LEGACY - Trevecca Nazarene University

LEGACY
Spring 2008, Volume 3

Legacy
Spring 2008
Vol. 3
FICTION
13 Rain Boots by Abigail Watkins
21 You Can Call Me Al by Austin Johnson
38 Confession by Kelly Tillson
POETRY
3 Mourning Summertime and The Frost by Benjamin
Prescott
6 Monday Night, Never So Hostile by N. W. Lindsley
7 Jefferson City Misery by Austin Johnson
8 Mashing Candy by Diana Reaves
10 Classical Gas by Abby Petrunak
12 Wilted by Jillian Frame
18 Forgotten by Erin Perry
20 Triad by Abigail Watkins
30 Correne’s Opus by Karye Cook
37 Circus Act by Amanda Berry
51 Untitled and 65 North by Jacob Perry
54 The Billboard by Bethany Hill

ART
31 The Death of a Moth and Rusty by Chadd Lin
33 Opryland Hotel, Nashville, TN; “Caddie” - William
Faulkner’s House; and Cross by Aimée Childress
36 Subway Train by Jonathan Edlin
55 Contributor Notes
EDITOR
Graham Hillard
COVER
Life by Aimée Childress
Photograph
Legacy is published once a year by Trevecca Nazarene University.
To submit work or to learn about the Creative Writing program,
write to Graham Hillard at ghillard@trevecca.edu.
Printed by Colorstream Digital, Nashville, TN.
Trevecca Nazarene University
333 Murfreesboro Rd.
Nashville, TN 37210

3
Benjamin Prescott
Mourning Summertime
Fireflies, reflect your brothers above
One last time, and rest.
Rest also, oaks; let fall your plumage,
Point your sparrows south.
Katydids, wail your last goodnight
To the bullfrogs. Cicadas, scream
Once more for the warmth before
Cold silence overcomes you.
Brown bats, dip over the pond again;
Drink the last of the mosquitoes.
Fly to the moon, moths.
Show the sky your great green wings.
Swallow the sunset, autumn dusk.
Let it dissolve into the maples
And dogwoods—one last glimpse
Of color before darkness.
I’ll whisper to the whitetails,
“She’s gone.”

4 Benjamin Prescott
The Frost
It was April, but cold.
The dogwoods were late to bloom.
The orchard trees, too.
An un-welcomed frost greeted
My father’s farm every morning.
It blanketed the bare
Earth of the garden;
Told us there was nothing
We could do to
Stop it.
A heifer had birthed her first calf
Early that morning.
It lay still on the frozen ground
As the mother tried frantically to
Lick the last traces of
The womb from its soft black hair.
She was too late.
There would be another calf
Next year,
A red one.
My father asked me to help him
Carry the body to the back field.
We placed it between a thorn bush
And a pine tree.
It looked odd there,
Like a rumpled and forgotten mink coat.
I wanted to bury it, but my father said no;

The Frost 5
The ground was too cold to break,
And besides, the coyotes
Would just dig it up.
We lost two more calves that year,
And got no fruit from the orchard.
Winter should stay within its boundaries.

6
N. W. Lindsley
Monday Night, Never So Hostile
Monday night, never so hostile, never so necessary as now.
We are huddled against the cold. Gathered in coats, wondering
what, if anything, we are desiring. And what will the wind
locked trees reveal to us in the white lights of the lampposts
standing above our cold green benches? There is a shadow
across the way, fallen from the bases of buildings
upon all our simple property until the street walls off the dark
with its welcoming lamps eliminating shadow. The trees
that have held on so desperately to their leaves whisper
along the wind, telling stories, as the fire escape freezes.
The lone leafless tree on the hill glowing orange
under a distant street lamp pulls like gravity on my eye,
begging me, “Don’t let me alone.” The passing clouds are masking
the purple velvet sky. Are we so special as to be alone
on this unforgiving night, experiencing its glory, its redemption?

7
Austin Johnson
Jefferson City Misery
They die along the railroad tracks
in clumps of dizzy heat,
the leaves fall from the tamaracks.
The dogs meet in the downtown shacks,
they’ll always own the street.
They die along the railroad tracks.
The kids divide the lunches packed,
ziplocs cast about their feet,
the leaves fall from the tamaracks.
The heater on near jacket racks,
the raindrops lose their seats,
and die along the railroad tracks.
A woman calls them softly back,
and like the tramping of their feet,
the leaves fall from the tamaracks.
The men will raze the downtown shacks
but the dogs will have caught their meat,
they lie in packs on railroad tracks
in clumps of dizzy heat.

8
Diana Reaves
Mashing Candy
Choosing candy always proves to be a challenge
I’m never ready for. Even though I usually
survey the selection while waiting in lines,
noticing the flavors that now last even longer
and planning to try the new cookie and caramel,
I’m still never prepared when the day comes.
My eyes glance at the bubble and chewing gums,
but a craving calls me to rows below. I reach out
for the new cookie and caramel bar. “Yes. That one.
No. Put it back!” I say, my fingers backing into fists.
It’s candy, but if I choose chocolate, I’ll want tart.
If tart, I’ll wish all day for that chocolate
which could have been mine if I had
only taken the time to think.
Suddenly, the craving changes, and all I want
is to pull that small package from its box.
I stare through the orange sleeve at the two
chocolate cups, partnered in the white tray.
Why do I long to press into their soft centers?
Taking the pack and holding it to my side, I do it.
My nail sinks down, followed by its thumb,
pushing past a thin chocolate coat,
grinding the brown butter.
My thumb moves to the other piece, but just as it touches
the surface, I see a cart coming into my line.
With a little puncture in the cup, I smooth the wrapper

Mashing Candy 9
and place it back on the shelf. Now, staring
through orange plastic, two crushed eyes glare back,
and understanding I should purchase what I’ve pulverized,
I check out and leave them there.
How I love to mash candy. Next week, same store,
some spoiled child’s scream darts at me as I shop.
Smiling at my soundless sin, I walk with presence,
satisfied and afraid of nothing.

10
Abby Petrunak
Classical Gas
Let me lose myself in your words;
Play me some sad lyric, dressed in blue.
I’m not in the mood for those happy love songs,
And I’m not interested in folk ballads.
Watching your fingers slide across her neck
Against the grain, start strumming a song.
I can’t remember where I’ve heard this song.
My mind races through tunes, trying to place
The familiar melody. Could it be. . . ?
Maybe it had no words, like Rhapsody in Blue?
Giving up, I listen to the music.
Words or no, I still feel the pain.
I recoil in pain—the coffee
Has scalded my tongue, just as the song
Has told me off with its simple music.
The words are coming back to me now
Like a bruise turning blue.
I glance at my watch, suddenly agitated.
I remember the years I learned music,
When practice was like an unwanted chore.
Behind her back, I flung insults at my mother.
Now I flinch when they’re flung back in my mind;
It was just practice. There was no need for mouth.
I should have practiced until my fingers turned blue.

Classical Gas 11
You’ve closed your guitar case. My blue
Skies have plummeted, even though the music
Has stopped. I suddenly hate you for
Ruining my song. Everything was perfect
Until you made me remember what I
Desperately longed to forget.
I’m insulted by your words.
Music was my inspiration
Until the clock struck twelve
And it was over; over and gone.

