Crack the Spine - Issue 140

Crack the Spine

Issue 140

Literary magazine

Issue 140 February 25, 2015 Edited by Kerri Farrell Foley Collection copyright 2015 by Crack the Spine

Cover Art: “Two Cups” by Lisa Jay Lisa Jay is an artist and writer living in Houston Texas. She graduated from Stephen’s College with a BFA in Fine Art, and spent a semester studying at Oxford University before entering the Master’s program in Art History at University of Missouri, which she didn’t finish. She was then uniquely qualified for her long career as a cocktail waitress. During this time she developed several dubiously useful skills: private pilot, black belt in Kung Fu, world traveler, mother, and collector of small and obscure object so no real value. She hopes to someday learn to laugh without ruining her makeup, and actually make money for her art, a novel and crazy concept.

CONTENTS Melissa Ostrom

Birth Order Rites

Michael Salcman Tongue Tied

Stuart Friebert s

Rogue Wave

Paige Simkins Opium

Mike Scofield

Drones Over America

Kevin Casey Cutting Grass

Kevin Brown Stickman

Melissa Ostrom Birth Order Rites

The middle child plays the oldest moves to “Venus.” Eventually she will child’s games, or the middle child plays alone.

What about the youngest?

He’s sucking on the handle of a wooden spoon. He’s sleeping in the highchair. He’s crawling. He’s walking.

He’s finally interesting. But now he plays superheroes, wears Underoos and runs around the neighborhood with David. He pees with Richie in the backyard. He tries to kill the trespasser, Damon, by lining the driveway with nails to bust the asshole’s bicycle tires and topple him to a piercing death. He hides under his bed to avoid Dad who’s shouting about the goddamn nails in the station wagon’s tires. The youngest is not a contender.

So the oldest gets to write the rules.

Rule one: she leads. In their basement, Middle’s sister choreographs the

manage their band, the next Bananarama, the future Bangles. But presently, the sisters practice with the mixed tape in the recorder. They wear legwarmers and sweatbands. They dance, stop and rewind, dance, stop and rewind. The oldest takes charge of the rewinding, each time precisely returning the tape to the song’s beginning.

Sometimes the sisters just grab hold of the fat pole that grows out of the dusty cement and race around it until they’re too dizzy to stand, until they stop laughing, until the metal begins to burn their right hands. Around and around and around, no one should win.

There shouldn’t be a leader. There is.

Middle does not play the part of Barbie, but getting more than one role (Ken, Skipper, the knockoffs and a baby known as Baby) compensates. If Nicole

from two houses down or Amy or Beth from across the street joins them, the sisters act their age, hide the secret of the Barbies and play Charlie’s Angels instead. Middle becomes neither darkly glamorous Kelly nor blond and beautiful Kris. She is Sabrina, the notas-pretty but smart one.

Middle spends her growing fetching, waiting, following, listening, obeying, juggling and chorusing. She can be a boy when necessary. She learns to laugh like a villain. She sits when she is told to sit, completes her assignment, watches her sister slash red through her words then tries to do the assignment better a second time.

The oldest—quick and pretty, outgoing and masterful—is worth following. Middle loves her sister. This love, worshipful, alters her until, as much as organs and bones, conciliation makes up Middle. She is easily contented. She can be ugly, get vanquished, go to jail and be rescued.

She loses and dies many times. She

serves every story’s conflict and can undermine, subvert. If there is to be evil, she must invent ways to show it.

She can do helpless and pitiful, too. She will never be the goddess of beauty and love. However, she is another planet, red with blood or iron dust. She is war, imminently disarmed but nakedly fearless.

Michael Salcman Tongue Tied

That first student surgery makes my hand tremble forty years on— how facile I was, how thoughtless— impressing my weight on a helpless anonymous orator tied to me like a calf tied to its mother across a bridge of steel.

Innocent then the small mouth opened to me a not-so-brave surgeon, scissors aiming fitfully at the frenulum I cut to free the tongue in its pink dungeon.

After a cry the child stretches to speak; before the wail grows louder, I sponge away a flowering drop at the base of the reddening tongue.

Stuart Friebert Rogue Wave An Essay 1

Ellie Klarner was already at dockside in Quebec, when I stepped off the shuttle from the Hotel Frontenac, where my gramma insisted on putting me up the night before departure. Only after Gramma died did I learn she’d been housed there for a few days by a group called Canadian Relief for Refugees, which worked to ease the way across the Atlantic for souls fortunate enough to escape the German juggernaut. She’d had to cash several war bonds to foot my bill.

