Blacktop Passages: Issue One by Blacktop Passages

2014

ISSN 2328-840X 1

ISSUE ONE

“Driving in Waterford, VA” / Kathleen Babarsky

Blacktop Passages A Literary Register of the Open Road

“Different Road” / Tammy Ruggles

ISSUE ONE Editors

Thomas John Nudi Zachary Lundgren Ryan Cheng Christopher Cartright

Blacktop Passages is published digitally and in print up to four times per year. Issue One © 2014 Blacktop Passages. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized outside the context of the publication itself without the proper written permission of Blacktop Passages.

(ISSN: 2328-8396)

For subscriptions, the PDF archive, submission information, or anything else, visit www.blacktoppassages.com, or contact us by e-mail at blacktoppassages@gmail.com.

Table of Contents 6

A Letter from the Editors

Danny Bedrosian

Curatorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Note

Steve Lapinsky

Potholes

Holly Day

Dora Jean

Olivia Wolfgang-Smith

Driving Directions to the Illegal Owl Prowl...

Delia Rainey

30 32 34

The Deer Lies Down in the Snow Table in Tears A Letter to All My Dead Animals

Christopher Cartright

Interview: Danny Bedrosian

William Doreski

48 50

North to Rutland Cruising to Work

Lauren Lee Fusilier

A Selection from Stay: A Novel

Bret Lawrence

In Rain, Driving Away from You

Sarah Marshall

Nine

Danny Barbare

Driving through the Country

Cover: David Rhei

This issue of Blacktop Passages would not have been possible without the generous support of the following individuals: Vincent Dale Fritz Fisher John Fisher Joshua Kaster Russel Nickel Jessica Roberts Joshua Steward Karina Xavier

A LETTER FROM The Editors

Welcome to Blacktop Passages Issue One! While Issue Zero focused on the American Southwest, this issue stretches from coast to coast and beyond with poems, short stories, a novel excerpt and an interview with this issue’s guest curator: Parliament-Funkadelic’s Danny Bedrosian. Start with a drive to Anaheim, California in a single poem. Turn the page and you’re in Tallahassee following Google Map directions to a closed park in the dead of night. Along the way we’ll find boudin balls, murder, and UFOs. Danny tells us what it’s like to play all over the world with George Clinton, and our wonderful photographers spirit us to cities, deserts, and foreign countries. If there’s a theme to the issue this time around, it’s the beauty of diverse experiences juxtaposed to create something new: camels on country roads, the skeletal chimneys of fallen houses, drainage ditches and dirty rice. February marks our one-year anniversary, and we’re excited to share our first full-length issue with you. We are so thankful to our contributors, readers, and supporters for making this all possible. Safe travels. Sincerely, The Editors of Blacktop Passages

“028” / David Rhei

CURATOR’S NOTE Danny Bedrosian

Dear Readers of Blacktop The road has brought me into Passages, contact with some of the most fascinating Arts and EntertainMy name is Daniel Bedrosian. ment people of the late 20th I’m a professional touring mu- and early 21st centuries. I find sician who has the opportunity myself brushing elbows and to see all six livable continents working with my childhood heeach year as the keyboardist roes and a variety of industry for George Clinton and Parlia- giants the world over across ment-Funkadelic (P-Funk). My multiple genres, from Hip Hop travels take me to disparate lo- to Bebop, from Electronica to cations all over the world. I’ve Heavy Metal, and from Alterbeen playing piano for thirty native Rock to World Music. years now and have been singing even longer. I also run Bozfonk Although I am proud of my acMoosick, my music produc- complishments, I am always tion and publishing company. humbled by the Earth and all of its people. My experiences with I have seen and experienced the locals, wherever we are, stay things that have certainly al- with me the most: eating a tratered me for life. I have had the ditional stew on the streets of opportunity to witness culture Sao Paulo; getting omu-raisu in action--teeming audiences at the Han Shin in Osaka; sitin the hundreds of thousands at ting and talking with friends on major festivals in Europe, South a moonlit beachside boardwalk America, North in Nice; going to a jazz club in America, Aus- Moscow that looks like sometralia and else- thing out of a spy novel; the arwhere. The kind omatic fragrances of the bazaar of ambassador- in Tunis, or, for that matter, in ship of music Nassau; touring centers of histhat P-Funk represents as trav- tory and culture in Auckland; eling musicians gives me great enjoying a home-cooked meal pride. in Buenos Aires; or just meeting

the many-faceted Americans at the thousands of truck stops As we Armenians say, we happen upon in our travels. Kenat’siner! (Cheers!) Indeed P-Funk travels hard- — Daniel P. Bedrosian er than most, if not any other band. A short tour could be 1,700 miles of riding for just a handful of shows. Still, you can expect a lot of studio work from George and the band in 2014. Our fearless leader, Dr. Funkenstein, shows absolutely no sign of slowing down. I’m working with Blacktop, not because I was introduced to the magazine by friends in the literary world, but because reading Issue Zero immediately registered positive personal feedback. Not just due to Blacktop’s nomadic theme, but because of the artistic combination of writing, photography, travel and the ideas set upon readers by the culmination of so many unique experiences. I hope you all enjoy reading this issue as much as I have enjoyed being a part of its process. The images here evoke such a color and tone, and the ethos of travel, which spoke to me on a very core level. I am so happy to have been able to curate Issue One. Here’s to the road ahead.

“En Route to Actobe, Kazakhstan” / Charla Allyn Hughes

“8th Ave NYC” / William J. Stribling

POTHOLES

Steve Lapinsky It had begun to rainâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; the street, slick with haplessness. The Jefferson Corridor, exactly how I remembered itâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; forlorn by potholes. Without warning, not even an orange cone, my car bottomed-out, the front end diving as I applied the brakes. Not a hole from worm or pin, but the road like the back of a crocodile leading back to what was once a swamp. As my Chrysler limped to the side, I glimpsed into the rearview mirror: Out of the kettle rose, the head of cherub; not the plump child of the Renaissance, but the four-faced biblical ungulate walking upright, the smell of hot asphalt darkening the day in its wake. The eagle cried, the ox lowed, the man ineffable as the lion spoke: Beware the hole of desire! I was eighteen and passionate about stupid things: my convertible, Florida, girls without limits. I waited for the wrecker.

DORA JEAN

Holly Day

My uncle started beating my aunt when she started to show. The baby wasn’t his, and he knew it because everyone in town knew who she was sleeping with. One night, when my uncle was passed out drunk on the couch downstairs my aunt’s lover came and got her parked outside the house in his Model T with the suicide doors helped her climb out the second-story window caught her when she slipped It was all terribly romantic to everyone but her family. They were going to drive all the way to California to have the baby, get a tiny house in Anaheim near the spot Disneyland was being built he’d get a job at a munitions factory while she stayed at home with the baby. A few months later, she showed up at my grandparents’ house with the baby, said she wanted to come home, said the new man beat her worse than the old one. My uncle took her back, raised the baby as his own we all knew better than to ask him why.

DRIVING DIRECTIONS TO THE ILLEGAL OWL PROWL AT ELINOR KLAPP-PHIPPS PARK, TO WHICH YOU HAVE BEEN INVITED BY THE GUY WHO CHANGED YOUR OIL THIS MORNING 14

by Olivia Wolfgang-Smith “Tennessee Street” / Stephanie Cameron Kennedy

1225 S. Dogwood Drive Tallahassee, Florida 32301 1. Head south on S. Dogwood Dr toward Oakland Ave 2. Turn right onto Oakland Ave 3. Change your mind, again, about the ballet flats. Decide that it is not important that you expose your ankles and the tops of your feet in order to make your calves look less stocky. Decide that nobody will be looking at your calves. Decide that they will be looking at the tree roots in the path, over which you will be tripping to your death in your too-small, too-flimsy shoes. 4. Turn around in the parking lot of the boarded-up BP station, a shell gutted by PR fallout from the oil spill. Plastic numbers, the ghosts of prices, litter the asphalt below the sign. 5. Turn left on S. Dogwood Dr 6. Double-park in your complex’s half-empty lot and leave the engine running. Kick off the flats and sprint to your bedroom. Leave your nylons on. Pull on day-old jeans. Jam your feet into the Nikes you used to run in, when you ran. Check your watch. Skip the odd stairs on your way back to the car. 7. Head south on S. Dogwood Dr toward Oakland Ave 8. Answer a call from Katie She will say, “You’re going to the owl thing, aren’t you.” Say, “No.” She will say, “You’re driving. I can hear your radio.” She will say, “The fucking jig is up!”