12
Jillian Frame
Wilted
Nothing moves me. I think that’s all.
Pebbly granules of thoughts that don’t fit
Knock around the corners of my
Brain, loosening the shell of it.
You think that’d be all. So did I.
But the shell loosens and the shell
Cracks, leaving lines to study, so
All will see the trail I’ve made.
Who knew I could’ve been here?
The spring-summer air knew, whistling
Through the fissures, relieving my mind
From stale snow and frost. I seal up,
Ready for the next time this comes.
Un-plastered to the ground, still
Breathing in the earth, I will
Be ready then.

13
Abigail Watkins
Rain Boots
Big, shiny black rain boots with violet polka dots—Sophia was
thrilled by the contents of the package. Just the sight of the UPS man
stopping in front of her house that afternoon had been exciting. And
the fact that the package was for her was almost enough to send her
into a sort of pre-birthday ecstasy orbit.
“Your uncle is a ridiculous man.” Mom sighed, glancing out the
window at their backyard. They lived in the High Deserts of California,
and their yard was yellow with foxtails and sage brush instead of being
green with grass. “He should remember that it never rains here.”
Sophia shrugged. “It does sometimes, I think.” She was shoving her
pink little feet into the boots.
“Sometimes.” Mom clicked her fake fingernails across the Blue Willow
Ware patterned tiles on the kitchen counter. “Not enough to merit
wearing boots, though.”
Sophia hummed by way of answering and dashed out the back,
leaving the screen door swinging open behind her. Her boots made
crunching sounds as she walked to the center of the yard to get a good
look at the sky. The sun glared down at her from its perch above the
big, gray Sierra Mountains.
“Hey baby doll!” Dad called over to her from where he was down
on his knees digging a small hole. Sophia usually wanted to know all
about what Dad was working on, but today she had much more important
business.
“Hi,” she replied. “Dad, does it ever rain here?”
“You’ve been talking to your mother, huh?” Dad rubbed his dusty
hands on his heat-moistened face, causing streaks like Indian War paint
to appear.
“Uncle Jay sent me rain boots.”
“How nice of Uncle Jay…” Dad wasn’t listening anymore. “Oh,

14 Abigail Watkins
sweetie, be careful when you play out here. I just found some fire ant
hills and I would hate for you to get bit.”
“Yeah.” Sophia’s feet were beginning to sweat. What can I do with
these boots? She sat on the hot ground just near the side of the house as
she considered this question. What can I do?
She closed her eyes. Sweat rolled down her back. She would really
need a bath tonight. Of course! I can wear them in the bath tub! She chuckled.
They would fill up with water and I could pretend I was walking in the Amazon
Rainforest and stepped in quicksand and… She frowned. Mom won’t let
me.
Sophia lay back in the sand. The sun hurt her eyes even when they
were closed. If she scooted closer to the house she could be in the
shade, but she covered her face with her hands instead. What if I took
them to the public pool? She imagined herself in her tie-dyed swimsuit
wearing the fantastic boots with her orange fun noodle. Then an image
of the sour, wrinkly faced lady with the rose tattoo who took your
money at the door pushed away her nice thought. She sighed. She probably
wouldn’t let me bring them in anyway.
Something started to tickle Sophia’s foot. She sat up to see what it
was. She found that a rollie pollie bug was crawling on her.
“Hey there little guy,” she said. “I am just trying to figure out something.
What would you do with rain boots?”
The rollie pollie didn’t seem to have much of an opinion. He just
fell off of her foot and rolled into a ball.
“I guess you wouldn’t do anything with them because you are so
small. You are small enough to live in them.”
Sophia had an idea. “Yes! I’ll make you a house out of my boots!”
The rollie pollie started crawling toward the shade of Sophia’s
house. Sophia crawled after him, grinning widely as she described to
the insect what she had in store for him. “It will have a big, fancy room
to eat dinner in and a game room in the basement. I saw them do that
to this one guy’s house on TV. They even gave him a huge pizza

Rain Boots 15
oven!”
Sophia reached the side of the house before the rollie pollie did.
The shade made her eyes feel funny after the bright sun. She absentmindedly
peeled some of the gray paint that was flaking off of the side
as she continued to chatter. Then she noticed that the rollie pollie had
been leading her to his family’s home, and there were dozens of rollie
pollies coming out of the ground.
“Oh! I’ll make a home for all of you! You can pretend that the
boots are castles and that you are the rollie pollie royal family!”
Sophia went straight to work filling the boots with the moist dirt of
the rollie pollie’s previous home as well as the rollie pollies themselves.
She even found some itty-bitty baby rollie pollies who were white and
had tiny, cute feelers she could barely see.
When she had finished filling the boot-castles she decided that the
rollie pollies needed a better view than just the flaky wall. She carefully
lugged them away from her house and into the sunny yard. They
looked so nice and shiny there that they inspired Sophia to tell a story.
“Once upon a time there were two big, shiny castles that belonged
to the royal rollie pollies—” She paused as she tried to think of what
should happen. She noticed an ant hill on the other side of her boots.
“They had ant neighbors who were very nice and liked to have picnics—even
when it rained.” Sophia stopped to grin at her cleverness.
“And everybody in the kingdom wore rain boots every day.”
At this point in Sophia’s narrative one of the nice ant neighbors bit
her toe. She shrieked and leapt up—knocking over the rollie pollie castles.
She soon realized that there were ants in her clothing. She was
hopping and wailing like mad.
Dad ran over. “What happened?” He saw the fire ant hill.
Sophia was led—her cries piercing Dad’s ears—around the house to
the car port where the hose was kept. She didn’t really want to be
sprayed. The coldness of the water caused more howling but brought
an end to the fiery biting. “I told you to look out for the ants.” Dad

16 Abigail Watkins
grumped.
“I just wanted to play with my rain boots.” Her teeth were chattering
and tears were still flowing down her face.
“I am sorry this happened.” Dad patted her arm. “Go to your
Mom—tell her to put baking soda on the bites.”
Sophia slumped into the kitchen, her breathing erratic and her
clothes dripping. “Mom, I got bit. All over!” The sobs gained momentum
again.
Mom was already mixing up some baking soda and water paste.
“You got all wet, too.”
“My whole day is ruined.”
“It is?”
“Yeah—‘cause of those stupid meanie ants!”
“You are going to let stupid meanie ants ruin your day?”
Sophia couldn’t think of a good reply to this.
“I was watching you and I think you had a good day. You made
some fun for yourself with those boots—which is something I couldn’t
have done. I have to admit I was kind of jealous of your creativity.”
“You were?” Sophia giggled.
“Yes.” Mom kissed her nose. “Let’s put some stuff on those bites
to take out the sting.”
Sophia endured the pasting on of the baking soda with just a small
pout. When Mom was finished she told Sophia to get Dad because it
was almost time for dinner.
Sophia slipped on her sandals and went outside to get Dad. Sunset
was approaching and the sun was fat and bronze as it began its dip behind
the mountains. She found Dad whistling while putting tools away
in the shed.
“What were you working on?” she asked, suddenly curious.
Dad smiled and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “It’s a secret.”
Her eyes widened. “Please tell me! Please!”
“Here is a little hint.” His breath tickled her ear. “You are going to

Rain Boots 17
need these.” He swiped her boots from off of a shelf in the shed—all
nice and clean.
“Oh! The ants didn’t eat them!” she squealed. “But what about… ?”
“The pollies fled to safety. I think they are okay.”
“Thank you, Daddy!” She hugged him.
“How about you go get Mom so that I can show you both the secret?”
Sophia didn’t have to be told twice. She hugged the boots to herself
and ran like lightening. “Mom!!!”
Mom appeared in the doorway. “What?”
“Dad has a sur—” Sophia’s phrase was stopped short. She had just
been hit in the face with water. “Is it raining?”
Mom screamed and ran toward Dad. “Sprinklers! Oh, baby, sprinklers!”
Mom kissed Dad profusely.
Sophia stood in the water, letting it whip past her as she considered
the situation. It’s too bad it isn’t raining… She looked over at Mom. Mom
was still making a big deal of Dad. Mom probably won’t mind if I get wet
again…
And so she did. Sophia shoved her boots on and got very, very wet.

