her voice cracking through
the thin floor of our room. “You bastard!” she yelled, again and again.
“I hate you, you stupid bastard.” The fight lasted for at least twenty
minutes. John never raised his voice, and the whole house seemed to
go still in Kim’s rage—the children were quiet, the animals wandered
away, and my husband and I lay on the bed, frozen, as if it were our
own parents fighting.
The fight thundered on. “And now you’re ruining that nice
couple’s honeymoon!” Kim shrieked, and finally, my husband and
I snuck out of the bed and the hotel into the muddy street. We stayed
out late that night, stopping at different hotel bars, drinking a beer at
each, until we realized we were much farther from our hotel than we
imagined. There are no streetlights in Monteverde and the roads are
completely black under the thick canopy. There is no difference in the
shades of darkness between the road and the sheer drop of the valley.
We stumbled in our blindness, knocking our tennis-shoed toes into
large rocks jutting from the slick clay. A jeep passed and we ran in its
red wake, happy to have something to guide us, if only momentarily.
Back at the lodge, we toppled into our stiff bed and sighed boozy
breath into each other’s faces.
The next morning my husband and I woke up late. Other guests
had already rumbled in and out of the breakfast room below us, hauling luggage in heavy bumps down the wooden stairs to wait for their
jeep rides. My husband and I slept in, unwilling to schedule a plan,
tucked warmly into the curves of each other’s bodies. The lodge was
quiet for a brief half an hour and then the fight began again. An ugly
flood of cursing and the repetition of “Bastard. You fucking bastard.”
Her rage was loose and uncontrolled. It was something her kids
were used to; they would interrupt for a glass of milk. It hunted her
husband out the door, down the road, mornings and afternoons. It was
ridiculous to think there’s a singular reason for her kind of hysteria.
Sadly, I recognized that she wanted to claim victory even if she made
everyone, including herself, miserable.
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*
My sister Julie is getting married in May. The wedding date is
only two days before my husband and I celebrate our second anniversary. For her bachelorette party, I met Julie, my younger sister
Carolyn, and Julie’s friends in Montreal. The streets were covered
in waist-high banks of snow, but we stayed out late anyway, gulping
Lemon Drops and Molson Dry and dancing with French Canadians in
our snowboots. We ate pizza and putine and told our most embarrassing make-out stories. Late one night, Julie, Carolyn, and I stayed up
to talk after everyone else had passed out. We sat on the bed next to an
electric fireplace and gossiped about our significant others.
“Sometimes we have these crazy fights,” Julie admitted. Carolyn
and I had already changed into our pajamas, and my hair frizzed out
of a messy ponytail. But Julie hadn’t gone back to her room yet to
change. She was still wearing a short turquoise dress, her make-up
neatly applied; the only thing missing was a fresh coat of lipstick and
a pair of polished, pointy boots. She tucked her bare feet under her
legs.
“We do too.” I told her about throwing the remote at my husband.
But I boasted that I hadn’t thrown anything in a while. “Maybe I’m
maturing?”
Carolyn also admitted to her fair share of disagreements. “I know
we fight,” she said, “I just can’t think of any examples.”
Julie crossed her arms and frowned. “Why don’t we talk about
these things?”
I wanted to offer some advice or simply say something that might
make her feel better. Instead I told her about my most recent argument
with my husband. We’d had a long week of conferencing with our
students, and we’d decided to reward ourselves with a double feature.
We snuck from one theater to another with a bag of popcorn and a diet
coke half-filled with cheap vodka. On the way home from the movies,
we planned to pick up some pasta for a late night snack, but we began
fighting in the car. This time I didn’t really get angry, but my husband
got out of the car and stormed away, taking his bookbag with him. He
hobbled in a fast, crooked line through the parking lot. I drove after
him. He tried to avoid me by crossing the street, but I followed him,
driving from parking lot to parking lot.
“I’m walking home,” he said. His voice was even, not angry
sounding, just determined.
“Please get in the car,” I shouted through the rolled down window.
“I’ll see you at home,” he said, crossing the street to avoid me
again.
But I persisted. Coasting next to him as he walked. I crept slowly
with my foot on the brake, and I turned the radio off. “I’ll walk with
you,” I said, hoping to turn our fight into a joke. “I’m like a sheep
dog. I’m herding you.” I nosed our car toward home, angling him in
the same direction. After one more parking lot, he finally agreed to
get in the car.
I doubt my story made Julie feel much better. “At least I didn’t
throw anything.” I shrugged and pulled the blankets around me.
“What were you fighting about?” she asked.
I didn’t know. Nor did I remember who won. My husband is right
to call me naïve because I tend to think in absolutes. I will either win
or lose. Our marriage can only succeed or fail. As if these are standardized tests. I don’t know if there’s a right way to fight, but I need to
stop acting like an occasional shouting match will be our last. I need
to stop keeping score.
Page 136
Mark St. Germain
FITZROY
(LIGHTS UP on DR. MARTIN FINLEY and DR. ELIZABETH
WELLS)
MARTIN: We’ve tried to get Fitzroy to copulate for nine years now.
ELIZABETH: I’ve read his history.
MARTIN: So tell me, Dr. Wells, what makes you think you can succeed where our experts have failed?
ELIZABETH: Because my specialty isn’t science. It’s sex therapy.
MARTIN: We brought in four females and Fitzroy showed no interest
in mating.
ELIZABETH: You took Marilyn and Posh from their native environments. They could have been unhappy and unwilling. Perhaps
Fitzroy sensed that.
MARTIN: I doubt his brain is that highly developed.
ELIZABETH: Now you have Paris. Who comes up with these
names?
MARTIN: Staff optimists. Paris seems more receptive, but Fitzroy
barely looks at her.
ELIZABETH: There is their age difference. Paris is twenty-five?
MARTIN: Give or take.
ELIZABETH: And Fitzroy?