You love Katie, but you have never liked her laugh. 9. Turn right onto Oakland Ave Katie will say, “I’m begging you. I don’t want to have to fly down there to ID your body tomorrow morning.” Say, “I have friends here who could ID my body.” Say, “He’s not going to kill me.” 10. Turn right onto S Monroe St Katie will say, “Uh-huh.” Say, “You didn’t meet him. He’s not weird.” 11. Get stuck at the double red light at Park Ave Katie will fall silent at a frequency that broadcasts a raised eyebrow. This will be a reference to your last date, which was accidental and occurred eight months ago with a man from the local Department of Parks, Recreation, and Neighborhood Affairs who turned out to be a recovering amnesiac. You work for the City too, for twelve dollars an hour, typing minutes at the weekly Commission meetings. He was a new face in the Chambers, giving the official announcement of plans for the annual Summer Festival. He read your transcription of his speech over your shoulder. “Wow,” he said. “You’re fast.” He asked if you would join his family and friends and people from work for a picnic at Lake Talquin. You were lonely, new in this almost-city, with everyone you knew still living in the actual city of Boston. You went. You did not realize it was a date until far too late in the day. He did not reveal until even later that he had recently suffered a traumatic brain injury in a motorcycle accident and could

not remember his life between ages 12 and 31. He was, in hindsight, too whimsical for comfort, too genuinely childlike. He was obsessed with the Meyers-Briggs personality test and rattled off his profile long-form, with no daylight between the words: Extravert-Sensing-Thinking-Judging. “What’re you?” he asked. You told him you didn’t know the options. He put his hand in your hair in the Lake Talquin parking lot, beside the honor-system entry fee box. He was proud of himself for reading your body language, a skill he was working on relearning since the accident. “You don’t like this,” he sensed-thought-judged, smiling. You used banked sick days to skip work until after the Summer Festival ended, in case he addressed the Commission again. 12. Continue straight onto N Monroe St 13. Attempt to argue with Katie, even though it has never worked. Call her a snob. Say, “You assume this new guy’s shady because he’s blue collar. Do you know how offensive that is?” She will say, “No, I know he’s shady because he’s luring desperate women to a closed park at night.” Say, “I’m not desperate.” Say, “There are owls in Florida. I Googled it.” After a silence, she will say, “You are about to be strangled by a redneck, and it’s totally unnecessary. Just move back up. Tim works with, like, forty different nerds who would be happy to romance you in well-lit, public places while speaking in full sentences.” 14. Hang up on Katie.

15. Be offended on this guy’s behalf. Carl. Be offended on Carl’s behalf. Katie doesn’t know. She wasn’t with you at the Super-Lube today to see him, scrawny and grease-garnished, eyes a little glassy with nerves as he ran the pad of his thumb over the edge of your Civic’s door. “You’ve got some really great CDs,” he swallowed, nodding at your passenger-side footwell. You almost swore aloud; you’d meant to clean the car before you brought it in. You don’t like how obvious it is that you never have to transport others. “Um, listen,” he said, and expelled the rest in a stream, rehearsed: “You seem like someone I’d like to get to know better, and if you want there’s this nature hike thing some of us are gonna do tonight for the full moon, it’s an Owl Prowl?” You hadn’t been asked out in so long, particularly by a man without brain damage, that you had forgotten how to wield both grace and dishonesty. You let the silence stretch too long. “There are three species native to this area,” he said to fill your dead air. “We’ve seen a Great Horned twice this year already.” You considered the singleness announced by your trash-heaped car. You considered the intimacies he’d shared already by default—adjusting your seat and mirrors to fit him; hearing your most underrated Paul Simon album blare when he turned the key you usually keep in your front pocket. You wondered what else he’d learned about you from the shit you’ve left in your car—that you work for the City. That you eat like you’ve never seen those documentaries. That your reason for being here disintegrated last semester, when you let your GPA slip below the minimum requirement for your History master’s program.

He knew too much to be lied to. And he still wanted to prowl for owls with you. 16. Turn right onto E Tharpe St 17. Turn left onto N Meridian Rd Elinor Klapp-Phipps Park will be on the left. 18. Crunch to a stop in the gravel lot between a mud-spattered pickup with no tailgate and two rusting sedans. The cars will just barely be visible in the twilight. There will be no sign of any actual people. 19. Be confronted by the faux-retro wooden sign reading “Park Hours: Sunrise to Sunset.” Wonder if this is a rule or a law. There was a time when you would not have bent it, either way. 20. Consider leaving. Hesitate to kill your ignition. 21. Shriek delicately at a rapping sound on your window. It will be Carl. “Hey, wow, hey!” he will say through the glass, reaching for the door handle but pulling away to run both hands through his hair. His grin will be crooked, one tooth chipped so he looks almost feline. “I’m so stoked you made it!” 22. Allow his ’90s surfer-slang enthusiasm to make you flush. Make eye contact with him through the window. His eyebrows will gesture like limbs, encouraging. 23. Do not open the door. 24. Feel more appreciated than you have in months. This has been the hardest part: the withdrawal from validation, which you have been fighting not just since the university offi-

cially drummed you out but since you moved down and abruptly stopped caring. It was as if you needed the beating heart of Boston—you went instantly swamp-stagnant here, skipping assignments and classes to lie on your apartment floor and meditate on your loneliness like a koan. Eventually your professors noticed. Carl will rap again on the glass, uncertain now. 25. Palm your keys into makeshift brass knuckles, teeth jabbing the meat of your fingers. Know that you would never be able to use these. 26. Exhale with relief close to tears, a tightness behind your eyes you weren’t expecting, when a pair of women in their fifties amble from behind the truck and wave. 27. Open your door. “A newbie?!” one of the women will crow, her hair a salt-and-pepper pixie. She will shake your hand and introduce herself as Rosemary. Her friend is Barb. “We’re hippies,” she will say. Then, pointing at Carl, “he’s a stats nerd.” Carl will adjust the straps of a backpack on his narrow shoulders and apparently assent to the label, eyes searching the leaf litter. “These are different flavors of prowlers,” Barb will explain, shooting the cuffs of the cardigan under her windbreaker. “It’s like baseball; there are different reasons to love it. What’re you?” Say, “I’m here for the owls?” Shrug with both arms, from shoulders to hands, like you’re stretching. Feel ridiculous. Stop. Carl will cough. The women will smile. “I grew up outside Orlando,” Barb will say, thumbing over her shoulder as if giving

directions. “We’ve got the burrowing owls down there, little guys, they’re adorable. You ever seen one of those?” Shake your head. Say, “I’m from Boston.” “Oh, that’s a shame,” Barb will say, kneading her fingers in pity. “You’ve got Barred, Great Horned, and Eastern Screech in Massachusetts,” Carl will say to the ground abruptly, treading on the end of Barb’s sentence. He will look at you. “Those are ours, too.” “This all of us?” Rosemary will ask, clapping. “Steve can’t make this month.” 28. Shuffle after the three of them toward the start of Coon Bottom Loop, the park’s hiking trail. 29. Skirt the soccer field and little league pitch. Pass the green mailbox with its lacquered label “TRAIL MAPS,” red flag at attention. Nobody will take a map. Don’t feel like you need one either. 30. Cross the Redbug Mountain Bike Trail. It will be hard-packed sand, glowing white and clear in the moonlight. It will flow like water, standing out for hundreds of feet into the trees on either side. Wish you could follow it. 31. Turn left onto Coon Bottom Loop. Rosemary and Barb will lead the way with flashlights pointed at the ground, shielded with cupped hands that filter the light pink. Yellow trumpet-shaped flowers will carpet the trailhead in bruised petals. Nearby, rotting planks will circle a rained-out campfire pit. Carl will scrabble in his backpack and produce an iPod with external speakers. He will fall even with you as he thumbs its screen. Say, “Hi.”

