Crack the Spine Literary magazine
Issue 111
Issue 111 April 30, 2014 Edited by Kerri Farrell Foley Collection copyright 2014 by Crack the Spine
Cover Art: “Art is in the Imagination� by Sharonlee Goodhand Writer Poet Artist Photographer Gypsy Adventurer Maiden Mother Crone Matriarch...
CONTENTS
David Rawding The Climber’s Crux
Marc Tretin $18.99/LB
Janet Dale Truth, Imagined Lifetime
J.D. DeHart Carnivore Cereal Boxes
Carole Waterhouse In Her Dreams
Ralph Monday Moon Malady
Dan Leach Other Towns
Jed Myers Farmed Out
David Rawding The Climber’s Crux
I
know I’m dreaming because what I sense is more than what I understand. Mercury slides under my skin, settles in plunge pools, and restrains my body as invisible as magnetism. There’s a crystalline vase in a room of bleached white. A dark crack splits the vaulted ceiling and a slow drip begins. The drops strike the water in the vase and I witness as the blackness unfolds and accordions— spreading deeper— searching for more untainted space to inhabit and grow. Soon, the whole vase has
transformed black as a tar pit. I separate from the dream and the hairs of my skin extend to trap cool pockets of air that filter through the choked window screen and lean over my bed to lick my chest. With dry, cracked fingers littered with padded callouses—long dead of feeling—I rub my arms. My index finger hesitates at the crest of a lump on my shoulder, a more recent fixture on my body’s landscape. This hard, calcified flesh isn’t a solitary monument. I connect each of my lumps with invisible
lines. A single-paned window reveals the moon, a road flare in the blackened sky that spreads across the gray plains, the sloping foothills, and traces the outline of the Rocky Mountain peaks in the rear. The pillow beside mine is undented. I sigh, and commit my cold feet to leave my toe holds in the loose afghan blanket. Bent over, my hands probe an indistinguishable pile of laundry trying to discern boxer shorts from other cotton clothes. Suddenly, I’m wrapped in pulses of
heat, radiating and getting worse the more I concentrate on finding something to wear. I stand up and my muscles presume a rigid stance as if anticipating a fight. Inside, my organs are cooking. I remain naked, and with the speed of a fireman responding to a call, I find my cell phone, car keys, wallet, and leave my bedroom behind. As I descend the stairs, I look at the cell phone, dark against my pale right palm. When I get to the bottom of the stairs I leave the phone face down on the flat wooden rail. Downstairs, under dim light; with a pen
balanced in between my knuckles, I put the tip to work on words. With note in hand, along with my wallet and keys pressed in my bare chest, I stride to the front door, but before I pass through, my loose hand rubs the worn lumps of molded plastic above the frame. I’m welcomed by the familiar neon colored hand-holds of my climb board that have trained my hands and arm muscles for the better part of thirty years. On the front porch of the house, I take a moment to inhale the cigarette potpourri coming from the old coffee cans filled with scoops of high desert
sand. For a moment, I unconsciously lick my lips and my fingers touch my lips. I distract my eyes by turning to face the overwhelmed mailbox. Although the moon is somewhat blocked by leafy maples (transplants like me) the pale street light is enough to make out several words and symbols on the tightly sealed envelopes: Medical, Health, Hospital, and Care with the images of a medical staff, and a cross. Leaving my house behind, I walk the cracked sidewalk and catch the stench of leaking garbage bags blended with the freshly
shaved rubber from car tires. I see my own car among the many humps; a sandy Jeep Cherokee, hugging the granite curb. In my path, I step around a discarded newspaper at my toes with "The Denver Post” printed across the top. In the Jeep, I can't avoid noticing how the bucket seat sticks against my bare ass and back. The car starts as if waking from a tormented dream, making its disgruntled feelings plain to me and anyone who may care. As I drive down my street and turn the car west, I smile at how the wheel seems to move more freely now that I’m
naked, as if the car, too, had dropped its stiff demeanor. My smile eventually fades as I leave the city and make my way toward the foothills. An hour passes. Cut shapes of rock begin to rise on either side of the road. The few trees that flank my headlights are twisted junipers and thin stands of pine. I eye the canyon walls that hold themselves like dark mammoths before me. My tires crunch gravel and dip into potholes. There are no houses, no lights, save my headlights and the cascading sheets of moonlight. The road follows a creek; a
particularly vascular vein of water, running along the bottom of the canyon. I park alongside a copse of trees, and gaze past their umbrella tops to the cliff face. There’s enough light to reveal the rock’s shape, that of a humpback whale at nearly full breach, but still too dim to fill in the network of jagged cracks. I turn the car off and try to regain a rhythm for my jagged breathing. I close my eyes. Again, I see the vase filled with dark, venomous water. When I open my eyes, I leave the keys dangling in the ignition, the wallet on the seat, and the note:
face up on the dash. The smell of the junipers is strong. The creek’s water whispers as the current tumbles over rocks and is severed by boulders. There’s a light wind being channeled by an unseen tempest through the canyon, weaving through my course, curly hair. The whale wall stood before me, rising a full 300 feet to the top of the canyon like an enemy of time. At the base, I touch the wall. It’s warmer than I expect, retaining the residual heat from a day spent baking under the Colorado sun. My hands grasp a scoop of loose rock and earth.
Flakes of dirt, dust, and loose granules become trapped on my palms as I work the moisture off my skin. With ropes, a heavy rack of trad gear, and a partner this route, named “Jane’s Pain Addiction” by the first known climber, had only been conquered by a handful of expert climbers since. In my best shape, I’d only made it just beyond half-way. I stare as deep into the rock as I can. “You’ve always scared the shit out of me.” I slap the stone like the back of a friend. I eye the twisted route above and say, “Let me get to the top this time?” The wind picks up and then dies.
