DOWNLOAD: Spring 2010 Sisyphus - St. Louis University High School
DOWNLOAD: Spring 2010 Sisyphus - St. Louis University High School
DOWNLOAD: Spring 2010 Sisyphus - St. Louis University High School
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
2<br />
Si s y p h u s <strong>Spring</strong> ’10<br />
Outside Cover artwork by Sonny Hagar<br />
Outside Cover design by Joseph Wright<br />
Inside Front Cover: watercolor by Conor Gearin<br />
Inside Back Cover Artwork (from left to right, top to bottom) by Eric Mueth, Joseph Wright,<br />
Greg Fister, and Sonny Hagar<br />
Inside Back Cover Design by Joseph Wright and Patrick O’Leary<br />
Masthead photograph by Patrick Zarrick<br />
3 Bad Cartography, poetry by Ben Minden-<br />
Birkenmaier<br />
4 drawing by Greg Fister<br />
5 Top Ten Ways I Blew It with Lori, fiction<br />
by Adam Cruz<br />
6 drawing by Sonny Hagar<br />
11 drawing by Evan Orf<br />
12 drawing by Perry May<br />
15 watercolor by David <strong>St</strong>ankoven<br />
16 watercolor by Nicholas Dooling<br />
17 <strong>St</strong>riped Couch, poetry by James Fister<br />
18 Oleander Garden, fiction by Eric Lewis<br />
19 watercolor by Joseph Wright<br />
20 watercolor by Will Linhares<br />
23 Original Flight, poetry by Ben Minden-<br />
Birkenmaier<br />
watercolor by Conor Gearin<br />
24 etching by Joseph Quinlan<br />
25 Summer Skin, fiction by Brian Faron<br />
26 print by Joseph Quinlan<br />
28 Creative Writing, poetry by Daniel Hart<br />
L’Ecuyer<br />
29 The Last Chapter, fiction by Joseph<br />
Quinlan<br />
31 watercolor by Dave <strong>St</strong>ankoven<br />
32 watercolor by Will Linhares<br />
33 “No.” poetry by Sam Herbig<br />
34-5 Glittering Industry, poetry by James<br />
Fister<br />
painting by Joseph Quinlan<br />
36 drawing by Phil Nahlik<br />
37 The Columbia Sun, fiction by Conor<br />
Gearin<br />
39 watercolor by Kevin Kickham<br />
42 Man from the Desert, poetry by Daniel<br />
Hart L’Ecuyer<br />
43 print by Sonny Hagar<br />
44 The Operation, prose by Conor Fellin<br />
45 watercolor by Joseph Wright<br />
46 drawing by Clayton Petras<br />
48 Good Morning, poetry by Mike Lumetta<br />
50 What If, anonymous prose<br />
52 watercolor by Joseph Wright<br />
53 Odysseus’ End, poetry by Greg Fister<br />
watercolor by Kevin Kickham<br />
54 The Red Pen, fiction by Joseph Quinlan<br />
55 Comme Il Faut, prose by Michael Tynan<br />
photograph by Sam McCabe<br />
58 Prodigal Song, by James Fister<br />
self-portrait by Greg Fister<br />
59 Nothing, prose by Collin McCabe<br />
61 drawing by Perry May<br />
62 design by Eric Mueth<br />
65 Angel Maintenance, poetry by Ben<br />
Minden-Birkenmaier<br />
charcoal by Evan Orf<br />
66 Deep Blue Sea, prose poetry by <strong>St</strong>even<br />
Dyke<br />
pastel by Greg Fister<br />
67 The Axis of Existence, poetry by Daniel<br />
Hart L’Ecuyer<br />
68 Easter Risings, poetry by Bill George
Ba d Ca rt o g r a p h y<br />
Ben Minden-Birkenmaier<br />
I’ve never followed a coastline,<br />
never turned rocky crags and dusty scrubland<br />
into drawings on a page.<br />
I’ve never captured the story of a man’s life<br />
in 700 sheets of paper, or put<br />
the history of a nation into<br />
four manageable volumes for the coffee table.<br />
I’ve never frozen a moment<br />
in oil on canvas, or etched screams<br />
and moans onto a vinyl disc.<br />
But I do know there’s something lost in the translation,<br />
some essence that can’t be drawn or written or etched,<br />
and instead falls into that nebulous gap<br />
between creation and recording, forever drifting.<br />
3<br />
And yet, like stone replacing bone<br />
in a fossilizing skeleton,<br />
something is added until at last<br />
the recorder replaces the creator<br />
as master of the creation.<br />
And if that conglomeration of creator and recorder,<br />
that mixing of thought and feel and soul,<br />
is somewhat imperfect,<br />
what of it?
4<br />
Gr e g Fi s t e r
To p Te n Way s I<br />
Bl e w It Wi t h Lo r i<br />
Adam Cruz<br />
#10—Th e Ni g h t I Me t He r: Ju ly ,<br />
b e t w e e n f r e s h m a n a n d s o p h o m o r e<br />
y e a r<br />
I don’t buy the cliché that when you<br />
meet the love of your life, the world stops<br />
and you just know. I don’t, just to make that<br />
clear.<br />
It was the summer after freshman year,<br />
and me and Craig walked in late to the surprise<br />
pool party. Most of freshman year, we’d<br />
hung around with my grade school friends,<br />
but, with most of their summer breaks<br />
starting two weeks after ours, we’d hooked<br />
up with some nice girls my neighbor Marta<br />
played soccer with. Two girls in particular,<br />
Carrie and Rachel. Craig and Carrie would<br />
date for two years, but Rachel I didn’t talk<br />
to very much after this surprise party, which<br />
was for her, by the way.<br />
Being mysterious was really cool. Most<br />
of the guys were from our school anyway, and<br />
had been hanging with these girls all year, but<br />
we were new to their parties, and that made<br />
the party that much more fun, for them and<br />
for us—already they were getting bored of<br />
the same old group. And to the girls, Craig<br />
and I were a hot commodity: new, single<br />
guys. Craig was the good-looking one, sure,<br />
but I was the funny one; I had that going for<br />
me.<br />
We walked through the gate and around<br />
Elisa’s pool to drop off our presents on the<br />
table under the deck. Already people were<br />
calling out our names to come join them for<br />
a game of Chicken, but we figured we should<br />
at least meet this Elisa girl before jumping in<br />
her pool. Well, at least I figured that; Craig<br />
flipped me his cell phone and jumped into<br />
the pool, shirt, towel, present, and all.<br />
Now alone and not near as confident, I<br />
put my gift card on the table and bent down<br />
to fill up a drink. A few guys said hi, and I<br />
was about to jump into a conversation about<br />
summer baseball when I felt a tap on my<br />
shoulder.<br />
“Is your name Eric?”<br />
I turned around and surveyed the scene<br />
in front of me, and quietly thanked God.<br />
Three smokin’ hot girls, in bikinis, asking<br />
if I was Eric, which I was. The tall brunette<br />
with the blue-and-white-dotted bikini was<br />
the one who had done the asking, and wore<br />
a proud and confident smile. I put on a fake<br />
scowl and said, “Who wants to know?”<br />
They all three busted out laughing at<br />
that.<br />
“Rachel talks about you all the time, seriously.<br />
She says you are the funniest guy!”<br />
said the blonde in the green swimsuit. Of<br />
the three, she had the best body for sure, but<br />
something about how excited she was to talk<br />
turned me off.<br />
The tan, black-haired girl with green,<br />
snake-like eyes, who was standing at the<br />
edge of the group and wore the red and by far<br />
most revealing swimsuit, held out her hand.<br />
“Thanks for coming to my party. I’m<br />
Elisa. Rachel really talked you up.” I took it<br />
all in. I had a tiny crush on Rachel, yeah, but<br />
now she had opened up a new world for me.<br />
I took a glance at Craig over in the pool, Carrie<br />
draped at his side. Life was good.<br />
I don’t know why Lori joined the group<br />
at that moment: she’s not really friends with<br />
those three girls—she’s much too interesting.<br />
But when I turned around to show off<br />
my “ghetto booty” to the girls, I saw her for<br />
the first time. She was laughing with the rest<br />
of them, hard too, so I got to check out her<br />
profile a bit before it became awkward. Her<br />
hair was blonde, which got me right off the<br />
bat. Her body had a cute petiteness to it in<br />
comparison to the other three. Her smile was<br />
toothy and genuine. Her eyes were bright<br />
5
6<br />
blue, the kind that look at you and you can<br />
tell they see right through whoever you’re<br />
trying to be at the moment. They could be<br />
no other color.<br />
She did catch me staring, and gave me<br />
that knowing look with the arched eyebrows.<br />
When everyone stopped laughing, she extended<br />
her hand.<br />
“I’m Lori.”<br />
“And I ... gotta go<br />
talk to Craig.” Everyone<br />
laughed at the joke as I<br />
scurried away, especially<br />
Lori. Before I got to<br />
Craig, Mrs. Sims came<br />
outside and said Rachel<br />
was here and to get ready<br />
to surprise her, so before<br />
I could even talk to him<br />
we huddled under the<br />
deck. I tried to catch another<br />
glance at Lori, but<br />
I couldn’t pick her out in<br />
the crowd.<br />
As I said, I don’t believe<br />
in love at first sight,<br />
and I never will. But I<br />
kept scanning the group<br />
for Lori. I wanted to talk<br />
to her, even for a bit, before<br />
Rachel got there.<br />
“SURPRISE!!!!!”<br />
And I had to go talk to Craig …<br />
#9—Di b s: Im m e d i a t e ly a f t e r<br />
When Craig’s mom’s Volvo pulled up and<br />
we had finished toweling off, Craig and I gave<br />
our good-bye hugs and headed for the fence.<br />
After I had slipped my shirt on, Kurt asked<br />
for a ride home. I don’t know why, because<br />
he lives at least ten minutes out of the way,<br />
but I said yes.<br />
We got into the car, the lingering dampness<br />
bleeding through our shirts and towels<br />
wrapped around our waists—Craig riding<br />
shotgun, me and Kurt in the back.<br />
Mrs. Hack asked how the party was, and<br />
we each gave her our one-line answers, then<br />
settled into a quiet late night mood, listening<br />
to the Fray on Craig’s iPod. Craig lay his<br />
head against the window in front of me, and<br />
I followed suit. My eyes started to flutter a<br />
So n n y Ha g a r<br />
bit to “Cable Car” when<br />
my phone buzzed in my<br />
lap.<br />
“HEY Eric! I totally<br />
creeped and got<br />
your number from Jason.<br />
When are we going<br />
to rendezvous again?” It<br />
was the first text I ever<br />
got from Lori James. I<br />
started to fashion my<br />
response, but my phone<br />
buzzed in my hand<br />
again. Text from Kurt.<br />
“There were sho<br />
some prettttty women<br />
there!” I looked over at<br />
Kurt, but he was facing<br />
forward, a smile creeping<br />
at the side of his<br />
lips.<br />
“Yeah, I thought<br />
so too.”<br />
“Any in particular?”<br />
I started to get a little nervous and debated<br />
whether or not to text Craig to tell<br />
him to start up a quick conversation.<br />
“A few, u?”<br />
“Just one. Have you met Lori James?” I<br />
got that horrible feeling in my stomach, a<br />
mix between needing to poop and getting<br />
kicked.<br />
I debated my response, and cunningly<br />
retorted, “Yep.”<br />
Kurt’s text came back less than ten seconds<br />
later.<br />
“Dibs.”
I shut my phone and tried to go back<br />
to sleep, but I felt Kurt staring at me, so I<br />
shrugged my shoulders and nodded. He<br />
smiled and patted me on the shoulder.<br />
As for Lori’s text, I didn’t respond.<br />
#8—Tw o f o r Th r e e : Se p t e m b e r,<br />
s o p h o m o r e y e a r<br />
The flashing mixer lights broke up the<br />
darkness in the gym as I sifted through the<br />
crowd, looking for Lori. I bumped a grinding<br />
senior in a purple basketball jersey and aviators,<br />
and almost knocked over the tiny girl in<br />
pink, but I didn’t care too much. I was a man<br />
on a mission. Three in a row.<br />
Getting to know each other was an adventure,<br />
her favorite time in our relationship—we<br />
didn’t fight much then. We didn’t<br />
fight at all, actually.<br />
We’d stay up late every night, on instant<br />
messenger and texting at the same time, trying<br />
to guess tiny facts about one another. It<br />
seems dumb now, but all day I’d look forward<br />
to it. Back then, I didn’t know her middle<br />
name was Dana, or that she hadn’t kissed a<br />
boy, or that she wanted to go to the <strong>University</strong><br />
of Arizona. I applied there earlier this year,<br />
even though I hadn’t visited or anything. Got<br />
$9,000, too.<br />
I had been on a really hot streak of<br />
guesses in the past week, guessing her favorite<br />
food (pizza, easy to guess) and the state<br />
she was born in (Connecticut, not so much).<br />
And now, if I got three in a row, I would get<br />
a prize. I wasn’t sure of the question, or what<br />
the prize was, but I knew I’d guess it right,<br />
and I knew I wanted it. I wiped some sweat<br />
off from my NBA headband and fought<br />
through the crowd.<br />
“Craig! You seen Lori around?” Craig,<br />
dressed as a monk, looked up from Carrie,<br />
who was dancing close to his body wearing<br />
some sort of ’80s spandex. I felt bad for interrupting,<br />
but, like I said, I was on a mission.<br />
He grinned and gave me the one-second finger.<br />
I stood there awkwardly as he said goodbye<br />
to Carrie (God forbid he be apart from<br />
her for one second) and reviewed potential<br />
questions while they passed around his piece<br />
of Juicy Fruit for a bit.<br />
Favorite color is too easy; she wouldn’t<br />
ask that unless she wanted me to get it. Dad’s<br />
name? Jack, Carl, Dave …<br />
Craig grabbed me by the shoulder, his<br />
sweaty palm clamping down a bit too hard.<br />
He obviously wasn’t pleased.<br />
“Eric, I haven’t seen you dancing all<br />
night. Will you just forget about her, man?”<br />
Craig’s hand surveyed the crowd. “We have<br />
over 1,000 beautiful young fish for your taking.<br />
Will you give up on that Lori thing for<br />
awhile?”<br />
I had lost him around “fish,” because<br />
while I followed his hand’s path I spotted<br />
Lori on the outskirts of the crowd talking<br />
with her friend Heather. Her bright neon<br />
outfit kept with the theme, but she wasn’t<br />
like the other girls; her outfit wasn’t revealing<br />
or flashy. She wasn’t asking to be looked<br />
at, but it was at the same time impossible to<br />
avert your eyes. I loved that.<br />
I waved off Craig and started heading<br />
over. He began to protest, but something,<br />
probably one of “those” looks from Carrie,<br />
stopped him.<br />
Lori spotted me about halfway before<br />
I got there and waved excitedly, ending<br />
her conversation with Heather. She nearly<br />
knocked me over with her hug. I tried to talk<br />
but couldn’t manage to wipe off that dumbstruck<br />
smile that she sometimes gave me. She<br />
gave me a wink, and we danced to the rest of<br />
the song. She moved easily, guiding my clumsy<br />
arms. I stepped on her feet a few times,<br />
but she squeezed me hard at the end of the<br />
song. We were still on the outskirts, apart<br />
from the massive mixer crowd, and I didn’t<br />
see the flashing lights, or the eyes of Kurt or<br />
Craig resting upon me. I only replayed that<br />
wink in my mind again and again.<br />
7
8<br />
Lori snapped me out of it when she left<br />
my arms.<br />
“Okay!” she said very professionally,<br />
pursing her lips and rubbing her hands together<br />
like my English teacher. “Here’s the<br />
big one, the one for the grand prize: What’s<br />
my favorite color?”<br />
I started to answer when Heather came<br />
back over and tried to yank Lori back on the<br />
dance floor. Lori shrugged her off and looked<br />
at me intently, expectantly.<br />
“Red.”<br />
Lori’s face fell, and her smile faltered<br />
a bit. God dammit. She recovered quickly<br />
though, and so did I, falling to my knees in<br />
fake devastation.<br />
“Nope! WRONG! No prize for you!”<br />
Before I could intercede, or argue, or even<br />
stand up, Heather was yanking her back into<br />
the fast-paced mob. I tried to grab Lori’s<br />
hand, but missed.<br />
“Wait, what was the prize?” I called after<br />
her.<br />
Lori smiled and blew me a kiss. “It’s a<br />
shame. You coulda been the first!”<br />
Lori entered the crowd, dancing with<br />
Heather towards my group of friends. But<br />
I stayed on my knees for a while, my hands<br />
rubbing my face, my eyes closed.<br />
I tried to convince myself that my first<br />
thought had been blue, that I should’ve gone<br />
with my instincts. But no—I had been sure it<br />
was red.<br />
Lori’s dad’s name is Rodger. Her first<br />
kiss would be Kurt. But to this day, I have no<br />
idea what her favorite color is.<br />
#7—No t My Ty p e: Nov e m b e r,<br />
s e n i o r y e a r<br />
My phone buzzed on the table for the<br />
second time in five minutes, but again I ignored<br />
it and kept making out with Vicky.<br />
We sank deeper into the couch, and my<br />
hand started to slide up to unstrap her bra,<br />
but then the phone vibrated again. I felt her<br />
tongue leave my mouth.<br />
“Will you just get it?” It was more a statement<br />
than a question; before I could answer,<br />
Vicky was fixing her mussed-up red hair into<br />
a ponytail. I grabbed the phone and immediately<br />
popped off the couch, knocking off the<br />
blanket we’d pulled over ourselves, but Vicky<br />
didn’t even look up to comment on my “atattention<br />
soldier,” as she liked to call it.<br />
I excused myself and locked the bathroom<br />
door behind me, but I doubt Vicky<br />
looked up from the mirror.<br />
I hadn’t talked to Lori in a month, maybe<br />
more. She began talking as soon as I answered.<br />
“You’re dating Farr?! I know you said<br />
somebody on the baseball team had a crush<br />
on her, but you didn’t tell me it was you.”<br />
“What do you need, Lori?” I wasn’t in the<br />
mood, hadn’t been in a long time. Although<br />
it was over the phone, I could feel the smile<br />
fade from her face.<br />
“Nothing, I just heard about you and<br />
her, and I thought it was funny …”<br />
“Why do you even care?”<br />
“Because she is SO not your type. She’s<br />
the kinda girl YOU date, but she shouldn’t<br />
be.” Lori really knew how to press my buttons.<br />
I sat down on the toilet seat and tried<br />
to calm myself and keep my voice down.<br />
“Oh, and what kinda girl is that?”<br />
Lori gave a short laugh on the other side<br />
of the phone, the kind where nothing’s actually<br />
that funny. “You know, she’s a ditz. Selfabsorbed,<br />
loves to hear herself talk ...”<br />
“And what exactly is my type?” My voice<br />
had started to rise, and I turned on the sink<br />
to try and muffle it. I was standing now.<br />
Lori’s voice was quiet now on the other<br />
side of the phone. “I don’t know, Eric. Just<br />
not that.” There was a sort of plea to her<br />
voice, as if asking me, begging me, not to<br />
badger any further. But that only made me<br />
angrier—how dare SHE try to make ME the<br />
bad guy here?