MARTIN: One hundred sixty eight. The oldest Tortoise we know
of died at 175 in a London Zoo, but in the wild they might live
far longer. Even so, Fitzroy’s the last of his kind. If he doesn’t
reproduce, the last genes of the Sierra Negra Galapagos will be
extinct.
ELIZABETH: I’ll get started immediately.
MARTIN: How, exactly?
ELIZABETH: With the same tool I’d use with the male of any species.
(LIGHTS DOWN on ELIZABETH and MARTIN, LIGHTS UP
ON FITZROY, A HUGE TORTOISE, staring in horror at the
screen of a DVD Player placed before him—facing away from
the AUDIENCE. EAR SHATTERING GRUNTS of a MALE
TORTOISE MATING are heard. ELIZABETH ENTERS)
ELIZABETH: Do you see that, Fitzroy? How he mounts her? Listen
to how happy he is! Doesn’t it look fun?
FITZROY: (Unheard by humans) I am beyond horror.
ELIZABETH: This could be you and Paris!
FITZROY: Or you and I if I were fast enough. It would be equally
pointless.
ELIZABETH: Look! Here she comes now! Smell her pheromones!
Doesn’t she look beautiful?
(PARIS, chewing gum, crawls onstage. Again, unheard by
humans)
PARIS: Hey, Old Timer. How ‘bout we get this over with.
(MARTIN joins ELIZABETH, watching from a distance)
MARTIN: They’ve made eye contact!
FITZROY: (To Paris) We’ve had this conversation.
PARIS: Enough with the talk. Jump my shell. Hump, smash, hump,
smash: thirty minutes and the job’s done.
FITZROY: The answer is “no”.
PARIS: Easy for you to say. They already treat you like a King! You
get more room, more food, your own swimming pool. You ever
think of anybody else? A little grunt and bang and I get the same
treatment.
FITZROY: There’s a better chance of my playing the piano.
MARTIN: (Grabbing Elizabeth’s arm) Look! He’s getting aroused!
ELIZABETH: Let go of me, Martin.
PARIS: It’s painless. I’m telling you. It’s even fun sometimes.
FITZROY: I think not.
PARIS: There’s your problem. Don’t think. It’s all instinct. You don’t
have to look at me. Jump me from behind, grab my plates and let
nature take its course.
FITZROY: Nature is off course. Far off.
PARIS: What’s that mean?
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FITZROY: It means we should live the way we die. The sooner the
better.
PARIS: How’s that?
FITZROY: Alone.
(He walks away)
MARTIN: Now what?
ELIZABETH: First thing tomorrow, manual stimulation.
MARTIN: Really?
ELIZABETH: Do you have rubber gloves? Red seems to work best.
MARTIN: Maybe we should play some Frank Sinatra. (Elizabeth
looks at him) Just a thought.
(THEY EXIT. LIGHTS CHANGE; EVENING. SOUND OF
THE SEA. CHARLES DARWIN ENTERS )
DARWIN: Look at the moon, Fitzroy. Beautiful, don’t you think?
FITZROY: They brought in another one, Mr. Darwin.
DARWIN: Two hundred thousand miles away, but sometimes I feel I
could reach up and touch it.
FITZROY: You’re dead.
DARWIN: That doesn’t lessen desire.
FITZROY: My body tells me one thing and my mind another. Which
should I listen to?
DARWIN: When I first saw you on the beach you were with your
mate.
FITZROY: Yes.
DARWIN: I couldn’t stop the sailors from taking her any more
than I could stop a typhoon. They dragged her on board ship.
Ate her for months. That was their nature. Would you bring
more children into this world, my friend? I wouldn’t. Look! A
shooting star!
FITZROY: Is that what they call heaven?
DARWIN: (Smiles) I can’t say. Perhaps if I believed in heaven I’d be
there. Instead I’m still in England or South America or here on
these islands. Except when I’m playing checkers with Thomas
Edison or Friedrich Nietzsche. Who cheats.
(LIGHTS DOWN on DARWIN, UP on MARTIN and
ELIZABETH, MORNING. She pulls on elbow high
red rubber gloves)
ELIZABETH: I’ll need help flipping him over. Can you handle that?
MARTIN: Of course.
ELIZABETH: Have you ever seen the engorged penis of a giant tortoise?
MARTIN: I can’t say I have.
ELIZABETH: Brace yourself. When the male’s aroused it’s gigantic.
And its head fans out like a manta ray.
MARTIN: I’m a scientist, Elizabeth. Do you really think I’ll be
shocked?
ELIZABETH: No, Martin. Jealous.
(They approach Fitzroy. Elizabeth slips on the rubber gloves)
ELIZABETH: Good morning, Fitzroy. I promise you’ll enjoy this.
FITZROY: Of course I will. I’m a glutton for humiliation.
ELIZABETH: (To Martin) Now. (MARTIN and SHE roll FITZROY
over on his back)
FITZROY: AGGH!
ELIZABETH: Hold him steady while I mount him!
(FITZROY’S head is downstage; ELIZABETH’S back to the
audience as she stimulates him. MARTIN tries to stop
FITZROY’S rocking)
FITZROY: TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF—(She grabs him with her
gloves) Oh. Oh! That’s a private place! DON’T TOUCH ME!
DON’T TOUCH! (More and more excited) DON’T! TOUCH!
TOUCH! TOUCH!
ELIZABETH: It’s working!
(FITZROY lets out a loud TORTOISE mating grunt)
Good boy!
MARTIN: (Incredulous) It’s still growing!
FITZROY: Concentrate! Think! Think! A frigid, shriveling ocean!
MARTIN: It’s like a Totem Pole! I’ve never seen anything like it.
ELIZABETH: (Surprised) Neither have I
(Paris enters, intrigued)
PARIS: Neither have I.
Page 140
ELIZABETH: Grab Paris and push her over here!
PARIS: (Tries to escape) Not so fast! That thing could kill! (MARTIN
grabs PARIS; she struggles. ELIZABETH and MARTIN fumble
as they try to get FITZROY into position to mount PARIS from
the rear)
FITZROY: GOD HELP ME!