18
Erin Perry
Forgotten
On a rough, dirty sidewalk I sit,
Head in my hands and longing for home.
My sandals are covered in rock dust.
My feet hurt.
A group of women are looking at me
From across the street and I wish
They would move on.
But they stay, waiting for me
To do something incredible.
I look up from my smooth, white hands
And notice a small girl standing nearby.
An oversized, floral dress swallows her dark skin,
Chalky from the dirt in the air.
The plastic bag she uses for underwear
Shows through the many rips and tears.
And it crinkles as she walks.
She sees me and moves over to the place where I sit.
Curiously, she crouches in front of me,
Like a small animal,
And speaks in a tongue I have heard before,
But still cannot quite understand.

What can I do for her diseased body?
How can I help her?
Maybe I’ll forget this tomorrow,
Or perhaps when I get home.
I’ll put it in the back of my mind.
My plane leaves in the morning.
Forgotten 19

20
Abigail Watkins
Triad
i in this moment . . .
look at fire.
smell of smoke.
get that close—
returning to the chill.
fall into water.
submerged below
mirror-like glow—
flourishing in the still.
feel the earth.
warm genesis
holy breath—His
impartation of the thrill.
. . . know You there.

21
Austin Johnson
You Can Call Me Al
If you don’t mind, I would like to start with the saddest moment of
my life. This was two years ago, about a week after my wife moved out.
How she left was pretty sad, I mean, it was really sad, but looking back
on it, not as sad as what I consider to be the saddest moment of my
life. I should be used to the disappointment, I’ve never been the type
that wakes up at five to jog or can make really good pancakes. I’ve
never been the guy that can give someone a business card and confidently
say, “Call me.”
I was watching TV in the den—and this is the one that’s just sad,
not the really, really bad one which I will get to shortly—I was watching
TV in the den, I don’t know, it was the Discovery Channel maybe,
might’ve been Animal Planet. God. It was something about meerkats
so whatever channel that comes on. I was just sitting there with my
hand slightly under my waistband when Suze walked by. Real fast.
Where you going? I asked, not looking up—which could’ve been my
biggest mistake in hindsight, but looking back on all of my mistakes
makes me realize how many stupid things I do like that, I mean I do
things like that all the time, I don’t look at people.
Out. We’re out of… Jello mix, she said. When I really think about it,
she sounded nervous. Shifty might be a better word. If I’d cared at all, I
like to think that the whole thing would have ended in my favor, but I
think that’s me softening things. Making me seem manlier than I really
am, or whatever. Really, I never exercise or anything.
Jello mix? I asked absently. God, those freakin meerkats. What did I
care about beta females and their bastard babies? Does Jello come in a
mix? I thought it was just… in, you know… I looked up to where she was.
In those cup things, I said to no one. The scene that followed, I’m told,
was intense. I say “I’m told,” because it was one of those things I don’t
remember very well afterward. All I know is that Helen my landlady

22 Austin Johnson
heard me screaming and came outside to see what was wrong. She says
she found the Jordans’ mailbox in her backseat along with the remains
of her rear window. She says she found me on my knees in the patch
of yard in front of our building. She says she told me that she wouldn’t
call the police if I went inside right now and shut the door and didn’t
open it for a couple days.
I do, however, remember sitting back down on my couch and
watching the meerkats. For one thing, they have incredible vision at
night. They’re very territorial, and sometimes when the beta females get
impregnated by alpha males from other clans, they try to hide the illegitimate
litter in with the alpha females’. God. Why do I remember
that.
That was sad, but it wasn’t the saddest moment of my life. This is,
though.
Like I was saying, it was about a week after Suze left. Two years
ago. I hadn’t called her up yet, like I could’ve. She didn’t carry a cell.
She was an artist, and unlike the rest of the common world she didn’t
feel the tug of normal American responsibility on her back. She didn’t
follow any religious beliefs. She didn’t believe in our nation’s system of
laws. And perhaps most insanely, she did not carry a cell phone. Don’t
get me wrong, twenty-four-year-old me loved these things. They actually,
to be quite honest with you, kind of turned me on. Here was I, a
townie who’d spent the summer timing the people who counted pills at
Pfizer. Here was I, a beta male, who’d met this really hot artist chick at
a punk festival downtown. Here was I, sitting in her passenger seat
while she ran all kinds of signs and lights so we could get to her place
to watch The Graduate. That much reckless neglect of authority, so
many run STOPs, like a million eminent birds flipped to the proverbial
Man.
I really should get onto it.
It was two years ago, about a week after Suze left. I hadn’t gotten a
hold of her. I hadn’t called my mom in Iowa yet either. Only my

You Can Call Me Al 23
brother Owen knew, but he was in Japan most of that time. This was
in July, actually eight days after Suze left, because my birthday was on a
Wednesday that year. I had about ten dollars in pennies which I’d
dumped into one of those coin-counter machines and I was really jonesing
for chicken fingers. There was this place sort of downtown,
Clark’s Chicken & Fries, and I had intended to have a quiet lunch by
myself while I read a Nelson DeMille, The Gold Coast I think it was.
One of my mother’s. Anyway, I got in there and it didn’t feel right. A
place has to feel right if I’m going to read there. A six-year-old threw a
Buzz Lightyear figurine that connected with my bum wrist—the one
I’d mysteriously hurt during my blackout mailbox rampage—but judging
by how off-putting the place felt that day, it could’ve been thrown
by the salad bar. I picked up our favorite Space Ranger and handed it
back to the kid like a nice, not-creepy-at-all single man in line for
chicken-and-fries. I didn’t want to eat in there. Neither did Nelson De-
Mille, as I could only guess from the way he hit the floor. Can’t blame
him. No one likes a sweaty palm. I ordered my chicken and left.
Drumroll. The Saddest Moment of My Life.
I drove with the bag in my lap. I ran all kinds of signs and lights.
There was a grease stain halfway down its side, and when I checked it a
second time I could actually see a yellow shoestring of fry through the
side of the bag. It was like looking into a portal to another world,
where I could live a nice, short life jumping in and out of a hot bath,
going home with strangers, eating with beautiful artists and poor
schmucks and single men who’d finished their chicken fingers and
were devouring me slowly, vacantly, out of boredom, for the sole reason
that I existed.
When I was close to the airport, I turned left onto America Rd and
kept at it for about as long as a MeatLoaf song (what is that—eight
minutes?). Where America hits Stratton there’s a wide gravel shoulder
and I’d never seen any cars parked on it. I never saw any cars when I
drove that far out on America, which I did a lot at night, usually alone.