He will quirk his mouth into a smile and raise his index finger to it. Take this like a slap. 32. Take a slight right to stay on Coon Bottom Loop. It will be almost fully dark, ivy and moss and ferns blurring into an unbroken green-blue wash and separating into distinct plants only under the flashlights’ beams. Tangles of woody vines will grapple up tree trunks and canopy the trail. Spanish moss will hang in matted clumps that taper to wisps. Nocturnal sounds will pad your silence—small shifts and rustles in the undergrowth. 33. Breathe deep. Feel the tension of the parking lot and trailhead beginning to spiral out of you, darkness as ever a salve on your neuroses. Katie is mostly right, but there are some things Tallahassee does better than Boston. Night-quiet is one of them. 34. Scramble to silence your phone when you feel the half-second warning vibration. Be too late. Three heads will snap to shush you at the chime of your text alert. The look on Carl’s face will knock the wind out of you—a raw hurt you didn’t know you were capable of inspiring. Find yourself caring desperately about winning back his cartoonish approval. Wonder what it is with this guy and owls. 35. Discretely check your phone, the light of its screen muffled against your palm. The others will keep walking. You will have a text from Katie. It will say, “Are you dead yet?” 36. Silence your ringer just in time. Another will follow: “No, but seriously.”

37. Hurriedly tap a reply, feeling as guilty as you should have about cutting classes all last year. “fine. shut up.” 38. Jog after the group down Coon Bottom Loop. Rosemary will bloom first out of the darkness, stopped in the path, her hair a faint glow to orient you. She will turn and beckon to you, hooking an arm around your shoulder and pulling you close in that indiscriminately motherly way some women have. Decide you don’t mind it. Decide it feels kind of nice. Rosemary and Barb will be standing at the lip of a sandy ravine, about five feet deep with a shallow creek sleeping at the bottom. Carl will be half-crouched in the hole, damp sand sucking at his tennis shoes. He will tap his iPod. It will play the ghostly, hooting call you’ve heard sampled in a hundred movies’ establishing shots of nighttime woods. Who cooks for you? “The Barred,” Rosemary will lean in to whisper, as though telling you this in confidence. “That’s his favorite. Tons of them around here.” Carl will tip his head back and scan the broken canopy almost prayerfully, cradling his iPod. He will pivot in the wet sand, face caught hopeful and sad in the moonlight, examining each tree in supplication. He will look entirely unlike a stats nerd. 39. Begin to ask, “Is he…?” Want to ask, Is he okay. Realize that you don’t know what you’d even mean by that. Be unable to decide whether it makes you happy or sad that Carl’s favorite animal is so common. Be sure it makes you sad that he might not see one tonight. Rosemary will nod. She will say, “He’s the best kid your generation’s got.”

40. Feel a little warm. 41. Feel a little insulted. 42. Ask, “Is it okay that we left our cars at the trailhead?” Rosemary will make an exasperated noise, a huffing tsk of a laugh at your preoccupation with rules, and give you a playful shove in the small of your back. Your sneaker will stick-slip sideways in the sandy bank. Your ankle will roll. 43. Try to steer the weight of your fall away from Carl into the unknown dark beneath a live oak’s exposed root system, which is probably full of water moccasins but would at least be less embarrassing. Think, This is why I changed my shoes. Think, Fuck you, Rosemary. 44. Jackknife around Carl’s ropy grease-monkey forearm, which he will dart out to clothesline your waist. He will push against your inertia and beat it, tipping you upright. 45. Be embarrassed. 46. Be in pain, a sharp heave of it in your gut. 47. Be impressed. You have never touched a strong person this significantly. And Carl’s strength will be secret, unexpected, something he carries beneath his baggy shirt and nervousness like an undercover cop’s badge. Lit by the blue glow of the iPod, he will ask a question with his eyebrows. 48. Answer with yours: Fine.

He will crack open in a grateful smile to see you use the silent language of the owl prowl. In thanks, he will speak again in your native tongue. He will put dry lips to your ear—as if sound is forbidden; as if you and he are held hostage by the owls and to be caught colluding after lights out is certain death. “Barred owls nest by bodies of water,” he will mouth, his words a whisper nearly drowned by your own breathing, your heartbeat, the sounds of your body at work. Flutter a little louder at it, his alchemy of trivia into magic. He will flick at the iPod until it hoots again. 49. See it first. The silent shape blown noiselessly into the tree above you, a hole in the darkness. 50. Clutch Carl’s wrist to show him. At the same moment it will call: a low, haunting sound that makes a mockery of the tinny iPod and floods you with sudden belief in every omen, every myth that has ever been written. It will answer Carl’s summons, greet him like it knows him. Up on the bank, Barb will begin to gasp and catch herself. It will sound like a death. 51. Watch the owl. It will be liquid space, picked out of the darkness by subtle movements. Let your eyes trick you into thinking you see more: mottled feathers, shining eyes. Listen to its call. 52. Watch Carl watch the owl. He will sink to his knees as if to hide from it, denim darkening with creekwater. He will sit on his heels and balance the iPod on one thigh. He will play his recording: maybe conversing, challenging, courting; saying whatever he has the tools to

say and letting the owl answer. 53. Wish you cared this much about anything in Tallahassee. Wish you knew how to stop listening to Katie and Tim and all the inhabitants of every town in the world except this one. 54. In a fit of courage that may be a breakdown, crouch in the sand and take Carlâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s free hand in the darkness. He will stiffen. He will wobble on his heels and steady himself without pulling away, grinding your joined hands briefly into the grit and dead leaves. He will squeeze your hand, once. He will continue to stare at the owl. 55. Think ahead. Maybe you will wait for Barb and Rosemary to leave and kiss him inexpertly in the parking lot, soft pucker and smek, clacking teeth. Maybe you and he will run aground as one on the hood of his pickup. Maybe on your paisley sleeper sofa. Maybe he will be dark-eyed, a little fearful looking, sweat beading on his nose and slicking cowlicked bangs. Maybe he will shiver, looking at you. Maybe he will teach you how to look at this place with love. Maybe he has seen the capacity for this in you. 56. Stop thinking. 57. Watch the owl. It will gather itself against the dark, its silhouette shape-shifting. Carlâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pulse will thrum. Stay still and call one another. 58. Wait.

27 59. Wait.

Rand McNally & Company

“It’s Hot Out There” / Chase Berenson

THE DEER LIES DOWN IN THE SNOW Delia Rainey

the deer lies down in the snow. she imagines sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in the ocean, bending at the knees. she imagines a faraway brown boat. wobbling in the waves. we watch her on a wooden bench in the park. the deer rests still, and thinks sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s alone. blowing globes of smoke into the hatchings. the bench is cold with water. we scratch our real names into the snow. like paper, the deer is a paper weight. in a canopy of black bark, everything we touch feels naked. look at your one white knuckle when you kiss me. the bark peels off. the flesh beneath is pink and scared. when the deer buckled her legs beneath her womb, it looked like someone had shot a bullet inside of her.

or a wooden arrow. through the trees in slow motion. a tiny fire would appear in her heart but no one would notice. in the ocean. sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s never been there before. look at my one purple knee from the hard ice we crossed. to be here. frozen water feels like stained glass when you kiss me. like praying, the deer is a prayer book. she falls asleep and the wood creaks and we stretch our legs. the smell of sun. cut through the trees in slow motion, two freshly brown fawns folded underneath somewhere.

TABLE IN TEARS Delia Rainey

A concrete floor floods above the rug and then sets for a while – the stagnant reflection of paper on the walls. You once swallowed a love letter so that your belly would expand and be full. the wax falls down onto the disposable tablecloth sprinkled with false-died flowers. you watch the days drop – drown and dissolve into tiles as mushed-up corners, petals pressed together as birds. pleading, we eat off the floors. we’ve counted the nights of rain and the mesh screen door

that swings and smacks into them. all the while, papers are disappearing. I will eat in this river for dinner tonight. the rolls unraveled and ruined from floods â&#x20AC;&#x201C; too much this year. you once set the table in tears that stayed in place like fish eggs, or water petals on the reflective covering.

A LETTER TO ALL MY DEAD ANIMALS Delia Rainey

where have you been? I’ve been in the desert. I’ve been inside the skeleton of a UFO that somebody abandoned here. I’m almost onto my last shard of cacti but I don’t mind. in the sand, I am just a black shape rippling in yellow. I have sifted through with my children’s shovel from Wal-Mart. I’ve found animal bones, mostly birds. mostly eye-sockets. black holes leading nowhere. inside my UFO, I’ve collected and placed each one inside a glass case, all lined up in order of arrival, right next to the TV: it is always playing a movie about rivers and the people who die in them each year.