DARWIN: (Enters) Unlikely.
FITZROY: Distract me! Hurry!
DARWIN: Do you know why I named you Fitzroy?
FITZROY: NO!
DARWIN: He was the Captain of the Beagle; the ship we sailed here.
Fitzroy was a man of science; an unshakeable atheist. I came as
the Beagle’s naturalist and Chaplain.
FITZROY: You? A Chaplain?
ELIZABETH: Push ! Push!
DARWIN: As the years passed we exchanged roles. Our belief and
disbelief. He became relentlessly religious and thought me the
devil incarnate. When I published “The Origin of Species” he was
beyond consolation.
ELIZABETH: ( To Martin) It’s now or never!
PARIS: Bring it on!
DARWIN: After a debate at Oxford on Evolution that turned riotous,
Fitzroy took the train home, then went into his washroom while
his wife was sleeping and slit his throat with his razor.
FITZROY: How sad.
DARWIN: He was a brilliant man. I’ll never understand it.
ELIZABETH: It’s shrinking!
MARTIN: What happened?
ELIZABETH: It just . . . inverted.
MARTIN: I need a drink.
ELIZABETH: I need five or six.
MARTIN: Let’s go back to my bungalow.
ELIZABETH: Just know this, Martin. Drinks are the only thing I’m
interested in.
MARTIN: Don’t worry. After today I’m joining a monastery.
(They exit)
FITZROY: (To Darwin) Thank you.
DARWIN: Take deep breaths or you will hyperventilate. Physiologically, you’re still in heat. I’ll read to you, if you like. (Takes out
book) I believe we were on Chapter 3, “The Struggle for Existence”.
PARIS: You’ve got it wrong, you know. Or only half right.
DARWIN: Pardon?
PARIS: Your book.
DARWIN: You’ve read it?
PARIS: I hear people go on about it.
FITZROY: (Surprised, to Paris) You can see him?
PARIS: You think you’re so special? (To Darwin) Sure, all creatures
change over time. Size, claws, colors. That’s common sense. But
that’s just physical, things you can see. What about things you
can’t, whatever you call them?
DARWIN: Such as?
PARIS: Spirit. Soul, maybe. Something too big to fit inside us.
DARWIN: I don’t agree. They’re products of emotional wish fulfillment. Our need to believe we are not alone in the universe. That
there is a greater power than death and more to the body than we
are born with.
PARIS: You’re sure there isn’t?
DARWIN: I’m not following.
PARIS: Do you have children?
DARWIN: I do. I did.
PARIS: Do you know how many eggs I’ve laid? Two hundred, easy. I
laid them, covered them with sand and then watched while birds
swooped down and swallowed them or lizards tore them apart. So
in a nest of ten, do you know how many of my kids crawled from
the sand to the sea? Sometimes one, two. Sometimes none at all.
DARWIN: Do you understand the survival of the fittest?
PARIS: Sure. Is that all you understand? Do you know why I kept on
laying eggs year after year?
DARWIN: A biological instinct.
PARIS: I’ll give you that. But what made me keep going when I saw
my babies eaten or cry when I saw them swim into the sea? That’s
not biology. It’s hope. I hoped they’d grow and have children who
had children and someday it would be the world that changed into
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a place where so many terrible things didn’t happen. That’s not
instinct. That’s something you can’t see or prove. You believe or
you don’t. I do.
DARWIN: My daughter Annie died of gastric fever. She was five. I
kept records of her condition hour by hour. I knew by the third
day it was medically impossible she’d survive.
PARIS: But you hoped, didn’t you? For something greater than science.
DARWIN: (Pause) What’s your name, my dear?
PARIS: Here, they call me “Paris.”
DARWIN: My uncle Josiah took me on a tour of Paris when I was
eighteen. I grew very homesick. I still am. Fitzroy, I’m afraid I
have no advice for you. I am vain enough to think I have all the
answers, but not foolish enough to trust my heart, not my head,
to find them. Goodbye to you both for now. I believe I’ll visit
England. I miss the rain.
FITZROY: You surprise me.
PARIS: Is that good or bad?
FITZROY: I’m not certain yet.
(HE puts his hand over PARIS’S)
PARIS: You’re standing on my foot.
FITZROY: I know.
END OF PLAY
Holly L. Jensen
CLASS ACT, VERSION 379
Cast:
BAILEY, 17, tough yet insecure
STACY, 17, perky, wants to be liked
Set: A high school classroom.
(Lights up. BAILEY and STACY are seated behind desks in a
classroom. They remain perfectly quiet and still as the sound of
a school alarm buzzes for five seconds. After the buzzing ends,
STACY jumps up from her seat and begins speaking energetically.
BAILEY also stands, but he keeps his arms crossed and he looks
annoyed to be there.)
STACY: It looks exactly the same!
BAILEY: I barely remember.
STACY: Mrs. Johnson’s desk was like in the exact same spot. She
used to have a vase of daisies right at the edge.
BAILEY: I knocked it over once . . . by accident, of course.
STACY: And she used to like have a red cushion with gold flowers
on her chair.
(STACY moves around to look and point at various things.)
Eric was here. Hilary was in front. No, that was Jackie? Yes, Jackie! And Thomas to the left.
(BAILEY cringes at the sound of THOMAS’S name.)
No, he was on the right. Next to you! Like how could I forget!
And I was here. Like nothing’s changed!
BAILEY: Always the same.
STACY: Even the book shelves. Crime and Punishment. Catch 22.
Pride and Prejudice! My favorite! I mean, I didn’t actually like
read the book. I saw the movie. Like so romantic!
BAILEY: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Now that was a killer
flick.
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STACY: Bailey, he acts like he’s not, ya know, into the whole like
romance thing, but I know he really is.
BAILEY: Stace’s my girl.
STACY: We met a couple years ago.
BAILEY: I was workin’. At PJ’s Tavern.