24 Austin Johnson
I’d know if there were cars, I can see really good at night. I parked on
the gravel. There was nothing around, crickets and the slow breath of
trees. Something came to mind about a friend of a friend, after his girlfriend
left him, my friend said—and I don’t believe him because I think
Mark’s an idiot and he lies all the time anyway—he just ate doughnuts
for weeks. That’s all he ate. Why doughnuts? I’d asked. He didn’t say
anything. Mark’s an idiot. I ate fries for a while, staring off into the
middle distance. I would like to tell you that I thought about something
else, that I thought about the Sox or the lyrics to “Paradise By The
Dashboard Light.” I would like to tell you a lot of things about me that
aren’t true. I do know the lyrics to every MeatLoaf song. I haven’t been
to church in a while. I would like to tell you that my name isn’t Alain F.
Moran. People make the Elaine jokes and I get called moron a lot. I
would like to tell you that I thought about something else while I ate. I
would like to tell you a lot of things, but the truth is I ate fries and I
thought about meerkats.
When I first entered adolescence and began the pursuit of a female,
I was told by my brother that that female may break my heart. He also
gave me the disheartening news that that could happen a lot in my life.
What he didn’t tell me was that every female has a distinct scent, and if
you spend a lot of time with the same girl, that scent gets in your
clothes, in your hair, and, depending on how things go, in your car.
Suddenly, I sniffed.
Suzan was in the car. Suzan was everywhere.
That was the saddest moment of my life. A couple times after that, I
saw a car like hers around town, but the smell stayed on the chairs
where she sat and there were plenty of hairs in (our) my sink. That was
two years ago. What is more important than any of that, though, is the
happiest moment of my life, which I will get to. Later.
About a month later my brother Owen and his wife April and their

You Can Call Me Al 25
little girl Lonnie moved fifteen minutes away from me. The day they
moved in was chaotic. For me, I mean. Owen wears a lot of suits; I
wear the same five shirts like all the time. There are more reasons but I
think you can guess a lot of them based on that observation alone. I
have trouble with lots of people. It’s easy at the punk shows. If you feel
weird you just punch someone in the face and jump into the pit. Somehow,
though, in Owen’s yard, it wasn’t that easy. Where do you want this
clock, Mrs. Fitzgerald? everyone seemed to be saying. One thing I should
tell you: Owen writes under Fitzgerald (which is my middle name) instead
of Moran. He thought it sounded more writer-y. April stood on
the porch in a long skirt, conducting floating couches to the garage or
to the side door, squinting against the sun. I don’t know if you’ve ever
seen Asian people squint, but it’s like their eyes disappear and in their
place are charcoal comets. It’s certainly more interesting than when
white people squint. We just look like idiots. April waved me away,
laughing. She thinks I’m freakin hilarious. I’m really not that funny, but
April laughs at everything I say. Really. You should see her. I weaved
through all these sweaty guys, these guys with blank faces. I didn’t like
how they were looking at April. For a year or so in high school, Owen
was a total racist. He had the truck and everything. He shaved his head.
Obviously, he got out of that stage, I mean, he was the freakin salutatorian
and racists don’t go Dartmouth. (I listen to NPR.) Anyway, I could
tell a lot of these guys had trucks. I could see it when they looked at
April.
I found Owen in his car. Where’s Lonnie? I asked. He was tooling
around on his phone. He shoved a thumb backwards.
LonJohn? he asked loudly, looking at his phone.
Right here! said Lonnie as she jumped up onto the back of his seat.
He played like he was hurt and couldn’t breathe as she berated him
with an action figure.
What’s that doll? I asked. I knew it was an action figure, but somewhere
on down the line I thought adults were supposed to be ignorant

26 Austin Johnson
of crap like that.
It’s Ash, from Evil Dead. I found it at ComicCon like four years ago but I’d
been waiting til she’s old enough. We talk fast when we’re together.
Til she’s old enough? I asked.
Yeah, cause remember how I told you she’d eat anything that came off in her
hand? Like necklaces and beads. I mean she eats her vegetables, but the chainsaw
hand comes off when you press a button on the back. He gets so excited sometimes.
Oh, and when we talk fast, we kind of whisper-talk.
Does it have the boomstick? I asked. I’d seen those movies a couple
times, but Owen’s freakin obsessed.
Yeah, everyth—he was cut off as Lonnie said something in Japanese.
Owen spoke Japanese back and she climbed over his lap and out the
window and ran to her mom on the porch.
I’m glad you guys are moving in. I smiled. Smiles look great in autumn,
and if your smile is good enough, no one can tell that you’re lying. I
started to walk away.
Hey. Al. I walked back to his car.
Yeah? We were whispering again.
Are you doing okay?
What kind of question was that. What kind of question is that?
He looked away. Never mind. You’re always Alain.
What is that supposed to mean?
I was just wondering if you were doing okay.
Why.
Because I’m your brother and I’ve been out of your life for a while and I want to
know if you’re doing okay.
What was that about how I’m always Alain?
Don’t worry about it. That’s the thing though. When people tell you
that, you worry about it.
I’m glad you’re here.
Yeah? I think it’ll be nice. April missed the movie theaters, of all things. Plus I
want Lonnie to learn some English beyond “Right here!” and “Bond. James

You Can Call Me Al 27
Bond.”
Yeah. Hey can I ask you something?
He looked at me suspiciously. Yes…?
What was the saddest moment of your life?
A pause. He breathed in. It’s hard to say, man. Uh, finding out Dad was
in a plane headed for the White House kind of shook me up, I guess. I bet the
whole too-cool passive-aggressive thing really gets on April’s nerves.
It wasn’t the crash?
No, knowing that he was probably one of the guys that fought back right at the
last second, I mean, he died like he would’ve wanted to.
Okay. Okay, great. What about the happiest one?
The happiest… what?
The Happiest Moment of Your Life.
Hm. That one’s harder. Why do you need to know? Just wondering?
Just wondering.
Hm. His eyes rolled around and darted. He had a lot of good in him.
He would’ve fought back, too. I’ll be proud of him, when he dies. I
know that’s a morbid thing to say, but I mean it. That would be washing
dishes, two in the morning, Big Apple Pizzeria on America Road, by the airport.
Another pause. 1994.
I nodded.
He nodded.
I hit a dog with my car doing 60 in a 35 six months later, on the way
to Lonnie’s dance class. Owen was at his publisher’s and April had to
be at the museum all day and I had to take her. Lonnie was sitting in
big kid seats by then and she saw it before I did with those big brown
comets of hers. It was just standing there looking at us and I hit it. She
was screaming. I had run outside. She tried to get out. STAY IN THE
CAR! I said, bending down at its side. My mind ran the last ten seconds
over and over and over; I saw a yellow bullet sailing through the
grass. His coat was golden still, but the closer you got to the neck, the