My neck feels the sudden need to turn my face back in the direction of the car. I strain and start a battle against my instincts and common sense. I look up and see the route for what it is: bare slabs alongside a crack for the majority of the climb, then a carsized roof, an arete, and then a ledge—the crux of the climb—at the top. Led by my courageous big toe, the rest of his comrades find a worthwhile fissure for my foot and I lift my body off of the flat ground. My hands ball up and stab deep into the beginning of the first crack. My protruding thumbs hold each fist in
place. I release a long exhale, a breath I just realize I have been holding, and begin moving foot over foot, hand over hand, wedging whatever flesh I can into the long fist-sized crack. The way I move is as steady as a sloth and as calculated as a mantis. My back arches, and my legs bow to find foot holds. My hands move by feel. My memories are here, embedded with this rock. This portion of the route is stored within my own body, activated once I begin climbing. I feel my fingers suddenly slip out of a milk cap pocket in the rock and my body
swings like a barn door. My left arm holds me to the rock, as it is buried deep in the crack with my fist shaped into a mallet. The crack cuts into the skin of my forearm and my knuckles as I swing. I grit my teeth and drag my right hand down the rock face. My nails feel the flat section of wall, until a small dent catches. Miniscule, but enough to keep me there, I hold myself flat against the wall and catch my breath. Sweat sprouts in my palms, which releases a packet of stored adrenaline. "No!" I shake my head, and look at the rock wall
inches from my dry lips. "I'm climbing. I got this. This is all me." My feet are cut and tender along the top and sides. I rub each hand on the wall and continue my ascent. The route leads to a large roof, a hanging cut of rock that fills my view of the sky. When I reach the roof, my hands settle into a finger crack along the crease where the rock splits. The crack is ice cold and damp. I shove hands, like two shovel blades, as high as I can and let my arms go straight. I lean my body back while the balls of my feet smear against the flat wall. I slowly shuffle right by
alternating my hands in the crack as I traverse for the edge of the roof. When I pull my right hand out of the crack and reach over the top of the roof I find my fingers are too moist to grip the smooth rock above. My left arm is bent and starting to lose power. I pat my right hand blindly on the rock above in search of a hold. Energy saps from my stiff left forearm while my left leg is being chewed by a cramp. The nails of my right hand scrape and claw until they get stuck on a stone lip. I let go of the rock with my left hand and rely on the finger strength of my right
hand to haul my body up and over. On top of the roof, I’m able to stand on a patch of partially flat rock the size of a hospital bed. I massage my forearms against each other in an effort to loosen the stiffness. In between heavy breaths I exhale the words, “I’m gassed.” Goose bumps have gathered on my arms and legs. I cough once, but then break into a fit of hacking. When I stop, I spit a chunk of something dark on the rock at my feet. I wipe my mouth and my eyes transition to the climb ahead. The ridge above has the look of a spine protruding from a
malnourished person’s back. After that, the rock’s slope angles outward. At the very top is the crux of the climb: a ledge that the local climbers have named, Where the Sidewalk Ends. I’m still working my forearms when something small collides with the skin on my shoulder. A coolness that tries to sink through, but instead slides down my arm in a damp trail. A sudden volley of liquid nails comes from the heavens. I look up at the dark sky and hear the rumble. The rock quivers and as I move my hands to climb the glass ceiling shatters and the water dumps on me and the
rock face; turning the high desert and my thoughts to mud. I sit on the roof and hug my knees to my chest, while rocking my body back and forth. My body still radiates heat despite the darkness and the rain. My head feels as if it’s wrapped in thick fur and I close my eyes. “Hey, buddy, hey! Can you hear me?” My eyes only open half way, but the sunlight burns through strong. “Stay put. I’m coming to help you.” The voice is coming from above. A man’s voice, but I can hear others as well, their voices echoing through the canyon. My arms are still
wrapped around my legs and are cemented together. The rock and my body seemed fused. I struggle to move, finding no strength left within me. Instead, I close my lids and listen. “Still with me down there?” The voice has gotten closer. I hear his scraping shoes bouncing off the rock. He’s there now, on the ledge with me, shaking me by the shoulder. I open my eyes and meet the focused eyes rimmed by disorganized sun-crisped hair that’s stuffed into a climbing helmet. The guy leans away and yells, “He’s alive!”
I still can’t move even when he tries to coax me. He builds a harness with webbing and lassoes my arms and legs and body tight. Working with the people above, I’m hauled up the face. I peer at the final ledge, the crux: Where The Sidewalk Ends, as I’m lifted above the lip. Several hands reach and pull me to safety. They work quickly to cloth me and carry my body along the trail down back side of the cliff to the bottom of the canyon. Their cars are parked beside my Jeep. I whisper the words, “A note . . . my Jeep.” A girl comes back with my note. Her eyes flash
from the note then to me. “Is this what you needed?” She hands the paper into my shaking hands as they buckle me into a seat. I look down at the four simple words I’d written and nod my head. They drive fast while I slip in and out of consciousness. I see the vase again, filled with black water. I shake myself awake, force my eyes open, and stare at the note crumpled in my hand. Black ink letters that read, “I want to live.”
Marc Tretin $18.99/LB
Farm-raised and previously flash-frozen, the mermaid hangs in the fish-store window. Her eyes say, “Look at this life I’ve chosen.” Though her tail’s impaled on a hook, she’s often admired; her mouth’s a delectable O. She was farm-raised and then flash-frozen. The breasts of anyone half fish, half woman are made to be sold like sole or like shad roe. The firmest ones are the ones first chosen. Externally fertilized by mermen, her eggs are hatched, to swim, to sing, to grow up to be farm-raised and then flash-frozen. Knowing what she knew, she tried kabbalah, then Zen, but stayed a Baptist—why, she knew too well. She agonized, “Is my faith wisely chosen?”
What happens to all mermaids, did happen to her. She knew this, yet powerless to say no, she thought, “We are farm-raised to be flash-frozen. It’s my choice to choose to be chosen.”
Janet Dale Lifetime
Truth, Imagined
She
liked to collect souvenirs of moments—the ones others hardly noticed—for example, a glass or a pen. But once an acceptable portion of time passed, she would take the objects out from their hiding place, hold them in her hands, and rearrange the storyendings in her head: Truth He had drunk from it the night they all took shots at the dive bar on the corner after work. Staring at one another while tequila burned their throats and they licked salt from the topside of their own fists until the tang of lime shifted their blurry vision. When his eyes reopened his date nuzzled into his neck, whispered into his ear, and they promptly left together. The brief moment they had
shared broken. Used all semester by the girl who sat behind her, after the final exam it fell and rolled across the greenish gray industrial tile. Their hands had touched once when they passed syllabi to one another on the first day, the professor droning on about policy and procedure. She thought the two would become friends, but they never exchanged a single word. Imagined He smiled and asked for her phone number then called as soon as he got home, leaving a message on her machine—can we meet tomorrow?— green light flashing in her dark apartment. After coffee at her favorite bistro, they would visit an overgrown cemetery where he traced the engraved birthdates with his left
forefinger and she would trace the deathdates with her right. Touching palms they unknowingly allowed the departed spirits to dance in the empty space between them; the only sound, their breathing and the wind in the trees. They would both stand to retrieve the faded blue Bic and laugh loud enough to make the professor shake his head. After class, a shared visit to the campus bookstore to sell back their matching introduction to economics textbooks would net not even one-third of what had been originally spent sixteen weeks ago— how’s that for an economics lesson? Then using their gains to buy overstuffed burritos with extra rice and black beans from the food truck, they would sit on the same stone bench and watch squirrels traverse bare branches.
Then
she’d pull out the old suitcase
once belonging to her grandmother— the ends of the destination stickers loose and peeling—and gently line her moments up side by side. When they were perfectly placed, they would be slid back under her bed.
J.D. DeHart Carnivore
You can try new delicacies Combinations of fruit and leaf Substitutes and legumes Somehow, I think some people will Always need to tear flesh.
J.D. DeHart Cereal Boxes
If I had every moment I have taken Picking up spilled cereal boxes I could have written a dissertation Perhaps on the use of grain The arrangement of rubber containers The useless nature of cabinets.