STACY: Like such a cute little place, ya know.
BAILEY: A total dive.
STACY: At the foot of Mt. Minnow.
BAILEY: Middle of fuckin’ nowhere.
STACY: Everyone was like so friendly.
BAILEY: A bunch of smelly drunks.
STACY: I was there with my two cousins . . . my older cousins. And
there was a karaoke machine.
BAILEY: I hated that thing.
STACY: So we like decided to sing a few songs. ’Cuz like, we didn’t
know anyone. And we had a few wine coolers. Kiwi blackberry.
Like so delicious. I remember, I was feelin’ tipsy.
BAILEY: The thong song. That’s what she sang.
STACY: First we sang Sweet Home Alabama. Then Vogue. And then
. . . the thong song
BAILEY: She looked hot.
STACY: After we were done, Bailey, he like sent an empty plate over
to my table that said . . .
BAILEY: Call me, 932-229-222
STACY: It was written in chocolate syrup! Isn’t that sweet? We’ve
been together 11 months now.
(a beat)
BAILEY: Fuckin’ homo.
STACY: I’m thinkin’ we’ll get married after graduation. We like talked about it a little.
BAILEY: I mean, did he really think he could get away with that shit?
Not showin’ up like that?
STACY: Thomas was our friend, ya know. I mean, he’d just moved
here ’bout six months ago. His Dad’s a doctor. Like a heart doctor
or somethin’.
BAILEY: Ya can’t mess with someone like that.
STACY: We hung out a few times. Ya know, like went to his house,
played pool. Had a few beers. ’Cuz like his Dad was never home.
They even had a horse. Like a real horse.
BAILEY: So he had money. Big fuckin’ deal.
STACY: I wanna have a baby right away. I already told Bailey. I mean,
we don’t wanna be like old when we have kids, ya know. Those
mothers who look like grandmothers.
BAILEY: Thomas, does he really think he’s better than us? ’Cuz his
Dad’s a doctor? I fuckin’ hate that. I hate doctors. I mean, who the
hell made them God? Decidin’ who lives, who dies? My Dad was
a coal miner. Worked his whole fuckin’ life in them mines. And
when he wasn’t there, he was drinkin’. Cirrhosis ain’t no way to
die. Ain’t no doctor that coulda saved him.
STACY: My family, we own a chip factory. And I help out, ya know,
like after school and weekends. But my Dad, he says I can work
more after graduation. I’ll be in charge of like processin’ potatoes,
keeping ahead of all of the orders that come in and makin’ sure
they go back out. It’s a lot of responsibility. So like, it’s totally
perfect.
BAILEY: It was beautiful.
(a beat)
STACY: Sometimes, Bail, he’d visit me at work.
BAILEY: Fuckin’ beautiful.
STACY: The first time, he just wanted to hold it.
BAILEY: Heavy. It was heavy. But I was careful.
STACY: It was so heavy. I like had to use two hands. And so shiny. I
helped polished it.
BAILEY: A locked-breech, semi-automatic, single-action, recoil-operated pistol.
STACY: It was my Dad’s. He kept it at the factory. Just in case.
BAILEY: Browning Hi-Power Mk I. Uses a 13-round staggered magazine.
STACY: There was this one time. In English class. Mrs. Johnson,
she had each of us choose a sonnet. From like Shakespeare or
somethin’. And we had to read it out loud. In front of the whole
class. And when it came to Thomas, he chose the really famous
one . . .
Page 146
BAILEY: I mean, what the fuck was he thinkin’?
(STACY recites the following Shakespearean sonnet as if she’s
trying to seduce BAILEY or the audience with the words.)
STACY: “Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And Summer’s
lease hath all too short a date.”
BAILEY: It was weird, he stood right in front of my row.
STACY: “Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And oft’ is his (STACY stresses the word “his”) gold complexion
dimm’d.”
BAILEY: Thomas, he looked right at me. When he was readin’ that
stupid poem.
STACY: “And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d.
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade.”
BAILEY: And again. He looked at me again. I mean, what the fuck?
Ain’t that poem written to some douche bag? What’s up with the
“his”?
STACY: “When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see.
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”
BAILEY: Why the fuck’s he keep starin’ at me?
STACY: I know Bailey really loves me. I mean, a lot of guys say they
love their girls. ’Cuz they wanna get in their pants and stuff. But
not Bailey, he’s different. I mean, he is so respectful. Like, not
once has he tried to do that. He says he wants to wait, ya know.
Wants it to be super special.
BAILEY: My stomach, it started turnin’. I took my pencil and started
jammin’ it in my notebook. Broke off the tip and just kept pushin’
it through the paper . . . pretendin’ it was Thomas’s face.
STACY: Like this one time. I was at Bailey’s. We were kissin’ in his
room and I was gettin’ a little . . . ya know, hot. So I was like wantin’ for him to do somethin’. And after a bit, I just couldn’t take
it no more. So I put his hand up my shirt. It was sweet, ya know.
Like he didn’t know what to do. And he just like grabbed my tit
and held it. ’Cuz he was nervous, I guess.
BAILEY: Stacy, she was better friends with Thomas. And, I told her,
told her I wanted to knock him out.
STACY: I don’t know. I mean, Thomas, he was kinda shy. And Bailey, he wasn’t, ya know. So maybe like Thomas kinda admired
him for that. But Bailey, he like couldn’t let it go . . . it was like
he became totally obsessed.
BAILEY: She got on my nerves, always naggin’ me to drop it. Tellin’
me to forget the poem and shit, to ignore Thomas. But it
wasn’t just the poem. . . .
STACY: I just . . . I just wanted him to forget it, ya know. Or just deal
with it . . . talk to him. Find out if it was somethin’.
BAILEY: When I got that email . . .
STACY: That email.
BAILEY: I can’t . . . can’t even repeat what it said. It was fuckin’
disgustin’.