“You know what, Lori, do me a favor.<br />
When you find that girl who IS my type, and<br />
it’s NOT you, give me a call. Until then, leave<br />
me the hell alone.” And I don’t know why—I<br />
easily could’ve just hung up—but I tore the<br />
battery out of my phone and threw it to the<br />
ground. It bounced under the counter and<br />
out of sight, and the screen of my phone<br />
went black, leaving me with just the sound of<br />
the running water.<br />
#6—Va l e n t i n e s : Fe b r u a ry , j u n i o r<br />
y e a r<br />
We lay on the hood of my car, me in my<br />
red and black formal attire and her in gray<br />
sweatpants. I was pretty spiffed up, and I<br />
doubt she had on make-up. I loved it when<br />
she didn’t wear make-up.<br />
“And … it’s over. Valentine’s Day, 2009,<br />
has officially come to a close.” Lori closed<br />
her phone and moved a bit closer to me, almost<br />
touching. If I had known it would be<br />
one of the last times we’d be alone together,<br />
I’d have touched her. I continued to look up<br />
at the stars and gave a fist pump at the end of<br />
her countdown.<br />
“How was the dance? I bet Linda looked<br />
REALLY pretty.”<br />
I shrugged. “Eh, it was fine. It was something<br />
to do. She’s not much of a dancer, but<br />
maybe I’m spoiled.” I leaned over to look at<br />
Lori, but now she was looking up into sky.<br />
She was smiling, though, and I smiled too,<br />
glad she got the reference.<br />
“How was your date with Kurt? Where’d<br />
he take you?” I asked out of obligation, immediately<br />
regretting it. I knew I would get<br />
one of two answers—a complaint about how<br />
crummy Kurt was or a drawn out exaggeration<br />
of his romancing. I was in the mood for<br />
neither. I got the former.<br />
I listened and nodded, realizing this was<br />
the moment I had been waiting for since she<br />
had called me to come over an hour before.<br />
“It’s like he doesn’t care at all. Or he<br />
doesn’t want to.” Lori finished and sighed,<br />
looking at her phone. “I gotta go in before<br />
my mom shits herself, but thanks for coming.<br />
I needed you tonight.” I got down from<br />
the hood and we looked at each other the<br />
same way we had for months—like we didn’t<br />
really know how we should appropriately say<br />
good-bye. Before she could come in for the<br />
awkward hug or brief kiss on the cheek, I<br />
reached into my pocket and pulled out the<br />
black velvet box.<br />
“Look, I know you said no gifts, and I<br />
agree, but I had some money left over from<br />
Linda’s present, and I just figured … well<br />
here.” I handed her the box that held the<br />
ring I had gotten her with her ruby birthstone<br />
in it. Lori opened the box and closed<br />
it almost immediately, and her expression<br />
didn’t change.<br />
“Eric …”<br />
Whoa, she was near tears. That wasn’t<br />
the reaction I was expecting. She looked towards<br />
the ground and didn’t meet me in the<br />
eye like she usually did.<br />
“What? It wasn’t that big of a deal, I had<br />
just bought Linda …”<br />
“You bought Linda a teddy bear and<br />
chocolates, Eric!”<br />
It was my turn to look at the ground.<br />
She put the box back in my hand. “I love<br />
it, but I can’t. We obviously can’t do this anymore.<br />
You can’t keep doing this to me.”<br />
I threw the box down angrily. “Keep doing<br />
what?”<br />
Lori, the hint of tears no longer in her<br />
eyes, calmly picked up the box and put it in<br />
my hand, and closed my fingers around it.<br />
“Make me regret dating Kurt.” Lori started<br />
to walk back towards her house. I called<br />
out after her, trying to sound confident and<br />
caring, though I’m sure my voice came out<br />
more like that of a wounded puppy.<br />
“Will you at least keep the ring?”<br />
Lori shook her head and didn’t turn<br />
around. She closed the door after herself.<br />
9
10<br />
#5—Qu i t Pl ay i n g Ar o u n d : Ma rc h,<br />
s o p h o m o r e y e a r<br />
I threw my backpack on the ground and<br />
collapsed on the couch. It had been a long<br />
day.<br />
I flipped through the channels, and<br />
somewhere between Sportscenter and That ’70s<br />
Show, I decided to do it. I dialed the number<br />
without a thought. The only number besides<br />
Lori’s I have memorized is my mom’s.<br />
She picked up on the last ring; she always<br />
did that for some damn reason even if<br />
she was right by the phone. It was as if she<br />
considered each and every call completely<br />
before she picked up.<br />
“Hey good lookin’!” She had established<br />
early on that she didn’t answer the phone<br />
with a simple hello, but I still blushed.<br />
“Hey, we gotta talk about something.”<br />
I then proceeded to tell her about the confrontation<br />
with Kurt while I was doing my<br />
homework in study hall. “He wasn’t mad or<br />
anything, he just wanted to know what he<br />
needs to do for you to be his girlfriend,” I<br />
said. After a long pause, “He said he knew we<br />
were close and I could help him out.”<br />
“Well, isn’t that just typical Kurt shit.<br />
I—”<br />
“Why don’t you just stop messing around<br />
and date him?” There was a long pause on the<br />
phone after that, so I repeated it. And still<br />
Lori didn’t say anything, so I spoke up again.<br />
“I mean seriously, he likes you, you like<br />
him. There should be nothing in the way<br />
of you just becoming his girlfriend. Maybe<br />
it would be better for you, and me, and especially<br />
Kurt if you would just stop playing<br />
around and just go out with him.”<br />
Five second pause.<br />
“Okay, Eric.”<br />
Three days later Kurt and Lori officially<br />
became boyfriend and girlfriend.<br />
#4—Th e La s t Bi r t h d ay Pr e s e n t:<br />
Lat e Fe b r u a ry , s e n i o r y e a r.<br />
I found it in my mailbox, after Vicky and<br />
me had finished in her car. She had to work<br />
at six, on my birthday. Some girlfriend.<br />
The CD was pink and simply read<br />
“Birthday CD.” Lori’s name wasn’t on it, but<br />
the goofy curl at the bottom of the “y” was a<br />
dead giveaway. A piece of paper was taped on<br />
its underside.<br />
“Eric: Shouldn’t let a little fighting get<br />
in the way of tradition. I miss you. I know<br />
that it isn’t fair for me to say that, but I do.<br />
Happy birthday. Love, Lori.” I put the CD in<br />
my pocket; maybe I’d listen to it later. I was<br />
tempted to text her when I pulled out my<br />
phone, but I picked the next best way to get<br />
rid of the heaviness now forming in my chest.<br />
Instead of texting Lori, I texted Mark.<br />
I rarely drank too much, or at all, but<br />
when I did, watch out.<br />
I was a mess that night of my 18th birthday.<br />
Mark, my ever-loyal college dropout<br />
chum, chauffeured me around and provided<br />
the alcohol as we cruised <strong>St</strong>. <strong>Louis</strong>. I wish I<br />
could describe in detail the events that led<br />
me to Lori’s doorstep around one that night,<br />
but in my memory the activities and movements<br />
of the night are broken and fragmented,<br />
like a shattered CD.<br />
Mark offered to help me up the driveway—I’d<br />
need help in the rain, he said—but<br />
I refused and stumbled my way up it the best<br />
I could. I thought I had gotten there pretty<br />
swiftly and silently, but that must not have<br />
been the case since Lori was waiting for me<br />
at the door when I got there.<br />
I had an entire speech planned out, beginning<br />
with “I love you” and ending with<br />
“screw you,” but when she opened the door<br />
in her pajama pants and a Fillmore North<br />
<strong>High</strong> T-shirt, I forgot what it was. I had given<br />
her that shirt, too.
She studied me for a long time, and I<br />
stared right back, the rain lightly drizzling<br />
around me.<br />
Finally, she sighed. “Eric King, you are a<br />
mess. Get in here.” She reached to grab my<br />
arm, but I yanked back violently and took<br />
another step back, now on the grass of her<br />
lawn.<br />
I tried to say something, I did, but the<br />
words didn’t come out. The words that would<br />
explain why I was there. Why I was going to<br />
do what I was going to do. But, for the life<br />
of me, I couldn’t<br />
force them out.<br />
Instead, I<br />
pulled the pink<br />
CD out of my<br />
pocket and broke<br />
it in half. The<br />
noise was duller<br />
than I expected,<br />
and the break<br />
wasn’t clean down<br />
the middle like I<br />
had intended it<br />
to be. I took the<br />
two pieces and<br />
split them again,<br />
then threw them<br />
in front of her on<br />
her porch.<br />
Lori looked<br />
at me with her<br />
eyes big, empty,<br />
and sad. She closed the door slowly in front<br />
of her, her eyes never leaving mine until<br />
I couldn’t take it anymore and started to<br />
sob into my hands. When I looked up, the<br />
door was closed and the porch light was off.<br />
I might have stayed there all night if Mark<br />
hadn’t forced me to get in the car.<br />
I left the pieces on the porch, but the<br />
accompanying note was still in my pocket.<br />
#3—Ch o o s e Me: Ap r i l, j u n i o r y e a r<br />
I parked Craig’s car on the edge of her<br />
curb and let loose a massive sigh as I flipped<br />
out the lights.<br />
I had stolen my slumbering buddy’s<br />
Mazda and driven at three a.m. to Lori’s, but<br />
the most nerve-racking part of the night had<br />
yet to begin.<br />
I had never been in Lori’s backyard.<br />
From the sliver of light from the streetlamp<br />
reflecting around the house, I saw a worn<br />
swingset, a patio table, and a grill as dark<br />
Eva n Or f<br />
as the night. I also<br />
saw a porch swing.<br />
As I texted her to<br />
tell her I’d arrived,<br />
I tried not to think<br />
of how many times<br />
she and Kurt had<br />
swung on it.<br />
The sliding glass<br />
door opened three<br />
seconds later; she’d<br />
been waiting in the<br />
kitchen. Lori put<br />
her finger to her<br />
lips and grabbed<br />
my hand, guiding<br />
me down towards<br />
her basement. We<br />
walked quietly but<br />
swiftly, her in pink<br />
pajama pants and a<br />
baggy sweatshirt,<br />
me still in my baseball uniform from the<br />
game that had ended hours before. I tried<br />
without much luck to recall what the game’s<br />
score had been as we descended down the<br />
carpeted steps, the only light the bluish beam<br />
guiding us from Lori’s open cell phone.<br />
“Sit on the couch next to the computer<br />
room. If my dad comes down the stairs, jump<br />
behind the couch and crawl into there. Hide<br />
behind the desk,” Lori ordered, her first<br />
words of the night to me whispered hastily<br />
11
12<br />
and business-like. I had never heard her talk<br />
like that, but then again I’d never put her in<br />
a position where she had to. Now I had.<br />
Lori turned on a dim light from the fan<br />
overhead and flipped on the television. She<br />
played with the channels, stealing glances at<br />
me each time before she flipped the button,<br />
finally settling on some old movie on TNT, or<br />
some channel like that. I didn’t take my eyes<br />
off her. She turned<br />
down the volume<br />
so it was barely audible<br />
and looked at<br />
me, her electric eyes<br />
seemingly enormous<br />
in the dim lighting.<br />
I handed her<br />
the letter before I<br />
said anything, wishing<br />
I had remembered<br />
to rip off the<br />
torn edges of the<br />
notebook paper.<br />
“Don’t read<br />
that until I leave.”<br />
She nodded and<br />
tucked it in her elastic<br />
waistband.<br />
We sat in silence<br />
for a little<br />
while longer. “You<br />
played good tonight,”<br />
Lori said, her<br />
tone conversational<br />
but her voice shaky as she broke the dialogue<br />
between the two women on the television.<br />
“That other pitcher—”<br />
“I don’t want to talk about the damn<br />
game, Lori.” Something about my own tone<br />
surprised even me. I had never spoken with<br />
such harshness and coldness, not towards her<br />
anyway. Lori seemed taken aback too, but<br />
only for a second before she fired back.<br />
“Then maybe you can tell me what the<br />
hell that was all about after the game.”<br />
“What do you mean?”<br />
Lori stood up and flipped off the television.<br />
“If you’re going to play stupid and be an<br />
asshole, I’m not wasting my time. I’m going<br />
to bed.”<br />
“Sit down.” Lori gave me a hard glare,<br />
her eyebrows forming a V over her eyes that<br />
seemed to have lost their softness. But she<br />
sat.<br />
Pe r ry May<br />
“Maybe, Lori, I<br />
just can’t wait any<br />
longer. Maybe I am<br />
just sick of being<br />
second place.”<br />
“I don’t even know<br />
what the hell you’re<br />
talking about, Eric.<br />
Second place in<br />
what?”<br />
“I love you, Lori.”<br />
It was the first time<br />
I had said it to her<br />
face-to-face, and I<br />
wish I could’ve taken<br />
it back. It didn’t<br />
come out caring<br />
or sweet like I had<br />
imagined, but rather<br />
forceful and accusatory.<br />
“And yet I always<br />
lose.”<br />
“Lose what? I’m<br />
not some baseball<br />
game, Eric. You<br />
don’t win and lose me.”<br />
“Why are you dating Kurt? He’s an asshole,<br />
and he doesn’t love you.”<br />
“How do you know? He tells me he<br />
does.”<br />
“He doesn’t mean it.”<br />
“Do you?”<br />
Nobody talked for a while after that. Lori<br />
flipped back on the television. Some kind of<br />
car chase was going on, the main character<br />
on the run. I watched for a bit, then de-
cided to quit. I was done. She wanted Kurt,<br />
she could have him. I stood up and started<br />
to walk back up the stairs when I heard her<br />
voice behind me.<br />
“What do you want me to do? I can’t<br />
lose you, Eric. I just can’t.”<br />
I fought back tears the best I could, but<br />
just in case, I kept my back turned to her.<br />
“Choose me. Be with me. I will make<br />
you happy, I’ll do whatever I can to make you<br />
happy. Let me.”<br />
She walked closer and I turned around.<br />
She had stopped near the bottom of the<br />
steps.<br />
“I can’t do that to Kurt. I just can’t. He<br />
doesn’t deserve it.” I started to wheel back<br />
around, but she grabbed my right arm. Held<br />
on firmly, too.<br />
“And I don’t deserve you. How you ever<br />
got to love me, I’ll never know. How a great<br />
guy like you could ever—”<br />
“Let’s not go into that.” For the first<br />
time in the night, my voice had lost its edge.<br />
Instead though, it came out weak, tired. “I<br />
can tell you how beautiful you are, and how<br />
great you are, but you’ll never believe me.<br />
And I don’t know what else I can do.”<br />
I stepped to the last step; we were almost<br />
touching now, but I kept my gaze past<br />
her, towards the television. I tried to focus<br />
on the conversation going on in the movie,<br />
but I couldn’t really register much.<br />
“I’m sorry about tonight, I am so sorry.<br />
But I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried to get<br />
past you, I’ve tried. But no girl can live up to<br />
you.”<br />
“To this insane false image you have of<br />
me.”<br />
“No, to you, Lori James.”<br />
I met her square in the eyes now. They<br />
were beautiful. She was beautiful.<br />
I leaned to kiss her, and our lips touched,<br />
slightly grazing, but still touching. Her lips<br />
felt soft and welcoming, and I leaned in even<br />
closer. I don’t know how long we kissed, but<br />
I know she was the one who pulled away.<br />
She touched her lips and looked at the<br />
ground.<br />
“Get out, Eric. Get out right now.”<br />
I don’t know how I managed to find my<br />
way out blindly, but soon I was stepping out<br />
of the glass door, still without the aid of any<br />
light.<br />
#2—Bu r n it: Au g u s t, b e f o r e s e n i o r<br />
y e a r<br />
I teetered the salt and pepper shakers<br />
then set them back down and checked my<br />
watch again. When I looked up, Lori’s silver<br />
Corolla was backing into a parking spot<br />
next to the Applebee’s sign. Late, but not too<br />
bad.<br />
I fiddled with the lighter in my pocket<br />
and pretended to look at the menu. I took a<br />
sip of my water. No, there would be no need<br />
to order food.<br />
I felt two cold hands fold across my face<br />
and cover my eyes.<br />
“Guess who.”<br />
I didn’t want to, but I felt myself grin,<br />
and I played along.<br />
“Well, considering the chubbiness of the<br />
fingers, I’d have to say it’s a very, very fat—”<br />
The hands lifted and smacked me softly<br />
on the cheek, and Lori and I laughed together<br />
as she sat down across from me in the<br />
booth. I reached in my pocket for my phone,<br />
but instead felt the plastic lighter I had just<br />
bought at the Shell. I stopped laughing. I remembered<br />
why we were there.<br />
Lori gave me a warm smile from across<br />
the table, and I loosened my grip on the<br />
lighter. “How was Bridget’s? Lots of people<br />
there?”<br />
“Yeah, well about that ...”<br />
“Kurt says there was a lot of people<br />
there, but then again he was drinking so he<br />
could have totally been off base …”<br />
“Lori.”<br />
“I’m actually glad I had to baby-sit, I<br />
13
14<br />
can’t stand being around him when he’s in<br />
one of those moods. You know, those …”<br />
“Lori.” I clapped my hands together this<br />
time when I said it this time, and she stopped<br />
and started laughing.<br />
“Ha, I’m sorry, I just didn’t talk to you<br />
last night. You didn’t text me or anything.”<br />
Her tone wasn’t accusatory, but I could<br />
tell she was a bit hurt. “So, why did you want<br />
to meet me here?” She put her chin in her<br />
hands and made the face I loved, where she<br />
pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows. I<br />
was on now, it seemed.<br />
“I had a long talk with Kurt last night,<br />
Lori.” Her smile faded slowly, through realization<br />
or confusion I didn’t know.<br />
I delivered what I had to say exactly how<br />
I had rehearsed it; I was as cold and professional<br />
as possible and did my best to avoid<br />
looking at her eyes. I told her how Kurt<br />
knew everything; how I had decided to confess.<br />
And then, I told her that I found out he<br />
already knew. She had told him it all. He had<br />
even read the letter.<br />
“But you know all that,” I finished quietly,<br />
eyes still fixed on the Applebee’s Wall of<br />
Fame. After a few seconds of silence, I finally<br />
looked up. She had been staring at me the<br />
whole time.<br />
“So, what do you want me here for?” I<br />
felt the anger bubble inside me, her calm and<br />
apparently uncaring demeanor adding to a<br />
fury only being held back by the tight grip I<br />
had on the lighter.<br />
“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?” I<br />
controlled my voice the best I could, but the<br />
look I gave her was enough.<br />
Lori continued calmly though, her eyes<br />
never leaving mine. “I could tell you what really<br />
happened, how I had to show him the<br />
first page of your letter so he wouldn’t try to<br />
steal the entire thing. I could tell you about<br />
my guilt after the kiss, and how I told him in<br />
hopes that maybe he’d finally end it. I could<br />
tell you how many times I’ve chosen you over<br />
him. But you don’t want to hear that. You just<br />
want me to be the bad guy. You wanna blame<br />
me.”<br />
Before I could answer or respond, she<br />
reached into her purse and placed the crumbled<br />
and weathered pages of my letter on the<br />
table. I wondered how many times she’d read<br />
it.<br />
“You asked me to bring this here.<br />
Why?”<br />
I cleared my throat, and placed the lighter<br />
on the table.<br />
“Burn it.” Her eyes shifted from me to<br />
the lighter. They widened with surprise but<br />
still showed no sign of sadness, of remorse.<br />
I tried to say something else but couldn’t, so<br />
instead we sat there in dead silence, the letter,<br />
the lighter, and two waters in between<br />
us.<br />
“If I burn it, things will never be the<br />
same between us again. You know that?”<br />
I nodded, tried to talk, then just kept<br />
nodding.<br />
She moved quickly, grabbing the letter<br />
and the lighter and placing them in her purse<br />
in one quick movement. She got up and left<br />
the table without a word, leaving me sitting<br />
there, watching her.<br />
I toyed with the straw of my drink and<br />
pretended to text, waiting for the appropriate<br />
amount of time to pass. Five or so minutes<br />
later, I was pulling out of the parking<br />
lot. I looked left to see if I could turn onto<br />
the main road when I saw her.<br />
She was sitting in the driver’s seat of her<br />
car, the car running and her hands on the<br />
wheel. I tried to tear my eyes away from her<br />
and back to the road, but I sat and studied<br />
her.<br />
I had never seen Lori cry before, I’d<br />
heard her cry only once, and even then<br />
it wasn’t certain. But there she was, in the<br />
parking lot of Applebee’s, her head laid back<br />
on the headrest, her face red and puffy, tears<br />
falling freely as her hands stayed gripped on
Dav id <strong>St</strong>a n k o v e n<br />
15<br />
the wheel. She looked beautiful when she<br />
cried.<br />
The car behind me blared its horn. I<br />
snapped back to attention and pulled out<br />
onto Big Bend, narrowly avoiding an oncoming<br />
red SUV, whose driver promptly flipped<br />
me the bird. I didn’t cry.<br />
And things were never the same between<br />
me and Lori.<br />
#1—I’m in l o v e w i t h y o u : Ju n e ,<br />
p o s t-s o p h o m o r e y e a r<br />
I almost hung up after the first ring, but<br />
I didn’t. I was going to go through with it.<br />
The second ring I experienced similar<br />
panic, but I remembered my perfect plan,<br />
and it calmed me.<br />
The plan was this: I would fake drunktalking<br />
on the phone with Lori, so then I<br />
could basically say whatever I wanted.<br />
I should’ve hung up.<br />
Lori picked up, her voice in a barely<br />
audible whisper. I could tell she had been<br />
awake, though.<br />
“Eric King, it is almost 2 o’clock in the<br />
morning. You better have a good reason for<br />
this.” And with that, I broke into my drunken<br />
banter, and she bought it. Completely.<br />
She asked where I was and who I was<br />
with and why I had been drinking. At first,<br />
she sounded concerned, but I did my best to<br />
calm her nerves and soon she was laughing at<br />
my slurred dialogue. I sang to her, and I went<br />
on a rant about the rainy weather, and she<br />
laughed and laughed. And then, in a moment<br />
of silence, I said it.<br />
“I have to tell you something REALLY<br />
important.”<br />
She laughed. “Oh and what’s that?”<br />
“No, no, no, it’s REALLLLLLY important.”<br />
I kept up the drunken demeanor, but<br />
she could tell from my tone it was serious,<br />
and her laughing ceased.<br />
“Go on.”<br />
And like a hose suddenly unkinked, I<br />
spouted off, forgetting to sound drunk and<br />
instead talking without thinking or stopping.<br />
“I’m in love with you, Lori.” Before she<br />
could answer, I went on. When I’m nervous,<br />
I rant.<br />
“I am so in love with you. I can’t stop<br />
thinking about you, or dreaming about you.<br />
Well, not really dreaming, but wanting to<br />
dream about you, which is even better. God,<br />
I love you. I’ve loved you for … ever. A long<br />
time. Since the day I met you, I think. And I<br />
don’t know what to do. I love you.”<br />
She never told me if she was crying at<br />
that moment, but I know she was. And I
16<br />
know it because her voice cracked when she<br />
answered, softer than it had been before.<br />
“Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you<br />
ever tell me?”<br />
I tried to talk, but I couldn’t. I was<br />
choked up myself.<br />
“All you had to do was tell me, Eric. It’s<br />
all you had to do. You had months to, you<br />
had opportunities to. Why didn’t you? God<br />
dammit, Eric. Jesus.”<br />
“I was so scared, Lori. I was scared.”<br />
“Scared of what? Me?”<br />
“No, no. Just what if you didn’t love me<br />
back or that maybe…”<br />
I heard a deep sigh. “I waited for months<br />
and months. You never said anything. Why<br />
didn’t you say something? God, Eric, you are<br />
so stupid.”<br />
“I love you.” There was a longer break<br />
this time after I said it. I heard her heavy<br />
breathing in the phone and did my best to<br />
control mine. I stopped pacing across my<br />
basement floor and sat down when she finally<br />
spoke up again.<br />
“Why now? Now I’m with Kurt. We<br />
can’t be together now. You could have told<br />
me for months. How could you not tell me?”<br />
I figured the question was rhetorical,<br />
and let it sit.<br />
“I wish I could see you.” With that I<br />
popped up off the couch and started running<br />
up the stairs two at a time, headed towards<br />
the key rack.<br />
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”<br />
Lori laughed on the phone, one short,<br />
barky laugh. “Eric, you are drunk as a dog.<br />
There’s no way you can drive to see me tonight.”<br />
I had forgotten.<br />
I tried to recover, and, returning to my<br />
slurring accent, I said, “What about tomorrow?<br />
I could come over and we could talk<br />
about it tomorrow.”<br />
Lori continued to laugh, and her voice,<br />
which had slowly been getting louder as we<br />
had gone on, returned to a whisper. “No, by<br />
tomorrow, you’ll have forgotten all about<br />
this. Things will be back to normal, and you’ll<br />
never even know what we talked about.”<br />
“No,” I said. I wanted to tell her I was<br />
sober, and that I needed to see her. That I<br />
loved her more than anything, and I didn’t<br />
need to hide it anymore.<br />
But I didn’t.<br />
“No,” I repeated. “I’ll remember everything.”<br />
Ni c h o l a s Do o l i n g
<strong>St</strong> r i p e d Co u c h<br />
James Fister<br />
So long you have softened the falls<br />
of children jumping up and down,<br />
of Grandma weary after the evening meal,<br />
of my bandaged arm, still there,<br />
two weeks after the football game.<br />
<strong>St</strong>ill you haven’t lost your fluff<br />
or your willingness to support us.<br />
The countless people who have rested<br />
on your stripes run together<br />
like your colors once bold.<br />
Red and white, now pink.<br />
17<br />
Last night some friends were over,<br />
and you did not object to their impressions,<br />
not like Samantha, the tabby that shares your shade.<br />
You do not hiss or hide.<br />
You rest there, waiting warmly for company.<br />
You know, I cannot spend all my time<br />
on a couch.<br />
I have other furniture I am committed to.<br />
Around dinner time, the chairs get antsy.<br />
As the night grows near, the mattress squeaks in anticipation.<br />
The high chair in the kitchen nods its tray at me as I pass<br />
though it knows I can no longer sit in it.<br />
But you! You know that there is always a time<br />
for sitting. To each his own purpose.<br />
You rest there, waiting warmly for company.