Carole Waterhouse In Her Dreams
On an early fall morning
rises around her legs, when the birds are emerging from some noticeably silent, grate hidden within the Caroline wakes up still cobbled streets, the immersed in the slightly vapor pumping itself out acrid scent of the city she in perfect rhythm to the has just dreamed, its sound of your snores as crumbling walls still you lie there next to her. surrounding her, the Yes, you. You are part cries of its street vendors of this, too, though you heard clearly in the have traveled nowhere, distance, even as her dreamed nothing. head remains nuzzled It is an immense city, within her pillow. She sprawling to the point keeps her eyes closed, where its edges don’t afraid the city will quite fit into Caroline’s disappear, but at the imagination and lying same time not wanting there she can see it to lose the warmth and simultaneously from comfort of her room. several perspectives. The dreams of sleep fade First there is that into a wisp of steam that panoramic view that
shows off its neoclassic charm, its rows of ochreshaded buildings, none especially high, some capped by domes on top, noble-looking but years beyond glistening. If anything it is a city marked by age. Then there is the steep descent into the old town, accessed by a single street, paved at the beginning, cobbled at the bottom, as though marking its own descent into time. A little dirty and full of narrow and winding alleys—not the safest place after dark— the old town is still her favorite spot, with its
cafes tucked in corners, its ornate metal signs, its unexpected delights. It’s a place she has visited many times. She knows that, though she still can’t put a name to it. The first was when she was young and had been especially charmed by the old town’s surprises. Then years later there had been another visit, a disappointing one where she had lingered too long, had allowed the streets to fill with dusk and had been afraid to enter, more aware that time of their seediness. And now she has gone back, searching for that earlier version of herself, some lost hint in curved
streets with steamedover windows and hidden shadows. She realizes, now, the regret of that one missed visit has been lingering with her for years, though she can’t say for sure there even is such a place, or if it is a city that exists only in her dreams. For a moment all three visits remain simultaneously in her mind, one layered on top of the other so that she can feel not only the city, but the three ages of herself in it. She resists one final moment before opening her eyes, knowing when she does that the city will be gone. But as it’s fading away, she’s surprised there are
no regrets, only its peacefulness surrounding her. And that’s when she turns to you. “I dreamed a city last night.” You smile vaguely, even hesitantly. She’s not surprised. Your conversations have taken on a more guarded tone lately. “You weren’t there.” There’s a moment’s pause before you answer. “No, I don’t suppose I would be.” The girl who wanted to collect the world in her backpack. You described her that way once while youth hostelling together years ago. You said it between
chattering teeth on a rainy morning in a small German town somewhere along the Mosel, while you were struggling with too much to carry and waiting on a train that just didn’t want to come. She recognizes your expression now, the same hungry boy who stood on the station platform with sore feet and an aching back, the one who had eaten only half a roll for breakfast and was counting out pfenning to see if he could afford more. He wasn’t happy at that moment, and for many others afterward, but still, he continued on. Today he smiles at
her, even if the expression is only halfhearted. It’s not much, but enough to make her think that everything may work out okay.
Once
you are gone, Caroline calls the university and cancels her classes for the day. A sudden illness. Nothing serious. She’s certain she’ll feel better tomorrow. When she hangs up the phone, she begins her morning yoga stretches, a ritual that has taken the place of the time she used to reserve for her own writing. This is a fault she knows she will need to correct, but in the past few weeks yoga has
become important to her, a defining part of her life. After her warmup she begins a series of sun salutations which she does facing the French doors leading to her deck, offering herself to a still hazy sky where the birds at least have returned, probably were all along, their merry song lost in the echoed noise of her imagined city. She arches her back, arms lifted, face pointed upward, offering herself to the day, a good stretch, but the motion feels slightly empty here compared to the joy she experiences in her yoga class. That’s all right. This is just a warm-up. The real yoga is to come
later with Jessica, the new friend she’s made who already seems like more than just a companion, someone whose influence she suspects has yet to fully understand. She begins her final sun salutation, feels her body lengthening, the joy of the stretched muscles, but already her mind is beginning to wander. In their last class, her yoga instructor talked about monks in some far away place who go through this same ritual a hundred times every morning as a way of greeting the start of each new day. Everyone in the class moaned, thinking of the monks’
poor bodies, but Caroline wondered about their minds, what they concentrate on the whole time, the things they are supposed to and the things they really do. Whenever she thinks about the monks doing this, she imagines them all lined up in some high place above the winds where everything is peaceful and still. Through the distance, they look down over an immense valley where all the colors are especially intense, the greens all shades of emerald, even the browns more saturated, the yellows never washed out or colorless, more like glistening
spots of light. And as she thinks this, she suddenly startles herself, feels the rough cloth of a habit against her own skin, its coarse fabric tangled around her ankles as she begins her final movements. She takes off her yoga clothes, skipping over the relaxation section, the most important part according to her instructor, but something she feels silly doing home alone, ineffective anyway since the cat, Jeremiah, takes it as an opportunity to walk all over her, sniffing her face, stealing catsized breath’s from her mouth. Besides, she is too nervous about the
possibility of the whole day before her with Jessica to fully relax. Jessica is a woman she has met in her yoga class, a laughing vibrant sort who always comes in at the last minute, usually after everyone else is getting started. While not really friends, they always seek each other out in the class, exchange smiles, and Caroline feels as though there is the potential for some link between them, suspects Jessica feels the same. It’s been like that from the start when Caroline turned towards her that first time Jessica walked in breathless and offered her a smile. Jessica came over to
her after class, that initial smile making her think they had met somewhere before. And even after it was determined that they had not, they lingered after class, talking about inconsequential things, the approaching autumn, the instructor’s enthusiasm, the lifealtering effects of a good, peaceful workout. Caroline found herself acting more out-going than usual, more energetic, matching Jessica’s enthusiasm for everything that was said, feeling what it was like to be the bright, spontaneous kind of person she always wanted to be. But while
she herself began matching Jessica’s vibrancy, up close she saw something else, the way Jessica’s eyes looked tired behind her laugh, the lines around the smile just a little strained. And that’s when she noticed the hair, short and curly, a bright red scarf pulling it back from her face, separating it from the bangs, a flattering look for her, but one that didn’t seem quite right. A wig, maybe. Cancer suddenly came to mind and Caroline began to wonder if this tremendous positive energy for life before her had something to do with having faced the
possibility of losing it. Now, sitting back and sipping a cup of tea, she is surprised how much she is looking forward to the possibility of spending an entire day with Jessica. “Ambience. We need a place with more ambience.” That was Jessica’s laughing assessment after a new group of students joined their regular class. Up until three weeks ago, the class had been primarily a group of women. Listening in on their conversations, Caroline realized how infrequently she saw women her own age, how little she actually knew about their lives. These were women who
saw their children off to college instead of teaching them, who had encounters with their divorced husbands’ second wives, made dinner engagements on a regular basis. They lived the lives that Caroline only wrote about, and while they never directly involved her, talking around her or over her head when she inadvertently placed her mat between them, she still felt connected to them, had to keep herself from joining in on their conversations, saying what she would have said to those second wives she had heard so much about, offering her suggestions about their
children’s descriptions of college life, what they said that did and didn’t sound genuine, even feeling a mild disappointment when they talked about going to some new Middle East restaurant that had opened, since she, after all, didn’t like spicy cuisine. Then a group of workers from a local factory enrolled, taking the course as a way of keeping their insurance premiums down. They were a rowdy group, mostly big-bellied men who always showed up still sweaty from a hard day’s work. And they clearly seemed to be amused by the class. In
the balance position, the instructor would ask them to think what kind of tree they were and they would laugh. “What kind of tree am I? Right now I feel like one with more sap than bark.” “How about a coat tree.” “Or a stinging nettle tree.” “But that’s not any kind of tree at all.” They made jokes about everything, their knees creaking as they lowered themselves to their mats, their bellies getting in the way of most of the positions. Caroline assumed they would quit after the first week or two, but they all seemed determined to
stick it out, mostly because, as Caroline could tell from their not so whispered comments, they thought the instructor was hot. In the last class, while bending over in a standing position that stretched out their upper chests, Caroline heard a circle of moans behind her, an unintentional mantra that filled the room. She looked over at Jessica to see if she had heard it too, was ready to share a laugh, but saw that Jessica also was having trouble with the position, seemed to be focusing on an emptylooking spot on her chest where a breast may or may not have been.