STACY: The email, it was from Thomas. And Bailey, he wouldn’t
even show it to me. Said it was bad. Real bad . . . thought he
was just gonna mess him up. Thomas, he was bein’ stupid and
ignorin’ me anyways. I didn’t care none. I don’t know, I guess I
was kinda pissed that he was hittin’ on my guy. I mean, what’s up
with that?
BAILEY: Stacy, she let me borrow the gun.
STACY: He came by the factory one Friday after school. Said he just
wanted to borrow it for the weekend . . . I didn’t know. . . .
BAILEY: I told her I just wanted to take it home. To show my cousin.
(Bailey laughs.) I hid it in my gym bag.
STACY: On Monday, we were in English class. I remember, we
were readin’ Beowulf. I mean, we were really readin’ it. Not like
watchin’ the movie with Angelina Jolie, who gets all naked in
gold and stuff. And Bailey, he just like got up and walked outta
class. Mrs. Johnson, she yelled after him. And I got up, but she
told me to sit down . . . I keep wonderin’ if things would’ve been
different if I hadn’t . . . anyways, a few minutes goes by and then
there was this crash. And the classroom door flew open.
And it was Bailey. And he looked weird. I mean, his eyes, they
Page 148
were all glassy and shit. Kinda zombie-like. And he had my Dad’s
gun in his hand.
BAILEY: I mean, I just planned to scare him. That’s all. Just wanted
to see Thomas...like react, ya know. Do somethin’. Say somethin’.
He was fuckin’ with me. So I like pointed the gun at his head and
told everyone that he was a homo . . . and he didn’t say shit. Just
sat there starin’ at me with them dark eyes. And I watched his
piss draw a line down his pants. I thought, I don’t wanna see this
digustin’ pig ever again. I thought, I can be the hero. Save our
school from this homo, ya know . . . so I like shot him.
STACY: Sounded like a firecracker. Happened so fast.
BAILEY: Mrs. Johnson, she started screamin’. So fuckin’ loud. And I
just had to make it stop. Had to shut her up.
STACY: Mrs. Johnson, our teacher. She had young children. Pictures
on her desk, ya know. She looked like one of them grand
mother types.
BAILEY: Stacy man, she just stood up and she stared at me. With a
strange look. Like she hated me. I was afraid, man. Like what if
she didn’t wanna be with me no more?
STACY: I didn’t know he’d go like totally crazy. I just wanted to get
his attention. I mean, why didn’t he realize that I sent him that email
from Thomas? I mean, I totally didn’t expect . . . I just wanted to
know . . . I mean, when Bailey responded, like what did that mean?
I just didn’t believe it, ya know. Like Bailey totally agreed to meet
him. And he must’ve been so pissed when Thomas didn’t show up
. . . but what was I supposed to do? I didn’t know. . . .
BAILEY: She didn’t even scream . . . just looked at me and said my
name. Once. And . . . I shot her . . . Stacy, she fell backwards, over
her desk. But her eyes were still open. Still lookin’ at me with that
horror . . . I couldn’t see nothin’ after that. Everythin’ was loud
and fuzzy . . . I, I didn’t know what to do . . . so . . . I put the gun
in my mouth.
(STACY and BAILEY freeze. They remain perfectly quiet and still
as the sound of a school alarm buzzes again for five seconds.
After it stops, STACY begins speaking energetically, BAILEY
crosses his arms and looks annoyed to be there, a repeat from the
beginning.)
STACY: It looks exactly the same!
BAILEY: I barely remember.
STACY: Mrs. Johnson’s desk was like in the exact same spot. She
used to have a vase of daisies right at the edge.
BAILEY: I knocked it over once . . . by accident, of course.
STACY: And she used to like have a red cushion with gold flowers
on her chair. (STACY moves around to look and point at various
things.) Eric was here. Hilary was in front. No, that was Jackie?
Yes, Jackie! And Thomas to the left.
(BAILEY cringes at the sound of THOMAS’S name.)
No, he was on the right. Next to you! Like how could I forget!
And I was here. Like nothing’s changed!
BAILEY: Always the same.
(Lights out.)
THE END
Page 150
DIANNE APRILE is the author of four books of nonfiction and is now at work
on a memoir, a portion of which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. A
recipient of writing fellowships from the Kentucky Arts Council and the
Kentucky Foundation for Women, Aprile teaches creative nonfiction for
Spalding University’s brief-residency MFA in Writing. Her essays and
book reviews appear in literary journals, newspapers, magazines, and in
anthologies, including Now Write!, due out next May by Tarcher/Penguin.
She and her husband, who co-owned a jazz club in Louisville for five years,
recently moved to Seattle. They took her mother’s records with them.
TIFFANY BEECHY is an assistant professor of English at the University of
North Florida, where she teaches poetry and poetics, creative writing, and
medieval literature.
GAYLORD BREWER is the founding editor of Poems & Plays. His most recent
books are the poetry collection The Martini Diet (Dream Horse) and the
novella Octavius the 1st (Red Hen). He teaches at Middle Tennessee State
University and in the low-residency MFA program at Murray State.
CATHLEEN CALBERT is the author of three books of poetry: Lessons in Space
(University of Florida Press), Bad Judgment (Sarabande Books), and Sleeping with a Famous Poet (CustomWords/WordTech). Her awards include The
Nation Discovery Award, a Pushcart Prize, and the Tucker Thorp Professorship at Rhode Island College, where she directs the creative writing program.
MICHAEL CARROLL’S fiction has appeared in a number of literary journals,
including Boulevard and Ontario Review, and such anthologies as The New
Penguin Book of Gay Short Stories (ed. David Leavitt, UK only). “Mosquito
Hour” is an excerpt from a novel in progress, The Returners, about aging in
Key West. He lives in New York.