18<br />
Ol e a n d e r Ga r d e n<br />
Eric Lewis<br />
The address was 12 East Battery <strong>St</strong>reet,<br />
and the three-story, single-room house<br />
stood on a palmetto-lined boulevard behind<br />
the sheltering flood wall bordering Charleston<br />
Harbor. Single-room is a native Charleston<br />
term for a house that has only a hallway<br />
and a single room facing the street but<br />
pushes deeper into a block than most city<br />
dwellers imagine.<br />
The house wore a coat of pastel green,<br />
one of the seventy-two colors approved by<br />
the Charleston Historical Society. It appeared<br />
to be made of stone but was most<br />
likely, like other homes built during that period<br />
in Charleston, plaster-covered cypress<br />
wood.<br />
A rod iron fence encased the large garden<br />
that ran the full length of the house’s<br />
northern face. To the aware observer, the<br />
fence was obviously a relatively new addition<br />
because it was only waist-high and did<br />
not feature a crown of thorns, the decorative<br />
antebellum equivalent of barbed wire that<br />
became immensely popular in the aftermath<br />
of Nat Turner’s slave rebellion. Eventually, as<br />
fears began to subside, the crown of thorns<br />
became a status symbol, an embellishment<br />
that proved the owner had someone to fear<br />
because he had something to lose. The fence<br />
was a disgusting shade of black known as<br />
Union Green, the result of the city’s defiant<br />
mixing of the paint sent south during Reconstruction.<br />
Andrew Billie <strong>St</strong>rawhun had learned<br />
that and much more about his grandmother’s<br />
home during his first month there. He<br />
had not, however, made any progress on his<br />
honors thesis, his parents’ purpose in sticking<br />
him there for the summer.<br />
“Come on, Andy,” his mother had pleaded.<br />
“She’s all alone there now, and you want<br />
to research secession, right? Where better<br />
than where secession began?”<br />
Andrew now sat on the bottom level of<br />
the breezeway that ran along the south face<br />
of each of the house’s three stories. He was<br />
bare-chested and in shorts beside his closed<br />
laptop. The breezeway squeezed into the<br />
tight gap between houses ten and twelve to<br />
prevent nineteenth-century peeping Toms<br />
from catching a glimpse of the lady of the<br />
house in her petticoats. Andrew possessed<br />
no such modesty.<br />
Finding himself unwilling to work, Andrew<br />
rose, walked through the dining room,<br />
and emerged onto a wooden semicircular<br />
porch in his grandmother’s garden. Whiteblossomed,<br />
chest-high bushes guarded the<br />
perimeter, and a row of Japanese cherry saplings<br />
in little plastic sleeves ran parallel to the<br />
house in the garden’s center. Andrew’s grandmother<br />
knelt at the base of a tree and wore<br />
work clothes and an immaculate white hat,<br />
digging holes for bulbs.<br />
“Good morning, Amelia,” he said from<br />
the patio. His grandmother smiled but did<br />
not lift her eyes from the garden spade in her<br />
hand.<br />
“Good morning to you, Billie,” she said<br />
as she continued her work. “It makes a body<br />
wonder. Had you stayed up in bed too much<br />
longer, it would have been afternoon already.”<br />
Andrew did not respond and began to<br />
walk a lap around the garden’s perfect rectangle<br />
of gravel.<br />
“When will you be less busy?” she asked<br />
as Andrew neared her after turning the corner.<br />
“I was wondering when you’d come back<br />
to our room.”<br />
Andrew sighed and knelt down beside<br />
her. “Grandma—” he started.<br />
“What do you mean ‘Grandma’?” she<br />
scolded, lifting her eyes. “And why are you<br />
dressed so indecently, you fool of a husband.<br />
What will the neighbors think?”
“I mean you, Grandma,” he said gently,<br />
taking her hand in his. “Remember me? Andrew.<br />
Your grandson?”<br />
Realization, like age, fell across her face<br />
and left her mouth wrinkled in a frown as it<br />
sapped her strength.<br />
“I’m so sorry, Andrew, dear,” she said,<br />
patting his cheek. She surveyed the garden<br />
about her and then rose to a single knee. She<br />
shook too violently to make it all the way up,<br />
and Andrew had to take her arm to help her<br />
the rest of the way.<br />
Once on her feet,<br />
she padded into<br />
the house without<br />
a word.<br />
Andrew recalled<br />
the way he<br />
had first arrived in<br />
Charleston. Tropical<br />
<strong>St</strong>orm Louie<br />
had struck three<br />
weeks earlier, and<br />
scaffolding then<br />
surrounded most<br />
of the houses<br />
along the battery,<br />
and workers<br />
scrambled over<br />
their surfaces like<br />
worker bees, removing<br />
the waterlogged<br />
plaster to<br />
reveal the cypress<br />
wood or perhaps<br />
brick underneath<br />
before covering it with plaster once again.<br />
The city had dumpsters placed in the streets<br />
that were filled with the shattered glass<br />
of windows, the trunks of felled trees, and<br />
whatever flotsam the waves had washed up.<br />
Twelve East Battery was the exception<br />
to the rule. She still wore the same plaster,<br />
though it hung from her frame in tatters.<br />
Two palmetto trees lay in the garden, one<br />
Joseph Wr i g h t<br />
broken over the rod iron fence. The soil was<br />
upturned, and the gravel washed away, leaving<br />
a loamy scent in the air.<br />
Amelia <strong>St</strong>rawhun had lived alone in the<br />
house for the past seven months. Her husband,<br />
Billie, died at the age of 49, when Andrew’s<br />
father was 17. The deed to the house<br />
had been a wedding gift, and thus the widow,<br />
Amelia, and her son could stay. Billie’s brother,<br />
who then took over the lucrative family<br />
shipping business, generously offered Amelia<br />
an annuity and<br />
even continued to<br />
pay the wages of<br />
her longtime servant,<br />
Sara. Seven<br />
months ago, however,<br />
Sara had died<br />
of a heart attack,<br />
and Amelia had<br />
withdrawn from<br />
her activities and<br />
usual self. Andrew’s<br />
father noted<br />
especially how<br />
she had allowed<br />
her garden, once<br />
her pride and joy,<br />
to fall first to desiccation<br />
and later,<br />
more violently, to<br />
the storm.<br />
When Andrew<br />
first came to live<br />
with her, she had<br />
taken to a quiet<br />
life in an easy chair. She was nothing like the<br />
vivacious, often domineering woman Andrew<br />
remembered from annual childhood<br />
visits. He had to bathe and feed her as well as<br />
organize the repairs to the house. Each night<br />
when he went to the old guestroom that Billie<br />
had used after late-night meetings during<br />
business rushes, Andrew fell asleep within a<br />
page of where he had left off in his research.<br />
19
20<br />
Wi<br />
One morning, he awoke to the sounds<br />
and smells of sizzling meat. He leaped down<br />
the stairs two at a time, and at the bottom,<br />
his grandmother was whistling and setting<br />
the table for a Southern Sunday morning<br />
feast, complete with grits, biscuits and gravy,<br />
and homemade jam from the cupboard.<br />
“Good morning, Billie,” she crooned<br />
from the stove. She handed him a spoon and<br />
gestured for him<br />
to mind the skillet<br />
until she got<br />
back. Andrew was<br />
spooning scrambled<br />
eggs into a<br />
serving bowl when<br />
Amelia entered<br />
the house through<br />
the French doors<br />
leading to the garden.<br />
Her hands<br />
were black with<br />
dirt.<br />
“Sorry, dear,”<br />
she said, running<br />
her hands under<br />
the faucet he<br />
switched on for<br />
her. “I wanted to<br />
take stock of the<br />
garden after the<br />
storm. Thank God the oleander survived.<br />
Those little white flowers are the apple of<br />
mine eye.”<br />
Ever since that morning, Andrew had<br />
tried his best to remain Billie when possible<br />
to please Amelia and to lighten his burden of<br />
caring for her.<br />
But as afternoon quickly progressed,<br />
Andrew followed his grandmother into the<br />
house to shower and get dressed. Finally beginning<br />
to feel guilt because of his recent laziness,<br />
Andrew had resolved to work on his<br />
thesis in earnest.<br />
“Amelia, I’m going out,” Andrew called<br />
as he grabbed his car keys from the rack by<br />
the door. “I won’t be back until late.”<br />
Andrew drove inland to Meeting <strong>St</strong>reet<br />
to give himself a chance to walk through the<br />
city’s tourist center. It had become his daily<br />
custom to peruse the wares of the Slave Market.<br />
Slaves had never been sold there, but<br />
had gathered there to sell what little they<br />
could scrape together. It had not changed<br />
l l Li n h a r e s<br />
much in Andrew’s<br />
opinion,<br />
now full of the<br />
dry riverbed faces<br />
of black women—<br />
who looked<br />
old enough to<br />
have been slaves<br />
themselves—and<br />
the sweet grass<br />
baskets they<br />
wove.<br />
When his watch<br />
read 1:47, Andrew<br />
completed<br />
his circuit of<br />
the market and<br />
emerged once<br />
again on Meeting.<br />
He turned<br />
left, and when<br />
he saw the pink<br />
stucco of the Mills House Hotel two blocks<br />
later, Andrew turned right onto Queen<br />
<strong>St</strong>reet. Haphazard concrete tiles lifted by the<br />
rebellious roots of a weeping willow forced<br />
Andrew to walk more carefully as he neared<br />
the safety of the haint-blue ceiling of Poogan’s<br />
Porch restaurant. Haint blue was a sky<br />
blue that was meant to convince ghosts that<br />
it was daytime and scare them away whenever<br />
they attempted to enter a house. As he<br />
told a waiter that he had a reservation for<br />
two under the name Rollock, Andrew wondered<br />
if the original occupants of the houseturned-restaurant<br />
had genuinely believed the
paint protected them.<br />
Toussaint Rollock worked at the College<br />
of Charleston. In what capacity, Andrew<br />
did not know, because as a child he had first<br />
known Toussaint as Miss Sara’s cousin. Every<br />
year during Andrew’s childhood, when he<br />
and his parents would stay at Amelia’s house<br />
for a week, Toussaint, a professional storyteller,<br />
would stop by the house at least once.<br />
Toussaint’s stories had first drawn Andrew to<br />
history, and Andrew had contacted the family<br />
friend soon after arriving in Charleston to<br />
tap his knowledge of Southern oral history<br />
for his thesis paper.<br />
“Andrew, my boy,” the elderly black man<br />
greeted him warmly, his smooth voice contrasting<br />
with his pockmarked face.<br />
“Hello, Toussaint,” Andrew said with a<br />
touch of exasperation as he endured comments<br />
about how much he had grown, which<br />
parent he resembled, and how mature he<br />
must be now.<br />
Soon, however, they were talking about<br />
the past over steaming bowls of soup—gumbo<br />
for Toussaint and she-crab for Andrew—<br />
with Andrew’s voice recorder sitting on the<br />
table between them. They had long since<br />
finished eating and the setting sun had made<br />
the rectangle of the window red by the time<br />
Andrew switched off his recorder.<br />
“You have no idea how much of a help<br />
you’ve been,” Andrew said, as he returned<br />
the recorder to his pocket.<br />
“If you’re so grateful, you could have paid<br />
the check,” Toussaint said, with a humorous<br />
expression that soon became more serious.<br />
“How is your grandmother?”<br />
“She’s doing all right,” Andrew said, taking<br />
a sip from his glass of ice water. “She has<br />
her good days and her bad days.”<br />
“Your grandmother—Amelia—is a very<br />
patient and generous woman, Andrew,”<br />
Toussaint said, looking Andrew in the eyes.<br />
Andrew cocked his head to the side questioningly,<br />
and Toussaint continued haltingly.<br />
“Well, as you know, Sara and I were close<br />
cousins, closer to brother and sister, really.<br />
How many people know their servant’s cousin,<br />
after all—”<br />
“Toussaint,” Andrew interrupted, leaning<br />
forward. “What is it that you’re trying to<br />
say?”<br />
“Well, I don’t have any proof—only what<br />
Sara said and little things I saw back while<br />
Billie was still alive—but I think he had an<br />
affair with Sara, Andrew.”<br />
Andrew leaned on his elbow, his hand to<br />
his temple. He chuckled softly and shook his<br />
head.<br />
“You know,” Andrew said. “I never knew<br />
my granddad, so part of me doesn’t care. But<br />
why’d you say what you did about patience<br />
and generosity? Did she know?”<br />
“I don’t know,” Toussaint said from behind<br />
wide eyes. He opened his mouth to<br />
continue, but Andrew stood and offered his<br />
hand.<br />
“Thanks for everything, Toussaint,” he<br />
said, his mind already on Amelia’s nickname<br />
for him<br />
Soon after, Andrew walked down a street<br />
in the dark. He had not paid attention to direction<br />
or street names after leaving the restaurant.<br />
Flames that leapt up simultaneously<br />
in the street gas lamps made him shiver. The<br />
knowledge that it was simply Charleston’s<br />
timed public gas line, another effort to preserve<br />
Charleston’s historic image, failed to<br />
comfort Andrew.<br />
Andrew ended up at Southend Brewery,<br />
Charleston’s only haunted bar. The three-story<br />
bar and micro-brewery had once been an<br />
office building belonging to a shipping mogul<br />
and business competitor of the <strong>St</strong>rawhuns.<br />
The man hanged himself in his top-floor<br />
corner office after watching his last three<br />
ships catch alight and sink to the bottom of<br />
Charleston Harbor. He was now known as<br />
one of the more violent of Charleston’s many<br />
supposed ghosts, having flung around furni-<br />
21
22<br />
ture and harmed bar hands on more than one<br />
occasion.<br />
Waking up the next morning, Andrew<br />
felt as though the Southend Brewery<br />
ghost had taken up residence inside his skull<br />
for the past several hours. He flopped out of<br />
bed and stumbled down the stairs to find<br />
Amelia sitting waiting in the dining room<br />
with a steaming tea pot and an already filled<br />
cup at the ready.<br />
“I heard you come in last night, and you<br />
sounded pretty far gone,” she said, offering<br />
him the cup. “So I prepared you an old family<br />
remedy for the morning after.”<br />
Grateful, Andrew slid into the seat<br />
and slurped the floral-scented tea greedily.<br />
Amelia quickly refilled the cup when he set<br />
it down. The pangs in his head already felt<br />
duller, so Andrew gulped another mouthful<br />
before learning, with tears in his eyes, to<br />
blow on the tea to cool it first. As he downed<br />
the rest of the cup, Amelia brought a freshly<br />
sliced pineapple from the kitchen in the next<br />
room and set it before Andrew. Andrew ate<br />
ravenously as Amelia watched.<br />
“Thanks,” Andrew murmured, taking<br />
the cup in both hands to drink his fourth<br />
cupful.<br />
He settled back in his chair with a sigh,<br />
and Amelia waited for his approving nod before<br />
refilling the cup. Andrew reached for the<br />
cup once again, but his left hand had trouble<br />
closing around it. His finger hooked the handle<br />
and pulled the cup towards him. Amelia<br />
relieved him of the cup before it reached the<br />
table’s edge and gingerly poured its contents<br />
down Andrew’s throat, as a parent might administer<br />
cold medicine to a fussy child.<br />
Instinctively, Andrew resisted. He<br />
ducked his head to the left, causing painfully<br />
hot liquid to splash across his face and neck.<br />
His open mouth spewed tea as he fell forward<br />
towards the French doors and the garden.<br />
He managed to put one foot in front of<br />
the other until he reached the edge of the<br />
patio outside and careened into a facedown<br />
sprawl in the gravel.<br />
“I thought getting rid of Sara would stop<br />
you, you incorrigible man, or the first time<br />
I gave you this tea, but look at what you<br />
made me do.” Amelia’s voice rose hysterically<br />
as she continued her invective. “I saw<br />
Toussaint, that prattling fool, bring you in<br />
last night, drunk. Which girl of his had you<br />
just finished with when he brought you here?<br />
The white flowers—oleander—they’ll kill<br />
you. A heart attack. It killed you once, and<br />
Sara, too. I was so patient, too. I let her live<br />
for years. No one suspected a thing, I was so<br />
patient. It will work again. You’re dead for<br />
good this time, Billie.”<br />
Ph i l Na h l i k
Original Fl i g h t<br />
Ben Minden-Birkenmaier<br />
It is difficult not to pity Adam and Eve,<br />
trapped in their garden, coddled and swaddled.<br />
There is little pleasure in being a pet, even a pampered one,<br />
and if they sought release, who can blame them?<br />
Ignorance the lock, and knowledge the key.<br />
And if death entered the world, so did life.<br />
Sin, but also virtue. Yes, they toiled<br />
to build their life outside, but in doing so, gave it value.<br />
Eve bore children in sweat and blood,<br />
creating life, a privilege formerly reserved<br />
for their benevolent jailer.<br />
And maybe He learned something too,<br />
learned that to cage a bird, you have to cripple it,<br />
and maybe it’s better to let it fly free, to live or die on its own.<br />
23<br />
Co n o r Ge a r i n
24<br />
Joseph Qu i n l a n
Su m m e r Sk i n<br />
Brian Faron<br />
It was probably the hottest day that week,<br />
and that’s saying a lot during June in <strong>St</strong>.<br />
<strong>Louis</strong>. Me and Jo were panting in the shade<br />
of the basketball hoop as Dubs and Jay were<br />
playing one-on-one. Jo’s phone rang just as<br />
Jay raised the ball and released a distant<br />
jumper. His face turned to a frown midshot.<br />
In one fluid motion, Jo reached into<br />
his pocket, snatched the phone, and pressed<br />
it to his ear.<br />
“What’s up?” The ball banged off the<br />
backboard and didn’t even glance the rim.<br />
“Brick,” I added. Jay flung his arms up in protest.<br />
“Yeah, sure. We’ll be over in a minute.”<br />
Jo hung up the phone. “We’re goin’ over to<br />
Cassie’s.” I looked quickly at Jo. Jay put his<br />
arms down, his frown faded instantly.<br />
Two miles on a bike isn’t so bad when<br />
you’re fourteen, you’ve got two fourteen-yearold<br />
legs, and you’re racing to a girl’s house.<br />
The heat seemed to evaporate. A household<br />
is a different domain in the summer days.<br />
With parents at work, kids will play, and play<br />
the way they’re not supposed to. We threw<br />
our bikes on the front yard and stepped up to<br />
the front door. Jo knocked on the door, and<br />
it swung wide open. Cassie stood holding the<br />
door, wearing a yellow bikini with pink dots.<br />
The yellow stood out against her sun-tanned<br />
skin.<br />
“Hey, boys!” she shouted in that suburban<br />
teenage girl way. “’Sup, Cass,” said<br />
Jo as he leaned on the door frame. “Come<br />
on in, guys.” Jo turned and slid through the<br />
doorway. Jay pushed towards the door, “Hey,<br />
Cassie.” They embraced, and I was quick to<br />
follow his lead. But Jay threw his arm over<br />
Cassie’s shoulder as he turned, and pulled<br />
her through with him. I gave Dubs a look<br />
like, “What the hell?” and stepped in.<br />
Cassie’s friends were sitting on the floor,<br />
all four of them in bathing suits. Their skin<br />
blended with the thick white carpet. Cassie<br />
spun around, “So we were just layin’ out by<br />
the pool, gonna jump in for a little bit. You<br />
guys wanna join us?”<br />
“Hell yes! I’m dyin’ in this frickin’ heat,”<br />
barked Jay. The girls laughed and covered<br />
their mouths. Cassie stood still in the center<br />
of us all and let out a brief giggle while her<br />
head wagged slightly.<br />
The girls sprang from the carpet and<br />
headed towards the sliding glass door leading<br />
to the above-ground pool in the back. Jay<br />
and the boys were at their heels as I followed<br />
slowly. Cassie hung back to usher everyone<br />
out.<br />
The heavily painted red deck radiated<br />
like a broiler under us so that whether we<br />
looked up or down, our faces stung. I sat on<br />
a lawn chair and began to unlace my Nikes.<br />
The rest of the guys popped off their Nikes<br />
with two quick, well-practiced foot-flicks<br />
and carefully lined them up by the chairs.<br />
Mine were just white with a grey swoosh and<br />
a little grey trim, which seemed unusual next<br />
to the fluorescent color-coordinated copies<br />
all in a row. Everyone pulled their shirts off<br />
and gazed at the pool while Jay struggled to<br />
pull his v-neck over his arms. He stood at<br />
least six inches above the rest of us and had a<br />
lot more hair, even a little patch on his chest.<br />
I wished I were that hairy. It gave Jay some<br />
texture, a slight ruggedness. He looked like<br />
he would know how to remove a tree stump.<br />
But he also had a shirt tan and clusters of<br />
freckles. I felt a twinge of pity. I tanned like a<br />
cowhide, and the bent-back work in my dad’s<br />
garden had toasted my skin. By June I could<br />
have passed as a young Mexican boy except<br />
for my light hair. Along with “Patty,” Jay also<br />
enjoyed labeling me “Pedro” or “Paco.”<br />
My bare feet stuck to the deck as Jay and<br />
Dubs sprang, one after the other, from the<br />
diving board screaming, “Cannonball!” The<br />
25
26<br />
girls shrieked as they got the one-two punch<br />
of the waves, and spat the water dripping<br />
down their faces as they pushed their sopping<br />
hair away. The girls splashed back at Jay<br />
and Dubs as they rose to the surface. Dubs<br />
let out a dumb chuckle. Jay let out an even<br />
dumber chuckle. When Jay laughed he always<br />
scrunched up his cheeks and let his jaw<br />
hang open so that what came out was more<br />
of a throaty grunt than a laugh.<br />
Jo slipped in from the step ladder on the<br />
side, taking his time on each step, getting a<br />
feel for the water. I flopped in over the side<br />
and rested my back on the edge, letting my<br />
feet dangle in front of me. Cassie followed<br />
my example and clung to the edge right next<br />
to me. Her bangs flowed over her forehead<br />
and covered the eye on my side. The reflections<br />
from the pool danced on her blonde<br />
hair. The glare of the sun and the shape-shifting<br />
patterns made her hair look like a golden<br />
sheet flowing over her ears and around her<br />
neck.<br />
“Hey, who wants to play chicken? Come<br />
on, Cass,” Jay yelled while hanging under the<br />
diving board.<br />
“I’ll play,” I blurted out. It was a chance.<br />
I wanted Cassie’s thighs on top of my shoulders.<br />
I wanted to press her legs against my<br />
chest to give her balance, support. I wanted<br />
to be the one holding her above the water.<br />
“All right, grab a partner, Patty. Cass,<br />
jump on my shoulders.” He waved her over.<br />
“Ooh, I wanna play!” shouted one of the<br />
carpet-white girls.<br />
“There you go, we got a game. Come on,<br />
Cass.” He kept motioning her over.<br />
The carpet-girl was at my side now, and<br />
Cassie moved slowly through the water to<br />
Jay. I shook my head as I dropped into the<br />
water to allow her creamy thighs to slide so<br />
excitedly over my shoulders<br />
I emerged and saw Jay standing with<br />
Cassie perched on his wide frame.<br />
“All right, let’s go!” Jay charged forward<br />
with Cassie struggling to keep her balance. I<br />
locked my legs and braced myself against the<br />
impact. The girls grabbed onto each other<br />
and screamed in high-pitched yelps. My girl<br />
was giggling and started to pull Cassie down. I<br />
took a step back. The bind weakened and my<br />
girl lunged forward, losing her balance. Her<br />
thighs slid off my shoulders as she made one<br />
last grab for Cassie. Her hand failed to grab<br />
hold of Cassie’s shoulders or torso or arm,<br />
but did tear down the yellow bikini top with<br />
pink dots. Cassie’s breasts faced the open<br />
sunlight, and she let out a deafening scream.<br />
The top dropped to the surface and floated<br />
listlessly like a fallen flag. She wrapped her<br />
arms around her chest and screamed more.<br />
Jay snatched the top and held it under<br />
water. “Give me it, Jay!” Her voice cracked<br />
higher and the veins in her necks bulged out.<br />
It looked painful. “Give it! Give it!” Jay just<br />
laughed. She struggled to fall into the water<br />
as Jay held her legs tight against his chest<br />
and stifled her struggle for cover. The girls<br />
yelled at Jay but just stood in the water and<br />
pointed. The boys loved the scene. They just<br />
pointed while bending over with laughter.<br />
I tried to run, but in the water I could<br />
only go in slow-motion. Jay pulled the top<br />
behind his back, putting himself between it<br />
and me. But I didn’t even really care about<br />
the top anymore. Jay scrunched up his face<br />
in that dumb grin. Seeing that face between<br />
Cassie’s bronze thighs made me sick. I<br />
cocked my fist back and punched Jay right<br />
in the chest. My knuckles hit with a “thud”<br />
that seemed to quiet even the splashing of<br />
the water. Jay fell backwards, pulling Cassie<br />
down with him. She flung her arms out while<br />
falling, and her breasts were bare right before<br />
me. Jay rose and spit water from his lips. I<br />
saw Cassie retrieve the yellow top with pink<br />
dots behind him and discretely slip back into<br />
it. Her mouth hung open, and her cheeks<br />
were stained red. Suddenly my view was obstructed<br />
by Jay’s incoming fist.