“016 (2) bw” / David Rhei

“Moscow, Russia” / Ulia Lee

AMERICAN AMERICAN AMBASSADORS AMBASSADORS OF FUNK: FUNK: OF AN INTERVIEW INTERVIEW AN WITH DANNY DANNY WITH BEDROSIAN BEDROSIAN OF PARLIAMENT-FUNKADELIC PARLIAMENT-FUNKADELIC OF

When I first meet Danny Bedrosian, I’ve heard of Parliament-Funkadelic, but I don’t know how much P-Funk I’ve actually heard. He’s a friend of a friend. He doesn’t strike me as this world-class musician who gigs on six continents with George Clinton. Danny’s just this ridiculous, hilarious guy that comes around the house sometimes and knows a lot about geography. One afternoon, I drive to Danny’s house, sun setting orange through the oak and pine and crepe myrtle of his quiet Tallahassee neighborhood. He opens the door and introduces me to his cats: Ruby, Lucy and Mumphy. For a second, I remember that this guy is some kind of famous. I don’t know much about the band. I have a lot to learn. I have to get it right. I don’t know where to start. It turns out I’m not just talking to a member of Parliament-Funkadelic, but that I’m talking to one of P-Funk’s biggest fans. A kid who, at 11, decided to play keyboard for George Clinton and worked diligently until he did. A hype-man historian, a critic-connoisseur

who teaches me some of the intricacies of a sound that has become synonymous with modern American music outside of the United States, and that represents, for P-Funk’s millions of American fans, a genre in and of itself, a groove that’s all its own. Five hours later, I had a lot. Digressions into Middle-Eastern history, analyses of federalist politics— we covered a lot of ground. * “You have to start a conversation about P-Funk with George Clinton,” Danny begins, graciously running down a history of P-Funk for the uninitiated. “He’s the founder and leader of the band; he’s the guy who most people associate when they think of [Funk] and the ethos of P-Funk—he’s the conceptual leader, the spiritual leader, the producer, the main songwriter—the most constant, contiguous songwriter—and one of the many lead singers. “[George] started Parliament in 1955 as a Doo Wop group. Now, there’s no break in the continuity of this history,

I’ve ming

been to for

jamyears.

“Still,” Danny continues, “most members will say it has always been a ‘zebra band.’ I represent one of those stripes, but I’m not even “Carcassonne Castle From Afar” / William S. Thoren the only Armenian so the band is 58 years old. guy that’s played for P-Funk! [P-Funk] also has the larg- It’s that varied. It is very est discography of any one much American in that way. musical unit and is the longest-running band of all time, “After the band had its with the bandleader still alive.” first big single in ’57-’58, then a bunch through the 60s, they P-Funk represents a 60- started morphing into a more year slice of American music Soul, R&B, Motown thing. and history. I ask Danny to talk But they always had this edge. about P-Funk as an American George has this really unique band. He lights up at the chance. voice; a lot of the people that were performing with him at “P-Funk represents the the time said he was doing harimportance of African Amer- monies that weren’t even heard ican influence on American of at that time. There was a very pop culture and music. The progressive nature within the band had always been on the confines of such a commercial bad end of the segregation outlet as Doo Wop. Even before of radio; they’d always been the psychedelic era the band ‘too black for the whites and went through a phase where too white for the blacks.’ But, they were all dressed up like there are a number of hits pregnant ladies, fake boobies that got played.” Like “Flash- hanging out, with duck faces— light,” “Can You Get To That,” and this was before acid! A lot and half a dozen other songs I of this music is long and rauquickly learn are P-Funk tracks cous and there’s really no one

single genre in the catalogue. You hear Psychedelic Rock and Motown and Doo Wop and Metal and Jazz and R&B. And a lot of Clinton’s most progressive stuff was his most divergent; it would take a generation before people finally got it.”

Europe was open to American rock bands. It happened again, not in the actual Arab Spring, but in the kind of pre-revolution that was happening pri-or to that, in order for places like North Africa to open up for American bands.

So how did P-Funk “Now I play all six livbecome the internation- able continents with George. al tour-de-force it is now? The only place I haven’t been is Antarctica, and it’s “The first time they left pretty much the only place the country for touring was we don’t go to every year.” in the late 60s early 70s, and it’s been pretty constant since I’m surprised to find then. That being said, this band out that this intensely experihas become more and more in- mental music, a sound grown ternational as the years have out of the American Soul tradigone by, to the point that we’re tion, is so popular where it is. playing places the band has never been. I’ve been a lot of When I ask Danny places with George where’s he’s where they play most, he says, been like, ‘This is the first time “all the provinces of France, we’ve played dot-dot-dot.’ And 17 or 18 different cities in the I have to say dot-dot-dot be- Netherlands, believe it or not, cause there’s so many places.” Even before Danny joined Clinton’s group in 2003, new markets were opening up. “That happened once really big with the fall of the iron curtain,” he explains. “All of a sudden Eastern

“Carcassonne Castle” / Tracey “Trazae” Lewis-Clinton

a ton of Western Europe, the UK extensively. In Switzerland, we play in these ancient Roman amphitheaters—there’s like some serious history in those places. Maybe we represent some kind of cultural exchange, if you will, in the romance countries.”

“If you strip the ego from the classical thing, it’s actually a brilliant academic thing. And P-Funk was very inherent in me. It was my favorite genre of music. It’s very feel-based. You have to be expelling every ounce of yourself on every note.”

Then Danny tries to explain why the Germans seem to get P-Funk better than some other fans, but I get lost at “ultra-futuristic, modern, post-modern view of Funk.”

Is it about keeping it pushing? I’m not quite sure what I mean, but the question just comes out. Danny gives the question more consideration than I expect, then answers carefully: “Sometimes the push means pulling.” He grins every time he gets to talk about the intangibles of sound.

I change tack. What’s it like to play with P-Funk? Danny talks about the band as if I’d asked him about a genre. It starts to make sense, weeks later, when I’m two or three albums into Parliament’s discogra- “There are so many feel-based phy and I discover Funkadelic. things in the actual theory of playing P-Funk. George’s thing “One thing with P-Funk about how everything is acceptis that the songs are always ed in its own way has both alevolving, which is something lowed our spread to influence I’ve always taken pride in, P-Funk on the world and has even before, as a fan, and as a allowed the world to come back classically trained musician. I and influence us in a positive applied my classical training manner. There is a huge mywhen I was learning P-Funk, all thology surrounding P-Funk, the way from when I was elev- you can learn about the characen. My mentor, Bernie Wor- ters, the literature. But there’s rell, was a classical guy who this other thing that is both alien played this funky-ass music. and aboriginal; it’s future and past; it’s cultish, but it’s also, like you said, very accessible.”

P-Funk’s diverse makeup, its progressive sound, its cross-cultural appeal: The band that is a genre becomes a movement somehow, over the course of our conversation.

Since we’re a journal of the road, I have to ask. What’s it like being on the road with P-Funk? “You might as well say we live the exact same life as the truckers: We’re at the Flying J, the TA, the Loves, the Pilot. On a regular day, I’ll probably see seven truck stops. We spend 240-300 days [traveling], including show days.

“We look at ourselves as positive American ambassadors to the world,” Danny says. “Not coming from a place of the upper-class—coming from a very humble, meager place, but a place of acceptance and excellence in the “It’s funny because it arts. We don’t have a lot of that doesn’t feel like I’ve been in Talhumility in American music.” lahassee for a decade. It does in time, but not in experience. I’ve The next question played all over Tallahassee, but seems obvious. What do you I don’t know Tallahassee as well think of American music? as I should.” I joke that Danny’s only lived here for two years “I’m a little bit neutral at out of 10. “Exactly,” he laughs. this point. I don’t particularly “I’m like this funny novice.” listen to a ton of American music, but a lot of people my age, Does traveling so much or even just Americans in gen- turn everything into a blur? eral, find the trend to just hate it. I find that to be both count- “At the end of the year er-productive and just a waste you forget what order things of time. For me it’s more A) what happened in. We just did 6,000 can you get out of it? and B) miles on the last tour in eight what strains are more market- days. Arizona, Colorado, the able to you? I run a production long way back through Kancompany, so I find that there’s a sas. It was crazy. That can be lot of good in everything. There the most excruciating thing: are good versions of every 30 hours of driving in one go. genre and there’s good in every In Europe, some of those tours genre. I believe in the good.” are two or three flights a day.”