28 Austin Johnson
darker and more maroon-flecked it was. The face took the brunt of it.
It was gone. I’ve never seen anything like that before in my life. Stay in
the car, I gasped and I threw up, spinning my head to the side. I was in a
field, so it was okay—No it was not okay. I’d hit a dog. That isn’t okay. I’m
not okay. I would like to tell you that I do the right thing, all the time. I
would like to tell you that I exercise, that I don’t have a receding hairline
or hemorrhoids. I really would.
I felt a hand on my back. I turned around and grabbed Lonnie. Uncle
Al? Uncle Al, are you okay? she said, hugging back. We sat there in the
field, hugging. Sometimes you cry for hours, you cry until you vomit or
burst a vessel in your eye. Sometimes, though, the clouds gather in the
right positions and the mist covers your window and pulls down your
shades and the sun doesn’t matter. You look out your window on a day
like that and you might as well be crying. Uncle Al, I can’t breathe. I let
go.
That night I got a phone call from a friend of Suzan’s. She said to
come over right away. I was too dumbstruck by the sound of her voice
to say No at the time. I hadn’t really kept in touch with any of my
friends, our friends, since Suze left. Charlie and Bill lived in a two bedroom
place about twenty-three miles from my building. I ran all kinds
of signs and lights. Bill answered the door.
Evening. Was your—
Listen, Bill, I don’t need your crap right now. Why did you call me?
Bill was a nice guy and I was being a jerk. Charlie’s in the kitchen.
Their house is covered in those vintage French wine posters. Everywhere,
French mustaches and airplanes and wine bottles. Someone was
making pop tarts. Charlie.
Alain.
Charlie.
She pushed her hair back. I looked around.
Why am I here? I asked.

You Can Call Me Al 29
There was a definite pause and we all looked at each other. I tried
my best to be patient but the whole place smelled like Suzan.
I just got off the phone with a woman in Dallas, Texas.
Is there another Dallas?
What?
On the phone with a woman in Dallas. And…
And she says she saw a woman that looked like Suzan at the bus station. She
says the face was just like the one they’d played on the news so much.
I couldn’t breathe. My voice was dead. Y— I tried again, Yes?
Alain?
Yes?
She was described as being ‘very very pregnant.’ The woman guessed eight
months.
Yes?
And…
And what?
And this woman said she’d been looking for how to get in touch with us for a
few weeks. The stations quit running the story so long ago—
So what does that mean? Does that mean she’s… I trailed off. It made
sense that she would leave, in hindsight. It made plenty of sense. I
know way too much about meerkats now to think any different. Bill
came over and we sat on the couch. Charlie came and sat next to Bill. I
couldn’t breathe. I let go.
A year from that night, with generous help from my family, specifically
my brother, Owen, I was finally able to give people that business
card.
Alain Moran. Big Apple Pizzeria. Owner. 313 America Rd. Passaic,
NJ. 07055.
“When you call me, you can call me Al.”
Our dad was always a big Paul Simon fan. I think he’d get a big kick
out of that.

30
Karye Cook
Correne’s Opus
Her hands are small—fragile, the nails no larger than a dime.
They dance through the air, conducting her symphony of cries.
Gracefully the masterpiece ends in her tiny mouth.
A face floats above her and she squeals around her fists.
Out pops her tiny hands—saliva laminating her skin with a clear gleam.
Her fingers paint the floating face as she brings it closer to her own.
The face is swiftly exchanged with the morning’s
Concoction—wrinkles crease her face in displeasure.
A green spray erupts from her mouth
And settles on the face before her.
She squeals in delight, her hands again conducting, to a different cry.

Chadd Lin
The Death of a Moth
Photograph

Chadd Lin
Rusty
Photograph

Aimée Childress
Opryland Hotel, Nashville, TN
Photograph

Aimée Childress
“Caddie” - William Faulkner’s House
Photograph

Aimée Childress
Cross
Photograph

Jonathan Edlin
Subway Train
Photograph

37
Amanda Berry
Circus Act
My eyes were closed as I heard the music play.
No longer controlling my thoughts,
for they were walking a tight rope.
As people watched in anxiety,
Everyone prayed silently that the performers would not fall.
But I did. And it woke me from my sleep.
I fell into the tiger’s cage
And put my head in his mouth.
Hot and moist were the performers’ hands,
As they climbed the ladder to swing from the bars.
One small slip, they might fall.
Two flips and they grabbed hold of each other.
I wanted to join the circus.
They told me in your dreams.
So I did . . .

38
Kelly Tillson
Confession
Nobody ever really asked me if I wanted to be an altar boy. I mean,
it’s not like I minded being an altar boy (and it’s not like it would’ve
mattered if I had minded), but I can’t recall ever being asked; probably
my ma mentioned it to me at some strategically late hour of the evening,
I can’t remember. I can’t remember the first day I put on that
smelly white dress, but I can guess it wasn’t pleasant business getting it
on. “Ma, I can’t wear that thing, it’s a dress! You can’t ask a fella to
wear a dress! Ain’t that non-Biblical?” Actually I probably didn’t put up
much of a fight; like I said, I never minded. Not like Lou. Lou had to
be corralled every Sunday before Mass, forced, practically threatened at
knifepoint to get him to wear his cassock, stand at the front of the
church and restrain himself from running like mad for the exit.
Luciano Bugiardini was probably the least Catholic altar boy I ever
met. “I don’t confess,” he announced to me one Sunday after Mass, as
our screaming families were herded out of church and we loitered after
them. I stopped up short, hands still in the pockets of my knickers. If
my ma’d of seen me she’d of hollered at me; she hated to see me with
my hands in my pockets, mostly because when I stuck my hands in my
pockets I had to scrunch up my coat (handed down from my far-larger
brother) to reach them, which gave it wrinkles that were “the very divvil
to get out.”
“Don’cher Ma make you go confess?” I demanded, incredulous.
“Oh yeah, she makes me go,” Lou replied, forcing his fingers
through his curly hair and ridding it of its plastered-down Sunday neatness.
“Jiggered if I tell that old padre what I been doing!”
Impressed by his expletive, I took a step back and surveyed him, I
guess looking for signs of spiritual decay or an especially filthy soul.
“And nobody knows?”
He snorted, disgusted by my lack of smarts. “Dummy! It ain’t like

Confession 39
they can tell when you done something wrong! Who’s going to know?
You think the padre and your ma meet up downtown and check receipts?”
“Well, gee—I guess nobody’d know. But say, Lou—” a thought had
occurred to me. “You’re gonna spend an awful long time in Purgatory
if you don’t confess your sins sometime.”
“Ah, says who?”
“Says God, stupid!”
Too much for his pride—he jumped me, grinding his cracked
brown knuckles into my ribs.
“Mike! You, Mike!” my ma shouted over the heads of our younger
siblings as Lou and I scuffled, careening dangerously near the dusty
edge of the sidewalk. “You get them clothes dirty and I’ll tan yer backside!”
As we were fairly close in size, clashes of this sort usually ended in
gridlock. Readjusting the hang of our Sundays, we continued walking,
nonchalant as anything.
“All right,” I said at last, “I can’t figure how you manage it. If you
go in the booth and don’t say nothing, then how come Father Czémpa
don’t tell your ma you ain’t confessed?”
“I confess,” he replied airily. “Only I just confess a little—I tell ‘em
something small. Something that don’t matter.”
“Something small?” I repeated.
Lou kicked the stone so that it flew off the sidewalk, flicking up
dust as it bounced away. “Last time,” he declared, “I confessed to the
sin of spitting on the street.” And he did so.
I wasn’t convinced that this was an especially wise way to deal with
the whole business of confession, though I would have jumped at the
opportunity to get out of having to sit in that little dark booth every
month or so. Lordy, what a nightmare—it was like talking to voices in
your own head.
“Father Czémpa,” I came out and said one time, “Can’t I just come
see you in your office and confess to your face?”