It hit me right in the nose, and immediately<br />
a stream of red flowed into the pool.<br />
My tear ducts exploded. Cassie shrieked<br />
and cursed. It was the same crackling, painful<br />
tone as before, only hoarser, exhausted.<br />
My head throbbed as I staggered to the side<br />
of the pool and grabbed hold of the ledge.<br />
Through tears I saw the fluorescent Nikes<br />
being slipped back on in an equally wellpracticed<br />
manner. Cassie slammed the sliding<br />
glass door behind them all. I felt the water<br />
move and knew she held onto the ledge<br />
next to me. I couldn’t raise my eyes to face<br />
her. She slid closer so that our arms pressed<br />
against each other.<br />
“Don’t worry. They’re gone.”<br />
“I’m not cryin’, it’s just he just hit me in<br />
the nose.” I raised my head but didn’t look at<br />
Cassie’s eyes.<br />
“Thanks, Patrick.” I turned and noticed<br />
that she was staring at the deck’s paint. Her<br />
hair was completely wet and pushed back<br />
over her ears. Her bangs no longer hid her<br />
face, and I could see that she was avoiding<br />
my eyes. The skin on my forearms stuck to<br />
the heavily painted deck, and my face burned<br />
in proximity to the deck’s heat. Cassie’s arm<br />
began to perspire, and her bronze skin melted<br />
into mine.<br />
27<br />
Joseph Qu i n l a n
28<br />
“Cr e at i v e Writing”<br />
Daniel Hart L’Ecuyer<br />
I wanted to write a story that day<br />
About the man who dances on the Embarcadero<br />
He was poor and gold and mute<br />
And we were tourists watching.<br />
My mother said to pray for him<br />
My father said “No eye contact”<br />
My teacher said it wouldn’t do<br />
He danced, he doesn’t dance<br />
And besides, she said, I’d missed the point<br />
Since vagrants are not heroes<br />
So I wrote about Father instead.<br />
Mi c h a e l Ro s e
Th e La s t Ch a p t e r<br />
Joseph Quinlan<br />
J<br />
“ oe, Joe looks like he need a puff,” Doug<br />
smiled—a cigarette stretched out in his<br />
fingers, “It’s on me.” I froze. It had nothing<br />
to do with the cigarette.<br />
I had smoked before; it did not bother<br />
me much.<br />
But the cigarette from Doug did not at all<br />
resemble my eighteenth-birthday cigarette.<br />
I mean, tobacco is tobacco and it seemed so<br />
simple: yes or no. But I was caught between<br />
decisions—I felt unsettled. I heard the voice<br />
of a manager calling me back from the alley:<br />
“The dining room is in shambles.”<br />
worked at <strong>St</strong>anley’s—a local burger joint.<br />
I I was paid to clean tables, but I hated<br />
the dining room, and I tried to find jobs in<br />
the alley that kept me as far away from the<br />
unpredictability of guests. Occasionally, I<br />
would get Phil to sneak me a fry fill to eat in<br />
secrecy in the alley ten minutes before every<br />
shift. A warm fry fill from <strong>St</strong>anley’s is all you<br />
need to sustain you for dinner, but you have<br />
to include the ranch dressing, of course.<br />
In the alley I only had to dispose of trash,<br />
sweep, and break down boxes for recycling.<br />
Because I had just turned eighteen, I was legal<br />
to take out the trash—it’s against the law<br />
for minors to use the trash compactor. Doug<br />
told me this crazy story about some fifteenyear-old<br />
kid trying to hold it up to show his<br />
friends how strong he was. He was crushed.<br />
I never wanted to believe that story because<br />
it was too horrible to be true. I mean, come<br />
on. He got crushed while his friends just sat<br />
there and watched? Not likely.<br />
The alley was defined by the far side of<br />
the building and a brick wall that divided<br />
it from the parking lot. A chain-link fence<br />
above the alley prevented others from throwing<br />
trash in the company dumpster. When I<br />
was scheduled to open on summer mornings,<br />
something about the alley was beautiful; the<br />
sun cast shadows of the fence above and<br />
fell on the boxes in a pattern that mesmerized.<br />
Now and then a bird would fly out of<br />
the dumpster with an onion ring in its beak<br />
and try to fly up through the chain links. The<br />
morning was the best time of day to just sit<br />
in the alley and wait for something. But I was<br />
on a short leash and would eventually return<br />
inside to keep the dining room clean and under<br />
control.<br />
Like everything else, though, it would<br />
eventually fall into entropy.<br />
Though most of the customers enter,<br />
eat, and leave, a few can throw off your balance.<br />
Those customers you remember. That<br />
Thursday night, Kelsi, a server, was an unlikely<br />
victim. She was quiet and had received<br />
numerous awards for her customer service.<br />
Kelsi served a group of elderly couples at table<br />
ninety-four, and at first it seemed like any<br />
other table. But Kelsi has a habit of keeping<br />
to herself when distressed, and it wasn’t<br />
until I visited the table myself that I knew<br />
what kind of people she was dealing with. I<br />
brought a fry fill to the table and heard the<br />
lady addressing Kelsi, “Everything on this<br />
menu must be a thousand calories!”<br />
“No wonder you work here!” The whole<br />
table erupted in laughter and Kelsi left immediately<br />
as to not make a scene in front of<br />
other guests, squeezing between barstools<br />
and booster seats to get to the kitchen.<br />
Kelsi lives alone in an apartment, and<br />
serving at <strong>St</strong>anley’s is second to her management<br />
job at Torrid, a plus size clothing shop<br />
in the mall. I saw her there once as I passed<br />
the shop, waving through the glass at her very<br />
large figure. I had forgotten my glasses.<br />
That summer, it seemed like Kelsi was<br />
slowly reaching her breaking point. And<br />
when I saw her from a distance turn around,<br />
ready to break down after ninety-four said<br />
something about her jeans, I realized there<br />
29
30<br />
was nothing I could do. Kelsi is one of those<br />
few people who keep getting the short end<br />
of the stick, and the worst part of it: she had<br />
grown used to it. I wanted to help her somehow,<br />
but the managers had said that because<br />
of last time, I was not to communicate with<br />
disruptive guests.<br />
Last time I had to escort a drunk woman<br />
out of the restaurant. I can still picture her at<br />
table forty-four, with her twenty-something<br />
son across from her. He slouched over the<br />
table in his black Spider-Man t-shirt, and<br />
took every abuse thrown from his mother.<br />
“You’re not here to talk at me, Chuck.<br />
You’re here to buy me drinks and drive me<br />
home.”<br />
“Mom, I think it’s time to…”<br />
“Fuck off, Chuck!” She interrupted and<br />
the whole family establishment heard. “You<br />
wanna go home? Then buy your own fucking<br />
house!” She tried to stand up quickly to walk<br />
toward the bar, but she instantly lost her balance<br />
and pulled an entire drink tray on her<br />
way down. That is usually the part where the<br />
other party member escorts the guest out,<br />
but her son just sat in embarrassment and<br />
rearranged his silverware.<br />
I was the only male on the clock, and<br />
somewhere in <strong>St</strong>anley’s handbook, it stated<br />
that only able-bodied males were to deal<br />
with intoxicated guests … at least that’s what<br />
the manager told me. I helped her up and<br />
brought her to a bench beside the arcade<br />
room and tried to find her son, but he had<br />
vanished.<br />
“Ma’am, can you tell me where you<br />
live?”<br />
Without hesitation, she brought her fist<br />
to my face in one sloppy motion. The manager<br />
took care of the rest. Now only managers<br />
may deal with intoxicated guests.<br />
But Kelsi’s table was sober. She had another<br />
waitress take over table ninetyfour<br />
while she cried in the alley for the rest<br />
of her shift.<br />
As I left later that night, I noticed that<br />
Kelsi and I were both scheduled to close the<br />
next evening. I didn’t like closing. Wait until<br />
all guests leave, break down tables, put up<br />
chairs, sweep, take out all the trash. You’re<br />
the last to clock out at around one-thirty in<br />
the morning.<br />
I don’t know. There is something about<br />
staying in the same place until the end that<br />
depresses the hell out of me.<br />
I came into work the next evening as<br />
scheduled. We got slammed with a standing<br />
line of customers out to the parking lot.<br />
Luckily the new managers over-scheduled<br />
and we had more bussers than we needed.<br />
Someone needed to break down boxes, and<br />
I did not want to buss so many tables. I volunteered<br />
immediately, though aware of the<br />
mountain of boxes piling in the alley.<br />
The bulb had blown out leaving half the<br />
alley dark. I launched into my project as the<br />
sky darkened. Not long after I had started,<br />
Christina came out and pulled up a crate.<br />
She had long dark hair that she would release<br />
from her ponytail prison whenever she came<br />
out to smoke. I never understood why she<br />
did this, because when she was done, she had<br />
to put it back up again and she came out a<br />
lot. She lit up, and sighed.<br />
“I’m beginning to enjoy these more<br />
and more.” She looked at me but I showed<br />
no response. She chuckled and filled in the<br />
blanks.<br />
“I’m pregnant. Soon I’ll have to get off<br />
‘em.” Again, no response. It was not my place,<br />
and anyway, I wouldn’t have known what to<br />
say. She changed gears.<br />
“I don’t know. Every time I come out<br />
here, I feel trapped.” Looking up, “It must<br />
be the fence. I mean, who puts a fence over<br />
an alley? Some retards, I guess.”<br />
As she said this, a young family walked<br />
past the window and towards the front entrance<br />
and I dragged my fingers through my
hair. “There are so many boxes!”<br />
She gave me a short look and agreed;<br />
flicking the filter into the broken glass<br />
bucket, she retreated back to her tables. The<br />
mountain was half the size it had been.<br />
Brett, another server, came out later.<br />
When I first met Brett, I knew he would<br />
come out to the alley a lot. He was constantly<br />
smoking. In fact, he smelled like he even<br />
smoked in the shower. He surprised me when<br />
he came out and immediately apologized.<br />
“Sorry, I haven’t had one in an hour.” His<br />
voice reminded me of sandpaper.<br />
“That’s fine. I don’t mind,” I responded.<br />
I really didn’t<br />
mind.<br />
“No. It’s not<br />
fine. How old<br />
are you?”<br />
“Seventeen,”<br />
I lied. I didn’t<br />
want him to<br />
ask me. I<br />
didn’t want to<br />
say no.<br />
“Seventeen?<br />
I thought you<br />
were younger.<br />
Don’t ever<br />
smoke, pal. It’s<br />
hell on earth,<br />
and it’s going<br />
to kill me.”<br />
Something in Brett’s voice wavered when he<br />
said this. He squinted and dropped his head<br />
clumsily into a more fetal slouch. He wasn’t<br />
finished yet. I waited.<br />
“And I’ll tell you what,” he looked straight<br />
into my eyes, “there is nothing more terrifying<br />
than knowing where you will be at the<br />
end.” He was about to say more, but paused<br />
with his mouth open. Brett would pause for<br />
up to ten seconds between ideas. It annoyed<br />
the shit out of me. Sometimes I just wanted<br />
to yell at him, “Finish your fuckin’ sentences,<br />
Brett!” and I had that line rehearsed for the<br />
right time. But now was not the right time.<br />
“I don’t mean to be a downer. Don’t let<br />
it get you.” It got colder the darker the sky<br />
became. I watched him take a drag. With his<br />
eyes cast down, it seemed he had temporarily<br />
resented the taste; he too disposed of the<br />
Camel filter at the bottom of the bucket and<br />
retreated back inside.<br />
Soon I was done, not with the boxes,<br />
but with the cold. I went back inside and<br />
decided to bring ice to the bar station where<br />
Kelsi was working the bar. I wanted to check<br />
up on her. It was warm inside, especially as<br />
Dav id <strong>St</strong>a n k o v e n<br />
I brought the<br />
buckets of ice<br />
past the hot<br />
side of the<br />
cooking line.<br />
I could<br />
tell that Kelsi<br />
was having a<br />
bad night. She<br />
slumped at the<br />
bar, sporadically<br />
sorting<br />
her cardboard<br />
coasters in her<br />
apron pocket,<br />
and her mind<br />
was clearly<br />
somewhere<br />
else.<br />
I loved it when she was happy. She would<br />
talk about how she couldn’t wait to get home<br />
and put on some fluffy slippers she bought<br />
herself for Christmas and fall asleep on the<br />
couch to her favorites on TiVo. Her eyes<br />
would trail off towards the ceiling and she<br />
shook as if just thinking about the slippers<br />
made her feel warm. I loved it when she was<br />
happy.<br />
But she was not having a good night. I<br />
found her racing between the bar and her<br />
tables trying to account for every kid’s choc-<br />
31
32<br />
olate milkshake. She closed her eyes, which<br />
disappeared under a cloak of heavy, black eye<br />
shadow.<br />
I took it upon myself to help her with<br />
the ice receptacles.<br />
“I’m sorry, Joe, you don’t have to do<br />
that,” Kelsi said. “I haven’t really been paying<br />
attention. My feet are killing me and I’m<br />
tired.” Kelsi was always tired, but I thought<br />
she deserved to complain. There was a tensecond<br />
pause. While I dumped the buckets<br />
in the receptacles, she again broke the silence.<br />
“Joe, what are you going to do in your<br />
life, like, in the future?” She parted her hair<br />
and dragged it behind her ear.<br />
Everything surrounding me was in full<br />
motion; children sent macaroni flying, a spill<br />
at seventy-two, hot food waiting, birthday<br />
cheers erupting, chairs screeching, change<br />
falling to the floor. I paused.<br />
“Well, I love to write music, I love to<br />
paint, I love to create, I can’t wait to go to<br />
college, and I can’t wait to have a family.”<br />
She nodded. It was getting late.<br />
“What about you?”<br />
She paused,<br />
expecting<br />
the question,<br />
“Some people<br />
can’t wait to<br />
go to college,<br />
some people<br />
can’t wait to<br />
travel abroad,<br />
some people<br />
can’t wait to<br />
get married<br />
and have kids.<br />
I can’t wait<br />
until I get to<br />
bed, because<br />
I work tomorrow<br />
morning.”<br />
Part of me<br />
wanted to cry, part of me wanted to give her<br />
my night’s tips, but most of me wanted to finish<br />
with the ice. I was becoming aware of the<br />
chaos in the dining room and I wanted to get<br />
back to the quiet of the alley. I passed countless<br />
dirty tables and wondered where all the<br />
other bussers had gone. I figured Doug was<br />
probably smoking in the alley. As I came out,<br />
Doug and Zach, another busser, were hiding<br />
in the dark half of the alley, though I could<br />
see the orange glow of ash.<br />
That is when Doug offered me the cigarette.<br />
“It’s on me.”<br />
I had to make a decision. Why had Kelsi<br />
asked me, of all people, what future I wanted?<br />
What world did she face? Who would help<br />
Christina break her addiction? My Grandpa<br />
always said that it is never too late to change<br />
your future. But Brett would say otherwise:<br />
how can you change your future when you’ve<br />
already written the last chapter? These people<br />
believed in me.<br />
Why? I declined the cigarette. I don’t<br />
know why. But I did, and it felt all right.<br />
Wi l l Li n h a r e s
“No.”<br />
Sam Herbig<br />
Then I’ll spend the time<br />
Between our visits<br />
Preparing for the end.<br />
The end of that strawberry-flavored,<br />
Green-apple euphoria.<br />
You know,<br />
The purple, green, blue, and black.<br />
When it’s over, I’ll need a few things.<br />
I’ll need to learn how to breathe,<br />
Someone to coach me to get my pulse<br />
Back to where it was.<br />
I tell you now<br />
That I’m preparing<br />
For the End.<br />
When all I can hear is<br />
The resounding “No.”<br />
I won’t hear the “I’m sorry,”<br />
Or the “See you tomorrow”<br />
(Someone will need to teach me<br />
What a tomorrow is too).<br />
I won’t see the awkward smile,<br />
Feel the uncomfortable hug,<br />
Or remember our last dance.<br />
A “no” to this<br />
May well be a “no” to everything.<br />
33
34<br />
Glit tering In d u s t ry<br />
James Fister<br />
The glowing metropolis rests on the horizon<br />
As I drive, slowly but deliberately, northwards.<br />
Maybe it is my destination, the windy city,<br />
White city, late bloomer in a modern world.<br />
Where lights shine, businesses and families<br />
Blinking in and out of view. A silhouette of modernity.