JOAN COLBY has seven books published, including The Lonely Hearts Killers
and The Atrocity Book, and over 850 poems in publications including Poetry,
Atlanta Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, The New York Quarterly, South
Dakota Review, Epoch. She has received two Illinois Arts Council Literary
Awards (one in 2008), an IAC Literary Fellowship, an honorable mention
in the 2008 James Hearst Poetry Contest (North American Review) and the
2009 Editor’s Choice Contest (Margie). She was a finalist in the 2007 GSU
(now New South) Poetry Contest and the 2009 Nimrod International Pablo
Neruda Prize.
ADAM DAY’S work has appeared or is forthcoming in the AGNI, Kenyon Review, Guernica, American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, The Iowa Review,
and elsewhere and has been included in Best New Poets 2008. Recently, he
was nominated for Pushcart Prize (2008), and for a tuition scholarship to
the Bread Loaf Writers Conference (2009), was awarded a Kentucky Arts
Council grant (2008), and was a finalist for Colgate University’s Olive B.
O’Connor Fellowship (2007 & 2008).
SUSAN FINCH is originally from Nashville, Tennessee. She is currently a PhD
candidate at Florida State University where she serves as the nonfiction editor for The Southeast Review. Her most recent work is forthcoming in The
Fourth River.
STACIA M. FLEEGAL is the author of Anatomy of a Shape-Shifter (WordTech,
forthcoming 2010) and the chapbooks The Lines Are Not My Friends (second place, Ĉervená Barva Press chapbook competition, forthcoming 2009)
and A Fling with the Ground (Finishing Line Press, 2007). Individual poems
are forthcoming in Fourth River, Skidrow Penthouse, The Kerf, Pemmican,
Prick of the Spindle, and Babel Fruit and have appeared most recently in Inkwell, Blue Collar Review, New Verse News, Dos Passos Review, and Protest
Poems. She received her MFA in writing from Spalding University and is
co-founder and managing editor of Blood Lotus (www.bloodlotus.org).
GAYLE HANRATTY is a short story writer who lives in Louisville with her
husband, dog, and two cats.
HOLLY L. JENSEN’S Class Act: Version 379 had its world premiere in May
2009 at the Boston Theater Marathon and was also featured in the 2009 Playwrights’ Platform Summer Festival, where it received runner-up for Best
Play. In the Fall 2008, Lizzy Izzy was produced in the 14th Annual Women’s
Playwriting Festival at Perishable Theatre. Previous plays also include One
Two Many and Cut, both of which were featured in previous Playwrights’
Platform Summer Festivals. Holly resides in Providence, Rhode Island, and
is pursuing her MFA in Writing at Spalding University.
TIMOTHY KENNY, a former newspaper foreign editor, Fulbright scholar, and
nonprofit foundation executive, traveled and worked in some forty countries
Page 152
before living in Kosovo from May 2002 to March 2003. He is an associate
professor of journalism at the University of Connecticut.
Originally from Chauvin, Louisiana, CHRISTOPHER LIRETTE lives in Ithaca,
New York, with his wife, Linda. In addition to writing, he has worked as
a bartender, an offshore roustabout, an archery instructor, and a tutor and
has received a Fulbright grant to research Acadian/Cajun culture. Primarily
a poet, his work appears/is forthcoming in The Colorado Review and The
Louisiana Review.
CHRIS MATTINGLY, a native of Kentuckiana, is a student in the Spalding University brief-residency MFA in Writing Program. Chris is the first in his family to pursue a graduate degree. He currently lives in Bloomington, Indiana,
where he works on a cooperative farm.
BRIAN MAXWELL is a graduate of Eastern Washington’s Creative Writing Program. Currently he resides in Grand Forks as a graduate student and instructor at the University of North Dakota. His fiction has appeared in Fugue, The
Evansville Review, The Beloit Fiction Journal, Silk Road, and Permafrost.
MINDY BETH MILLER lives in Hazard, Kentucky, where she was raised and
her family has lived for generations. She is a graduate of Spalding University’s brief-residency MFA in Writing program. She was the recipient of the
2008 Jean Ritchie Fellowship in Writing at the Mountain Heritage Literary
Festival at Lincoln Memorial University. Her creative work has also been
featured in Appalachian Heritage.
ANDREW NAJBERG teaches for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
His chapbook of poems, Easy to Lose, was published by Finishing Line Press
in 2007 and his work has appeared in various journals and anthologies.
A.J. NASLUND has one book of poems, Silk Weather (Fleur-de-Lis
Press, 1999). His work has recently appeared in such journals as Lalitamba, Caesura, Upstreet 4, Abiko Annual (Japan), Seven Circle
Press (online), and other places. A resident of Louisville, he grew
up on a farm in Montana in the forties and fifties. He has taught college and university courses in English in the U.S., Japan, and in Korea.
RICARDO NAZARIO-COLÓN was born in the South Bronx, New York, and now
lives in Georgetown, Kentucky. He is a co-founder of the Affrilachian Poets.
Currently, he is a doctoral student at the University of Kentucky and works
as the Director of the Office of Diversity Programs for Western Kentucky
University in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
RICHARD NEWMAN is the author of two full-length poetry collections: Domestic Fugues (Steel Toe Books, 2009) and Borrowed Towns (Word Press,
2005). He teaches at St. Louis Community College and edits River Styx.
SCOTT PROVENCE was a nationally-ranked gymnast until he discovered that
words were more flexible than the body. Some of his recent work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in The Potomac, Quarter After Eight, Harpur
Palate, and Poet Lore.
MICHAEL SALCMAN, physician, brain scientist, and essayist on the visual arts,
served as chairman of neurosurgery at the University of Maryland and president of the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore. Presently Special Lecturer
at the Osher Institute of Towson University, he lectures widely on art and the
brain. Recent poems appear in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Hopkins Review, New Letters, Harvard Review, New York Quarterly, and other journals.
His work has been heard on NPR’s All Things Considered and in Euphoria,
a documentary on the brain and creativity (2008). The author of four chapbooks, most recently, Stones In Our Pockets (Parallel Press), his collection
The Clock Made of Confetti (Orchises Press) was nominated for The Poet’s
Prize in 2009 and was a Finalist for The Towson Prize in Literature.