After class though, Jessica came over, her usual laughing self. “Ambience. We need a place with more ambience. I know one we can try. A place where yoga is practiced the real way. It’s a bit of a drive, though. What do you think? Are you up for a day trip?” And Caroline said yes, while she realized that her teaching schedule meant she didn’t really have a single free day to go. She took a quick glance at the other women, hoped they noticed that for once she was the one being invited somewhere. Now, ready to meet Jessica, she has no idea
what to expect, only some vague notion that she is going some place where she will meet the monks that crossed only briefly in her imagination that morning, some quiet place above everything else where the secrets of herself will be revealed, an idea she suspects is laughable, a reason she has told no one about this journey. As she walks out her front door, though, another destination comes to mind. Imagined or not, Caroline suddenly feels an incredible longing to revisit her city, not just the place this time, but to see it as she did when she was
young, to be that girl who could walk for miles, absorb every detail with her eyes, who saw every shift in shade and color as some spectacular offering. And what if that girl could likewise imagine her. She can see her sitting in a café with a pot of steaming tea in front of her, engrossed in her own life’s story as it now exists. Caroline wonders what that girl would think, if she would find her character sympathetically sad or hopelessly lost, or strong and solid, the kind of woman she hopes she herself could be some day. She drives to the
shopping center where she and Jessica have arranged to meet, aware that better friends would pick each other up at their homes, a line she hopes they will sometime cross. She knows she is going to be disappointed, that she isn’t really going to visit the monks high in the hills, a place where she’ll be aware of silence and sound at the same time, or where secrets she has been keeping from herself will suddenly be revealed. She imagines herself describing that version of their day to Jessica, can almost hear her carefree laugh, the words following, “Well, not exactly.”
Caroline is the first to arrive in the parking lot, feels a sense of abandonment at the possibility that Jessica might not show. But five minutes past their meeting time, the same interval of lateness she always has for the yoga class, a sunny yellow Volkswagen appears, Jessica waving her arms hello, and Caroline feels something in herself lifting. This lightness of spirit—she used to feel it all the time. It was part of the girl who once walked those narrow streets, the one who right now is reading the pages of a story she still can’t quite comprehend. Jessica gets out of the
car and gives her a hug. “I’ll drive. We’ll put the roof down. It’s just too beautiful today to separate ourselves from the sky.” Actually, the morning haze has continued on and for an early autumn day it’s a little humid, but Caroline walks around the car convincing herself that the heat from the asphalt she feels through her sandals is a good thing, the smell of exhaust simply a reminder of what she’s about to escape. Today she’s determined to be a believer. The VW has a manual transmission and Jessica changes gears roughly
each time as though this is something new for her. “Just a few more miles and we’ll be away from all this strip stuff.” Jessica, she imagines, isn’t much of a shopper, a characteristic she considers to be one of her own secret vices. Caroline’s home has become cluttered with artifacts she has picked up while traveling, things she wouldn’t necessarily choose a second time around, but can’t easily dispose of. Who can throw away a piece of Paris or Rome, the town in Belgium with the forgotten name where a stop for lunch turned into a two-day sojourn into the country
walking along a canal? Jessica’s home, she’s willing to bet, is streamlined and simple and clean, all of her excess past long removed. “Do you have a husband?” Caroline asks the question without thinking, before judging its tactfulness. Jessica’s eyes remain steady on the road for longer than usual, but finally an answer comes. “There was one. Two depending on how you count them.” She laughs then and Caroline laughs, too, certain suddenly that her friendship with Jessica will always turn out right. They drive fast, the
VW taking a jerky lurch forward with each gear change, the ride finally smoothing out when they hit open road. Caroline worries about the speed, keeps hearing imaginary sirens, but Jessica seems to have no such inhibitions, is clearly enjoying the drive, her smile blending into a face full of wrinkles not at all unpleasant to look at, the lines of an active life rising up over her cheekbones and disappearing behind a set of stylish sunglasses. But something seems out of place, too. Caroline can’t figure out what it is, then realizes it’s the hair. So still. How can it be so
unmoved by the wind? If it were a wig, though, wouldn’t it fly away completely? Caroline realizes how long she’s been staring and shifts her glance, embarrassed by her own thoughts. Trying to regain the sense of oneness with her surroundings she felt in the parking lot, she rolls her head back and looks up at the sky. “Aren’t the clouds magnificent?” Jessica says nothing at first and Caroline wonders if she has heard it too, the overeagerness in Caroline’s voice, her attempt at trying to say something that is just like what Jessica would say. She
has to be aware that there is nothing the least bit spectacular about the clouds, that with the overcast sky they are barely visible, but Jessica takes her eyes off the road a moment longer than she should to look at Caroline as she nods her head. “Clouds are always beautiful in any form, aren’t they? I’ve always been an avid cloud watcher.” Caroline knows they are just in the early stage of a friendship where everything is tentative and closeness is defined by a willingness to agree with each other’s comments no matter what, but she still feels vindicated somehow, as
though she’s finally found a place where her comments actually mean something. And for a moment in the clouds she thinks she sees the traces of a skyline off in the distance. The monks. If they could build a city what would it be like? Or better yet, what if they were to come and populate hers? She imagines them in the old town, walking with their arms crossed, their robes dragging, the sound of their sandaled feet on the cobblestones echoing long after they are past. They could be there. Even monks must sometimes need things, the supplies for their bread, for instance, or a sunshine, or at least a
moment to enjoy the sunshine, or at least a parting glance at the worldly temptations they’ve so happily given up. They are out in the country on roads that Caroline finds familiar, though it’s been awhile since she has driven on them herself. Still, from the perspective of sitting in the passenger side of Jessica’s car with the wind blowing her hair back and making her eyes tear, everything looks new and fresh and exciting, the horses and cows out grazing in their pastures taking on an exotic new look, the barely standing barns and broken fence lines
remnants of a lost civilization. She feels as though she could ride like this forever, is disappointed when in what seems like a matter of minutes the car slows and they enter a town, one that’s not old enough to romanticize in anyway, the modern buildings with more store fronts that are closed than open looking simply decayed rather than nicely aged. It’s a small town, but built along a hillside that follows a river, it has two distinct sections, an upper and lower set of streets. Caroline’s breath stops a moment when she realizes it’s a smaller, shabbier version
of the city in her dreams. Jessica parks the car on a street where theirs is the only one. Caroline looks around, doesn’t see a single other person. She imagines for a moment that the city with the shimmering yellow walls and golden domes has become this, a ruined spot with her and Jessica as its sole inhabitants. Apparently noticing the expression on Caroline’s face, Jessica begins to laugh. “Oh, what you must be thinking. All this time I’ve been promising you a place with ambience and I bring you here. Don’t worry. This isn’t where we’re going. This
is just a good place to stop for lunch.” Caroline wonders if Jessica is planning all of the details of the day as a surprise for her, or if she, too, is more used to being alone. Caroline has no objections, finds it comforting to be cared for in this way, wonders if the other women in the yoga class, who argue so amiably at times, would respond differently. The restaurant is, indeed, a surprise, so tiny that had she been alone, she’s certain she never would have noticed it. Inside it is a mixture of cultures, green tables and chairs similar to ones she has seen in French country
catalogues, photographs from Tuscany on a wall opposite one lined with Ukrainian eggs. Zither music is playing. As least that’s what Caroline calls it in her mind. She has no idea, really, what a zither sounds like, but is certain, for some reason, that this must be it. A white cat sleeping on a window ledge opens its eyes for a moment as they enter, immediately closes them again. Its fur glistens pale pink, a reflection of the vintage Coca-cola sign that hangs lit in the window. The woman who takes their order looks remarkably like Jessica, though they show no signs of intimacy beyond