Joseph Qu i n l a n<br />
35<br />
Even where there is no light, the vaulting figures<br />
Are clear to see, monoliths draped in a gown<br />
Of a Hollywood sky. Hundreds of stars, in building shapes.<br />
I can tell where the sky really begins—<br />
I cannot see the real stars for the stars of<br />
The Chrysler Smokestack and the Empire <strong>St</strong>ate Refinery.<br />
I pass the industrial park, much less distant. <strong>St</strong>ill<br />
Spouting smoke, telling lies. I’m burning daylight.
36<br />
Ph i l Na h l i k
Th e Co l u m b i a Su n<br />
Conor Gearin<br />
Ar b u t h n o t<br />
Jim Arbuthnot gazed mutely at the wad<br />
of papers on his desk. The wad was the Columbia<br />
Herald, the student newspaper of Columbia<br />
<strong>High</strong> <strong>School</strong>, and it was delivered<br />
every other Monday during homeroom. The<br />
other students in his homeroom had either<br />
opened their newspapers or were reading the<br />
story below the fold, but not Jim. Jim hated<br />
the Columbia Herald.<br />
Jim hated the Herald for a number of<br />
reasons. When it was delivered every other<br />
Monday during homeroom, students read it<br />
in grim silence, killing the usual pleasant din<br />
of conversation. This made homeroom as<br />
lifeless as the carful of freshmen he drove to<br />
school every morning.<br />
Also, the Columbia Herald was written<br />
almost entirely by students who never entered<br />
the Herald’s office and who wrote news<br />
articles in an impish, mock-stupid way they<br />
thought was somehow satirical. Guest speakers,<br />
new faculty, and deceased animals in biology<br />
classrooms were reported on in articles<br />
consisting of garbled syntax, buzzwords, and<br />
run-on sentences struggling to make jokes<br />
while simultaneously giving up a minimum<br />
of fact.<br />
“55 students came Saturday because they<br />
had nothing else to do,” one reporter had<br />
written. The sentence that was published,<br />
though, read, “Fifty-five students came.” In<br />
fact, the whole article had been purged of<br />
facetious nonsense mixed with bland facts,<br />
leaving merely bland facts. This purging was<br />
the third thing Jim hated about the Columbia<br />
Herald, because it was the fate of every<br />
article. Jim knew this because he had once<br />
been an editor of the Columbia Herald. In<br />
fact, he had changed that sentence himself.<br />
Jim despised that invisible reporter for making<br />
him read his sloppy Dadaist news report<br />
and forcing him to edit the article until it<br />
was completely innocuous. The resulting article<br />
left the reader feeling he or she could<br />
have written it better in about ten minutes.<br />
In fact, Jim was technically still an editor,<br />
though he had resigned three months<br />
earlier. However, the Columbia Herald was<br />
so desperate that they refused to accept his<br />
resignation. They even liked to pretend he<br />
still worked for them actively. If he turned to<br />
page two, he would see in the credits<br />
NEWS EDITORS<br />
James Arbuthnot<br />
Al Brown<br />
Ralph Griffard<br />
but Jim would never open to page two. He<br />
would not touch the wad of papers on his<br />
desk. Other students had opened to the inside<br />
of the paper or were reading the story<br />
below the fold because that was where the<br />
sports articles were. Sports articles received<br />
a minimum of editing and retained their<br />
original adolescent wittiness.<br />
Jim would rather eat the wad of papers<br />
than read it.<br />
Ha rv e y<br />
“You think you’re hard for beating up on<br />
a book, Harvey?”<br />
“Why d’you gotta be such a bitch?”<br />
They tried to soften their taunts with<br />
crooked smiles, but the malice came through<br />
in their empty gazes. Tim Harvey’s lunch<br />
table was angry with him.<br />
They were angry with him because of his<br />
last book review. Tim was the Columbia Herald’s<br />
literary critic. His column was called lit<br />
critic. No one read it. But that did not matter<br />
much to Tim, who reliably placed a goodnatured<br />
book review of around 800 words on<br />
page five, the Herald’s human interest page.<br />
Tim reviewed only books he read, and he<br />
read only books he was certain to like. The<br />
37
38<br />
column was therefore guaranteed to be upbeat<br />
and drily witty.<br />
However, his last review, while drily<br />
witty, was not upbeat. In fact, it was downright<br />
malicious. He hated that book. Reading<br />
it had been an experience of very deep and<br />
profound betrayal. He had thought it would<br />
be excellent: written in a genre he liked and<br />
by an author imitating other authors Tim<br />
liked. Yet Tim had found the book sentimental,<br />
silly, and even boring. Tim, who had<br />
built up an incredible immunity to boredom<br />
through years of reading, had been bored.<br />
No one bored Tim Harvey and got away with<br />
it. Nemo me impune lacessit. In his review Tim<br />
built up an effigy of seeming praise in paragraph<br />
one, then set it aflame with burning,<br />
angry sarcasm in paragraph two.<br />
Ever since its publication that morning,<br />
people he thought had never read his column<br />
made fun of him for his review.<br />
“‘Her ludicrous musings about existence<br />
are exposed as nonsense by her own childish<br />
characters’? What the hell does that even<br />
mean?” said a girl in his homeroom who had<br />
failed freshman comp.<br />
“Man, you’re weird,” said a guy who sat<br />
next to him in third-period AP English Lit.<br />
“Why do you even care about that shit?”<br />
Tim supposed that because they thought<br />
reading books was pointless in the first place,<br />
getting worked up over an already meaningless<br />
thing was even worse.<br />
Tim looked around his circular lunch<br />
table.<br />
“I didn’t know you guys read my reviews,”<br />
Tim said.<br />
The strange crooked smiles became bigger<br />
crooked smiles. Sal snorted sarcastically.<br />
Jen mouthed the word “what?” as if Tim had<br />
just insulted her.<br />
Tim was suddenly struck with inspiration.<br />
“Do you guys even read the paper?” he<br />
asked.<br />
They replied with hostile silence until<br />
Brett said, “Why d’you gotta be such a<br />
bitch?” again. Apparently they knew precisely<br />
what disgusted them about the review<br />
without even having to look at it.<br />
Tim decided to change the subject. “Did<br />
you see that basketball won?” he asked, holding<br />
up the paper and pointing to the story<br />
below the fold.<br />
Br o w n<br />
“Hey Ralph, did Crowley e-mail that article<br />
yet?” said Al Brown to fellow news editor<br />
Ralph Griffard.<br />
“Yep,” said Ralph. “I’m printing it out<br />
now.”<br />
A minute later the double-spaced rough<br />
draft was in front of Al, under his hesitant<br />
editing pen. He looked nervously across the<br />
office to the Columbia Herald’s faculty censor<br />
and advisor, Mr. Jenkins.<br />
Mr. Jenkins was a grey-haired English<br />
teacher who wanted nothing more than to<br />
be a grey-haired English teacher. He wore a<br />
tweed suit with a narrow ugly tie, and was<br />
currently grading English papers with a frown<br />
as he always did while in the Columbia Herald’s<br />
office—except on Sunday afternoons,<br />
when he saw the final draft of the Herald in<br />
its entirety before it went off to the printing<br />
company down the street. If Ralph and<br />
Al had not bleached out all of the silliness in<br />
the news articles in the name of professionalism,<br />
Mr. Jenkins would look at them with his<br />
lifeless grey eyes and say, “This paper needs<br />
work. Editors, you should be catching these<br />
things.” Then he would hand them back the<br />
paper, which bled from a thousand marks<br />
from the red editing pen, with whole paragraphs<br />
completely rewritten. Then he would<br />
lecture them on professionalism, something<br />
which apparently required “tact and seriousness<br />
and maturity.”<br />
If Al did not heavily edit Crowley’s article<br />
now, Mr. Jenkins would be furious. But
if Al did, Crowley would never write for the<br />
Herald again.<br />
Al knew this because Crowley had told<br />
him. Crowley was the sort of kid who was obsessed<br />
with movie directors and authors with<br />
a cult following. Crowley was in every cult<br />
there ever was. This, coupled with Crowley’s<br />
fantastic ability to imitate his cult leaders,<br />
made him a young snob<br />
suspicious of anyone<br />
who might not like his<br />
writing and therefore<br />
his cult leaders. He was<br />
also a good writer—just<br />
the sort of kid that Mr.<br />
Jenkins hated.<br />
“You know what?<br />
I’m pretty sure you<br />
took out all those adjectives<br />
just because you<br />
don’t know what they<br />
mean,” Crowley had<br />
said to Al after his first<br />
article had been heavily<br />
edited and published.<br />
He had looked terrifying<br />
behind his thin rectangular<br />
glasses.<br />
“Just because your<br />
writers write better than<br />
your editors doesn’t<br />
mean you have to edit<br />
until everything looks<br />
like you wrote it. If this<br />
happens again, I’m not<br />
writing anymore.” Actually,<br />
Crowley had sworn<br />
at Al throughout the monologue, but Al had<br />
edited those words from his memory.<br />
Al wanted so much to put down his<br />
pen, to beg Mr. Jenkins to let him leave the<br />
cultural references and just edit Crowley’s<br />
article for grammar, to tell Mr. Jenkins that<br />
Crowley was their last decent reporter, and<br />
that if Mr. Jenkins edited this one on Sunday<br />
as he normally did, Crowley would quit. But<br />
Al couldn’t do that. He couldn’t bear Mr. Jenkins’s<br />
cold grey eyes looking at him like he<br />
was an idiot, or being lectured on professionalism<br />
again in front of all the other editors.<br />
Al lowered his pen and removed the<br />
subtle comparison of STUCO to the mobsters<br />
of Miller’s Crossing<br />
Ke v i n Ki c k h a m<br />
in the first paragraph.<br />
Ar b u t h n o t<br />
Jim would not go into<br />
the Columbia Herald’s<br />
office for any reason.<br />
Actually, if there were<br />
girls in the office, he<br />
might go in. But there<br />
were never girls in the<br />
office. Girls suspected<br />
—correctly—that whoever<br />
wrote the boring<br />
news articles could<br />
not possibly be someone<br />
with whom they<br />
would have anything<br />
in common. The girls<br />
who had once written<br />
for the Herald had left<br />
after Mr. Jenkins had<br />
cut an entire review of<br />
the first Twilight series<br />
book two years ago by a<br />
female sophomore. Mr.<br />
Jenkins held that his<br />
literary critics should<br />
review only what he<br />
called “serious works of literature.” The girls<br />
correctly identified the incident as misogyny.<br />
The ones that did not resign that week were<br />
eventually pressured to by their friends.<br />
So Jim would not go into the Columbia<br />
Herald’s office for any reason. But this time<br />
he did look in.<br />
39
40<br />
Through the open doorway Jim could<br />
only see Tim Harvey, looking at something<br />
or someone out of view in the office. His face<br />
was red.<br />
“No,” Tim said quietly. “I quit.”<br />
<strong>St</strong>ieglicz<br />
Jen <strong>St</strong>ieglicz was the best student in her<br />
journalism class. Jen knew that only a few<br />
people had realized that yet, though. Her<br />
teacher didn’t know it because he was a little<br />
crazy. At least, that’s what Jen thought.<br />
Their teacher Mr. Kennedy had covered<br />
the Vietnam War for a wire service and was<br />
rather old now. He rarely talked about what<br />
they were covering in the curriculum.<br />
“Well, once again guys, your book reminds<br />
you to keep opinion out of a news<br />
article,” Mr. Kennedy said to his senior journalism<br />
class with a wry smile. “Well obviously<br />
the book’s editors weren’t in Vietnam. Hey<br />
look, I understand as much as the next guy<br />
that you can’t have an agenda when you’re reporting,”<br />
he said, standing up. He was about<br />
to plunge into one of his infamous tangential<br />
lectures. “But you know, what I say is, if you<br />
see shit, you gotta call it shit! You can’t always<br />
be—well, you can’t be a real reporter if<br />
you’re a robot. You know how I tell you guys<br />
about the robotic journalist. This is a perfect<br />
example!”<br />
Jen’s cell phone went off, playing the<br />
high-frequency ring tone Jen used during<br />
school to avoid detection. Adult teachers,<br />
with aged ears, could not hear it—<br />
least of all Mr. Kennedy, who had been<br />
embedded in an Air Cavalry unit for the<br />
wire service during the siege of Khe Sanh.<br />
Jen pulled the phone out of her pocket,<br />
keeping it under her desk. The screen read,<br />
1 new message from Jim A.<br />
She opened it. It read,<br />
Hey u want to start a newspaper with me?<br />
Mo rg e n s o n<br />
Principal Morgenson was a large man<br />
just past middle age with small blue eyes<br />
that were continually wincing, as if he were<br />
continually being stuck with a fork. The two<br />
newest forks in his life were Jim Arbuthnot<br />
and the youngest English teacher, Mr. Jones,<br />
and they now sat in front of Mr. Morgenson’s<br />
desk in his dark office.<br />
“See, this is the thing with these independent<br />
newspapers, though,” Mr. Morgenson<br />
was saying to them. “I’ve been in college,<br />
I know what they do! And if you guys print<br />
something inflammatory or tasteless, we<br />
could have a situation that’s bad for everyone.”<br />
“Right, right, and like I said,” replied<br />
Mr. Jones, “I’m going to see the paper before<br />
it gets published, just like Mark Jenkins does<br />
with the Herald—”<br />
“Yeah, about that. Jim mentioned to me<br />
in his e-mail that he wants this new newspaper<br />
to be ‘semi-independent’—do you mind<br />
explaining what that means?” Mr. Morgenson<br />
paused to enjoy the pain on Jim’s face. “Does<br />
it mean you turn a blind eye every now and<br />
then? What’s the system you have in mind?”<br />
Jim opened his mouth but Mr. Jones<br />
stopped him with a glance.<br />
“Well, it really doesn’t mean much,” said<br />
Mr. Jones. Jim winced, but Mr. Jones continued.<br />
“All it means is that they can have a<br />
little more leeway in the content, but still,<br />
still, anything inflammatory or offensive will<br />
be cut. And I will see every issue before it’s<br />
published.”<br />
“So then what exactly makes this paper<br />
‘semi-independent’?” asked Mr. Morgenson.<br />
“You’re asking for school funding, you’re going<br />
to use our professional printers, so what<br />
exactly makes you different from the other<br />
paper?” Jim winced again. “Is it because<br />
you’ve got the cool young English teacher as<br />
your moderator? Really though, why did you<br />
want to do this in the first place?”