Ellie and I’d managed to pass the intensive summer German language course at our college, the last requirement before our study-abroad fellowship could take effect, and we could join a growing contingent of the first exchange students after the war to enroll in various institutions in the land of our recent mortal enemy.

The first thing we did was just stand there and stare at the biggest boat we’d even seen. “Got to get a picture of her,” Ellie said, “which just might stop Hank from going on and on about his sweet little bass boat.” When I made a pass at her the last day of classes, I quickly learned she was engaged to Hank Svenson, who was a fishing and hunting guide in northern Minnesota.

“Stand aside or Hank’ll throw a jealous fit!” Ellie said so loudly several other passengers behind us also complied. I stepped back and counted decks and portholes while she snapped away. Some crew waved from what I thought might be the bridge. Grinning, one of them hollered something in

what I took to be Dutch, till his mates pulled him back and they all disappeared.

Someone from customs came along with chalk in hand, marked a big X on our trunks and pointed to a gangplank being lowered mid-ship, where other passengers were converging. He said not to expect any help, because the Volendam was only a one-class student ship now, having been converted right after the war. We got the idea, tipped our trunks on end and dragged them by the handle along the pier, sparks shooting up from their metal edges.

The steep angle up the gangplank cramped Ellie’s legs, so we rested a moment, taking one last look down the long deck front to back, while others pushed past. Finally, spitting in our hands, we muscled our trunks along a series of stuffy hallways, down two flights of stairs, and around a tight corner into a general section of cabins that seemed to match the numbers we’d been given. However, we kept turning the wrong way till a steward redirected us and several others, who’d been following us trustingly.

The gangway seemed to grow narrower the deeper we descended into the ship. Odd odors started hitting us. We were gulping, running out of air.

“God,” Ellie said, mopping her brow with her sleeve, “I sure hope there’s a window, somewhere. Correction, make that porthole!” We were getting better at maneuvering our trunks past other trunks, and finally found ourselves in the section whose number matched her ticket’s. “That’s got to be my cabin, or else!” Ellie plopped down in front of the door to suck up some energy. “I’ll look for you at lunch. Let’s try to sit at the same table, if that’s the way it works,” she said when she caught her breath. “And thanks tons for all the help. Keep that up and Hank’ll draft you to be best man, assuming the big lug ever stops gunning his boat around Birch Lake and

makes a down-payment on the ring I want.” The door to the cabin suddenly shot open, and a woman having a good cry came out. Inside, quite a young girl was bouncing up and down on a bunk.

“Oh, I’m just the mother, is all,” the woman said to Ellie. “Can I possibly trouble you to look after Astrid now and then till her father meets her in Rotterdam?” Ellie nodded obligingly, while Astrid gave her mother an exasperated look. I started down the gangway to search for my own cabin, another deck below.

The boat was filling up. The whistle pounded my ears, and I felt a great shudder right up through my feet. Probably the engines turning over, or whatever they did. “I think we’re headed for the same cabin,” a husky voice sounded behind me. I was out of breath again, sweating away, and looked around. “Here, use this to wipe off. I forgot to wave goodbye with it, I guess,” said a man in a priest’s collar. His hair, chopped short in the current ‘flat-top’ fashion, was pale white, but he sported a bristling, red mustache. Straddling our trunks, we were almost nose to nose in the narrow hallway, so I noticed right away his eyes were pink. And just two front teeth: gold, with a simian gap between. He easily read my mind and said, “I’m a Dutch priest, the only one so far as I know who was a former prize-fighter. And I’m a classic albino, so weak eyes are a given. ‘If you can’t see them, I guess you can’t hit them,’ my former manager finally said, and I knew the game was up. By the way, can you check my cabin number?” With that he handed me his ticket.

“Glory be,” I said, “we’re stuck with each other. Your number’s the same as mine, and we should just about be at our door.” Some people squeezing by us cleared the aisle and there our cabin was. We helped each other in with our trunks, plopping down side by side on the lower bunk.

“Now what about you?” he said after rolling a cigarette and offering me one, too.

I passed on the smoke, but was surprised by a sudden feeling, sitting there so close to him: something in me wanted him to know I was Jewish right away. So I just came out with it, and added a few words about the fellowship and all. I wanted no surprises. Let them know you’re Jewish first chance you get, gramma always preached.