What are you talking about Bizarre? on these long days of travel? “No, bizarro. There is an “We’re talking about ev- almost endless loneliness that is erything: politics, social issues, felt on the American road today. things going on in the States, things go ing on in “Most peothe world, ple don’t terrorism, know this, socialism, but those history. On people my bus, we are livplay a lot ing really of classical hard lives. music and Driving “Antigua” / Tracey “Trazae” Lewis-Clinton t h r o u g h talk about everything from football to Oklahoma is one of the most history. We represent such a depressing things. There is cross-section. There’s a part a poverty happening there of the band in New Jersey, that people don’t know about. there’s a part of the band in the Ghost towns are happening Midwest. Then there’s where now. That didn’t end with the we currently live. This music mining and the gold rush and spans seven decades and there all that crap. Towns that used are people born in all of those to have 8,000 people now have times represented in the music. eight—and that’s real. A simiEverybody gets their fair share. lar type of disparity is happenEverybody’s extremely respect- ing among the Native-Amerful about each other’s social, ican populations in the political, and spiritual beliefs.” Southwest. Miles—hundreds of miles of Arizona, New Mex What do you see on ico and southern Colorado of the road? I try to be eso- just extreme poverty, extreme teric, but I’m just vague. nothingness, people begging to get out of where they are, “Right now it’s and there being no way out. an extremely alien environment, just bizarro.”

“All of this sort of sadness, and loneliness, and helplessness is felt a lot, but it’s funny that a lot of the places people associate with that sadness in the modern American context, aren’t necessarily those places.”

Like where?

“There is a ton of vitality, and interest, and joy coming out of Detroit. I love Detroit.” Danny grins wide when he says it. “Some of my favorite restaurants are in Detroit. Some of my favorite people are in Detroit.” The loneliness of the road is almost part of its appeal, but I can’t help but wonder how we can get past that sense of alienation. How all this travel and distance and difference can be a good thing. “Unfortunately, America to me is a multitude of countries. I say it’s unfortunate because I like the federalist idea of America. Some of these people in the US have been divided by the stupidest things. We’re very lucky to be around so many different kinds of people. My wife’s stepfather is the exact opposite politically and socially than I am—he is nothing like me—and yet he’s always accepted me for

who I was. He’s always been like, ‘Well that’s what Danny believes, and this is what I believe.’ I wish more people of every sect were more okay with that. “One thing that we need more of here are experiences for the sake of experiencing them.” Danny recalls his last trip to Europe, and the different outlook he encounters there. “We as Americans are taught to be workaholics, and that can be a very good thing. But we don’t tend to take a lot of experiences with us that aren’t a part of our daily structure. So, where we are a great collective of a varied people that can all come together and tell each other different stories, unfortunately, not often enough do those stories intersect in a way where it can become an experience: sitting on a hill and enjoying a glass of wine, eating something you wouldn’t normally eat, enjoying the sounds of life with someone you love, whether it be silence or the mutterings of everyone.” What do you think is keeping us from stopping to enjoy these experiences and celebrate our differences? Is it anxiety, fear?

“Yes. Immediately I can say yes. Because before seeing that in regular people, I saw that in musicians. All of us who have come up as musicians have come up in a giant body of musicians. As the years go by, most of the time you lose people because they stopped playing—and 90 percent of the time it’s because of the fear. I used to talk about the fear a lot to musicians in Tallahassee. At the end of the day, the one thing that’s stopping you from doing everything you want to do is you. It sounds like some stupid self-help crap, but it’s 1,000-percent true.”

Everybody laughed at me and said, ‘You’re a good musician, but that’s crazy.’ They’d cite a color thing, or they’d cite a famous people thing, or theysaid I wouldn’t work enough. Then I made it. And it’s only because I said I would. I didn’t give myself any alternatives. It seems crazy, but it really is the only way, for an artist. And of course I live in a world of anxiety, but it’s just an example of how things can be done when you don’t psych yourself out.” It feels like the right time to try the question again: What’s it like to play with Parliament-Funkadelic?

Danny’s got some decent evidence to back his claim. “It’s a dynasty,” Danny says. “I love being a “When I was 11, I part of it. It’s an American said, ‘I’m gonna be the key- thing. It’s an Earth thing.” board player for P-Funk.’

“Le Reunion Island, Indian Ocean” / Ricardo Lewis

“Near Meteor Crater” / Bettina Gilois

“Santa Rosa County Rest Stop” / William J. Stribling

NORTH TO RUTLAND William Doreski

Cowboy singers mourn the Fifties, Hank Williams and two-tone Chevys, Stevenson versus Ike. Too bad, but a dank chilly wind surges from a limestone cave on Dorset Peak where a red-haired muse abandoned me. I can’t remember that woman’s name, but the green down vest she wore as she steered her Saab up the hill past the abandoned marble quarry lingers in the corner of my eye. The villages clench and relax, clench and relax. A gravel truck swerves down a narrow road. A child doesn’t get out of the way. A dog barks because the Angel of Death wears such a musty billow of cloud. She would claim it’s always like this, the cave sighing from the center of the earth, the railroad harp-strung and reeking of oil. I worked awhile tending bar for the ski crowd and made a modest fortune in tips. Then she turned away and I left for the city; but the cold breath of the mountains had filled me, Hank Williams and Patsy Cline still haunting the airwaves, the wax

on my old Chevy still gleaming, and Eisenhower still golfing as a train rattles north to Rutland and the bedrock crumbles like cake.

CRUSING TO WORK William Doreski

Cruising to work in gray dawn rain I feel the traffic congeal into a single organism, the dead-end of evolution. Radio news simpers. Flood and war, law and politics. The organism chokes on itself, suffering from lack of oxygen. On days like this Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m weightless, a helium-filled object. Good thing Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not intrinsic to the crude and dying organism formed by the mile-long file of taillights dappled down the highway ahead. To better define myself I park by the reservoir and stand staring into the mist. Not like Avalon, castles adrift, the Holy Grail winking in a disciplined sky. No, the bare bones of New Hampshire ache with rheumatism, groan with runoff. Back in the car I point myself at the core of the earth; but the traffic

skips me along like a flat stone on water, and the long recession of taillights illuminates only the merest shrug of the mind.

STAY A SELECTION FROM

A NOVEL by Lauren Lee Fusilier

“Penn Oil Station” / STAFF

Squeaky. That was the truck driver’s name. Carson forced a giggle when he told it to her, only because he seemed to expect it. All of the false bravado she had conjured left her when she climbed up into the bright blue cab of Squeaky’s eighteen-wheeler. Now she sat silently in the passenger seat while he took the huge looping ramp onto I-49, too afraid of what she’d done to think of anything to say. The window for changing her mind and going back home had closed as soon as he put the truck in drive, and she was headed south for Baton Rouge now. Squeaky had assured her she could find a ride to New Orleans from there, and if not, he was stopping at a truck-stop where she could pick up a few days’ work until she found someone headed that way. The idea had seemed a lot more reassuring in the café than it did in the dirty cab of his truck. Her nerve gone, she worried that she wouldn’t be able to fake it for people again. Outside the baked red earth of the early plowed cotton fields rolled by, already dry after the previous day’s rain, the soft hills undulating for as far as she could see. Carson wondered if she would miss north Louisiana; it was beautiful. Her heart hurt as she silently told it goodbye, and underneath that, held firmly below the thoughts of how pretty the green pines were along the edges of the fields, she said goodbye to Barrett too. Picking up on her mood, Squeaky made small talk, telling her that Mr. Leebow, that man who owned the gas station she’d met Squeaky at, talked funny because he’d lost most of his tongue to cancer from dipping, giving her little bits of information about the towns they passed, how Pineville had the state nuthouse and Woodworth a huge lake and campground. He was clearly someone who had experience traveling with strangers, treading the fine line between friendly curiosity and prying with ease. He still asked too many questions for her taste, but most were for her opinion on things and he managed to stay away from anything that directly related to why she was hitchhiking across the state. It was a surprise to her that he avoided the subject, considering how blunt he had been in approaching her in the Get N’Geaux café, but she was relieved that he seemed to have some manners. In a way, his attitude towards her seemed almost paternal; he insisted that she choose the radio station—she found his surprise at her changing it to AM to find classical music somehow charming