Mr. Jones actually smiled at the last question.<br />
He looked confidently at Jim. “I think<br />
Jim should answer that question,” he said.<br />
Jim looked down, smiling weakly.<br />
Co l u m b i a Su n<br />
One Tuesday students received a wad of<br />
papers in homeroom. It was an unfamiliar<br />
wad—an unfamiliar newspaper, in fact. The<br />
top of the front page said “Columbia Sun” in<br />
Old English lettering. Between “Columbia”<br />
and “Sun” was a drawing of a sun that was<br />
either rising or setting. Below this was an<br />
editorial with the headline<br />
WHY WE STARTED:<br />
THE SUN’S PLATFORM.<br />
The most compelling paragraph of the<br />
editorial read:<br />
“We, the editors, perceived a general disenchantment<br />
among the student body with<br />
the Columbia Herald, which is not to suggest<br />
that anyone was ever enchanted with that<br />
thing. That was why we started the Columbia<br />
Sun: to give the student body a paper that,<br />
while still publishing authentic journalism,<br />
realizes who its audience is—teenagers. We<br />
will serve the needs of this audience rather<br />
than hold ourselves above them. We intend<br />
to publish pieces that reflect the character<br />
of the student body—articles that students<br />
enjoy reading.”<br />
The editorial went on to explain the format<br />
of the paper. The paper would be sixteen<br />
pages long and would come out every week<br />
on Tuesday. There would be opinion on page<br />
three, including a biweekly column by Jennifer<br />
<strong>St</strong>ieglicz and book reviews by Timothy<br />
Harvey. Sports would start on page seven.<br />
<strong>St</strong>udents could read the Sun online and access<br />
additional content at www.columbiahs.<br />
org/media/publications/not-the-herald. It<br />
was actually just the Herald’s old website renamed,<br />
courtesy of former Herald web editor<br />
Joe Thompson, which was fine because no<br />
one had known the Herald had had a website,<br />
least of all the Herald’s other editors.<br />
In homeroom S144, Jim’s homeroom,<br />
the Sun’s deliveryman was met with shrill<br />
cheers of victory. Jim narrowly survived an<br />
attempt by his classmates to hoist him into<br />
the air in triumph. At last, Jim was riding a<br />
wave of public support, which was all he really<br />
wanted in the first place.<br />
“Oh, what’s this? Two papers in one<br />
week?” asked well-meaning chemistry teacher<br />
Mrs. Hobbes in senior homeroom S168.<br />
The freshman conscripted at the last minute<br />
to hand out papers was mortified.<br />
“Uh, read and find out,” he suggested.<br />
He began to turn around.<br />
“Oh no, is this a misprint?” asked Mrs.<br />
Hobbes, stopping him. “It says Sun instead<br />
of Herald.”<br />
At this, Herald news editor Ralph Griffard,<br />
who maimed large adolescents as a<br />
wrestler in his spare time, stood up as if to<br />
charge. The freshman ran from the doorway.<br />
In homeroom O98, upon seeing the new<br />
paper, Brett turned around, looked at Tim<br />
Harvey, and pronounced slowly and carefully,<br />
“Bee-yitch.”<br />
In homeroom E52, Jen <strong>St</strong>ieglicz opened<br />
the door in with a bundle of newspapers<br />
under her arm and then promptly turned<br />
around, the bundle undiminished. E52 was<br />
Mr. Jenkins’s homeroom. She pulled the<br />
door closed behind her and began to stride<br />
away quickly.<br />
“Jen? Mr. Jenkins wants to see you,”<br />
called a boy from the doorway. Jen walked<br />
back in, her heart slamming.<br />
“What is this?” asked Mr. Jenkins. Jen<br />
handed him a newspaper. Mr. Jenkins looked<br />
at it and walked briskly out of the room. Before<br />
the door quite closed against the frame,<br />
the studens heard Mr. Jenkins shout a phrase<br />
from the hallway that would have been censored<br />
in any newspaper.<br />
41
Th e Ma n f r o m t h e De s e rt<br />
Daniel Hart L’Ecuyer<br />
42<br />
the outsider came in the darkening quiet<br />
on the dry and desperate highway to somewhere<br />
that toils resolute<br />
unbending to the will of the desert<br />
the desert’s will is this: be gone<br />
be dead and never be back<br />
but if you do be beaten and burned<br />
in the blazing savage emptiness<br />
but still he came<br />
through the desert with the dark<br />
on foot through the realm of the savage sun<br />
to this dirt road sand-scarred<br />
time-frayed town<br />
of the dry farm empty wallet<br />
amble-minded people<br />
from the tar<br />
the sand<br />
the wind<br />
the sun<br />
the heat<br />
the empty sky<br />
the circling birds<br />
the wondering<br />
is anything?<br />
the wishing<br />
that you were<br />
the wanting—<br />
the seeing<br />
it all around<br />
and at the end of the road<br />
something better than here
So n n y Ha g a r<br />
43
44<br />
Th e Op e r at i o n<br />
Conor Fellin<br />
Y<br />
“ ou’ll be okay,” Mike Wentz whispered<br />
into his wife’s ear.<br />
Sarah looked up from the yellow curb at<br />
her feet to her husband’s face. His smiled,<br />
but his eyes intently scanned her face.<br />
“I will,” she said as she pushed open the<br />
door and stepped into the lobby of Christian<br />
Hospital Northwest.<br />
In an instant, the pastel-blue wallpaper<br />
of the lobby replaced the blank blue expanse<br />
of the sky. Visitors and doctors filled the<br />
space below as they shifted across the lobby<br />
in every conceivable direction. Near the center<br />
of the lobby, a cluster of families gaped at<br />
the massive wheels of an old-fashioned bike<br />
and the gaudy dress of a dozen antique dolls.<br />
“Sure is a nice hospital,” Sarah commented<br />
to Mike.<br />
As she marched towards the main desk,<br />
Sarah heard a hushed, curt voice behind her,<br />
undoubtedly belonging to some father scolding<br />
his son for losing control of himself and<br />
crying over a toy he could not have. Two<br />
bright polo shirts in front of her parted, revealing<br />
a woman in her early forties with a<br />
narrow mouth smothered in lipstick and a<br />
stocky build wrapped loosely in a parka. The<br />
woman shuffled towards her, intently focused<br />
on a space just to the left of Sarah’s left ear.<br />
After a second, her eyes slipped onto Sarah’s<br />
face.<br />
“Hey, nice to see you here of all places!”<br />
she said. “How’s your baby Goomba doing?”<br />
“Well…” Sarah began, browsing her internal<br />
catalogue of faces. She suddenly found<br />
it hard to believe how many people she had<br />
told about her pregnancy.<br />
“I’m sorry,” Mike interjected, “but I<br />
don’t think we’ve met before.”<br />
“I’m Jill. Remember, I work right across<br />
the bridge from your office.”<br />
“Oh, yeah, I remember,” Sarah said. She<br />
didn’t.<br />
“So what about the baby—you call it<br />
Goomba, don’t you?” Jill insisted.<br />
“Yes, we do,” Mike interrupted.<br />
“Yeah, about that—” Sarah sighed, “the<br />
pregnancy failed.”<br />
“Oh …”<br />
“Well, a couple of days ago, at work, I<br />
had some bleeding. I called the doctor, and<br />
he said that chances of miscarrying the baby<br />
and keeping him were about even. Unfortunately,<br />
I got the first option. I was disappointed,<br />
but I’ve dealt with it relatively well<br />
so far. I’m here to have a D&C.”<br />
“Oh, how sad,” Jill murmured.<br />
“Yeah, Mike and I were so excited when<br />
we heard I was pregnant. It was definitely a<br />
let-down. But don’t worry about me. I’m doing<br />
fine.”<br />
“Well, that’s…um…nice to hear—that<br />
you’re doing well, I mean. I guess I’ll see you<br />
soon.”<br />
As Sarah and Mike continued out of the<br />
lobby towards Outpatient Procedures, they<br />
fell in pace with a small, t-shirted woman bellowing<br />
some Michael Jackson lyrics that had<br />
recently besieged the airways. Mike, chuckling,<br />
covered his ears and hummed a distinctly<br />
Knopfleresque tune louder. Sarah could not<br />
suppress a laugh as she remembered Mike’s<br />
uncompromising tastes in music. Even at<br />
their wedding, he had insisted upon Graham<br />
Nash’s “Simple Man” for music. Sarah’s father<br />
had escorted her to the massive oak under<br />
which Mike waited to that gentle rhythm of<br />
a pleading whisper set against a moaning harmonica.<br />
The female Unitarian minister had<br />
spent most of her few comments dotingly<br />
repeating the lyric, “I just want to hold you/<br />
I don’t want to hold you down.” At the reception,<br />
Sarah’s maid of honor, Debbie, had<br />
begun an unusually moving toast with a joke<br />
about Mike’s obsession with music.<br />
Like everything else that day, Debbie’s
toast had reflected Sarah and Mike’s relationship<br />
in its sheer elegance, and Sarah was<br />
glad she had chosen Debbie to write it. Sarah<br />
had known she wanted Debbie to give the<br />
toast at her wedding ever since that time at<br />
the deep-dish pizza place. That day, she and<br />
Debbie had stopped at a local pizza place<br />
for dinner after an afternoon of sightseeing<br />
around Chicago. As Debbie’s first and only<br />
boyfriend Jesse had recently proposed to<br />
her, the conversation had naturally drifted<br />
to dating. By that time, Sarah had finished<br />
boasting about how romantic Mike was and<br />
how many hours they had spent laughing together.<br />
Debbie stared at Sarah for a couple of seconds<br />
as she finished<br />
swallowing the last bite<br />
of a slice of pizza. “So,<br />
how’s it with Mike?” Sarah<br />
asked.<br />
Debbie continued<br />
chewing.<br />
“Are you excited to<br />
be engaged?”<br />
“Yeah,” Debbie said,<br />
“almost as much as Jesse.<br />
He’s already trying to figure<br />
out how many children<br />
we’ll have and what<br />
their names will be and<br />
where we’ll take them on<br />
our family vacations. You<br />
know, I really love him.<br />
I love the way he plans<br />
something nice for me<br />
when he can tell I’m having<br />
a bad week and I love<br />
the way he makes dorky<br />
engineering jokes that no<br />
one else thinks are funny.<br />
And yet…” Debbie began<br />
scrutinizing the near<br />
edge of Sarah’s plate. Her<br />
lower lip quivered slightly.<br />
“Sarah,” she finally said, “do you ever wish<br />
you could date men besides Mike? I mean,<br />
not that you don’t love Mike, just to—just<br />
to make sure you know what others are like,<br />
just to make sure you’re making the right decision?”<br />
Sarah immediately shook her head.<br />
“Well … I do,” Debbie said.<br />
Sarah probed her experience for an adequate<br />
response. After several seconds of silence,<br />
Debbie sighed and took a bite out of a<br />
fresh slice of her pizza. She bit into a pocket<br />
of cheese saturated with sauce, and the sauce<br />
splattered into a long glob just above her upper<br />
lip. Grease began to drain down from<br />
the glob off her upper lip in a slow trickle. A<br />
Joseph Wr i g h t<br />
45
46<br />
she hadn’t just met Debbie in college but had<br />
known her since she had first learned to ride<br />
a bike.<br />
Not that she’s as close a friend as my husband,<br />
Sarah reminded herself as she studied Mike,<br />
now seated beside her in one of the Outpatient<br />
Procedure Room’s aluminum chairs.<br />
Across from them stood a dark-haired, hazel-eyed,<br />
thirty-something nurse, dressed in<br />
the green scrubs and plastic clogs she would<br />
need for a procedure. Posed halfway between<br />
sitting and standing,<br />
Hazel-eye was<br />
offering one-word<br />
responses to the<br />
queries of a doctor<br />
halfway across the<br />
room. Sarah’s eyes<br />
drifted to a set of<br />
supply shelves at<br />
the opposite corner<br />
of the holding<br />
room. She wondered<br />
what heroic<br />
tasks the doctors<br />
there were preparing<br />
for. A Middle<br />
Eastern doctor<br />
sorted out some<br />
pieces of equipment<br />
that seemed<br />
more suited to<br />
sculpting clay than<br />
creating incisions. At the adjacent sink, a<br />
nurse with tufts of blond-white hair playfully<br />
poking out from under her green hair net<br />
filled a plastic cup with water. A crisp voice<br />
returned Sarah’s attention to Hazel-eye.<br />
“Now—Sarah, isn’t it?”<br />
Sarah nodded.<br />
“I have a few questions before we can<br />
get you ready for the procedure. First of all,<br />
when did you last eat?”<br />
“I haven’t eaten since…about seven last<br />
night, I think.”<br />
“That’s correct,” Mike interjected.<br />
“Good. Any high fever?” Hazel-Eye continued.<br />
“Not in the last couple of days.”<br />
“All right, how far along would it have<br />
been?”<br />
“The baby?”<br />
“Yes.”<br />
It? Sarah thought. It? Doesn’t she mean he<br />
or the baby or Goomba—<br />
Suddenly Goomba had left her womb<br />
Cl ay t o n Pe t r a s and sat before her<br />
on a high chair. He<br />
had sky blue eyes,<br />
a wide, flat face,<br />
and slight tufts of<br />
brown, curly hair.<br />
And he had mashed<br />
carrots smudged<br />
across his cheeks.<br />
She had tried to<br />
spoon them into<br />
his mouth, but he<br />
had barely bothered<br />
to open his<br />
lips for them. She<br />
was breathing a<br />
long, low, deep<br />
sigh—<br />
Sarah cried.<br />
Goomba was<br />
now pouting and<br />
banging his little<br />
fists against the shelf of his high chair, as if<br />
he somehow imagined his soft hands could<br />
dent the hard plastic—<br />
Sarah shook her head back and forth, as<br />
if a slight jerk could somehow toss off the vision<br />
that was driving its spurs deep into her<br />
mind.<br />
I’ve missed my chance for love. I’ve missed<br />
it—What am I saying? I have a husband and<br />
parents and friends … But Goomba was going be<br />
different. Goomba was going to love me in a way<br />
they couldn’t. Children give you finger paintings of
hearts that are cute and sloppy at the same time.<br />
Goomba was going to be different …<br />
When Sarah had finally recovered,<br />
Hazel-Eye’s hand lay snug upon her own.<br />
Mike’s eyes gaped open, dry. In the corner<br />
by the sink, a surgeon was running his violetpatched<br />
hands under hot water. The others<br />
had left.<br />
“Just whenever you’re ready,” Hazel-Eye<br />
murmured.<br />
Sarah’s gaze dropped to her lap. Forget it,<br />
she told herself. Just forget it. <strong>St</strong>op crying. <strong>St</strong>oo-op.<br />
<strong>St</strong>op! Don’t make that nice nurse watch you<br />
lose control. Don’t do it. Get control of yourself.<br />
Get control of yourself.<br />
After Sarah had finished whimpering,<br />
she told Hazel-Eye that Goomba would have<br />
been three months old. She gave the nurse<br />
her height, weight, and age. After she had<br />
answered enough questions, another nurse<br />
guided her into a smaller room, where Sarah<br />
changed herself into a hospital gown, and<br />
laid herself upon a gurney. As she took a foot<br />
off the ground to step onto the gurney, Sarah<br />
felt cool air from the room’s vent trickle<br />
up through the opening in her gown to the<br />
space between her thighs. I wish Hazel-Eye<br />
hadn’t seen me that way. I’m usually so grateful,<br />
have so much self-control. Dad always said I was<br />
good at putting my best face forward. If only she<br />
had seen that.<br />
The nurse began to wheel Sarah to the<br />
procedure room. For most of the journey,<br />
Sarah’s head lay limp against the gurney, occasionally<br />
jarred upward by the soft jerks<br />
and pushes of the nurse trying to navigate<br />
her through the hospital hallways. Her eyes<br />
focused on the ceiling lights slipping by her<br />
one at a time. I am grateful, I am. I have a loving<br />
husband and I have lots of devoted friends. I<br />
have good parents. I’m not like those children in<br />
Africa who have nothing to eat or drink. I can<br />
get good healthcare. A streak of green with a<br />
slit of pale passed through Sarah’s periphery,<br />
assembling into a lime-garbed surgeon<br />
for a second only to wane into the distance.<br />
Maybe I’m not as grateful as I should be. And<br />
she’s seen it. Sarah tried to discern a murmur<br />
from behind her so intently that she almost<br />
didn’t notice when her gurney stopped. A<br />
second figure, this one a blob of pale above a<br />
splotch of red, approached and stopped just<br />
as it was beginning to gain definite lines. As<br />
it began to crane downward, Sarah recognized<br />
it as Hazel-Eye, wearing a rose t-shirt<br />
instead of her work uniform. Hazel-Eye held<br />
Sarah’s arm snugly. She opened her mouth as<br />
if to say something and then shut it again.<br />
Instead, her eyes just rested on Sarah. They<br />
did not scrutinize her chest as it rose and fell<br />
in short, shallow pulses. They did not count<br />
the dark stripes left on her cheeks by tears.<br />
They just took her in, quick breathing and<br />
tear marks and all.<br />
Sarah suddenly remembered Debbie<br />
with the pizza sauce squirted over her lip.<br />
She wondered if it had been the mess after all<br />
that had made Debbie feel so close. She wondered<br />
if Hazel-Eye saw her now as she had<br />
seen Debbie that night. Hazel-Eye finally let<br />
go. The cart began vibrating beneath Sarah,<br />
and Hazel-Eye floated back to the obscured<br />
horizon from which she had come. Sarah<br />
turned her face to the side and let tears drop<br />
from the ridges of her face into a crystalline<br />
pool beneath her, a pool that shone silver<br />
with the gurney’s aluminum.<br />
47
Go o d Mo r n i n g<br />
Mike Lumetta<br />
48<br />
Why does April smell like a supermarket?<br />
The sun’s slowly rising,<br />
Resting its girth on the horizon,<br />
And its rosy red rays,<br />
Recolored, recovered from the pale pink of winter,<br />
The light pall above a leaden land,<br />
Tinge all the tips of all the blades of grass.<br />
The buildings shift in their sleep,<br />
Dark clumsy things cutting off the sun,<br />
And it all smells like a supermarket from the old days.<br />
I remember how they used to work.<br />
The doors would spring open,<br />
No matter how I tried to trick them,<br />
And I’d step out of the sweltering summer<br />
Into a cool rush of air,<br />
Into an oasis of lush fruits I never took<br />
But always loved to look at in their high heaps.<br />
You never knew how the doors worked,<br />
But they always did.<br />
I’d walk in and take a free cookie,<br />
Choosing carefully, deliberately—<br />
Sugar, M&M, or chocolate with powdered sugar.<br />
I specialized in cookie taxonomy—<br />
Could’ve had a degree in it.<br />
Whatever I chose, I’d eat deliberately.<br />
Anyone would—<br />
The slow deliberate way to make it last,<br />
Or the fast deliberate way to feel the rush<br />
Of sugar to a limited brain<br />
You never knew was limited,<br />
Just like you didn’t understand<br />
Why adults never took a cookie too.
And when mine was gone<br />
I always felt disappointed (anyone would)<br />
Even though the cookie was free.<br />
But nothing cost anything anyway.<br />
The cart I rode in front<br />
Filled steadily with things I wanted<br />
And things I didn’t,<br />
But I didn’t care<br />
Because I never paid a precious penny<br />
And never had to.<br />
And I’d always leave happy.<br />
49<br />
Nowadays, though,<br />
They charge you for everything, even the cookies,<br />
And someone’s gone and made a bunch of rules<br />
Whispered by the fluorescent lights,<br />
Their gleaming reflections on the tile floors<br />
Someone’s worked so hard to mop,<br />
The chilling breath of the AC<br />
And the electric doors you finally walk out of.<br />
I don’t go there anymore.<br />
April rolls around every year, smelling,<br />
In the morning, like the old supermarkets.<br />
I don’t know why, and I don’t think<br />
That they’re ever coming back.<br />
But April rolls around every year.
50<br />
Wh at If<br />
Anonymous<br />
Just an average day: Mom and Dad, running<br />
around like madmen, getting their<br />
lives in order, just to leave the house; all<br />
the while, the two of them lashing back and<br />
forth at each other.<br />
“Has anyone seen my tie? Where in<br />
the hell did I leave that tie?” Dad screamed<br />
across the house.<br />
“I don’t know, dear. Retrace your steps.”<br />
Mom set down her purse on the kitchen table,<br />
closing her eyes.<br />
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! I am losing<br />
my mind! I can’t find anything in this goddamned<br />
house!”<br />
Finally, the Ford Windstar pulled out of<br />
the driveway; calm at last. It was a different<br />
world there in the minivan. I pulled my iPod<br />
out of my pocket, unwinding the headphone<br />
cord and plugging our ears. Kate and I sat<br />
in the backseat, listening to our music and<br />
watching people, cars, and buses fly by as<br />
if they were in some sort of hurry. All the<br />
while, Mom was telling Dad about some recent<br />
happening with one of her homebound<br />
patients, or Dad was going on about politics<br />
or breaking news.<br />
From time to time, something would be<br />
said between the two of them and set Dad<br />
off again. Every time his fuse seemed to get<br />
shorter and shorter. Normally, Mom would<br />
try (how wholeheartedly, I’m not sure) to<br />
make amends, and Dad would refuse. That<br />
woman that he married twenty-seven years<br />
ago doesn’t understand him anymore. He did<br />
everything for her, and she didn’t appreciate<br />
any of it; no one did. Mom would make her<br />
rebuttal and reassure him how much he was<br />
appreciated. I looked over at Kate, saw some<br />
sort of agreement in her face, and clicked the<br />
volume button on my iPod up, muffling the<br />
world around us.<br />
While the music kept up, I tried to forget<br />
about the world around me. I blocked<br />
myself off from the world and tried to recreate<br />
a better one inside my head: a patient<br />
and caring father, and an understanding and<br />
supportive mother—parents who loved each<br />
other, or seemed to at least. I couldn’t wait<br />
until we got to the party. At every party or<br />
family gathering, Mom and Dad always put<br />
up a façade to fit in with the others.<br />
As we drove home that night, everyone<br />
was too tired to care about the conflicts of<br />
that afternoon. No one said a word. In a way,<br />
that dark, silent, calming drive home was my<br />
favorite part of the day.<br />
As we pulled into the driveway and the<br />
van came to a stop, I could hear the<br />
sound of Dad’s door open and close, and<br />
the creak of the hatchback rising. Dad unloaded<br />
the trunk of the van, insisting on<br />
carrying the laundry basket full of leftover<br />
food and empty dishes himself, as if to make<br />
a point of his sacrifice for the family. While<br />
my eyes struggled to adjust to the light in<br />
the car, I forced the sliding door open and<br />
absent-mindedly found my way through<br />
the front door, up the stairs, and into my<br />
room. I began to wake up as I walked up<br />
to my room, avoiding the squeaky spots in<br />
the floor, stepping over boxes and clothes<br />
strewn throughout the upstairs landing as<br />
well as my own room. I shut the door closed<br />
behind me, kicked piles of dirty clothes<br />
aside, and sat down at my desk to begin the<br />
weekend’s homework.<br />
As I sat at the desk, rocking back and<br />
forth in my black office chair and staring<br />
blankly at my math problems, Mom and<br />
Dad’s voices from their bedroom right next<br />
to mine began to overpower the steady rainfall<br />
outside my window. Yet again, as I found<br />
myself doing so often, I retreated to my music.<br />
I quickly shook the little white mouse,<br />
waiting desperately for the computer to<br />
awakem and iTunes to open. Soon enough,
the music began to play. I kicked the volume<br />
up as far as I could and started on my homework<br />
once again. “Soon enough,” I thought,<br />
“Dad will be off to the airport again, and, for<br />
a few days at least, there will be peace.”<br />
It always got like this right before he<br />
left for a trip. As I became more aware of it,<br />
I realized the patterns of his behavior and<br />
his need to get things done. The massive<br />
white calendar on the side of the refrigerator<br />
marked every day of his flying for the month,<br />
as well as when he would leave that day, where<br />
he flew to, and when he would return. Those<br />
markings coincided with the days when Dad<br />
had it set in his mind that he needed to save<br />
the world and solve world hunger before he<br />
could leave us for a week. He would be out<br />
in the garage for hours, working on recurring<br />
car problem, fixing odds and ends around the<br />
house that had been left undone for years, or<br />
upstairs in his office working on his slowly<br />
increasing Childhood T.V. show or Turner<br />
Classic Movies collection. And God help us<br />
if you got in his way, especially as he threw<br />
his bag together, ran around the house finding<br />
his uniform, and got himself dressed for<br />
work.<br />
For a few days, maybe even a week if we<br />
were lucky, Dad would be out flying<br />
planes across the country, Mom would find<br />
things to keep herself busy, and Kate and I<br />
could live peacefully, more or less. That is,<br />
until Mom just couldn’t bear it anymore<br />
and started her nagging and complaining<br />
that we hadn’t done just as she asked right<br />
when she asked it. She made it a point to go<br />
around the house, find everything we had<br />
left lying around, and make piles for us on<br />
the couch. Just as I sat down to begin the<br />
night’s homework, she began.<br />
“I am getting so sick of you two slobs<br />
leaving your crap lying around the house!”<br />
she said, pointing to the piles sitting on the<br />
couch, as if they were giant mounds of crap<br />
upon crap filling her home: two college envelopes,<br />
a pair of socks, and a book. She had<br />
impeccable timing, that woman. She knew<br />
the most inconvenient time to nag someone<br />
about something she didn’t feel was up to her<br />
standards.<br />
I soon found myself picking up the<br />
things she had so kindly piled up, as well<br />
as my school books, and I retreated to my<br />
room, yelling all the way there that I had<br />
more important things to do than sit around<br />
and listen to her nag all night. After all, she<br />
always said that homework was my first priority.<br />
That Friday, I drove home from school,<br />
listening to the radio, excited for the<br />
weekend. It seemed to me that Friday was<br />
about the only day I could keep myself<br />
from dozing off at a stoplight as I made my<br />
way home. It was a day when I actually had<br />
something to look forward to: getting out<br />
of the house and spending time with my<br />
friends. I came to the last stop sign before<br />
Sussex Drive, and the engine of the white<br />
Saturn jumped as I pushed the pedal down.<br />
Our house sat right at the end of Sussex<br />
Drive, down a long, winding street. I drove<br />
down that lengthy hill, making sure to avoid<br />
the numerous neighbors who felt it necessary<br />
to park their cars out on the side of the<br />
street while their driveways sat empty. Right<br />
as I made the last turn down the hill, I could<br />
see the end of Sussex Drive, our house, and<br />
Dad’s old maroon Toyota Cressida sitting in<br />
the driveway. I pulled up next to it and listened<br />
for the click as I shifted the car into<br />
park. As I made my way up the sidewalk with<br />
the load of books on my back, I found myself<br />
dreading what I would find inside.<br />
I shut the door behind me, pushing it<br />
until the latch clicked, and carefully set my<br />
backpack down next to the small table inside<br />
the door. When I undid my laces and kicked<br />
off my battered sneakers, I noticed<br />
51
52<br />
the statue of the Holy Family that Mom set<br />
out on that table every Christmas. My eyes<br />
traced the fine details of Mary and Joseph’s<br />
smiling faces, which were gazing at the child<br />
in Mary’s loving arms.<br />
Dad was in the kitchen cleaning up the<br />
mess from last night’s dinner.<br />
“Hey, kiddo. How was school today?”<br />
Dad asked, as he lifted the lever and let the<br />
faucet run, masking the dirty dishes that lie<br />
beneath the hot foamy water.<br />
“Oh, it was fine. Nothing too exciting.”<br />
I glanced at Mom’s giant calendar on the refrigerator<br />
as<br />
I reached in<br />
the pantry<br />
for a bag of<br />
chips and saw<br />
Mom’s pink<br />
writing in<br />
today’s box;<br />
“Kate’s Mother/Daughter<br />
Retreat. 6-10<br />
p.m.”<br />
The next<br />
day, as<br />
we loaded<br />
the coolers<br />
into the<br />
trunk of the little white Saturn, I was not<br />
looking forward to the drive ahead of us. I<br />
loaded Mom’s laundry basket full of dishes<br />
of baked beans and coleslaw, plates, napkins<br />
and utensils, and slammed the hatch of the<br />
van shut. That was the only way I could ever<br />
get it to close. I lifted the latch of the door<br />
and slid in next to Kate in the back seat, listening<br />
for the thud of the door next to me.<br />
The little car’s engine revved and jumped<br />
as we accelerated onto the highway. I found<br />
myself staring off at all the houses and trees<br />
flying by, waiting for the inevitable. As I tried<br />
to avoid the people around me and to lose<br />
myself in anything else I possibly could, I noticed<br />
something a little out of the ordinary.<br />
As the car puttered along the bridge over<br />
the Missouri River, I stared out my window<br />
and saw a man standing at the ledge of the<br />
bridge. I couldn’t help but wonder what that<br />
man might do. My heartbeats quickly became<br />
overwhelming, and I felt a tear start to<br />
form in my eye.<br />
“Dear? Did you see that man there on<br />
the bridge?” Dad’s voice suddenly brought<br />
me back to reality. “That reminds me of one<br />
time, when we were stationed in Indiana. I<br />
Joseph Wr i g h t<br />
remember<br />
the one day,<br />
driving home<br />
from training<br />
and passing<br />
a man on the<br />
bridge there.<br />
I really didn’t<br />
think much<br />
of it at the<br />
time, until<br />
that night.<br />
I remember<br />
hearing on the<br />
news about a<br />
man who had<br />
jumped off<br />
a bridge and<br />
drowned in the river. It just makes you wonder,<br />
I guess. It made me wonder … What if<br />
that man on the TV was the same one that I<br />
had passed on the bridge? What if? ... What<br />
if I had stopped and done something?”<br />
I glanced up from the dirt and trash<br />
on the car floor and saw Dad’s face in the<br />
rearview mirror, tears streaming down his<br />
rough face. The mud from my old worn<br />
shoes began to harden on the carpet beneath<br />
them. Some movement caught my eye, and I<br />
saw Mom’s hand reach over and rest itself on<br />
Dad’s lap. I couldn’t help but wonder.