“Easy, son, easy,” he said. “I’m not proselytizing. Actually, truth to tell, I’m in something of a theological pickle myself. Too bad I can’t use you as my confessor! Let me just get my predicament out of the way, too. I’ve fallen in love with a distant cousin, so it’s something of a double whammy, you might say. Aside from the other issue, having children would be risky, if you know your biology. Well, I spent part of my assignment in Canada with her priest, and the rest drying her tears, while holding back mine. But we should make an effort to talk about more worldly affairs, now that we’ve cleared our little personal decks.” He patted me on the knee and stood up, feigning a few jabs at me, trying to smile. By the way, son, I spent some of my last days in silent retreat, and I can recommend it for most anything troubling your soul.”

I liked the way he said ‘son,’ though I’d flash an angry look if anyone else tried it. But I was baffled by his confession. Why would a priest say those things to a complete stranger? I knew about the cliché of spilling secrets to perfect strangers more easily but this seemed more complicated. I decided to pack it away for now and pretend all was normal.

“By all means, Father,” I went on, “I’m eager to have any thoughts, especially yours now – what Europe’s like these days, now that the war’s

over, for instance.” I liked saying ‘Father’ to him, and decided I’d try to hang on to any friendship he might offer.

“Well, we have ten days at sea to tell you all I know,” he laughed. “One more thing, I need to warn you I have to get up several times a night. I’ll make every effort to be quiet, but these are small quarters, so….” I must have given him an odd look, so he said, “Sorry, I see you have enough on your mind to deal with. I’ve been going off at the mouth for too long now. You should see my congregation roll their eyes if my sermons go on too long.”

I waved him off, “Maybe you should bunk below, Father, considering.” I threw my duffel bag up top.

“Fine, thanks. Now if you’ll excuse me,” he said, “I’ll skip lunch and see about some necessities. I’ve been eating much too heartily, all that marvelous Quebec cuisine. But I was up so many nights mulling over my devilish situation that I need to get in any winks I can.” With that he stripped off his socks and began washing them in the tiny basin. “So, my son, see you by and by. Perhaps you know, the head is down the hall and the shower-bath right next door.” I wanted to thank him in Dutch but didn’t know any. I knew enough not to, in German.

I settled on, “So long, Father.” He shook off my offer to steal him some lunch on the way back from the dining room.

“Can you believe this menu?” Ellie patted the seat next to her and I sat down. A blurred photo of the Volendam introduced the fare: sardines or liver sausage; followed by braised ox tongue and onions; apple salad with celery; and plum pudding with rum sauce for dessert. Our waiter pointed to his name on a badge, poured some strong Dutch tea and the table started

shaking: we were definitely underway! I started telling Ellie about my encounter with the priest.

“Sounds like my kind of guy,” she said. “Take me to him!”

2

Soon we were doing most everything together. Father Feite, as we decided to call him, offered a toast to the formation of our trio. “Here’s to Ellie, our first, not to mention left-handed, violinist! And you,” he turned to me, “our….

Oh, I forget what you said you play, my son.”

“Well, Father, I have recently taken up apricot brandy. I usually don’t start playing it till midnight, in the little bar on the second deck that stays open till three. But I don’t deserve to be head of the brandy section yet.”

“Good, good,” he said, “every trio needs a brandy player. All those 14 th century church compositions called for brandy solos, I’m certain! And that leaves me. Let me think. Well, I used to fool with the xylophone. I even saved the sticks. My housekeeper was going to start a fire with them one cold morning, imagine! Good thing she confessed. Anyway, we must give our first public concert in the meeting room of my church in Kierkrade, agreed?”

Father Feite said. “But perhaps we ought to practice a little more first.” With that he had me lead them to the little bar.

The ship – no dolphin – bellied along at 13 knots, while we set aside three hours daily for more serious enterprises. Father Feite worked on an application for a transfer to a small parish outside Quebec, so he and his cousin Monika would have a better chance, as he put it, to make the wisest decision after more time together. Ellie dreamed up lists of composers and musicians to invite to the annual contemporary music festival she hoped

Darmstadt would eventually welcome, while I pored over the Pedagogical Institute of Jugenheim’s catalogue, studying course descriptions for the fall semester. I’d been assured that my college back home would accredit most any course, making allowances for obvious differences between the curriculums. But I wanted to keep track, toward possible graduate work later; not lose too much ground by enrolling in subjects no one stateside could possibly recognize.