40 Kelly Tillson
“You’re not confessing to me, son, you’re confessing to God.”
“Can’t I do that in your office?”
Father Czémpa wiped the sweat from his big pale Polish face—red
now in the Chicago summer heat—and said, “Mike, are you scared of
the dark?”
“Hell, no!—I mean—no I sure ain’t—please don’t tell my Ma—”
I wasn’t lying. I wasn’t scared of the dark. I just didn’t like sitting in
a little dark room and talking about my sins to a disembodied voice—
even though I knew the voice was either Father Czémpa or Father
Flannigan.
My sister was dead scared of the dark. If there was a single person
on the earth who liked confession less than myself (or Lou) it was
Mary. Shaking like a leaf she’d walk to that booth like she was going to
be hanged, and she’d come out running, white as a sheet and gasping
for air. “I thought I was going to die!” she’d wheeze.
“Gee whiz, Mary, keep your hair on, it’s just confession.”
When I was fifteen she finally quit for good—said she could not go
back in that room. Our parents tried to change her mind and threatened
to stop her pocket money because they didn’t believe her story
even when I backed her up.
That afternoon, walking back from school, Mary told me she had
something she had to go and confess. I said, “Shucks, Mary, can’t you
wait?” and she said no it couldn’t so I said Fine, I’d wait if she was fast.
So we went into the church and she went off toward the booth and I
sat in the back, watching the little specks of dust float around. It was a
bright sunshiny afternoon and the windows were all lit up bright colors.
I felt like going to sleep almost it was so quiet. And then Mary let
out this awful scream—like somebody had jabbed her in the back with
an ice pick or something. I swear I jumped two feet straight up into the
air.
She came running down towards me as fast as I’ve ever seen anyone
run in my whole life, screaming bloody murder.

Confession 41
“What the blue blazes is the matter with you, girl!” I yelled. “You
want to give me a heart attack?”
She kept screaming and screaming, saying that she’d confessed her
sins but that it was the Devil on the other side of the screen, and that
when she finished he’d told her he was going to drag her down to Hell
with him.
“Why would Father Czémpa say something like that?” I yelped.
“I swear it ain’t Father Czémpa in there!” she screamed, still hysterical.
“It wasn’t either of the right voices, it was the Devil whispering
awful things in my ear!”
“Come on,” I said, “We’re going to go look, it’s somebody playing a
trick on you!” I was fairly certain she had dreamed the whole thing up
out of her crazy head, my opinion of thirteen year old girls and their
reliability being somewhat on the low side.
I dragged her back with me and we went and looked into the forbidden
half of the booth, where the priest sits. The door was
unlatched. There was an odd smell, which I realized was in fact the
very familiar smell of cigarette smoke and only seemed off because you
just didn’t smell that in church. There was a scuff of dirt or dust on the
floor.
“Hell, you’re right,” I said with a whistle, “There was somebody in
here. And don’t say it was the Devil, gee whiz, Mary, you sure scream
pretty loud—I think my eardrum’s busted.”
We never did figure out who heard Mary’s confession that day, and
she wouldn’t say exactly what “the Devil” had whispered in her ear—
she said it was “too awful.” But she wouldn’t go back in that confessional,
not for a thousand years out of Purgatory.
That was the same summer Lou’s brother died. I don’t even remember
his name. There was something wrong with him—I think he
must have had CP, now. Lou never really talked about it. Even though
we lived next door, I only saw him once, when we were about twelve—
he stayed in the back bedroom by himself most of the day, since he

42 Kelly Tillson
couldn’t really move. He was propped up in the bed, hands curled toward
his face, and when Lou and I came in his little fists shot up over
his eyes, trembling. The room was dirty—Lou’s whole house was typically
dirty—and stank to high heaven. I couldn’t imagine what it would
smell like on a hotter day.
“Don’t be scared,” Lou told him, “It’s my pal Mike.” He motioned
to me to come closer, and we tiptoed toward the bed. “Don’t talk too
loud,” he muttered to me. “He gets these fits, you know?”
Lou reached up to open the window on the other side of the bed,
stretching a hand over his brother—and suddenly the figure in the bed
let out a strange, strangled yell, like a cat. Lou jerked back, and I couldn’t
understand why until a second later when his brother’s arm flung
out wildly—his whole body bucked and shook under the blanket. But
he didn’t fall out, though it seemed like any second he would crash
onto the floor. I asked Lou why, and he revealed to me that there was
in fact a belt holding him to the mattress—was it otherwise, he would
fall out every few hours.
“He don’t do it himself,” Lou explained. “Something makes him do
it. It’s something wrong with his brain, you know?”
“Does he talk much?”
Lou shook his head. “He can’t talk. Don’t think he knows how.
Reckon he’s too dumb.”
“Didn’t look too dumb.”
“Ah, you should see him drool.”
When we went to his funeral—me and my ma—he was stretched
out straight in his coffin. I was surprised at how tall he was. I asked my
ma in a whisper how old he was, and she told me he was older than
Lou. I had thought Lou was the oldest in his family, and I was surprised—and
now I remember the kid’s name. He was named after
Lou’s father, Emanuele. Father Czémpa said that we had come to grieve
and to mourn our brother Emanuele—and somehow the way he said it
made my heart break, and my spine felt cold and shaky all over.

Confession 43
It wasn’t like burying a dead cat.
We had a cat until I was about eight years old, a skinny rat of a
tabby with some kind of breathing problem that made it sound like a
Hoover wheezing in and out. It didn’t look like much, but it kept the
cockroaches down. Mary (who had named it Lulu-Cat) insisted that it
suffered from laryngitis, which she had gotten one winter and had lost
her voice (to my great pleasure).
But this cat showed up in our weed-patch of a yard one morning
dead as a doornail. When he found it on his way to work, my pa put it
in a sack to get rid of it before any of the kids could get a good look at
it; all I saw was that it was covered in blood. Mary cried and cried, saying
she wanted to bury Lulu-Cat in the graveyard. Finally they gave me
the sack, telling me to dig a hole and stick it in the ground before Mary
gave herself a headache with her bawling. “Don’t open the bag,” my pa
ordered me. I had no such inclination whatsoever.
“I miss Lulu-Cat,” Mary sobbed as I struggled with the shovel. “I
love Lulu-Cat.”
“Aw, shut up, Mary!” I grunted. Of course that only made her cry
louder.
“Golly gee whiz, Mare-ree Magdalene! Will you quit yer screamin’?” I
yelled. When she began to sob so hard she couldn’t breathe, I dropped
the shovel and went over to pound her on the back, repenting a little.
“Say, Mary—Laryngitis is dead.”
“Her name—was not—Laryngitis,” Mary choked out, glaring at me. I
grit my teeth.
“Lulu-Cat’s dead. And that’s sad. Now we’re gonna bury the cat and
give her a nice grave so we can remember her and—uh—do right by
her. But you gotta quit screaming. You can’t scream at a funeral.”
Nobody screamed at Emanuele’s funeral, but there was plenty of
sobbing. Mrs. Bugiardini’s face looked like a paper bag when you
crunch it in your fist a few times—twisted up. Like Emanuele’s body, I
thought. “How did he die?” I asked my ma in a whisper. She shrugged,