Jessica obviously having eaten there before. Humus and sprouts and goat cheese. Caroline has tasted all of these things before, but here, for some reason, she feels in danger of making some awful mistake. Jessica orders first and Caroline immediately requests the same, feels instantly relieved when the woman memorizing their requests nods her head in approval. She looks at Jessica, wonders what she would think of her city. Like the monks, she suddenly wants her there. “Do you have any place that is really special to you? A place you can always go to
when you can’t go anywhere else?” The question seems to take Jessica by surprise. There’s a long silence before she says anything. “A special place?” A moment later, though, she laughs. “I used to hide out in my grandparents’ root cellar all the time when I was six, but I don’t suppose that’s what you mean.” Caroline feels her face flushing, realizes how juvenile the question must have sounded. Still, she’s gone this far. She may as well continue. “Not a place, exactly. More like a state of being.” She tries to find some way of explaining. “What if you just found
out that something your whole life you only thought you had imagined turned out to really exist. Something that was exotic and exquisite and like nothing else you’d ever experienced before. If you had to leave everything for something like that, something you were convinced was better, more true, do you think you’d be able to do it?” Jessica stares at her for a long time, long enough that Caroline is afraid she is going to be asked to repeat the long, twisted, nearly incomprehensible question that she is certain she couldn’t ask
again. Then Jessica smiles, very faintly, and nods her head and Caroline thinks yes, yes, she too has experienced just such a place. Jessica leans forward across the table, her voice close to a whisper. “Yes, I suppose I could. But he’d have to be truly, truly spectacular.” Jessica laughs and for the first time Caroline doesn’t follow her lead. A relationship. An affair outside her marriage. To think this dream that has been building inside her has been reduced to something so common by the woman she’s been working so hard to impress. Caroline feels close to tears and Jessica
stops laughing, must see the disappointment in her face, reaches underneath the table and squeezes her hand. “It’s all right. I’ve had plenty of both kinds, the spectacular and the nonspectacular. Personally I’ve found that they both wear off pretty fast.” Caroline realizes that this accidental admission of hers, something that isn’t even true, has actually brought them closer together. As they walk out the door, she’s aware that it’s no longer just the two of them, that there’s a third person lingering. The lover she has created. He’s there, just behind her shoulder, a place where she can’t
quite see him yet, though she can feel his presence. What if the other version of herself met him, the freer one sitting in a café in the city sipping on a cappuccino not just dreaming of unnamed and faraway places but actually visiting them? Would she know him? Would he be the love of her life or just one of many she has met along the way? Outside the sun is bright, the earlier traces of haze having lifted. With real clouds in the sky now, the town’s dinginess is even more apparent. Walking by one of the abandoned buildings, Caroline notices a long coil
sticking out of a hole in the wooden siding, watches it twitch once, then slowly disappear. She feels her breath catch. Was it really a rat? A few minutes later when they are back in the car winding up the hill, Caroline thinks again of this town’s resemblance to her city, realizes, too, that if the town weren’t here, the land left behind would look a lot like one of her favorite hiking spots, a split in a trail where one side leads to an upper path that follows a ridge while the other, lower one, stays by a stream. A new thought occurs to Caroline. Maybe the city
of her dreams isn’t just one place, but all of the landscapes that have meant something to her over the years, places she has visited and still wants to, all converged into one. The rest of the drive with Jessica goes quickly. In a few miles they will pull into a circular drive before what looks like an old grand hotel surrounded on three sides by trees, a spacious lawn in front where there is a large, ornate fountain that looks as though it hasn’t been used in years, its cherubs clothed in yellow scales. Ambience. This isn’t at all what she expected. She thinks of her monks
up in their mountain retreat, how they would say this is exactly what they wanted to escape from. She thinks Jessica can tell she’s disappointed. “Don’t worry. You’ll feel differently once you’re inside.” They park the car and walk to the entrance. The stone pillars they pass by are pitted and marked, the outside of the building worn and neglected. The interior, though, is more modern, its small lobby decorated with green and pink tiles in a sweeping art nouveau design, its corners covered in ferns. Everything smells clean and fresh and in the
background somewhere, though she can’t see it, Caroline can hear the gentle flowing of water as though underneath the floor or behind a wall there’s a hidden stream. Jessica smiles. “More soothing than the hospital, isn’t it?” They sign in and are led down a hall by a girl whose style is defined by straightness—her posture, the simple cut of her hair, the clothes that hang so still against her thin body—all are straight, clear, simple lines, crisp and perfectly defined. Caroline whispers in Jessica’s ear. “She makes me feel like a blur.” They are led to a room
where they can change, then to another where the yoga class will be held. Caroline suddenly feels very out of place. It’s not so much that everyone in the room is beautiful as very finished or polished, dressed in a way to show themselves off to their best, their hair nicely styled, outfits matching. They seem familiar in a way. Then she realizes it. She’s in an entire roomful of younger Jessicas. The room has a huge window that looks over what must have been an expansive garden in the height of the hotel’s grandeur. Now they are just vacant plots surrounded by an
intricate grid of brick sidewalks, but she still finds the view enticing, the intertwined paths leading in circles back to the same place, the garden left permanently in one season, an autumn that goes on perpetually. The monks would find some significance in all of this, she is certain, and so might the girl she has left behind sitting in that cafĂŠ. Caroline chooses a spot close to the window and rolls her mat out onto the floor, allowing Jessica this time to follow her instead of the other way around. As they begin the workout, Caroline eases into the familiarity of the
positions she has already learned, focusing on her own breathing as she stretches her muscles. The positions in yoga are metaphors for life. She remembers her other instructor saying that and for the first time she feels it, the solidness of her mountain position, the confident balance of her tree, her toes extending downward, roots growing into her mat. They work on balance positions first, their instructor encouraging them to feel each little shift their body makes, the constant swaying and rebalancing their bodies go through to remain upright, to force
nothing, but to allow their minds to simply follow the movements, embrace them, the same way they accept the shifts and changes in their own lives. And as they work through a series of sun salutations, she feels her spirit lift, once more imagines herself as one of the monks, for the first time feels the exercise not as a series of linked steps but as one long clear fluid movement, an offering of herself to the world beyond, a sense of being firmly rooted both here and there. She looks out the window but no longer sees the vacant garden, instead imagines a long valley that could
have existed below the monks’ mountain, can actually see it stretching out before her, a blur of purple and green and yellow blending into an expanse of white clouds. It’s the view her monks see everyday and her body stretches out now to join it, her neck and her back and her limbs becoming part plain, part cloud, but most of all she can feel herself opening up, finding a space that is both her and something more. And that’s when she sees it—her city in the distance, something glistening, maybe the sun reflecting off the roof of one of the buildings. The light is coming
closer, almost blinding, until she’s there, her fingers almost touching the rooftops. She opens her eyes, not realizing until now they’ve been closed all this time. She looks over at Jessica, expects for just a moment there’s a possibility that she’s seen it, too, that the city is something they already share. But when she looks over, Jessica doesn’t return the glance, if anything seems to be intentionally looking away, her expression tired, neither arm reaching out over her head for a stretch, but instead the right one wrapping around herself as though to protect.