The rest of our tranquil days were devoted to junk reading from the ship’s woeful library, taking whatever sun came along on splintered, creaky deckchairs; and plying our ping-pong skills – we hit so many balls overboard the deck steward said we’d be assigned kitchen duty unless we improved.

3 On our last day before sighting the coast of France I strolled up to the chain across the bow, which was as far forward as passengers were allowed to explore. The ship was slicing along. I lost myself in the curls of the waves, when a sudden lurch caught me by surprise and sent me wind-milling, lofting my beret overboard. I’d bought it in Quebec, hoping to add to my disguise as a European of some sort. I was starting back for the afternoon tea social on the back deck when I looked up into the huge swell of a monster wave. Just as it crashed over the bow it pitched the ship so violently that I fell to my knees and skidded behind a lifeboat.

Soon afterward I heard screams. When I finally made it back to the area where tea was normally served, I saw dozens of people strewn all over the deck, chairs upended, books and bags scattered, nothing much standing. Ellie and Father Feite were nowhere in sight. Since we’d agreed to meet by the

large tea cauldron, I grew worried. A woman was waving frantically in my direction. I ran toward her and recognized her from the table next to ours in the dining room. She was hunched over on the deck, holding her elbow, her legs akimbo.

“I see it all happen,” she cried.

“What, what, oh my God what happened?” I crouched down beside her.

She’d really banged her knee, too, I could plainly see.

“You know they carry this tea kettle up those stairs, the stewards,” she pointed to the stairwell behind her. “Every day, sharp, 4 p.m. I wait for my nice cup of tea up here and look down, and there are many people following them up the steps. Oh, I say, I am so glad I am up here. There is no room down there for so many people on the steps. Then it happen,” she said and put her hands to her eyes. A terrible image began forming in my mind’s eye.

“All suddenly, something push us way over. Water pour from all over everywhere. The men carry the kettle fall backwards. People all hollering now, all under boiling hot water from the tea now. So awful, so awful. Then I fall, I fall down so hard.”

“But where were the priest and my friend? Did you see them at all on the steps down there?”

“Oh, I see them for sure. He such a nice man. I like a priest. They right behind the kettle, first to have tea in line, I think.” Someone like a medic came over to us, so I left her, sobbing, to his care. I made my way back toward the library area and cut through a lounge trying to get below deck on the other side. Ellie and Father Feite are down there. Maybe they need my help, I kept thinking, when I saw Astrid on a couch, shaking.

“Astrid, Astrid,” I yelled, “are you all right?”

“I’m scared, I’m so scared,” she cried, “are we going to drown?”

“No, no, I don’t think so. Feel how the ship’s going along okay now? Just stay here a little while longer. I have to try to find Ellie.” She nodded and tried to smile.

All the passageways were flooded with people, most in a daze. Some were comforting others, some just holding on to railings or the wall, waiting for normal sounds and pressures to return. I squeezed past and down toward where I recalled the infirmary was. A deckhand motioned me along.

Ellie was pacing up and down outside when I reached the infirmary. We hugged and cried before exchanging a word. “Father’s suffered terrible burns, I’m afraid,” she finally managed to say. “He’s being looked after right now. He took the full force of the scalding tea when the stewards slipped and let go of the cauldron. Somehow he pushed me aside and just my shoulder got hit.” She bent over to show me the spot. “The miracle is the stewards managed to wedge the cauldron against the wall till we’d all been pushed to the other side of the stairs and could retrace our steps to the deck below.

One of those good guys broke something, I hear. The other three must have suffered burns, too. They’re all in there now getting looked at. Lord, I suppose it could have been much worse!”

Someone in uniform stepped out and asked us to return to our cabins.

There’d be an announcement when we could return and look in on our friend, he said. I asked him if he knew anything about what had happened to the ship.

“Did you get the bulletin we issued and slid under everyone’s door? It’s posted on all the boards, too.”

“No, Sir, we haven’t seen or heard anything. Well, lots of rumors, of course. One woman thought we’d been torpedoed, but her husband started laughing, and then she really got quite hysterical.”