—and spoke words of approval and encouragement every time she answered one of his questions. For lunch, he stopped at a place called the Chicken King, telling her it would be a shame for her to pass through Port Barré and not try their chicken. And when she admitted a half hour further down the road that she had never tried boudin before, he pulled over in Krotz Springs to buy her some. “Hot shit, girl. I’m from Clinton, Mississippi and even I know Buddy’s got the best fried boudin they is,” he said. “I can’t let you miss out on this opportunity.” Carson sat in the truck while he went inside. She turned up the music until it filled the cab, the sweeping notes making a comfortable cocoon around her. Why did this man who hardly knew her, who would drop her off somewhere in a few hours and never see her again, why did he care if she missed opportunities? Then it hit her—he liked her. He had treated her to breakfast and lunch and now this boudin, the way he had kept his hand on her lower back as they ordered at the Chicken King was affectionate and territorial, and he sure looked glad to see her as he walked out of the store smiling, a grease-spotted white paper bag in his hands. Hope sprang up inside her at the thought of how much easier it would be to just stay with Squeaky—he seemed nice enough and she could go to all kinds of places with him. She turned down the music and checked herself in the visor mirror. The green high-necked cotton dress she wore made her eyes look extra bright. If she were going to get him to take her wherever he was going, she would need everything to go perfect until they got to Baton Rouge. Squeaky climbed up into the truck, and she took the bag and glass bottles of Coke from him, smiling and trying to seem sweet. He waited for her to have one of the boudin balls before getting on the road, wanting to see her reaction. She took one out of the bag, unimpressed by its appearance—it was about the size of a plum, but was brown and had a thick, crispy fried-batter shell. Even if you hate it, she told herself, pretend to love it because this guy sure seems to want you to. She held her breath as she bit into it, exhaling to cool a bite of the spicy meat and rice mixture held between her teeth. She chewed slowly and swallowed.

Squeaky watched, expectant, a huge smile on his face. She noticed brown stains between his teeth, probably from chewing tobacco, but she forced herself to look instead at his eyes. “That is the most delicious things I’ve ever eaten,” she said, being honest. “It kind of tastes like rice dressing.” “Rice dressing?” he asked, pulling out of the parking lot. “That’s like dirty rice?” She shrugged but didn’t answer—the truck climbed a steep bridge, the sound of the engine escalating to a roar that she would have to yell over to be heard—just stuffed the other half of the boudin ball in her mouth and reached into the bag for another one. All she could see around them, besides the steel trusses of the bridge, was the midday sky; a little panic gripped her at the thought that the bridge could stop midway over the river and they wouldn’t know it until they were falling towards the water. A sign on the right told her that it would be the Atchafalaya River they plunged into. But then they crossed the middle and started the downward slope of the bridge. The engine fell quiet and he said, “I think they the same thing. When I asked the girls at Buddy’s what was in these, they said I didn’t want to know—it’s like scrap meat, you know, organ meats and stuff, like—” “Please,” she interrupted, looking down at the food and pretending it was Barrett in the driver’s seat to keep from being as nervous. “I don’t need to know any more than that. I want to keep eating.” Squeaky laughed at her and reached over to squeeze her knee, and it seemed totally natural for him to do this, and the fact that this man was nothing like Barrett really hit home. Carson turned to him and he was smiling and she laughed too. It was easy and she noticed how nice his dark skin crinkled around those eyes and she realized she was flirting with him a little. She shrugged her shoulders in a way that she thought might be pretty, enjoying how small and delicate they were, peeking out from the sleeveless cotton dress. Out ahead of them the land opened up, flat and covered in trees with shimmering waterways coursing through it.

As soon as they were over the Atchafalaya, they were on another bridge—this one low and long, going off as far as she could see. They were driving over the Morganza spillway swampland, mostly woods partly submerged in water on either side of them. There wasn’t much moss, she couldn’t identify any cypress trees, and everything was very lush and green; it looked nothing like the Louisiana she’d seen in Barrett’s research books, but it still held some of the haunted quality she’d read about in novels. The place felt lonely, like no one could leave a mark here because water would swallow it up as soon as anyone turned their back. It gave her chills and she thrilled at finally seeing what she’d only read about before. Gone were the hills of home; here was south Louisiana. She felt sorry for the girl she had been a few hours ago, the girl who had seen almost nothing of the world around her. And there was so much more to see, if only Squeaky would take her to see it. “Where are you going after Baton Rouge?” she asked, careful to keep her eyes ahead and the eagerness out of her voice. “I’m headed up to Jackson to deliver this load, then home for a few days before my next trip,” he answered. “I’d love to see Jackson,” she said. The bridge had ended and now they were in the middle of wide-open, flat farmland. Carson concentrated on identifying which fields grew what crops—the tall sugar cane that looked like corn, the flooded rice fields, the flat wide soybean leaves. Anything to keep her eyes off of him because she could feel him looking at her. “It’s no New Orleans,” he said after a little while. Her heart sunk at his words and the careful way he spoke them. They passed through a small town with a blue wooden cutout of a trident nailed high up on a pole. The truck crawled along at 45 miles an hour for a minute, then he sped back up as they left the trailers and single gas station behind them. She tried to call up her courage and said, “It doesn’t really have to be New Orleans. I just had to get away,” but instead of sounding brash and mysterious, she just sounded sad and like she didn’t know what she was doing, which was true. “That’s where we’re heading,” Squeaky said, pointing to an auto park on the left side of the highway.

Directly ahead of them loomed an enormously high bridge over what she assumed was the Mississippi river. It was painted a dingy orange and rust had taken over where the paint had chipped, covering it in what, from this distance, looked like bloody scabs. It wasn’t the shining silver of the cantilever bridge she had envisioned after reading about it in one of Barrett’s books on Louisiana history. The truck stop sat in the combined shadow of the bridge and the levee. “Is this Baton Rouge?” she asked. “Nope, this is Port Allen.” He exited from the highway before they started the upward slope of the bridge, making a huge loop under the raised part of the highway. She noticed a green sign on the right that said Baton Rouge 5 Miles. The curve pushed her, leaning to the right against the door of the truck, and she realized with a sinking feeling that she was still about a hundred miles from her destination. Squeaky pulled around to the back lot where at least twenty other big rigs were parked. “Baton Rouge is on the other side of that bridge,” he said, gesturing to the orange monstrosity that all but blocked out the sun. “But that’s where you told me you were taking me,” Carson said. Panic threatened to take over. If she couldn’t trust someone as nice as Squeaky, who exactly could she trust? “This is as good as Baton Rouge. I always tank up here so I don’t have to stop in traffic, and like I told you, you can get a job here if you want one, so I’m doing you a favor, toots.” Gone from his voice were the teasing and affectionate qualities. The change scared her and she turned away from him to look out the window. The bridge and the truck stop were all there were to see—besides them, there wasn’t anything else around. He was going to abandon her in the middle of nowhere. Squeaky parked next to the levee. Across the wide gravel lot stood a group of tin buildings, all painted purple and gold. The largest one had a balcony on the outside and a half-dozen doors on each level; it looked like a cross between a warehouse and a motel. The second largest was long and single-storied, the free standing roof over the gas pumps nearly connected to it. She could see the plate-glass windows of a convenience store and diner on half of the building. The other half had no windows, just a