Caroline stops her own breathing for a second, a momentary time out and hears a voice behind her that she realizes must be one of her monks finally speaking. “You recognize her now, don’t you? That part of yourself you try to keep so carefully hidden?” She turns to ask him what he means, but of course he’s not there. Everyone lies down on their mats for the relaxation part of the workout. Caroline lies still, her feet slightly separated, and tries to concentrate on the individual parts of her body, allowing a sense of warmth to overcome
her, first the toes and then the ankles, then the calves and knees, continuing slowly on upward, an awareness of herself that comes in a giant, peaceful wave. It’s during this process that the monk starts speaking to her again, words she can feel mounting up through her chest. “So she isn’t as strong as you thought, maybe isn’t always quite so happy. Can you forgive her?” “Of course.” The words come out spontaneously. Then she stops and thinks. “But who do you mean? Me or Jessica?” The monk smiles, a pleasant expression. She imagines him with
his companions, can hear the echo of their sandaled feet again, this time thinks of them joyously walking through her city eating their bread. When moments have passed, though, and he still hasn’t answered her question, she focuses on the room instead. It’s quiet. Peaceful. She allows her mind to drift off, feels as though she’s about to fall asleep. And then she’s there. She is in her city, has entered it more fully than she ever has in her dreams, its yellow walls smelling slightly acrid, its dust clinging to her, and this time she truly feels it, that she is this
other person, the young girl sitting in the café, but all grown up. She is sitting at a table with a half drunk cup of heavily-creamed coffee in front of her along with a book that has been turned over, its story interrupted by friends who have just arrived. And she’s still there, that same girl, she can feel her, too, the younger version of this same woman, the quick laugh, the liveliness, the same energy in her steps—just a little less desire to take quite so many. She’s comfortable around these people, at home in the city and its suggestion of age, the possibility of existing
within something that started its life so much earlier than her own and will most likely continue on so much longer. And then the door opens, and she looks up. Someone has arrived who means more than any of the rest. She feels her own smile, sees it echoed by the person who just entered. Yes, she understands now, can say it with certainty. All these years she truly has been happy. The yoga instructor tells them to roll over onto their sides, then slowly sit up whenever they feel ready. Everyone looks at each other and laughs or smiles, the relaxation
like a secret they have collectively shared and Caroline wonders where their thoughts have taken the rest of them, if others, more ambitious, have created whole empires in their thoughts. But she’s only remotely interested, her focus still on herself. As she stands up, it’s as though her entire golden city lifts up with her, a city that she’s free to populate herself, with Jessica, with the friends who have been with her for years, and most of all with you.
would have all come out the same, that somehow, somewhere in time she simply would have ended up with another other version of you. When she comes to bed that night, freshly showered, perfumed even, something she realizes she could have been doing throughout the marriage, she finds you already in bed reading a book, so patient, as though you’ve been waiting for years for just this moment. “I’ve come back.” You look surprised, but not entirely. “So I Yes, we come back to was right. You have you. She understands been gone.” “Yes, I’ve now that if she had been gone.” “But now you’ve come chosen that other life, it
back.” Caroline nods her head. “Now I’ve come back.” And you think maybe you do understand. You look at her smile and it’s full of love, warmer than any you’ve seen in years. It’s an expression that looks vaguely familiar, one you may have seen before, though you can’t say for sure. Then again, it’s a smile that may have existed only in your dreams.
Ralph Monday Moon Malady
The moon sifts through the clouds tonight, a piece of solder dripped from a welder’s torch. You took me through these dark hemlocks that run like autumn blood the first time we met. You found me straddling the bridge rail, the river beneath running towards Dante’s damnations. you don't have to you said it’s the moon. many have it when luna casts shadows on snow Frozen white like a Goodwill wedding dress trailed behind. Our words a mutual symbiosis linking us to the trees, the milkweed land, the moon's full glow a surreal button like a white knuckle leading us through the ceremony what happened to you I said and trailed fingertips along the thin beet root line stitched from ear to chin
Later in the room he took me to when I lay naked in a stranger's covers the moon drawing my body's juices like a fjord’s tides, when he entered me like a sacrifice impaled, I knew the blindness of the hibernating animal in its burrow. my mother you told me when I refused her pleas of fire's damnation she held my face to the burner We are all marked in some way, I now by this body come from snow and trees. It is not your face I know. These unwashed moments are the moon made of lye soap. The pot that rendered it black and bubbling, bridge to your arched movements, face that is not my own.
Dan Leach Other Towns
Later,
during college, when Sam would talk to boys from other towns, he would discover that there were places in the world with more than two kinds of baseball. He would hear about baseball organized by clubs and baseball organized by churches, baseball played in the fall and baseball played in the spring, baseball coached by ex-pros and baseball without any coaches at all. He would hear about this and think about South Pines Little League and he would not know whether to feel sad or grateful. Then he would remember the last game of baseball he ever played. It was summer. He was twelve. He wore number 7 on the Mariners and they were up 3-2 against the Rangers who were down to their last out. And like every other twelve year old boy on the field, he knew that by this time
next year he would be one of two places, but that neither one would be South Pines. He was one out away from completing his second year as a Major and, since there was no age bracket above the Majors, there was nothing for him or any other boy to do except to tryout for the team at the local high-school, the Fort Johnson Titans. After Majors, the kids who came through South Pines either played for Coach Mac’s Titans or did not play at all. Boys from other towns would hear this and think surely, in a town like that, there must have been something else. Only there wasn’t. This was sad only insofar as a mathematical formula can be sad. Coach Mac’s roster had fifteen spots. An optimist might reserve three of them for freshmen, but Coach Mac was not an optimist. Coach Mac
reserved spots for good gloves, quick bats, and fastballs above eighty-five miles per hour. He was notorious for cutting a quarter of the kids trying out within the first hour of the first practice. When asked how he could make a judgment so quickly, he said, “I know the keepers.” Sam, in this regard, was not a keeper. The kids who did not survive Coach Mac’s cuts found other things to do. Some elected to play football for Coach Chandler, who notoriously accepted anybody willing to show up for three out of five practices a week. Kenny Cox, who led South Pines in RBIs for three consecutive seasons and played a respectable right field, was developed into an All-Conference tight-end and eventually walked on at Florida State. Others, like Brian Hughes who terrorized batters by learning to throw a slider a full year before anybody else, found moderate
success as a middle-weight wrestler. Many gave up on sports altogether, subscribing to the theory that, in highschool, games involving throwing balls and scoring points were altogether less important than grades or girls or part-time jobs. To ask any of them about South Pines, though, was to realize that, for most, it was the last time in their life when duty existed alongside desire and when both feelings were given a field, quite literally, to be exercised on. Sam meant to keep that legacy pure and therefore had decided, earlier in the season actually, to call it quits after the South Pines season was over. Coach Mac could have his keepers. Better, Sam thought, to go out on my own terms. But Sam wasn’t thinking about any of that as Julius “Sticks” Simmons whipped back his long left arm one last time and released what Sam somehow knew would the last pitch
he ever played through. Sam was not even looking where he should have been looking—at the late-breaking curve already in motion towards Frank Owens—but instead had let his eyes drift to where the day’s last light was filtering through the tops of the trees on the hill. The light, he thought, was unlike any light he had seen. It made the world seem at once soft and amber and hazy, but also crisp and blue and cold. Most of all, the light seemed to slow everything down. The players’ younger siblings sliding down the hill on trashcan lids and flattened cardboard boxes, the loose line of fans waiting outside of the concession stand for boiled peanuts or dollar chili-dogs or fountain sodas served over chipped ice, the proud parents huddling together on the bleachers waiting patiently for their child’s moment, the players out on the field bouncing on the balls of their feet, pounding their tattered and dusty