“Well, I can tell you it was definitely a rogue wave. Such events are almost invisible till they’re virtually upon you. They start out far on the horizon, and despite the mass and force they gather rolling along, they seem to rise up just at the last moment; and of course threaten anything in their path with sheer hell. We’re very fortunate the ship took it at the best angle, or….” He was distracted by shouting down the hallway and left us standing there.

No one seemed to be able to eat dinner that night though the menu was quite simple, and free drinks were offered. Most of us just toyed with the silverware and sipped the beer and wine. We were still anxious, waiting for news of the injured. Meanwhile, it was apparent that the ship had slowed way down, and various inspections were underway. A voice on the loudspeaker said that we’d be late into Rotterdam, and might be interviewed by shore personnel for our various versions of what we’d been through.

The next morning, when sight of land was announced, just a handful of us ventured up on deck to have a look, though nothing much could be seen in the heavy fog. Breakfast was served all morning. No one was in a hurry about anything.

4

A French patrol boat met us when we turned into the English Channel and some officers came aboard. We could see a representative of the Holland America Line being escorted directly to the captain’s quarters. Looking grim, he shook a few hands along the way. Later, the rumors started flying –

there’d be a board of inquiry to determine if there’d been negligence on anyone’s part, for starters. All Ellie and I cared about was Father Feite’s condition.

Finally, that evening after dinner we were permitted to visit him briefly.

Father’s entire upper body was swathed in bandages, with just slits for his eyes and mouth as if he were a monster in a horror comic. One arm hung suspended in a ceiling sling. The doctor cautioned us to be upbeat, and thoughts of gramma dying in the hospital surged in me. “We don’t want him any more depressed than he seems to be,” the doctor confided. “He’s going to be facing extensive surgery and there will be some disfigurement, of course.

Just five or ten minutes, please.”

Ellie went to one side of Father Feite, I went to the other. We leaned over him and whispered that we’d be reactivating our childhood prayers. His eyes seemed to smile. When I lightly held his one free hand there was pressure in return. All he could say was, several times over, in the tiniest voice, “This will make things nice and easy now for Monika. Thanks be to God for two friends like you at a moment like this.” He was going to be put off at Cherbourg and flown to the burn unit in The Hague’s largest hospital.

“We have your address, Father,” Ellie said, “so this is not goodbye.”

We docked very early the next morning at Rotterdam, almost a day behind schedule. Just beyond sat the large, busy harbor with cranes in motion everywhere, and countless ships either heading into port or sailing out to sea. One could see a twisted church spire; quite a few houses with no roofs, their floors exposed; gasworks that had obviously been blown apart; and, in a little park abutting our berth, a playground with several children playing in the sand next to a large merry-go-round tipped on its side. We waved at the

children but they didn’t wave back. It was as if the war had ended only yesterday. A few bitter crew members had told some passengers that Rotterdam was shown no mercy by the invading Germans.

Ellie and I had taken our coffee from breakfast and were sipping it down to the dregs right next to the gangplank that would take us ashore as soon as the whistle blew. We were not up to much talking. She was going to spend a few days with family and friends in the military, who were stationed in Aachen. They were treating her to a weekend in their villa, which meant we’d not be taking the same train down to Darmstadt. Meanwhile, Mr. Silman, the liaison officer who’d be supervising my stay, had rearranged my booking when he’d learned of our delay. I had to hustle along to the station to make the connection. Ellie said she’d come find me after she got settled in Darmstadt since she knew I’d be at the Pedagogical Institute in a little town called Jugenheim, just a few miles south of Darmstadt, while she had no idea where she’d be living. We started to wish each other ‘a good trip’ in German, but suddenly caught ourselves.

“Don’t have to use it yet,” Ellie said surprisingly grimly. I swallowed hard and nodded.

Paige Simkins Opium

Entangled forecasts of black ruin The sun beats my forehead a vacant beat O how yellow caution tape banners the sky A funeral procession now in disorder Black flies pounce at the earliest stink Blood puddled mixed with sand spurs While we stand in a weightless watertight container.

Mike Scofield

Drones Over America

Stan’s obliterated. He talked too much. presence of the drone before it struck.

Didn’t like this, didn’t like that. So the people in charge sent a drone. Parked it right over his ranch-with-attachedgarage. The last thing he knew was the cold sweat of iced beer bottle in his hand after a float in the above ground.

Stan’s dripping pool water, gazing off across the backyards, twisting the final cap…

“Start the BARBIE!” yells Pam through the kitchen screen.