DANIEL SIMPSON, former church musician, computer programmer, and high
school English teacher, currently serves as Access Technology Consultant to
the Free Library of Philadelphia. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming,
in Prairie Schooner, The Cortland Review, Passager, The Atlanta Review,
and Margie, among others. He leads poetry workshops in schools and in his
community with the hope of enlarging the number of people who discover
that they can understand and fall in love with poetry. In 2003, he received a
Fellowship in Literature from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
SAVANNAH SIPPLE is an adjunct reading and writing instructor who also
works in television production and video editing. She resides in Eastern Kentucky. Her poetry has most recently been featured in Appalachian Heritage.
FREDERICK SMOCK is chair of the English department at Bellarmine University. His new book of poems is The Blue Hour (Larkspur Press).
Page 154
MARK ST. GERMAIN is a writer for stage, film, and television. He
is a member of the Dramatists Guild and the Writer’s Guild East.
JACOB ROBERT STEPHENS grew up in the woods of northwestern Montana,
working as a fisherman, logger, firefighter, and now as a forest patrol. He has
an MFA from the University of Alaska–Fairbanks. For two years he served
as Poetry Editor for the literary journal Permafrost. Jacob plays guitar and
mandolin and writes music in addition to poetry and nonfiction.
FIONA SZE-LORRAIN’S poems and translations have recently appeared or are
forthcoming in Poetry International, Alimentum, Ellipsis, Caesura, and New
Politics, sometimes under the nom-de-plume Greta Aart. Her collection of
poetry, Water the Moon, is forthcoming from Marick Press. She is an editor
at Cerise Press (www.cerisepress.com) and works as a zheng musician. She
lives in France and writes as well as translates in English, French, and Chinese. Her website is www.fionasze.com
DOUG VAN GUNDY’S poems and essays have appeared in many journals, including The Oxford American, Ecotone, The Fretboard Journal, and Goldenseal. His work has also been featured online at From the Fishouse: an audio archive of emerging poets. Doug teaches creative writing and literature
at West Virginia Wesleyan College in Buckhannon and plays fiddle, guitar,
and mandolin in the old-time music duo Born Old. His book of poems, A Life
Above Water is published by Red Hen Press.
SUELLEN WEDMORE, Poet Laureate emerita for the small seaside town of
Rockport, Massachusetts, has been widely published. Recently she was
awarded first place in the Writer’s Digest rhyming poem contest, her chapbook Deployed was selected as winner of the Grayson Press annual contest,
and she was awarded a writing residency at Devil’s Tower, Wyoming. Her
chapbook On Marriage and Other Parallel Universes is forthcoming from
Finishing Line Press. After twenty-four years working as a speech and language therapist, Suellen retired to pursue an MFA in Poetry at New England
College, graduating in 2004.
A previous contributor to The Louisville Review, JEFF WORLEY, most recently, is editor of What Comes Down to Us: 25 Contemporary Kentucky
Poets (University Press of Kentucky, 2009) and Best to Keep Moving (Larkspur Press, 2009). His book Happy Hour at the Two Keys Tavern was named
co-winner in the 2007 Society of Midland Authors Literary Competition and
2006 Kentucky Book of the Year in Poetry. His poems have appeared in The
Georgia Review, New England Review, Shenandoah, The Southern Review,
and The Sewanee Review, among others.
FREDRICK ZYDEK is the author of eight collections of poetry. T’Kopechuck:
the Buckley Poems is forthcoming from Winthrop Press later this year. Formerly a professor of creative writing and theology at the University of Nebraska and later at the College of Saint Mary, he is now a gentleman farmer
when he isn’t writing. He is the editor for Lone Willow Press. His work has
appeared in The Antioch Review, Cimmaron Review, New England Review,
Nimrod, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, and others. He is the
recipient of the Hart Crane Poetry Award, the Sarah Foley O’Loughlen Literary Award and others.
Page 156
The
Children’s
Corner
Danielle Charette
ZOOED MANATEE
There’s a postulate for perusing poetry,
a calculated pulse with which
I read, objectively I tell myself,
and browbeat the foreign language as if its
the neighbor blasting music next door.
With poised posture I stand distant from the words
and stare inward at them—an observer—
not unlike the little girl looking inward at the zooed
manatee for a 5th grade report. I
watch them, wave to them, ask their favorite author
and then measure their girth.
In this way I’ve been taught to analyze,
but, you see, I have to come a part of the hopscotching
32nd notes or the whistling cadence or the
Charleston-dancing dog described Shakespearingly.
And given time, the waters eventually break out
in a Genesis-styled tidal wave,
and soon I’m doing the butterfly
through the aquarium
and feeling the flow as I collapse into the humming,
oceanic vibrato, just as a troubadour strums
his guitar strings.
I steal, I plagiarize if that’s what your
prep school’s code of honor calls swallowing
poetry these days.
But I can’t help it. I have to chew on
The picayune perfection of words until I
choke and then cough them up as my own,
Woopingly of course.
Danielle Charette
OTHER PEOPLE’S LIGHTED WINDOWS
On January nights when ice washes the ground
in a cruel enamel
not unlike the indifferent dentist
with his frigid toothpick,
During late bleak afternoons
when my heart palpitates to
a chemical equation I can’t solve and a piano
lesson I haven’t prepared for,
locked within that nefarious manipulation
of the December clock
that leaves me malnourished in darkness,
On early November mornings
as I traverse the backroads
on my way to school and wonder why
It is the moon figured
He’d ever so discreetly stay in the sky at daybreak,
I’ve been known to peer jealously
into other peoples’ lit windows,
With the hope
of swallowing some of their happiness,
warmth, and
lackadaisical pie-baking.
Not so much spying, but wanting.
Not wishing to steal
their whimsical Christmas ornaments
but to join them
in their provincial, perfect living rooms
for one evening,
Page 160
where the paralysis doesn’t run so deep
and the responsibility’s not as unwieldy.