gloves, and him, at shortstop, realizing that he would never again be here— all of it seemed motionless beneath that light. It reminded him (and he did not know why) of the tiny white towns contained inside of snow globes, everything peaceful and still. Everything frozen in time. The shrill ping of Frank’s aluminum bat jolted Sam out of his reverie as it connected with the ball and sent it soaring upwards—a towering pop fly. He had, for some reason, imagined it ending on a grounder, a well-hit pill that skipped smoothly across the infield before rising up on a nice clean hop. That was not how it ended. It did not matter that Sam did not watch the ball come off the bat. While Thomas Walpole, who played a graceless third base, was still back sitting back on his heels and searching the sky, Sam’s eyes easily picked the ascending white orb out of the air and
shuffled to the spot where he knew, in several seconds, it would disappear into his glove with a muffled pop and put an end to his career in baseball. After eight years, it was instinct. But like everything else that was wrapped in that strange light, the fly seemed to take forever in its flight. He watched it ascending higher and higher towards the grey-blue cirrus that lined the bottom of the sky. He watched it just like Coach Greene had taught him to all those years ago. That first day, Coach Greene had shown up with a bucket of balls and a couple of Eastons tucked under his arm. Nobody spoke as he introduced himself and made all the players go around the circle and share their names and favorite professional players. But when he snatched a ball out of the bucket, grabbed one of the Eastons, and asked all the players to sprint out to the position they wanted to play, a chorus of giddy screams
erupted. Sam ran straight to right field, which resembled a barren wasteland compared to pitcher, first base, and shortstop, where kids fought to be first in line. By virtue of being the one kid in sixteen who didn’t stop running when dirt turned into grass, he had earned a starting position in right field. After being severely rebuked for picking dandelions during the second inning of the first game, he maintained the still and stoic posture of Greek statue, even if only two balls reached him all season. The first was a grounder that had slipped past Bobby Nichols at second base who had picked an inopportune time to chew on the leather lace in the webbing of his glove. Sam had scooped the ball out of the uncut grass with his glove and slung it so hard and fast that it flew over his cut-off man and clear into the chain-link fence on the third-base line. The second was a hammered line
drive that took one wild bounce off the grass and somehow landed in Sam’s glove, giving him enough time to drop the ball, pick it back up, complete a full wind up inspired by his favorite major league pitcher, and hit the second baseman before the generously proportioned batter had even touched first base. Sam had forgotten both of these accomplishments though. In time, they were eclipsed by other memories. Like the time at the concession stand when he overheard a teammate order a Suicide and then watched in awe as the concession worker moved one cup of ice under seven different soda fountains, resulting in a frosty purple-green liquid fizzing with mystery. Or the time that a sudden downpour led to a delay during which an assistant coach taught him not only how to properly crack a sunflower seed using his molar, but also how to accumulate the
salty hulls in one cheek while simultaneously chewing the inner seeds in the other. Or the day he got his first uniform. He was Yankee that year. The ball was still traveling upwards and showed no signs of slowing. “I got it, I got it,” Thomas Walpole barked as he lumbered towards Sam. “No,” Sam said, never taking his eyes off the ball, but using his right hand to wave off Walpole the way you swat a fly that buzzed too close to your food. “It’s me.” The ball had yet to reach its crescendo and inexplicably seemed to be picking up speed as it hurtled towards the sky. “I got it,” Walpole insisted and plodded to the spot where he thought the ball would land. He was a good ten feet behind Sam and at least five feet to the left. Walpole had a tendency to misjudge pop flies, more often than not, moving out too deep and then, at
the last moment, charging in and having to slide or dive to make the catch. There were those that speculated that the miscalculations were not accidental—a side effect of too much SportsCenter and not enough practice. “No you don’t,” Sam whispered and did not move from his spot. By some strange twist of fate, Walpole and Sam had played on the same team every year since Coach’s Pitch. Together, they had experienced the uncompromising introduction that Coach’s Pitch offers into the world of Have and Have-Not’s. Unlike the universal awkwardness of Tee Ball, the wide range of talent was suddenly and painfully apparent— some had it, some didn’t. He remembered those who did like Bryce Hamilton who, according to rumor, was being sued by the homeowners who lived in the neighborhood behind the South Pines fields on account of
his homeruns going so far over the fence that they supposedly smashed windows and dented cars. But he also remembered those who did not, like Dean Gilbert who had to be pitched to underhanded and positioned in right field only when Edgar Castillo, the fastest player in the league, was playing in center and could cover him. Nobody had to cover Sam when he played right field, though, and it gradually became more frequent for Coach Frazier to try him out at second base during the late innings of landslide games. “A natural athlete,” he had heard Coach tell his parents one evening after a game and, in an effort to validate this praise, he had bought a pitch-back to drill on during the hours after school and before practice. That was the year he turned his first double-play, a 4-6-3 in which he flipped the ball to Doug Hoffman and watched in awe as he jumped over a sliding runner and fired the
ball to first. That was also the year he learned about dead-legs and cherrybombs and split-poles and wall-ball, during those precious post-game windows of dusk when players from all teams came together to get high on Pixie Sticks and Pepsi and roamed the grounds in ragged clusters talking about everything except baseball until their parents dragged them home. At the end of the season, when the parents and players met at a local pizza parlor, he was awarded a plastic golden trophy with the inscription Most Improved. To him, that meant something. Walpole, along with Dean Gilbert and a girl that had been allowed on the team, received awards like Best Effort and Team Player and Most Heart. Maybe these awards meant something to them too, he thought. The ball had seemingly reached the peak of its arch and was beginning its descent.
“It’s Sam’s!” Julius yelled, coming off the mound and willing Walpole away by frantically waving his hands. But Walpole did not take notice of this anymore than he did Sam’s earlier warnings and continued mumbling, while backpedaling towards the fringe of the infield, “I got it, I got it, I got it.” When Walpole ran, he looked, as one of the crasser parents had observed, like a drunk whose lost his legs. After Coach’s Pitch, kids like Walpole were harder to hide, since a good hitter could place the ball anywhere on the field. Conversely, kids like Sam discovered that the Minors age bracket offered new opportunities for development. Having been impressed with his progress the previous year, Coach Frazier drafted Sam again and, during the first week of practice, expressed his desire to see Sam take over as a middle infielder. At the beginning of
summer, it was not uncommon for Sam to split time at second base with another player, but, by the midseason, Sam had earned tenure and was regarded as one of the best defensive players in the league. His batting was not far behind. Under the guidance of a former catcher for the Royals farm team who happened to know Coach Frazier from church, he learned how to hit and finished the season with a .432 batting average, 31 RBIs, and 12 doubles. Minor League also allowed Sam to continue his cultural education, serving as a backdrop of sorts to certain realities about race and sex that were too gritty to be explored in the classroom. At school, he learned about the Civil Rights movement and existing racial tensions. At South Pines, he heard an umpire use the ‘n’ word in reference to Nate Graves, the team’s black center-fielder, and then listened as Nate, while sharing his
Pine-Tar in the dug-out, explained why it offended some African Americans but not him. At school, he learned about reproductive organs and what to expect in the impending years of puberty. At South Pines, he heard vulgar stories and outlandish jokes that granted a color to all the black-and-white facts he had learned in school. Imposing words that stood for ideas that loomed like black clouds on the horizon— words like weed or immigrant or homosexual or suicide-were never defined at the dinner table or in the classroom. These ideas were confronted, grappled with, and mastered in a dugout or a baseball diamond. By the end of Minors, he had a good grasp on the foundations of baseball and an even better one on the foundations of the human heart. The ball was falling quicker. It had taken so long to come down that even Sutton “Doughboy” Jackson, the catcher, had trotted out to assist
with the final out. “Sam’s ball!” Sutton shouted in his raspy tenor. “Sam’s ball!” Julius echoed, while Walpole’s refrain of “I got it, I got it, I got” continued unchecked from his place in the outfield. Sam felt a strong breeze and automatically took one step back. He bent his knees slightly and held up his glove. He waited for the end. Majors was different. It was for the true believers. The kids who played through Minors to appease their parents or for lack of a better way to spend their summer had more or less petered out. A few slackers lingered in the league, but for the most part what remained was a core group of kids who loved the game and played it accordingly. Things changed. Games went from six innings to nine innings. The bats got bigger; the base paths, longer. Pitchers threw fast balls that got up into the sixties and seventies