large white square painted on the side with the words “Dancing Girls” stenciled in black spray paint. “I don’t want to work here,” she blurted on reading the sign. He looked up from fiddling with the parking brake and said, “Don’t give yourself airs, honey. Sweet or not, I picked you up in a gas station outside Alexandria.” Squeaky leaned forward and grabbed her, pulling her towards him, and kissed her. He shoved his tongue in her mouth and she went rigid. Barrett hadn’t stuck his tongue in her mouth when she kissed him. The dark bedroom came back to her. How hard the arm of the rocking chair was beneath her legs. The warmth of Barrett’s lap and the scent of aftershave on his jaw. How long she had waited for him to take her into his arms, to return the affection that she ached to give him. And then, it had been too much for him. He had thrown her from him and fled the room. Just as quickly, Squeaky released her from the kiss and the memory and started laughing. “You don’t have to dance, little girl,” he said, the kindness back in his voice. “There’s a lady in there, Miss Bobbi Joe—” Carson smiled faintly at the name, shock and confusion keeping her absolutely still. “I know,” he said with a smile, “the name’s ridiculous, but she’s a good lady. She’s married to the guy who runs this place, and she’s as good a Christian as he is shady. She runs the diner part and you go to her and ask for work, not to him, you hear me?” Squeaky spoke more and more roughly, and she was scared when he grabbed her shoulder and shook her until she looked at him. “There’s a lot of dope running through this place and most of the girls who work here are on it,” he said, “so stay away from that shit.” Carson stood stunned. She didn’t even know what exactly he meant by dope. Weren’t people who dealt with and did drugs dangerous? He had made her believe that he would take care of her, help get her to New Orleans, but this didn’t sound like a safe place. Desperate, she said, “Can’t I just go with you?” He shook his head. “I didn’t sign on for that. I got a woman at home, and you don’t even know how to give a kiss.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. Embarrassed, she looked back out the window and noticed a big, hurricane-fenced area tucked between the two largest buildings on the lot. There was a little purple and gold shed in one corner and she squinted at it, distracted from her fear and humiliation. She could see something moving back and forth inside of the fence. It walked from in front of the shed, and she saw that it was a fully grown tiger, its size dwarfing the cage that held it. Unnerved, Carson looked back at Squeaky, who was staring at her, frowning. “Don’t be sorry for being innocent,” he said. He hesitated a second, then continued, “But you need to know that even though I’m not wanting anything from you, pretty much anybody you get a ride with from here, or just about anywhere really, is going to want something for giving you a ride.” The idea of ending up in a truck with someone like Mr. Leebow sickened her—toothless and stinking, constantly mocking her, how would she manage to make it? And even worse, what if it was a drug dealer or someone violent who picked her up? She hadn’t thought of these things before she left home, or when she accepted the ride with Squeaky. Looking at him now, she realized how lucky she had been. He had a little bit of gut hanging over the waistband of his jeans, but it was just a little one. The stubble on his face grew in dark and he looked very masculine and handsome. Chances were that he would be the most pleasant person she’d come across out here. She took a deep breath and reached out to put her hand on his thigh. “Just take me with you to Jackson,” she said, hoping that more time might change his mind. “Please, I’ll do anything you want.” He took her hand off of his leg and threw open his door, but turned back to her instead of getting out. She could tell that he was angry by the redness of his neck and the look on his face. “Don’t go offering what you ain’t ready to give, girl,” he said. And then he pointed his finger in her face, “And don’t ever, ever tell someone you don’t know that you’ll do whatever they want you to. It’s a good way to end up with a tire iron up your pussy.” He jumped down from the truck and she sat stunned. What he had just said—the image of Mr. Leebow on top of her, drool

hanging from his gaping toothless mouth as he tore at her clothes passed through her mind. She would be defenseless against something like that. And who knew, there could be men more disgusting than Mr. Lebow out there, wanting to do things that she couldn’t even imagine. Panicked, she pushed open the door, jumped down from the cab, and ran after him. “Wait,” she called, catching up to him halfway across the parking lot. She could see the tiger over Squeaky’s shoulder, pacing. It paused to look at them, then continued its walk, back and forth, back and forth. “What am I supposed to do?” she asked when she reached him. “What the hell were you doing at Leebow’s this morning?” he asked. “How did you get there?” “I don’t know,” she said. The night before seemed like it had happened years ago now. It was blurry. The long walk to the highway, the strange, silent couple who had given her a ride to Pineville, it all seemed like a dream to her. Why had she left? As the possibilities of what could happen to her started to open up before her eyes, it seemed like such a small thing she had run from. Her play for Barrett seemed innocent enough, and maybe going home wasn’t the worst option, after all. But then, she thought of the shame on his face, his insistence on calling her daughter in the days following the incident, when he was forced to acknowledge her at all. No, she couldn’t go back. “Go in there and ask for Miss Bobbi,” Squeaky said. “If she ain’t there, order food and wait for her to get there. Don’t talk to no one, not even your waitress.” Carson nodded obediently, looking up into his face and wanting to change his mind so bad. He smiled and pushed her gently toward the door. “Go on,” he said. She crossed her arms tight over her chest to keep from shaking and started towards the door. “Oh, and if an old man with one arm comes up and talks to you,” Squeaky called after her, “smile and be polite, but don’t tell him anything.” “A man with one arm?” she asked, turning back to face him. “Yeah. That’s Larry LeJeune. He runs the casino.” “There’s a casino?” she said.

“There’s a lot more here than that, sugar,” he said. The wind off the river blew hot and stinking, smelling like sulfurous chemicals, and she remembered that there were chemical plants all along it down past New Orleans. “I’m scared,” she said, her voice high in the wind. “You should be,” he said, pulling a can of Skoal out of his back pocket and fitting a wad of tobacco into his bottom lip. “You sure there’s nothing I could do…?” she said. He cleared the distance between them in two steps and took her face in his hands. The gesture was so tender, it felt comforting after everything running through her head, even after the horrible thing he had said before. She closed her eyes as he leaned in close and wished as hard as she could that he’d offer to take her with him. Squeaky pressed his rough cheek to hers and said, “Honey, I’d love to be the one to pluck that flower, it’s so tempting, but I don’t have time. I’ll be back by here in a few weeks, and there’s a chance you might still be here too. If you are, I’ll collect that dick-sucking you owe me then. But I want you to know, that when you aren’t so doe-eyed anymore, I’ll remember what you look like right now and think of it while you’re giving it to me.” Carson tried to jerk her head free from Squeaky’s hands, but he held her tight, pulling her even closer. He licked her up the side of her face from her jaw to her temple, then let her go, laughing as she stumbled backwards and almost fell over. She turned and ran towards the diner, disgusted by the smell of wintergreen dip on her face and his howling laughter behind her.

“Father and Son” / William J. Stribling

IN RAIN, DRIVING AWAY FROM YOU 64

Bret Lawrence

You disappear from the rearview and I feel it for the first time my loss of traction, slick like oil. I feel the hydroplane begin the too-smoothness of it a queasy flirtation, hemispheres hanging in the silence moth-like, wet and crystalline. The car fishtails, slides across empty lanes of traffic, a monster of friction that canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be helped or stopped and suddenly between us that flutter, that black ice, that spinning radio dial, that pump of brakes, that perfect moment I take my eyes off the road to see the next morning all empty bridges and shattered lights, your face the last face in my mirror.

“Blacktop Mountain” / Matt Landsman

“The Back Roads Drive to Charlottesville, VA 2013” / Kathleen Babarsky

NINE by Sarah Marshall

“Straight Shot through the Desert” / Chase Berenson

In a drainage ditch. In a high school ballfield—before you make him go back, because you are afraid of some things, still. He says that after the next one you won’t be. But you are. In the garage for a long time, where no one goes anymore. In the old chest freezer. You wonder at him going out there, long hours at night, but then again he could be someplace else, someplace far. You don’t know which is worse. Buried shallow in the woods behind the house, shallow because he is weak for all his one good strength, and when you tell him to dig deeper and see his arms are trembling you know you can only back away or kiss the shovel blade, and so you back, you back, you back, and he buries. Buried shallow until the dogs start nosing around, and then you go out in the middle of the night, half-torn nightgown wrapped around you, and bury her deep as you can. Not because she deserves it, you think, but because you do. Cut up and put in concrete blocks and dropped in the river.

Ten pieces. That was a bad one. Your idea. He bought twenty sacks of cement and when he was done had two left over and drove them back down to the feed store to return. $4.60. He took the money and bought you a plastic ring in the shape of a rose, a chocolate bar and a magazine. After that, nothing for a while. He is tired. You are tired. But then the dark nights come and you both sleep good, too good, and he wakes you early and says how bout a trip? Grin like glowing. Grab his thin shoulders. Run your hands down his arms. They should feel like something, to have done all this work, done all this work in front of you. But when you go out they all side away from him, like piss inching down a sidewalk. He grabs one by the hair. He talks about California. He talks about leaving you by the side of the road. He pulls over outside Enumclaw and hauls you into the backseat with him, turns you away from him and you know what to do. You are the girl you didn’t find. You pretend until he puts his hands around your neck, and then you don’t have to pretend anymore. Ground up for dog meat. Buried again, but outside the woods, between the dark crocus beds. Dropped in the river again, this time with an old car engine tied to the ankle, wire already biting through to bone by the time you have carried her to the water. He filed the serial number off while you went to work on her hands. We’re a team, he says, and what else really matters, at the end of the day? But you are the one who takes the girl to the water, and you are the one who steels your arms against the engine’s pull, the weight enough to move you, but your tendons are cables and your muscles are stone and you stand there a moment, holding her just above the surface, the dark water kissing her and lapping at her and taking her from you, an embrace you have often searched for, but never yet found.