But of course no one really spends the night
carefully tending the fire
or wistfully smoking a pipe over a perusing of Dickens.
More accurately, we’re all outside,
cold in the misbegotten driveway,
hating our frozen gardens.
Danielle Charette
GATED GRAMMARIANS
alas I pled guilty to my assaults on language…
for marginalizing
it between
the covers of the OED,
for shackling
it within the chambers of my diction,
for stabbing
it with the bloody blots of my penmanship,
for barbing
it with the limitations of my tongue.
the dead romantics cringe at the lost translations,
the latin misspellings,
the crude cursive,
and gated grammarians,
as noam chomsky hammers his head against the self-imprisoning
bars of his zoo.
truly,
we’d unchain you,
our words,
to be conversed between more angelic lips,
and manipulated by more perfect poets,
but we’re worried,
if let loose,
you’d have something to say about us,
and cascade
off
the
carefully-constructed
shelves
of our carpenters
like
bricks.
Page 162
Carla Hasson
JAIL CELL
Outside my bedroom window
is a tree
and a breeze I do not feel, only see
rustles its leaves
gently
so that sunlight flickers off
hundreds of glittering emeralds
and they droop, creating a shimmering veil
covering a
dingy, off-white building that
still
refuses to be hidden
The width of the trunk does not match the show
of the leaves
I wonder if maybe,
if the whole was a little more impressive
it would stand between me and
the window
of the dingy, off-white building
and maybe,
if the sun amplified and glimmering emeralds
abounded
I’d be blinded
then spared the sight of power lines and wires
that span out like
ever-reaching fingers from concrete limbs
jutting out stiffly from a concrete sidewalk, creating
bars
in all my vision.
Kian Brouwer
GOOD NIGHT
Many ways to spell goodnight
My mom kissing me in bed
Reading my book in my head
Drifting away in my slumber
The sounds float away in the night
The lights flicker off
The sounds of goodnight
The cold chill coming
Monsters scary in the darkness
The sound of the moon rising
Page 164
Katie Metzger
REBIRTH
Where peonies blossom,
And fragrant flowers spring.
Where a soft wind whispers,
A faint bell rings.
Where willows dance,
And petals pucker,
Where colors prance,
—bugs cuddle under.
Where sprouts swirl,
To reach the heavens.
Green tangible whirls,
Rolling hills that flowers live on.
I find your arms,
To comfort me.
I find a soft wind,
That sings to me.
Where the earth is parted—
From it’s lips something new.
An earth-child darts and,
Reaches high, leaves in dew.
A new birth,
A new green plant,
Finds its worth,
A new dance.
Ema Williamson
THOUSANDS
If it is so
And pictures have the worth
Of a thousand splendid words
What is the worth
Of those words?
Did they say any more
Than the brush did
When it put the paint on the page?
Any more than the artist forbid
The colors to ever fade?
They may be many words
But they can only say so much
There is a limit to their growth
And a limit to their oath
But for every pair of eyes
That touch a canvas
That eat it
That is a thousand words
For every living soul
A painting speaks
How many words is that?
Page 166
KIAN BROUWER lives in Venice Beach, California, with his mom, dad, two
brothers and a sister. He is going into the fifth grade at Coeur d’Alene Elementary. He is on the swim team and also loves the beach, soccer, and
animals.
DANIELLE CHARETTE is a high school senior at Coginchaug Regional High
School in Durham, Connecticut. In addition to poetry, she enjoys editorializing, reading, soccer, track, and debate. Her works have appeared in the
Hartford Courant, Connecticut Student Writers, Indiana University-Purdue
University Indianapolis’ High School Anthology, and local publications.
Danielle aspires to become an English or history professor.
A native of Cape Town, South Africa, CARLA HASSON spent her formative
years surrounded by fascinating, diverse cultures and the rich magnificence
of nature. Her immigration to Florida at the age of eight served as the catalyst
for her emergence as a poet; she has professed thankfulness for its difficulty
due to this fact. She is currently seventeen and a student at Dr. Michael Krop
High School. Carla prides herself on being involved in the creative writing
community here and, now, at large.
KATIE METZGER is a seventeen-year-old home-school student who has been
writing since the age of nine. She is an active member of a local writers’
group and has been for almost three years. Katie also enjoys reading, singing, and drawing. One of her art pieces was included in the book, Yes! I Can
by the late Beasey Hendrix. Katie is currently working on finishing her first
novel.
EMA WILLIAMSON is an eleventh-grade cyber-school student from Pennsylvania. After writing a short story in seventh grade, she became fascinated
with the art of writing. Besides poetry, she also writes short and long fiction.
One of her poems, “To Be,” will soon be published in Creative Kids Magazine. She also enjoys photography and volunteering at her local library.
brief-residency
Master of Fine Arts in Writing
IDEALLY SUITED TO THE WRITING LIFE
• study with a great community of writers
• write in your own home
Spalding University
Our four-semester, brief-residency MFA in Writing
combines superb instruction with unparalleled
flexibility. Each semester begins with a 10-day
residency, after which students return home to
study one on one with a faculty mentor by
correspondence. Students may customize the
location, season, and pace of their studies.
The same amount of writing is required in
each option:
• Spring and fall residencies in Louisville,
each followed by a 6-month semester
• Summer residency abroad, followed
by a 9-month semester
• Spring “stretch” option, combining the
spring Louisville residency with the
9-month summer semester schedule
• A combination of spring, summer,
and fall semesters
fiction
poetry
creative nonfiction
writing for children
playwriting
screenwriting
Where Every
Individual Talent
Is Nurtured
Program Director
Sena Jeter Naslund,
author of Ahab’s Wife, Four Spirits, and
Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette
851 S. Fourth St.
Louisville, KY 40203
www.spalding.edu/mfa
502-585-9911, ext. 2423
800-896-8941, ext. 2423
mfa@spalding.edu

The Louisville Review

Transcription

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