Odysseus’ En d<br />
Greg Fister<br />
Where now, O man so ridd’n with strife? Where now?<br />
The suitors dead and gone who wooed your wife,<br />
You now sit on your throne, content but how<br />
is your end complete to a hard-won life?<br />
In your heart you know you must be alone,<br />
Out on the sea as you were those long years.<br />
You’ll not die in a cage with bars of stone—<br />
So out you sail weighed not by any fears<br />
The sea feels different, your heart not in pain.<br />
Though oft the water and its god were foes,<br />
It seems a fitting place you to remain,<br />
A place to bury all your earthly woes.<br />
The sea is calm, Poseidon slumbers on.<br />
By dawn’s red fingers is your curtain drawn.<br />
53<br />
Ke v i n Ki c k h a m
54<br />
Th e Re d Pe n<br />
Joseph Quinlan<br />
This better be it! I handed Dad the essay.<br />
I was almost afraid to provide the<br />
red pen, but after thirty-plus drafts it had<br />
become automatic. We had been at it for<br />
hours, tearing up this stupid research paper<br />
and putting the pieces back together over<br />
and over and over again, and I was tired.<br />
Dad wore his look of tireless concentration,<br />
his lower lip pushing up his upper, and<br />
squinting his tired eyes as he started each<br />
new paragraph. He looked so damn old. He<br />
wore his reading glasses shamelessly on the<br />
tip of his slender nose, which he would rub<br />
with his palm now and then.<br />
Did he really have the balls to send me<br />
back downstairs with another marked-up paper?<br />
It was late, and I had other homework<br />
to do, but every time I tried to leave, he’d<br />
call me back in case he had questions. I felt<br />
enslaved to the Jazz Age. I had chosen a good<br />
topic though. It’s better than being enslaved<br />
to a research paper about the Holocaust.<br />
If he put a single mark on my masterpiece,<br />
so help me God … I don’t know what<br />
I’d do. Killing Dad actually did come to my<br />
mind twelve drafts earlier. Hah! No. That<br />
would have been ridiculous … twelve drafts<br />
ago. Now the gold metal lamp stood ominously<br />
on the end table. Or the hardcover<br />
of Speakeasies: The Underground World of Jazz.<br />
Or the pitchfork beside the fireplace. Or the<br />
bust of Abraham Lincoln.<br />
No. There’s just no way. Anyway, I lacked<br />
the creative juice left to make it a good attempt.<br />
And even if I did succeed …<br />
He turned to the last page. Almost<br />
there. I looked at the clock. One thirtyseven.<br />
Screw the other homework. I wanted<br />
to get to bed. He stroked his chin again. His<br />
pen flinched once or twice but never found a<br />
landing. Holy crap, this could be it! Leave it,<br />
or I’ll kill you.<br />
“Perfect!” His voice rang out. I snagged<br />
the paper from his hands in an instant.<br />
“Swell! Good night, Dad.” I hugged him<br />
and at last ran up to bed.
Co m m e Il Fa u t<br />
Michael Tynan<br />
W<br />
“ hat does comme il faut mean?” I texted<br />
to Tess.<br />
Tess had studied French for a few years,<br />
so I was always asking her bits and pieces of<br />
the language I came across in this or that<br />
book, so much that<br />
I could speak almost-passable<br />
broken<br />
French if the<br />
opportunity arose.<br />
The opportunity<br />
arose mostly when<br />
I wanted to impress<br />
girls who never paid<br />
attention in their<br />
language classes.<br />
“It’s an idiom,”<br />
she responded. “It<br />
basically means<br />
expected or proper.<br />
Why do you ask?”<br />
“I was just reading about corporate executives<br />
for whom it is comme il faut to boast<br />
about sexual encounters with the company’s<br />
younger, more attractive personnel.”<br />
“Bâtards,” she replied<br />
“Oui, mademoiselle.”<br />
I slipped my phone back into my pocket,<br />
dropped my book on the ground, and<br />
leaned my head back against the top of my<br />
black leather(-looking) chair, closing my eyes<br />
together tightly. After I tried to rub out the<br />
numbing affect of four hours of pale airport<br />
light, I dropped my hands to my lap and<br />
looked around at the collection of humanity<br />
around me.<br />
Overweight families surrendered their<br />
natural mobility to the moving sidewalks.<br />
They passed, casting glances behind cheap<br />
sunglasses, looking like products floating<br />
along a factory floor. Other travelers walked<br />
briskly beside them, checking their watches<br />
anxiously, and yielding to the occasional men<br />
in loose-fitting suits or torn jeans sprinting<br />
past and nearly dropping their luggage with<br />
each hasty pump of the arm. Girls walked leisurely<br />
in prides. Lionesses crowded around<br />
each other to laugh at this and that on cell<br />
phone screens, adjusting their Coach(-looking)<br />
purses, and sipping coffee past their<br />
Sa m McCa b e luminous pink<br />
lips.<br />
My acquaintances<br />
in<br />
gate B6 surrounded<br />
me<br />
in the same<br />
uniform black<br />
chairs, most of<br />
them businessmen<br />
tapping<br />
on laptops and<br />
Blackberries. I<br />
kept glancing<br />
back at a man<br />
sporting a threepiece<br />
pinstriped suit while reading the Wall<br />
<strong>St</strong>reet Journal. He crossed his legs at the knee,<br />
revealing his argyle socks and gleaming black<br />
leather shoes. His chin rested near the knot<br />
of his regal purple tie as he peered through<br />
square-framed glasses discerningly at the<br />
bottom of his page. He raised his eyebrows<br />
slightly and gave a subtle nod of the head every<br />
few seconds, as if he had come across an<br />
interesting point in his article. The elegant<br />
man often rested one half of the open newspaper<br />
on his leg, freeing one hand to adjust<br />
his glasses or smooth his lapel, and the last<br />
time he did so before he gathered up his belongings<br />
and rushed out of the gate avoiding<br />
eye contact with any fellow travelers, his<br />
other hand slipped off the page, causing the<br />
whole paper to fall off his lap, accompanied<br />
by the copy of Penthouse magazine he had<br />
been hiding in the “Marketplace” section.<br />
55
56<br />
I hadn’t thought of that trick since 5 th<br />
grade, when I hid The Spectacular Spiderman<br />
behind my Math textbook, but I forgave the<br />
man as I watched him scurry away. Life is<br />
dull at O’Hare International, and it drives us<br />
all to different extremes. Though I wondered<br />
how the rest of his escape plan would unfold.<br />
He had to come back to the gate, after all,<br />
unless missing his flight was worth avoiding<br />
the shame.<br />
“Did you see that?” I said, laughing and<br />
turning to Drew.<br />
“See what?” he said, looking up from<br />
Good as Gold. His independent reading project<br />
was due in two days.<br />
“That guy. That guy with the porn.”<br />
“What?”<br />
“There was a guy hiding porn behind a<br />
newspaper.”<br />
“Huh,” he said nonchalantly, finding<br />
his place back in the middle of a long paragraph.<br />
“You should really put the book down<br />
for a second or two. There’s some funny stuff<br />
around here.”<br />
Drew had invited me to go along with<br />
him to Detroit to see a concert. His<br />
parents gave him tickets for Christmas and<br />
told him to bring a friend. Traveling without<br />
my family freed me to indulge in small<br />
luxuries like laughing openly about pornography<br />
and eyeing college girls with “PINK”<br />
printed across the back of their sweatpants.<br />
Three such girls were walking the rows of<br />
black chairs in B6, looking for a place to<br />
drop the luggage they were dragging behind<br />
them, approaching the row directly<br />
in front of Drew and me. Their t-shirts fit<br />
snugly, and their hair bounced slightly as<br />
they placed one flip-flopped foot in front of<br />
the other toward the three open chairs in<br />
front of us.<br />
“Play along,” I said close to Drew’s ear,<br />
as they approached.<br />
They turned into our row, and I immediately<br />
defaulted to one of my few reliable<br />
moves.<br />
“Ton arrivée passe inapercue, mais ta tete<br />
toutes les lumieres sur toi se ruent. L’image se bloque<br />
mais toi tu continues. La soirée n’avait pas d’sens<br />
mais tu es venu. Tu vis dans un clip de rap tout te<br />
reussit et tu claques, mais ce soir en rentrant chez<br />
toi tu seras seul devant ton mac.”<br />
I laughed after the last words and Drew<br />
mirrored my amusement at the apparent<br />
joke, though he looked uncomfortable.<br />
I have no idea what I said. They were<br />
lyrics to a song by some French pop artist.<br />
Tess put the song on a CD for me, and gave<br />
me a rough translation. Something about rap<br />
videos and night clubs.<br />
The girls turned to each other and<br />
smiled.<br />
One said her friend, “Meg, you took<br />
French, what are they saying?”<br />
Meg said, “I don’t know, he said it really<br />
fast … and I dropped that class junior year of<br />
high school.”<br />
“They’re kinda cute,” the other one<br />
said, “Are you sure you don’t remember anything?”<br />
“Shut up,” she said, laughing.<br />
“Talk to them,” the others urged.<br />
“No!”<br />
They argued for a moment while I<br />
turned to Drew, taking his book from him<br />
and hiding it behind his chair so our native<br />
language could remain hidden.<br />
“Mon café besoins un peu de sucre,” I said<br />
with a wink.My coffee could use some sugar.<br />
“What the hell are you doing?” Drew<br />
said through his teeth.<br />
“Où est la gare?” I responded. Where is<br />
the train station?<br />
Drew leaned in closely. “Cut that shit<br />
out. I don’t know what you’re saying.”<br />
“Neither do they.”<br />
“You don’t really think this is going to<br />
work, do you?”
“Ne vous inquiétez pas, l’amant. J’ai perdu<br />
mon passeport.” Never mind, lover. I lost my<br />
passport.<br />
“God damn it,” Drew said as he turned<br />
back to the girls.<br />
“Oh my God, I can’t believe you guys,”<br />
Meg still argued, “I’m not doing it.”<br />
Her friend turned to me abruptly and<br />
said “Hi! My friend wants to talk to you.”<br />
Meg stared at her, and turned to me,<br />
blushing.<br />
“Bon jour.”<br />
“Salut,” I replied. “Parlez-vous français?”<br />
“Un peu.”<br />
“I speak some English too,” I replied<br />
slowly with a heavy accent. “Prefer to you?”<br />
“Sure, yeah,” she said. “Are you here on<br />
vacation?”<br />
“Yes, we are from Nice. I am Jean. He is<br />
Gervais.”<br />
I turned to Drew, whose hands clasped<br />
the arms of his chair like vise grips. He stared<br />
at me as the girls waved at him.<br />
“Hi, Gervais.”<br />
He stood up and walked briskly out of<br />
the gate. I turned to the girls and said “Je<br />
suis désolé,” before following him into a coffee<br />
shop.<br />
“What happened to you?” I asked.<br />
“I can’t do a French accent.”<br />
“I was doing the talking anyway.”<br />
“I can’t lie to people either.”<br />
“Oh c’mon, I was just having some fun.”<br />
“Whatever, let’s just hide out for a second<br />
until our flight leaves.”<br />
“Like the porn guy?”<br />
“Shut up.”<br />
B6 was boarding, so we walked back to<br />
the gate. We waited in line for a moment,<br />
and while Drew was looking around<br />
apprehensively for the girls, I was watching<br />
a small blond boy smile up at his mom with<br />
his shirt tucked in and an arm around his<br />
younger brother. Having been a seven- or<br />
eight-year-old boy at one point myself, nothing<br />
in the world made less sense than the<br />
scene in front of me. The mother rubbed<br />
the blond boy on the head, and he gave her<br />
another toothy smile. She turned to the<br />
man scanning tickets at the door, and while<br />
she watched the green light flash over her<br />
three tickets, the blond boy took the opportunity<br />
to punch his brother in the gut. The<br />
brother cried, and as the mother turned to<br />
him, the blond boy gave his brother a consoling<br />
embrace. I couldn’t help smiling a bit.<br />
This scene was more of the attitude I remembered<br />
at that age.<br />
My phone buzzed in my pocket as I<br />
walked down the carpeted tunnel to the<br />
plane.<br />
“How’s the layover treating ya?” Tess<br />
said.<br />
“Might be better if Drew knew French.”<br />
“Did you try that bullshit on some poor<br />
girl again?”<br />
“Three poor girls actually.”<br />
“Bâtard.”<br />
“Yeah, I guess so.”<br />
Drew and I took our seats in the center<br />
of the plane, with an aisle on both sides of<br />
us. As all the people chasing their destination<br />
prepared to appear calm and relaxed,<br />
civilized and informed, courteous and prepared,<br />
I spotted a little blond boy helping his<br />
brother with his seatbelt across the aisle on<br />
my left, a man in a regal purple tie reading<br />
the paper across the aisle on my right, and<br />
directly behind me, I could hear girls chattering<br />
about two strange Frenchmen, who<br />
weren’t at all what they appeared.<br />
57
Pr o d i g a l So n g<br />
James Fister<br />
58<br />
In the hall music is playing,<br />
But the younger is discontented.<br />
To throw it all away and<br />
Leave. But not throw away,<br />
Seize and make the best of.<br />
Leave the monotony, the dirge.<br />
His father hears<br />
But doesn’t understand.<br />
I am trapped—too young, too large<br />
For my own mind to handle.<br />
In a distant land music plays,<br />
And he is happy; but how long?<br />
I’m in the wrong key;<br />
I need to be modulated.<br />
And then swine, muck, deep<br />
In his own filth, his humiliation.<br />
This is my day to day. I want to be<br />
Outside of this house, this city.<br />
Poorer than the hogs of the field,<br />
Wealthier than death, he crawls.<br />
I can pick up the pace.<br />
I can make better time.<br />
Of course open arms wait,<br />
Not all are as selfish as he.<br />
I am blameless, there is no<br />
Fault in being unhappy.<br />
A new beginning, that is<br />
What I will call it.<br />
Isn’t that how it always ends?<br />
Loose women, fine foods, pearls.<br />
In the hall, music is playing<br />
But the older is discontented.<br />
“He was lost and is found.<br />
Everything I have is yours.”<br />
Gr e g Fi s t e r
No t h i n g<br />
Collin McCabe<br />
went to the coffee shop with my friend<br />
I Alice that night to visit my buddy Conor,<br />
a cashier there, who often gave us free<br />
drinks. It was a Thursday night in mid-September<br />
my senior year, an unusually cold but<br />
still tolerable evening beginning a three-day<br />
weekend. I had agreed to tag along only because<br />
I had few plans for the weekend, and<br />
I’d decided that my homework wasn’t really<br />
important, considering I had a random day<br />
off the next day. Alice said that she would<br />
drive, and she picked me up a few minutes<br />
later.<br />
As we pulled up front, I could see a girl<br />
opposite the towering plate-glass window.<br />
She was the only person in the shop. She had<br />
a blueberry scone in her hand, the only flavor<br />
this shop offered, and was reading something<br />
from her laptop screen. She looked eerily familiar,<br />
and I paused as Alice locked the ’92<br />
Camry, wondering where I had seen her before.<br />
I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Alice<br />
ended up throwing a pinecone from one of<br />
the planters outside the shop at me to break<br />
my stare, and just as I started walking away<br />
the girl looked out the window. I didn’t make<br />
eye contact.<br />
“Who’s that?” Alice asked me as we<br />
walked inside, thinking I knew the girl. “She’s<br />
pretty.”<br />
I looked back at the girl to verify this.<br />
Alice was right—she was beautiful. The girl<br />
was a blonde, her wavy locks flowing down<br />
her back and ample chest and parting at her<br />
shoulders. Her rosy, prominent cheekbones<br />
contrasted with her round face, and her<br />
eyes were a deep blue. Not wanting to get<br />
caught, I didn’t spend too much time looking<br />
back. She appeared to notice me anyway<br />
and cracked a smile in my direction without<br />
looking up.<br />
“You didn’t answer my question,” Alice<br />
said. “Do you know her?”<br />
I was quick to answer this time. “Nope.<br />
I’ve never seen her in my life.” I opened the<br />
door for Alice and we walked inside.<br />
Alice was not my girlfriend, but sometimes<br />
we acted like we were dating. She would<br />
call me on weeknights and we would talk for<br />
hours, but I didn’t think she wanted anything<br />
out of our friendship. We had met each other<br />
freshman year after we both joined District<br />
Band—she plays viola, I play violin—and almost<br />
immediately became friends. I often<br />
had considered dating her, but for the most<br />
part we just hung out as friends, cracking<br />
jokes, laughing at movies like Tommy Boy,<br />
and helping each other with schoolwork.<br />
When we needed something to do, we called<br />
each other and planned something. It never<br />
crossed my mind that people thought we<br />
were dating until junior year, and even then<br />
I didn’t really do much; I had girlfriends that<br />
weren’t Alice, and that was enough proof for<br />
me—nothing else seemed necessary.<br />
Alice wasn’t as gorgeous as the coffeeshop-window<br />
girl, but she certainly was pretty.<br />
She had straight brown hair that often<br />
featured a streak of a bright color—tonight’s<br />
color of choice was purple—that reached to<br />
her shoulders and a round face that elongated<br />
at her chin. Her eyes were a pretty shade<br />
of gray-blue, and she wore a pair of black<br />
plastic-frame glasses. Alice didn’t think she<br />
was pretty, but Conor and I disagreed.<br />
Alice and Conor had dated briefly junior<br />
year. Their relationship had started as nothing<br />
extraordinary; the three of us hung out as<br />
a group most of the time, but a few months<br />
into junior year they started hanging out privately.<br />
At first they were very secretive about<br />
it, not bothering to even consult me. When I<br />
found out, I was upset; I didn’t want to start<br />
getting left out of our shenanigans, and I<br />
didn’t want things to get awkward when they<br />
broke up (a development that I considered<br />
59
60<br />
inevitable). They disregarded my campaigning<br />
for nearly a month, and I found myself<br />
getting more and more worried about the<br />
possibility of their relationship continuing.<br />
Near the end of their relationship, Alice<br />
had called me on a cold December Friday afternoon<br />
after school, inviting me over for a<br />
movie night at her place, and I was hoping<br />
it would be just us. I showed up a little after<br />
seven, like always, and her mom let me in and<br />
sent me downstairs.<br />
As I came down the stairs, I heard a<br />
movie playing, but when I reached the bottom<br />
I didn’t see Alice on the couch. This<br />
didn’t faze me–sometimes she would lie on<br />
a bed of throw pillows on the floor–but as<br />
I walked over toward the couch, Alice and<br />
Conor came into view. They were on the<br />
floor, Alice on top of Conor, his hands on her<br />
lower back, their lips pressed tightly together,<br />
their eyes closed. I stood there for what<br />
seemed like an eternity. Then Alice opened<br />
her eyes for a split second and saw me.<br />
“Gabe!” She immediately rolled off<br />
Conor and got up, brushing herself off. Conor<br />
was a bit bewildered, but Alice blurted out a<br />
rehearsed-sounding response. “I didn’t know<br />
you were going to be here so early.”<br />
“Really?” I said, doubting her. “Because<br />
this is the time I always come by.”<br />
Conor chimed in. “What time is it?” He<br />
wouldn’t look me in the eye. A lump was rising<br />
in my throat.<br />
I looked at my watch. The only sound<br />
was the movie playing in the background. “It’s<br />
seven twelve.” I paused again and looked up<br />
to see Alice staring down at her shoes, unsure<br />
of what to say, finally looking up as I broke<br />
the silence again. “I didn’t know Conor was<br />
coming over.”<br />
“He wasn’t.” Silence again.<br />
Conor finally broke the silence. “I’d better<br />
go,” he said, and started toward the stairs,<br />
but I beat him to the bottom step.<br />
“No, I think I should,” I said sarcastically.<br />
“You two have fun now. I’ll see you on<br />
Monday.”<br />
Alice said nothing as I left. She broke up<br />
with Conor only days later.<br />
Alice sent me up to the counter to convince<br />
Conor to give us some free coffee.<br />
“He’ll listen to you,” she said. “He’ll<br />
only mess with me.”<br />
Conor was waiting when I reached the<br />
counter. We had a way of making it look to<br />
his manager that I was actually buying something<br />
rather than Conor giving it to me, but<br />
he told me to give him fair warning each<br />
time: I’d texted him that we were coming before<br />
Alice picked me up.<br />
“How may I help you, sir?” Conor asked<br />
in his smart-ass tone.<br />
“Well, I’d like two white-chocolate mochas,<br />
please. That’ll be it.”<br />