44 Kelly Tillson
shook her head. “Don’t they know?” I persisted.
“Hush yer mouth, Mike, this is a funeral; it’s disrespectful,” she
hissed at me then, giving me a tiny jab with her sharp elbow.
We went up to the altar, my ma and I, to “give our condolences” to
Lou and his family. Lou, with his hair plastered down on his head in its
old Sunday style, was bloodless and still when I shook his hand. I told
him how sorry I was—and I was—and his lips moved but nothing
came out. All the Bugiardinis’ Italian relatives had hugged them and
cried on them, and part of me wished I could do the same—part of me
wished I could bawl like Mary, because a handshake didn’t seem to say
much—but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
“Ma,” I asked as we walked home, “Am I heartless?”
She looked at me—looked almost up at me, since I was as tall as
she was by this time—and after a second she said, “You’re grim Irish
like your pa. Don’t mean you’re heartless. You ain’t got it on your
sleeve, is all that means.” She wiped something off her chin with the
back of her hand, sucking at her teeth ruminatively. “Anna,” she said,
meaning Lou’s ma, “Told me they didn’t know what killed the boy. She
said the doctor thought it looked like he’d frighted himself to death.
Ah! With these crazy diseases, who knows. Could of hit his head
against the wall—anything. Lord knows.”
“Lord knows,” I repeated after her. After a minute she put her arm
through mine and we walked the rest of the way home in silence.
Lou was different after that. He was quieter. He quit smoking and
started going to Mass more often, and even showed up in school a few
times though he was looking for work—everybody was looking for
work then.
A few years later I asked him, jokingly, if he was confessing now.
He shook his head.
“Whatsa matter, you scared of the dark?”
He rolled his eyes. “No, I ain’t scared of the dark, ya dumb mick.”
“Well, what? You start smoking again?” I punched him in the arm,

Confession 45
grinning. “You think Father Czémpa and yer ma meet up downtown
and swap stories?”
“I ain’t going to no confession,” he snapped, swatting at me. I swatted
back. I was bigger at this point—seemed to me I was getting bigger
than everyone, even almost my pa. Lou rubbed his shoulder and
winced, swearing mildly; it was all in fun and we both knew it. “You
dumb mick—you still confess everything to them padres?”
“I ain’t saying a thing,” I replied loftily. In fact I did; I would have
been ashamed to say so at that point, but I had little to confess that I
would have been especially ashamed to tell the priests. “But I ain’t too
keen on Purgatory myself.”
When it came time to confess all our infirmities to the recruiting
officer, however, I quickly changed my mind. They ask you more questions
than you think they will, trying to make sure you’re fit for service,
and I was sure glad I was able to say “No” to most of them. When Lou
came back out into the street, on the other hand, it was only a question
of whether the color of his face was his pride or his temper showing
through.
“You look pretty hot under the collar, pal.”
“Didn’t know you had to confess to enlist,” he snapped. “I’m trying
to get into the army, not heaven, for God’s sake! They think they’re
priests or something?”
“You’ll be hearing plenty of confessions,” our mess sergeant cackled
when we arrived at the training camp a few weeks later. “Folks
think they’re about to die, they start talking a lot.” Lou and I exchanged
skeptical glances; obviously the man was blowing smoke. “Yep! Battlefield
confessions. Can’t blame ‘em, of course; when you first get out
there it might feel like hell—puts the fear of God into folks.”
“You ever wonder what it’s like for the priest?” mused a member of
our battalion when we broached the subject, expecting to hear our suspicion
of the whole thing’s being a rookie gag concocted by the mess
sergeant confirmed. “Listening to sins all day long… Must make him

46 Kelly Tillson
kinda wistful.” He cracked up.
“You idiot,” said someone else. “Don’t ya know they got training
for that kinda thing?”
“What!”
“Sure!”
“Whaddaya mean, training? Training for how to hear people’s confessions?”
“’Course! Priests get years of training for all that stuff.”
“Ah, how would you know? You’re not even Catholic.”
“I’m Orthodox! We got priests.”
“Orthodox priests ain’t celibate.”
“What the hell’s ‘at got to do with anything?”
“I mean the kinda sins they gotta listen to—”
At this point the conversation had strayed so far from the original
subject that I felt it necessary to interrupt as rudely as possible.
“Yeah,” agreed the Orthodox. “Yeah, I had a buddy spill his guts
about how he cheated his partner out of a couple hundred bucks. He
thought he was about to die ‘cause the Japs had some kinda Ma Deuce
and were tearing up the ground.” He shrugged. “He’s honorable discharge—got
typhoid a couple months back.”
Ma Deuce—the big brother to the gun Lou and I were jointly responsible
for, an M1919 Browning machine gun. The M1919 weighed
31 lbs and sat on a little tripod on the ground. You had to have two:
one man to carry the tripod and the ammo, one gunner to carry the
gun itself, spare parts, extra ammo, maybe. And you had to run carrying
it. That was how you advanced.
If I could tell you the number of times we had to practice this, me
running with this 31 lbs hunk of metal and Lou running slightly ahead
with the tripod, and having to coordinate him reaching Point X with
enough time to set up the tripod on the ground so I had somewhere to
drop this hunk of metal when I finally reached Point X, and all this
happening not more than 18 inches above the ground…

Confession 47
There were days when I wanted to just drop that M1919 Browning
right onto Lou’s stupid head.
“You two knuckleheads wait till you’re in rough terrain trying to get
each other to think straight with grenades flying at you, tripping over
your own feet and dropping your equipment!” our drill sergeant hollered.
“Aw, geez, don’t tell me you lost the pin,” I hissed at Lou as he
fumbled with the tripod. “Will you hurry up? My fingers are falling
off!” 31 lbs doesn’t sound like much, but at the end of the day, hunkered
over with your center of balance where God never intended it to
be, it feels more like 60.
By the time we managed to get it right the war was practically over,
in Europe, anyway. They sent us to the last place on earth we had expected
to go—Japan—with the last people we expected to rub shoulders
with—the Navy—as part of the last army level command in the
pacific theater—the Tenth Army under Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar
Buckner, Jr. Somehow we ended up with a whole bunch of New
Yorkers, which in a way suited us fine—plenty of Italians, plenty of
micks.
We landed on the first of April. That landing was like a walk
through a park. Later in the day Lou said to me, “This was too easy… I
feel like the Japs are going to jump out and yell ‘April Fool’ any second
now.”
“Today’s Easter,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Happy Easter.”
“Yeah. You too.”
I took a swig from my canteen. I felt hot even though the air was
cooler than it would have been back home. “My ma,” I said slowly,
“Used to always make us say a ‘Hail Mary’ on Easter.”
“What for? It ain’t Mary who rose from the dead.”
“I dunno.” I was feeling awful sleepy. “I remember… I hated it for