and left dark purple bruises if you got pegged. “Junk” like sliders and curveballs and change-ups became normal. Kids got quicker and stole more bases, but catchers got stronger and threw more kids out. The game became more cerebral. Coaches hired statisticians and created their line-ups based on information rather than pure instinct. Kids learned the intricacies of their positions and were required to memorize a system of signals such as touching the nose to signify bunt or brushing the forearm to call for a steal. As the level of play increased, so did the bond between players. Sam was able to navigate the turbulent waters of middle-school because the friends he had made at South Pines. A pitcher from a rival team, who once threw high and inside on Sam and nearly incited a brawl, was, in Algebra, a supportive friend and brilliant tutor. A former teammate who you were only
moderately close with on the field was a familiar face to speak with in the hallway or eat meals with in the cafeteria. For his first school dance, Sam and half his infield rented a limo and picked up girls who had come up through South Pines softball league. By Majors, South Pine felt like a family. Then the ball was right there. Like the hundreds of fly balls Sam had so easily snatched out of the air, the ball was right in front of him. He had positioned himself perfectly beneath it. His glove was open and waiting. There was only the matter of squeezing the ball as it dropped into the outstretched leather. Which is why a gasp rang out on both sets of bleachers, when, just as the ball seemed poised to land in his glove, just as the final out was at hand, Sam lowered his hands and stepped back, watching, along with everyone else, as the ball hit the dirt with a definitive
thud. Sam did not look at the runner, whom, by that time, had safely reached first. Nor did he look at his teammates whose faces registered shock and disbelief. Instead, he raised his eyes to the hill where, just moments earlier, that light had spilled across South Pines and suspended all the unseen magic of baseball and dusk and summer. The trees seemed darker now and the blue-amber haze had faded considerably. But the light held out as the next batter smashed a double into left-field, the runner on first scoring and tying the game. And it continued until, after two extra innings, the right-fielder for Sam’s team, a shy pockmarked kid from Boston who had come in halfway through the season and batted deadlast in the order, hit his first and only home-run, ending the game, the season, and Sam’s career in baseball. By the time they had shook hands
and packed up their stuff, it was dark outside. Stars like spilled sugar had spread out across the sky. After the game his parents asked him what happened. They seemed to think he would be disappointed that he made an error. He simply shrugged and said, “Walpole was calling for it. I thought he had it.” He did not tell them (or, more likely, could not tell them, even if he had tried) that the real reason for letting it drop was to preserve, if only for a while, one of the most vital parts of his life—a game that, when you got right down to it, was not really a game at all, but more like a poem or a story or a painting. But his parents would not have understood this. Like all good parents, his maintained an optimistic view of their son and not only assumed that Sam would try out for The Titan’s next spring, but felt confident that he would make the team. He would, to them, forever be a
“natural athlete.” Driving home that night, they talked about next season. He loved his parents but, in this sense, they too were from other towns.
Jed Myers Farmed Out Who was it the old man was talking about when he raised his head from the deliriumsweat-soaked pillow and spat She was always a bitch—his mother? his wife? There he lay, thrashing in that cage of his hospice bed, in that place of business where they made a living keeping the near-dead from trashing their bedrooms at home, one or two souls to a room. As damaged as ever I’d see him, pressure-ulcered, infected and steroid-plumped, hole in his head filled with the tumor making its comeback, he knew who he was talking to— his first-born kid—but hadn’t noticed my mother off to the side, ready to offer him sips of his Diet Coke. A few days later he died. Who was it
he’d meant was a bitch? That wasn’t a word he’d used much. He’d worked hard and lost touch with the loved ones for whom he provided. At the end, broken-headed, after he’d earned his last sum, he was farmed out to that quiet stable, to mumble and fuss like the child I guess he still was, having not done enough, while he was able, to win the goddess’s smile, to ever be held in the sure arms of love, those arms in which, however lost he’d become, he’d know where he was—home, where belonging can’t be undone. No, Mom couldn’t hold him like that, not at the last, even there in that terminal cell while there still was a chance. She was lost too. No one’s a bitch. But I knew what he meant. So I stroked his poor head with a helpless palm, and told him he’d done it all, all he ever could do.
Contributors Janet Dale Janet Dale has been transplanted in Georgia for the last four years: first in Milledgeville (where she completed her MFA in Creative Writing) and now in Statesboro (where she teaches First Year Writing at Georgia Southern University). Her prose has appeared inGravel, GERM Magazine, Foundling Review, and others. J.D. DeHart JD DeHart is an English teacher and writer. His work has appeared in Eye On Life Magazine, The Commonline Journal, Steel Toe Review, and Garden Gnome Publications, among other publications. Visit his blog. Sharonlee Goodhand Writer Poet Artist Photographer Gypsy Adventurer Maiden Mother Crone Matriarch... Dan Leach Dan Leach earned his BA in English from Clemson University in 2008. Since then, he has taught English at various high-schools across South Carolina. He currently works at a high-school on James Island, South Carolina. On weekends and summers, he writes short-fiction that explores connections
between faith, masculinity, and the South. His work has been published in Deep South Magazine and drafthorse literary journal. Ralph Monday Ralph Monday is an Associate Professor of English at Roane State Community College in Harriman, TN., where he teaches composition, literature, and creative writing courses. In fall 2013 he had poems published in The New Plains Review, New Liberties Review, Fiction Week Literary Review, and was represented as the featured poet with 12 poems in the December issue of Poetry Repairs. In winter 2014 he had poems published in Dead Snakes. Summer 2014 will see a poem in "Contemporary Poetry: An Anthology of Best Present Day Poems." His work has appeared in publications such as The Phoenix, Bitter Creek Review, Impressions, Kookamonga Square, Deep Waters, Jacket Magazine, The New Plains Review, New Liberties Review, Dead Snakes and Poetry Repairs. Jed Myers Jed Myers is a Philadelphian living in Seattle. Two of his poetry collections, "The Nameless" (Finishing Line Press) and "Watching the Perseids" (winner of the 2013Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award), are soon to be released. He won the 2012 Mary C. Mohr Editors’ Award offered by Southern Indiana Review, and received the 2013 Literal Latte Poetry Award. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Nimrod International Journal, Crab Orchard Review, Barely South Review, Atlanta Review, Grey Sparrow Journal, Crab Creek Review, and elsewhere.
David Rawding David Rawding has a BA in English from The University of New Hampshire and an MFA in Fiction from Southern New Hampshire University where he teaches English as an adjunct professor. David's Children's Book, "Lucas the Traveling Crab" won the New Hampshire Literary Awards' Reader's Choice Award for Children's Literature. David's short fiction has been published in Black Heart Magazine, Barnstorm Literary Journal, The Write Room Literary Magazine, Steel Toe Review, Extract(s) Daily Dose of Lit, Black Lantern Publishing Magazine, and Forty Ounce Bachelors. In addition to his professor work, David works as a fly-fishing guide in Alaska. Keep up with David on his website. Marc Tretin Marc's writing has been published in The Massachusetts Review, The New York Quarterly, The Painted Bride, and Paperstream, and he was the second runner-up for the Solsticeliterary magazine poetry prize in 2013. Conferences he has attended include 92nd Street Y, Colrain, and the West Chester Poetry Conference. He has studied with David Yezzi, Molly Peacock, Rachel Zucker, William Packard, and Emily Fragos. Carole Waterhouse A creative writing professor at California University of Pennsylvania, Carole Waterhouse has an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Pittsburgh and a PhD in 20th Century Literature from Ohio University. Her publications include fiction in The Massachusetts Review, The Artful Dodge, The Ball State University Forum, Ceilidh, Eureka Literary Magazine, Crossconnect, Spout,
Parting Gifts, Half Tones to Jubilee, Tucumcari Literary Review, Turnrow, The Styles, Potpourri, The Armchair Aesthete, The Baybury Review, Arnazella, The Pointed Circle, Rockhurst Review, Oracle, Seems, Minnetonka Review andThe Griffin. Book-length publications include three novels, "Without Wings," "The Tapestry Baby," and "Winsome’s Delight," as well as a short story collection, "The Paradise Ranch."
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