“Progreso Mexico” / Stephanie Cameron Kennedy

DRIVING THROUGH THE COUNTRY Danny Barbare

In a pasture Along a country road Stands the only memory Of a house A cold stone chimney, The spirit gone up in smoke Or crumbled.

“The Farm” / Stephanie Cameron Kennedy

“Roadblock Encountered in Mongolia” / Charla Allyn Hughes

CONTRIBUTORS

Kathleen Babarsky is 24 years old and the iPhone 4 is her camera of choice. While it is slightly dangerous and she doesn’t recommend it to anyone, she has recently been taking photos while driving, most of which are focused through the windshield of her Celica. “I don’t pause and think about a photo before I take it; I see something I deem beautiful and snap, a second later, it’s out of my sight.” Danny Barbare resides in Greenville, South Carolina. He has been writing poetry off and on for 32 years. Most of these poems are written about local traveling in the Upstate of the Carolinas. He says he thinks quite comical about them. Daniel P. Bedrosian has been the keyboardist for legendary American Funk band Parliament-Funkadelic for over a decade. His production company, Bozfonk Moosick, records, produces and publishes his own music and over a dozen other artists’, and serves as a booking and marketing agency. He currently tours all over the planet with George Clinton and P-Funk. Chase Berenson is a 2007 graduate of Vassar College, who, after graduating, moved to Alaska (“which is a magnificent place to live and serves as a great background for writing.”) He then traveled to Europe to participate in The Mongol Rally, which involved driving a comically small 1.1 liter car from England to Mongolia to raise money for charity. After completing the Rally, he moved to Bangkok, Thailand, where he currently lives with his girlfriend. He has previously been published in The Talkeetna Daily Weekend and The Anchorage Press.

Holly Day is a housewife and mother of two living in Minneapolis, Minnesota who teaches needlepoint classes for the Minneapolis school district and writing classes at The Loft Literary Center. Her poetry has recently appeared in Hawai’i Pacific Review, Slant, and The Tampa Review. She is the 2011 recipient of the Sam Ragan Poetry Prize from Barton College. Her most recent published books are Walking Twin Cities and Notenlesen für Dummies Das Pocketbuch. William Doreski’s work has appeared in various electronic and print journals and in several collections, most recently The Suburbs of Atlantis (AA Press, 2013). Lauren Lee Fusilier is from Reddell, Louisiana. She holds an MFA in fiction from Florida State University. She lives in Tallahassee, where she wanders the cemetery in the evenings with her blue tick mutt Doglene. Bettina Gilois is an award-winning screenwriter and author who has been writing in Hollywood for over twenty years. Her screen credits include the Disney/Bruckheimer production Glory Road for which she was nominated for the Humanitas Prize. She lives in Los Angeles. Charla Allyn Hughes doesn’t sit still very well. Currently, she lives in Bangkok where she works as a consultant and spends her free time contributing photos and articles to Southeast Asia Backpacker Magazine.

Stephanie Cameron Kennedy is a doctoral student in the College of Social Work at Florida State University. She primarily works with women affected by violence and victimization. To create beauty from all of that horror she does family, yoga, and fine art photography in analog and digital formats. Matt Landsman is a filmmaker and writer based out of Los Angeles. He graduated from Emerson College in 2012 with a BS in Journalism. He is currently pursuing an MFA in screenwriting at Dodge College of Film & Media Arts. Steve Lapinsky’s work is forthcoming from Poem, Mid-American Review and The Gettysburg Review. He received his MA in poetry from the University of Texas at Austin and his MFA in poetry from Florida State University. He currently earns his living as an adjunct English professor by day and as a sushi chef by night. Bret Lawrence is a 23-year-old graduate of Florida State University. She’s been writing since high school with a concentration on poetry. She now works as a copywriter, editor, social media manager, and dog walker. Sarah Marshall’s writing has most recently appeared in or is forthcoming from Hobart, The Collagist, Harpur Palate, Saw Palm, and The Believer. A story she published in 2013 with Rock & Sling was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She holds an MFA from Portland State University, where she currently teaches. Delia Rainey is finishing her third year at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri and is a poetry intern at The Missouri Review.

David Rhei is “not a professional photographer”, he simply “enjoy[s] taking photographs of random aspects of everyday living.” Originally from New Jersey, he now lives in San Diego, California after graduating from San Diego State University with an MFA in Poetry. Tammy Ruggles is a legally blind artist, photographer, and finger painter based in Kentucky. Her paintings have appeared in literary journals and art magazines like Art Times Journal, Sasee, Revolution Art, Wisdom Crieth Without, Tru Entertainment, neutronsprotons, Cease, Cows, Surrealist Star Clustered Illuminations, Awareness Magazine, and The Artist’s Network. She is also a freelance writer and former social worker. William Joseph Stribling received degrees in film & TV production and dramatic literature from New York University. He is currently pursuing a master’s in screenwriting from Chapman University. His NYU thesis film Beyond Belief has been an official selection of over 30 film festivals worldwide, winning several awards. His first feature film Lies I Told My Little Sister and his next short film Down in Flames are both wrapping up post-production. Olivia Wolfgang-Smith is pursuing her MFA in fiction at Florida State University. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Fourth Genre, The Common, and elsewhere. She has been named a finalist for Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers and nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Notes

Chase Berenson— “It’s Hot Out There” [p. 28-29] – August 2012 – Photo taken in the eastern Oregon desert on a drive from Alaska to Florida; an inferior mirage, or the optical illusion of heat waves, is visible. “Straight Shot Through the Desert” [below; p.64] – August 2013 – Photo taken in the desert in between Karabutak, Kazakhstan, and Aralsk, Kazakhstan, while on the Mongol Rally. Stephanie Cameron Kennedy—

“Astrakhan at Night” [p. 76-77] – July 2013 – Photo taken in Astrakhan, Russia, while on the Mongol Rally; downtown traffic is light late at night, but we do get a peak of one of Russia’s ubiquitous Ladas pulling out of the frame. Charla Allyn Hughes— The photos [...] are from this summer, when I drove a Fiat Panda from England to Mongolia to raise money for charity as a part of the Mongol Rally. Photo [top right; p. 8-9] is en route to Actobe, Kazakhstan. Photo [p. 70-71] is a roadblock encountered in Mongolia.

1. “Tennessee Street” [above; p. 14] was shot with a (broken) Holga on 120 film. 2. “Progreso Mexico” [p. 66-67] was shot with a Minolta X700 on 135 film. 3. “The Farm” [p. 68-69] was shot with a Yashica MAT124G on 120 film. All three images provide a unique perspective on the road, highlighting the differences between urban and rural, the United States and Mexico. But the road remains constant—a common language and place of connection.

Matt Landsman—

William Joseph Stribling—

I took this picture [p. 61] in the mountains of California while I was sleepily riding in the car and I thought it was very indicative of the feeling that being on “the road” evokes. For some reason, any time you photograph the road it seems endless. It’s so imminent in the foreground of the frame and seems to continue on forever, which might be one of the distant themes found in some of the literary work in [Blacktop Passages.] The road is a timeless place, both in the sense that it transcends the physical progression of time and that it has remained steadfast and unchanged for hundreds of years.

Photography--especially 35mm--has been a side project of mine since I began my undergraduate studies at NYU.

Thomas John Nudi—

“Penn Oil Station” [p. 48-49] Penn Oil Co. 6458 U.S. 129 Live Oak, FL 32060 Taken in 2012. David Rhei—

“PICT0210 (3)bw” (Front/Back Cover)

“8th Ave NYC” [p.10-11] - Right place at the right time. 8th Avenue and maybe 50th Street in New York City. 35mm taken near the intersection of 8th Ave and 50th Street in New York City. “Santa Rosa County Rest Stop” [p.42-43] - The first rest stop on a road trip from Florida to California. 35mm taken at a rest stop in Santa Rosa County, FL. “Father and Son” [p.58-59] - Dedicated to the memory of Josh Weisbrod. Digital taken on the road in Cape Cod, MA.

“Astrakhan at Night” / Chase Berenson