48 Kelly Tillson
the longest time… because I thought… it was my sister, Mary.”
“Your sister Mary,” Lou repeated.
“Yeah…” There was a pause, and I drifted off. Then I woke up
again, and, turning to Lou, said blearily, “What about my sister Mary?”
“Nothin’,” said Lou.
They couldn’t leave us there where things were easy. Instead they
sent us south where things weren’t so smooth. By the 12th of April,
when the Japanese finally took the offensive, our casualties had passed
1,500.
I was having a dream about having a soda back home—which was
weird since we never had money for sodas and I don’t know that I ever
had a soda but maybe once or twice (I guess that’s why I dreamed
about it, really)—when Lou shook me awake.
“Mike! Mike! Wake up!” He was pulling his boots on with one shaking
hand and punching me with the other.
“Where’s the fire?” I growled, rolling off my cot.
“They’re back again, the Japs, they came back—”
“What, now?” They had attacked the day before and retreated.
Somehow it seemed out of shape that they would attack again, at night,
so short a time after. Still not thinking clearly, I listened hard to see if I
could hear any sign that the Japs were attacking us, and almost immediately
I heard a faint hissing, whispering sound. The Japs—I can hear ‘em
coming, hear ‘em breathing, I thought, and this was so absurd I think it
shook me awake. I realized what I was hearing then:
“…until leg lock engages… insert pintle assembly and rotate pintle lock-release
cam…”
I didn’t know Lou had memorized the instructions from the manual.
He was muttering them word for word under his breath like some
kind of catechism.
“Attach the transversing and elevating mechanism (which requires a special
adapter)…”
“Lou?” I took a closer look at his face in the lamplight. It was hard

Confession 49
to tell in the darkness but I thought he looked kind of funny, pale,
maybe. “You feeling all right?”
“Center the elevating and transversing handwheels,” he told me half in a
whisper.
And then we were running, bent 18 inches to the ground—or
maybe lower, because the lower you got the less chance there was of
your head getting blown off. There were plants ripping at my face, the
ground was slick with rain, and I swear I could still hear, six feet in
front of me, Lou reciting the handbook to himself, panting as he ran.
Stop now, I wanted to scream. My fingers are slipping, I’m about to fall,
Lou, this is far enough—stop now, unfold front leg of tripod and spread rear legs
until leg lock engages so I can stop carrying this thing!
The fastest series of metallic clicks I had ever heard told me Lou
had stopped. I staggered forward, nose almost in the dirt.
“Mounting pins,” Lou hissed at me desperately, like he thought I
was forgetting or something. “…Locking lever of the pintle of the tripod—hole
of the trigger guard—”
“Shut up!” I growled at him—I already had the gun half mounted
but his voice was digging into my head, distracting me, making me anxious—somehow
the pin kept slipping out of my hands—just to stop
listening to him reciting the procedure I started droning the words in
my mind—Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee—
“Mike?”
“Not now, geez!” Blessed art thou amongst women—Was the stand shaking?
It felt like the tripod was shaking.
“Mike?”
“For crying out loud, Lou!” A grenade thundered into the ground a few
yards away, splattering us with mud—and what might not have been
mud, in the darkness—and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus—my hands
were wet—I could hear them coming, a thousand Japanese, panting as
they ran through the fog—
“Mike, I really gotta tell you something!” He was grabbing at my collar,

50 Kelly Tillson
pawing at me, trying to get my attention; I flat out hit him, knocked
him over backwards—he was going to get us killed—I had to get that
gun mounted—Holy Mary—
The gun locked into position on the tripod and everything clicked
into place as Lou said, “I killed your cat, Mike. In third grade. I killed
it.”
I couldn’t look at him, but I could hear him breathing, behind me
and a little to the left. I put my eye up to the crosshairs where flares of
machine gun shot, like fireflies, like revelation, began to flash through
the fog.

51
Jacob Perry
Untitled
We were the last great swing sets,
You and me.
The only people to still have purpose
For years,
Even as we noticed the rust and spider webs
Building,
Spinning up our bodies to the beat of the sun—
Toward heaven.
Always anxious for childish laughter,
We realized
The miracle of a scraped knee.
We were there.

52 Jacob Perry
65 North
The skyline looked used
Upon my return to Nashville.
The buildings looked climbed on
Rather than lived in
The spits of slow moving cars
Now angered me,
Making me like everyone else–
A city dweller.
The pedestrians looked sleepy
And staggered along the sidewalks
To their different haunts–
To be haunted.
I got a bad taste in my mouth
When I rolled down the window.
This city tastes like…
“A hole in the wall.”
My hands went numb
And fell from the wheel.
I woke up in St. Thomas Hospital
To a nurse stitching my arm.

65 North 53
“You’re awake,” she said
As she smiled and pulled through.
She drew back the curtains
When she was done.
“Beautiful view,” she observed.
“Yes,” I said–staring at the ceiling.

54
Bethany Hill
The Billboard
The electronic billboard flickers
In the distance,
Just far enough away to permit only
The outline of a missing person’s face.
The woman across the aisle from me,
Is she missing?
Her eyes dart about,
marking people and exits.
That child being led out the door:
He looks upset,
The hand holding his squeezing tighter than necessary,
The paranoia of the child getting loose,
The hand slipping down to grip his wrist.
It is getting darker outside.
The interstate’s indifference is
A continuous band of light
Cheerfully ignoring the face
Looming over it.
I have thought of a million ways to liberate
Every person here.
I look up again,
Towards the billboard,
Hoping to distinguish the face,
Gather some detail about the nose or eyes.
Have you seen this person?
Beside her smiling face, a gold stamp.
Found.

55
CONTRIBUTOR NOTES
Amanda Berry is a junior English major and Creative Writing minor
from Fallbrook, California.
Aimée Childress is a junior English major and double minor in Mission
and Religious Studies from Livermore, California. She likes drinking
tea and going for walks.
Karye Cook is a senior English major and Creative Writing minor
from Portland, Tennessee. She enjoys reading whenever she can and
she’s always looking for the next book that will sweep her off her feet.
Jonathan Edlin is a senior Organizational Communications major
from Olathe, Kansas. He enjoys taking pictures and making movies in
his free time.
Jillian Frame is a junior Dramatic Arts major and Creative Writing
minor from Nashville, Tennessee. After graduation, she plans to pursue
an M.F.A. in Directing and travel abroad.
Bethany Hill is a freshman English major and Creative Writing minor
from Nashville, Tennessee.
Austin Johnson is a freshman from Nashville, Tennessee. His major is
currently undeclared, though he maintains a healthy interest in Literature
and Film and would like to write for a living one day.
Chadd Lin is a sophomore from West Palm Beach, Florida and is
studying to be a physical therapist. He enjoys expressing himself not
only through photography but also through painting and sketching.

56
N. W. Lindsley is a senior History major from Nashville, Tennessee.
He enjoys studying U.S. history and reading Southern literature and
poetry.
Jacob Perry is a sophomore English major and Creative Writing minor
from Madison, Tennessee. He enjoys music and hopes to one day publish
a novel.
Abby Petrunak is a freshman English major and Creative Writing minor
from Springfield, Tennessee. She enjoys writing short stories and
participating in theatre productions.
Erin Perry is a senior English major and Creative Writing minor from
Dowelltown, Tennessee. She enjoys music, drawing, photography, and
studying different types of artwork.
Benjamin Prescott is a junior English major and Creative Writing
minor from McEwan, Tennessee.
Diana Reaves is a junior English major and Creative Writing minor
from Valley, Alabama. She enjoys studying Southern literature and
working as a writing tutor at Trevecca Nazarene University.
Kelly Tillson, who is currently nomadic, is a freshman English major
and Creative Writing minor. She loves God.
Abigail Watkins is a freshman Mass Communications/Film major
from Nashville, Tennessee. She has a passion for storytelling–especially
to children–and is always excited to get an opportunity to grow in her
craft. In the future she hopes to continue telling stories and to eventually
work in Children’s Television.