“Alright, your total is three twenty-seven,”<br />
said Conor, taking the ten and change<br />
I gave him, putting it in the cash register,<br />
taking out two fives and giving me the same<br />
handful of change back. It was perfect.<br />
“Thank you” I winked at him as I took<br />
the money. “When will these be ready?”<br />
“Shortly,” he responded. “Can I have<br />
your name?”<br />
“Free.” I hadn’t used this name before.<br />
Conor looked at me, obviously thinking it<br />
was a bold choice.<br />
I walked over and sat down next to Alice<br />
while we waited for Conor to make our<br />
drinks. The only people in the shop were<br />
Alice, me, the girl in the window (who kept<br />
glancing across the room in my direction),<br />
and a mid-twenties guy writing in a notebook<br />
at one of the tables. Alice had picked<br />
the booth in the back corner, the furthest<br />
from the door and the window-girl. After I<br />
sat down opposite her, Alice jumped up and<br />
sat down on my side of the table.<br />
“So,” she said, staring down at her hands<br />
as if trying to think of something to start a
conversation, “I think we should have a movie<br />
night tomorrow. It’s been a few weeks.”<br />
She paused. “I’ll supply the popcorn,” she<br />
added, as if she needed to convince me.<br />
“I like that idea,” I replied eagerly. “What<br />
would we watch?”<br />
“I dunno. We could decide later.” She<br />
paused as if she was contemplating something.<br />
“I wish I had the day off tomorrow<br />
like you. Then we could just watch movies all<br />
day. That would be quite fun,<br />
wouldn’t it?”<br />
I cracked a smile, saying,<br />
“Indubitably.” Alice and I often<br />
used words that were far<br />
beyond our normal vocabulary.<br />
We thought it was fun to<br />
use words that most people<br />
don’t, like indeed, quite, and<br />
the like.<br />
Suddenly the kid with<br />
the notebook knocked his<br />
hand into his cup of coffee,<br />
sending it toppling to the<br />
floor, and watched it explode;<br />
it had been nearly full.<br />
He looked down at it, pausing<br />
for a moment as if debating<br />
whether or not he should<br />
clean up the mess, then picked up his coffeestained<br />
things and made for the exit. Alice<br />
and I stared for a moment then erupted in<br />
laughter.<br />
“Did you see that?” Alice said, holding<br />
back tears. “He just ran out of here like he<br />
killed somebody!” She kept laughing.<br />
My reaction wasn’t much different.<br />
“That was awesome. I have never seen anyone<br />
bolt like that. I mean, it’s just coffee. He<br />
should’ve cleaned it up, though. I feel bad<br />
for Conor. He’ll probably have to clean that<br />
up.” And indeed he did; he started walking<br />
over toward us with a mop, giving us his typical<br />
death-stare when he saw us laughing and<br />
pointing to the mess. He wasn’t supposed to<br />
talk to us while on the job after the last time<br />
we were there—Alice and I distracted him<br />
while he was on coffee-duty by balling up<br />
napkins and tossing them at him. Not only<br />
did he get behind on drink orders, but when<br />
he threw the napkins back he hit an old lady<br />
in the face, causing her to drop her coffee.<br />
Instead of firing him, they demoted him to<br />
cashier.<br />
Alice, still laughing quite hard, looked<br />
Pe r ry May over at the girl in the<br />
window and caught her<br />
looking at me.<br />
“I think you know<br />
her,” Alice said, pausing,<br />
calming down. “That<br />
or she knows you. She<br />
keeps looking over here.<br />
It’s weird.”<br />
“Alice,” I said, “I<br />
can assure you that I<br />
have never seen her before.<br />
She’s gorgeous,<br />
though.”<br />
Shouldn’t’ve added<br />
that, I thought.<br />
Alice decided this<br />
was a perfect place to<br />
pounce. “So you like the<br />
way she looks, huh? Well,” she pushed her<br />
glasses down her nose a bit, looking over<br />
them, and put her index finger up to the corner<br />
of her mouth, trying to be faux-seductive,<br />
“what’s she have that I don’t? Hmm?”<br />
“Nothing,” I said, trying to fix my<br />
mistake. “But what do you have that she<br />
doesn’t?<br />
“Brains, of course.” We both cracked a<br />
smile, and I saw that Conor was chuckling,<br />
too. Alice wasn’t too fond of blondes; she<br />
thought they were all ditzes.<br />
A shout came from the other end of the<br />
shop:<br />
“Two white-chocolate mochas for<br />
‘Free?!’”<br />
61
62<br />
As I got up to go get our coffee, Alice<br />
began to laugh uncontrollably in the<br />
corner booth, something I expected. But I<br />
didn’t expect to see the window-girl looking<br />
in my direction. I looked over, grinning<br />
at my mischief, and looked directly into her<br />
eyes. She winked at me and motioned for<br />
me to come over with her right index finger.<br />
I didn’t want to leave Alice alone, but she<br />
seemed content for the moment reading<br />
the banners on the wall, so, both mochas in<br />
hand, I went and sat down<br />
opposite the window-girl.<br />
“So, I’m guessing your<br />
name isn’t ‘Free,’” she said.<br />
“So what is it? I’m Hailey.”<br />
She smiled at me in a devious<br />
way, as if she knew<br />
something I didn’t.<br />
“I’m Gabe.” I took a<br />
drink of my mocha, glancing<br />
over at Alice. “You<br />
seem familiar. Do I know<br />
you?”<br />
“I work here,” Hailey<br />
said. “My shift ended<br />
a couple of hours ago, but<br />
I’ve got nowhere to go and<br />
nothing to do, so I stuck<br />
around. I usually make your<br />
drinks,” she said, nodding to my mocha.<br />
“Thanks. They’re delicious,” I could see<br />
Alice getting antsy. She wanted her coffee,<br />
but I wasn’t finished yet.<br />
“Oh, you’re quite welcome.” Hailey was<br />
smiling at me. She paused, then looked in Alice’s<br />
direction. “She’s not your girlfriend, is<br />
she?”<br />
Alice and I had for quite some time answered<br />
the “are you two dating” question<br />
from strangers with “yes,” just to throw them<br />
off. We then would act like we thought the<br />
world’s cutest couple might, including obscure<br />
pet names—I would call her “gooberschnitzel”<br />
and she would call me “monkey<br />
buns”—never letting go of each other, and<br />
always sitting on each other’s laps. It was<br />
usually quite fun, but Hailey didn’t ask if<br />
we were dating. She was making sure Alice<br />
wasn’t my girlfriend. I liked where this was<br />
going.<br />
“No, she’s not. Just a really good friend,”<br />
I said. Alice had finally stopped reading all<br />
the banners and started staring at me, sticking<br />
her tongue out, contorting her tongue<br />
and lips, crossing her eyes, waving for me to<br />
Er i c Mu e t h<br />
come over there. I ignored<br />
her gestures.<br />
“Ah. I see. You<br />
don’t really seem like<br />
her type anyway,” Hailey<br />
said. She still had that<br />
devious look in her eyes.<br />
“So, tell me about yourself.”<br />
I did. I told her all<br />
about the music I was<br />
so passionate about and<br />
how I planned to major<br />
in music wherever<br />
I decided to go to college,<br />
even though I had<br />
no idea yet where—or<br />
even if—I might go. I<br />
told her about my band<br />
Crescendo Grand Finale, about the fanbase<br />
we were finally building and the clubs around<br />
town we had played. I found myself talking<br />
too much, almost bragging, trying to impress<br />
her. I soon found out how I knew her; she<br />
played the lead in my all-male high school’s<br />
most recent musical, for which I had played<br />
the stand-up bass. Hailey seemed generally<br />
interested in everything I had to say, closing<br />
her laptop and actually making an effort to<br />
listen. She was a junior at a nearby all-girls<br />
school, and she already knew exactly where<br />
she wanted to go to college (<strong>University</strong> of<br />
Missouri), what she was going to major in<br />
(broadcast journalism), and what she wanted
to do with her degree. She obviously knew<br />
what she wanted to do, and she gave me<br />
the impression that she always got what she<br />
wanted. I wanted to go back over to my table<br />
with Alice, but I couldn’t resist staying with<br />
Hailey for one more minute, which became<br />
two more, which became five, which became<br />
ten. Every few moments I would look over<br />
at Alice. Her funny faces were no more; now<br />
she simply stared at her phone, occasionally<br />
typing something, checking her watch,<br />
a glum look across her face. We had come to<br />
the coffee shop to hang out, to screw around<br />
like we always do, but now I wanted nothing<br />
other than to keep talking to Hailey. Girls<br />
like Hailey didn’t usually talk to me—I was<br />
the quintessential band geek, obsessed with<br />
music in all its forms and focused on little<br />
else, keeping to myself and my small group<br />
of close friends—and I just wanted it to keep<br />
it going. She’s talking to YOU, I thought. This<br />
doesn’t happen! I didn’t want to let this chance<br />
get by; I wanted to at least try and make<br />
something—anything—happen.<br />
As Hailey and I continued our conversation,<br />
Alice got up from the booth. We three<br />
were the only people in the coffee shop, and<br />
it was relatively silent except for my voice<br />
and Hailey’s. Alice started walking around<br />
slowly, almost pacing, waiting for me to get<br />
up and come over and give her the mocha<br />
she had asked for. And at that moment it became<br />
obvious to me as I watched her stare at<br />
the ceiling, waiting as patiently as she could<br />
for me: she wasn’t waiting for me to come<br />
over there. She was waiting for me to realize<br />
that she wanted to be mine. I could see her<br />
jealous glances every time Hailey laughed,<br />
every time I cracked my crooked smile that<br />
made Alice blush.<br />
But I didn’t want her to be mine, at least<br />
not anymore. I had wanted to date her for a<br />
while after I first met her, but it didn’t work<br />
out. Then, she had had a boyfriend, J.J. He<br />
was everything I wasn’t, and I didn’t think<br />
he was her type. He was a lacrosse player,<br />
the star and senior captain of his school’s<br />
state-winning team. He lived in a suburb and<br />
attended a private school nearly twice the<br />
price of mine, one that competed with mine<br />
on every level (and usually won). He was the<br />
epitome of the clichéd, better-than-thou<br />
jock, and he knew it. He carried himself as<br />
if he were the king of everything, and whenever<br />
the three of us would hang out he pulled<br />
Alice as close as possible and refused to let<br />
me get near her, as if I were a threat. One<br />
could easily set off his temper, and he didn’t<br />
like how close Alice and I were.<br />
The last time I had seen J.J., Alice and I<br />
had been listening to some music and playing<br />
video games in her room when he showed<br />
up out of nowhere, threw open her door,<br />
jacked me in the face right below my left<br />
eye, and knocked me to the floor. Alice and<br />
I had gone bowling with some District Band<br />
friends (but without J.J.) a few nights earlier.<br />
He called and texted her a few times while<br />
we were out, but she ignored him until she<br />
got home. When she finally called him after<br />
midnight that night, he was really upset and<br />
forbade her from seeing me anymore, but<br />
she didn’t think he was serious. He thought I<br />
was trying to steal her from him, and he was<br />
right—but Alice didn’t know that.<br />
“What the hell, J.J.? Gabe is my friend,<br />
and nothing more,” she said. “Our relationship<br />
means nothing. What is your problem?<br />
Oh, God, Gabe, your eye.”<br />
Nothing. The word echoed in my ears after<br />
she said it. Nothing. I didn’t say a word. I<br />
didn’t know what to say. Nothing. Alice and<br />
J.J. were still arguing, but I wasn’t listening to<br />
them. Nothing was all I heard. Grabbing my<br />
backpack, I picked myself up and walked out<br />
of the room, taking my jacket off the doorknob<br />
and gaining speed as I headed downstairs.<br />
J.J. came out of the room and began<br />
yelling at me to come back upstairs, calling<br />
me names, threatening me, but I ignored<br />
63
64<br />
him, never once turning to face him, never<br />
saying anything back. Alice’s mom, somewhat<br />
stupefied and bewildered at the situation,<br />
said something as I walked toward the<br />
door, but I didn’t hear her; nothing was still<br />
bouncing around in my ears.<br />
Alice began to walk over toward the table<br />
where Hailey and I were sitting, slowly<br />
at first, sort of meandering throughout the<br />
shop, but then deliberately, as if she were on<br />
a mission. She paused every few steps, occasionally<br />
turning around for a split second,<br />
taking a step back to the booth in the corner,<br />
but then turning back around, working<br />
up the courage to come and say something,<br />
anything. I never saw her gaze lift from the<br />
floor, and after what must have been five<br />
minutes she finally came all the way up to<br />
the table.<br />
“Hey Gabe?” she said timidly, “Can I<br />
have my coffee? It’s been nearly fifteen minutes,<br />
and I really don’t want it to get cold.”<br />
For a moment I stared at her blankly,<br />
forgetting that I had her coffee at the table.<br />
“Oh, sure,” I said, handing her the cup. It<br />
wasn’t hot anymore. “I’m sorry about that.<br />
Meant to bring it over there. Kinda forgot.”<br />
I was lying. She knew.<br />
“Oh, it’s OK.”<br />
She was waiting for me to invite her to<br />
sit down and talk with me and Hailey, but<br />
the invitation never came, and the three of<br />
us just stayed there in awkward silence for a<br />
few moments. Alice looked down at her feet.<br />
Then, quietly:<br />
“Gabe. I love you.”<br />
I had no idea where this came from, and<br />
I was shocked. Hailey was too, apparently,<br />
and just looked at me, asking with her stare:<br />
and your response is?<br />
Alice was my friend. We had been<br />
friends since we first met in District Band,<br />
and we had been inseparable since that day<br />
we first sat next to each other in the string<br />
section. I thought she was beautiful that day;<br />
she didn’t look like any of the other girls I<br />
knew, and she had a sort of “whatever” air<br />
about her. She didn’t take anything seriously—and<br />
that’s what I had loved about her.<br />
She had never cared if I would bring my<br />
girlfriend along with me to an outing, never<br />
showing any interest of dating me. But this<br />
had changed, and I hadn’t noticed. Why now?<br />
I wondered. Why do you say this now, after so<br />
long? Couldn’t there have been a better time?<br />
Hailey was embarrassed, and as she began<br />
to gather her laptop and books she muttered<br />
quickly, “I should go.” She seemed flustered,<br />
a bit upset and confused. I still said<br />
nothing, and I let her leave without even saying<br />
goodbye. Alice sat down in Hailey’s seat,<br />
but I stared through her.<br />
“Well?” she said, hoping I would utter<br />
those three words back to her, suddenly<br />
cracking a smile. “Something seems wrong.<br />
What is it?” She reached across the table and<br />
grabbed my hand, looking straight into my<br />
eyes. “What are you feeling?”<br />
But I couldn’t say it. Her sudden profession<br />
of love hadn’t changed anything. I had<br />
loved her, but she had told J.J. our relationship<br />
meant nothing, and she had said nothing<br />
when I walked out on her and Conor. As I sat<br />
at that table for what seemed like an eternity<br />
of silence, mulling over my response, nothing<br />
bounced around in my head, reminding me<br />
that I wasn’t nearly as important to her as<br />
she was to me, that although we might last<br />
for a little while together, nothing would resurface<br />
eventually. Nothing would be forever<br />
between us. As I gently pulled my hand out<br />
of her grasp, leaving her wispy fingers to curl<br />
upon themselves, I finally spoke.<br />
“Nothing,” I said. “I feel nothing.”
An g e l Ma i n t e n a n c e<br />
Ben Minden-Birkenmaier<br />
Even Seraphim, sailing smoothly<br />
above this dusty earth,<br />
must finally fail, and fall.<br />
Like a pond collecting crumpled beer cans,<br />
Like a carcass being slowly devoured,<br />
their wings grow chips,<br />
cracks spider across their faces,<br />
and into those cracks slip fear, anger, despair,<br />
and that most insidious, jealousy,<br />
and at last they fall.<br />
Why else would He have sent His only son?<br />
No, Judas never did it for the silver.<br />
65<br />
Eva n Or f
66<br />
De e p Bl u e Se a<br />
<strong>St</strong>even Dyke<br />
The water from the sea trickled up onto the beach, wetting the<br />
sand and turning it a dark brown. She sat just above the borderline<br />
of damp earth, her head tucked in between her knees. She<br />
wrapped her arms around her shins and stared out to sea. The sun<br />
was just dipping below the horizon, as if it were an orange slowly falling<br />
into the ocean. In one hand she held her mother’s old necklace, a<br />
worn golden chain softly reflecting the light of the setting sun. The<br />
waves tumbled onto the shore, roaring deeply under the breath of the<br />
wind. The breeze caught the girl’s hair, softly flipping it into the air<br />
and tangling it into light ivory webs. The sun was departing, letting<br />
its light glimmer one last time over the horizon. It sank below the<br />
depths of the ocean, and the girl closed her eyes. A lone tear trickled<br />
down her face, and she gripped the necklace tighter. She sat listening<br />
as the waves kept rumbling. She breathed in the scent of the ocean<br />
air. Cracking her eyes open one final time, she saw the orange horizon<br />
darkening, dimming the reflection against her streaked cheeks. She<br />
let her eyes slip closed again, and from that spot in the sand, she let<br />
her mind drift off. She let the rumbling waves pull her thoughts into<br />
the waters—out there to float away into that deep blue sea.<br />
Gr e g Fi s t e r
Th e Ax i s o f Ex i s t e n c e<br />
Daniel Hart L’Ecuyer<br />
He toils by day in his fields of wheat<br />
That rustle in the evening wind<br />
And tell him what they used to be<br />
Then, so very long ago, before the light of day<br />
When he walks amongst them quiet and slow<br />
And listens to the twilight whispers.<br />
67<br />
He clutches the fence with his withering hand<br />
A sprawling spine from some dead something’s skeleton<br />
Whose bones came to dust and dust to dirt<br />
And from dirt to the fields of wheat that he harvests<br />
When the winds of the fall bring it all to the ground.<br />
His eyes are set hard in his rough weathered face<br />
And stare past the fields and over the trees<br />
Beyond the horizon of the land of the living<br />
On his wife of the past in the clouds of the sky<br />
That ever are slurring to all the same gray,<br />
That ever are shifting and drifting away.<br />
His cold flat lips sit stooped and hunched<br />
A rock in a rainstorm that’s seen them before<br />
Jagged only at its broken side<br />
That, given time, will wear down too.<br />
Her body is buried past the garden<br />
Beneath the stone that bears her name and time<br />
The letters’ little curls and subtleties fading<br />
Her winding life seamed up and covered,<br />
Her story scrawled on scraps and writ in stone<br />
With charcoal sticks and mason picks.<br />
But through the windy, ever-ebbing tides of spring and fall<br />
Through the scorching snow and cloudy drought<br />
Through death and life and death his callused heart beats on.<br />
For the leaves that die are always later leaves again,<br />
The wheat will come again, he knows,<br />
And his sons will harvest that<br />
When he is gone and sweat is spent and blood dried up<br />
And the meek inherit his tears.
Ea s t e r Risings<br />
Bill George<br />
68<br />
On April sixteenth, two thousand and six,<br />
a mother, whom I do not know,<br />
bequeathed to me and others<br />
whom she did not know<br />
living fragments of her dead child.<br />
In the terror of the night,<br />
beneath the blank stare<br />
of a hospital’s pitiless light,<br />
she opened the tomb of her heart,<br />
her grief dropping like cerements<br />
that we might rise with the sun.<br />
In March of two thousand and ten,<br />
two callow widows<br />
clutched to their breasts a grief<br />
honed by a vengeance born<br />
when their Chechen husbands died.<br />
In the dark one terrible night<br />
they saw in it the right<br />
to pierce untold others<br />
with fragments of their hearts of stone.<br />
Sweet mother of God,<br />
as you cradled your dead child<br />
against your heaving breast, did<br />
vengeance grapple with your heart?<br />
Or did you, like my savior,<br />
envision Easters<br />
in Jerusalem and Gaza,<br />
Dagestan and Belfast,<br />
<strong>St</strong>. <strong>Louis</strong> and all hearts<br />
that salved your roiling ache?<br />
April 25, <strong>2010</strong>