POW! Stan’s gone.

Pam, too.

Their material beings cratered and smoking rubble.

Not everybody knows this: there are drones over America.

So how do I know? I pay attention.

The wreckage was gone over by government lackeys. ‘Propane tank bleve.’ Case filed. But I could feel the

I picked up on the transmission waves undulating the air.

My eardrums wuffled. That and the birds were always looking up.

You think of a sparrow on your dogeared fence. He’s looking down for something to eat. But I could see that the birds were looking up. It’s the same way that Krajewski across the street looks up at the huge silver maple dwarfing his house. The one he should have removed long before it grew so big. It’s going to come down hard is the way the birds were looking up.

So my earsdrums are screwy for a couple of days. Then that afternoon, like Stan, I’m gazing across the backyards, only I’m looking across at him cracking a beer. Birds are looking up. Eardrums wuffling and then this sound that you can’t hear, like your brain has perceived a sound but not

your ears. ‘Shooo-k-k-rooo’ it doesn’t sound like.

POW! I’m on my back in the grass. A fantastic fireball is racing away into the sky.

Whirlagigging debris spins through my line of sight. Once I get up and stop the rocking world with my legs, I see that Stan is gone, the pool is vaporized and his house is burning. I can’t hear a thing but my eardrums have stabilized. That’s when I knew it was a drone. Somebody pushed a button in Washington, took out Stan, and called the drone home. Or sent it on its next mission.

So I didn’t hold back. I wrote the letters to the editor.

Wrote the politicians.

Stopped a Common Council meeting right here in Catonic, NY to warn them about Them.

People need to know. I mean, you could be watching the birds at your feeder and suddenly they’re all looking up. Or you could be doing such sophisticated things as sipping exotic

martinis at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, watching the music and listening to the great cityscape out the big windows, and the jazz suddenly undulates.

The last thing you might see is a chickadee.

Or a solo drone over Columbus Circle.

I told them. They said I was nuts drones are only used way around the world on bushy-bearded hateful types.

Not in America. But I kept telling them.

They started to say somebody should do something about me. They should do something about me. Them.

So then I lay low. Maybe I talked too much. The last time I stood in the kitchen my eardrums…well, you know.

I looked out and the birds weren’t looking down. I moved enough stuff into the cellar to keep myself going for a while and started to tunnel.

But then I thought, run like a rat or go on the offensive? And you know what? I’m an American, goddam it! So I took it to them like John Wayne.

Maybe you don’t know who I’m

talking about. Maybe you have your own generational movie hero. Forget it. He’s not John Wayne, all right? Your guy couldn’t do it.

So, me, John Wayne, took the fight to Them.

But where to begin…

You look at your water heater and what do you think? Not me. I thought, ‘Mythbusters’. You remember that one where they blow up water heaters and they take off like rockets? Straight up?

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. How did they do that?

I had plenty of time to think about it.

Hacking a hole through the floor above the water heater took a long time. I’m not a remediator. And then I had to go through the crawlspace above that and then the roof. That was particularly tricky: no one must notice. I nibbled the shingles from the crawlspace with garden shears on a moonlit night.

Thank God I bought a ranch and not that wreck of a rental in Schenectady.

I’d be cutting through seven floors.

“Excuse me, tenants, I’m sending a water heater up at a drone – stay away from the hole for a while.”

Ha! That I’m not doing. I’m just back at the ranch. John Wayne.

They bypassed the thermostat, that’s how they did it. And locked shut the relief valve.

Down here in the cellar it’s T-minus I don’t know how many seconds. If I didn’t disable my laptop I could YouTube the episode and find out how long it will take. I don’t remember that detail. Anyway, it was TV. Don’t they edit out this type of boring lull?

And it’s a little maddening, cowering here in the corner. The gas is full on. I can hear the heater expanding…. TICK TICK TICK TICK TICK. It makes my eardrums wuffle.

‘Shooo-k-k-rooo’

Kevin Casey Cutting Grass

Sinews shudder as the motor bangs; hand bones shake in their leather casings while the tufts, once severed, seep an emerald scent, more dear than myrrh this time of year -an incense the exhaust’s caustic breath conceals.

And every weekend the mower must run, to mold a shorn mat from a meadow, and make this green firebreak to shield the home from the brush along the border, and what lies conspiring in the encircling woods.

Kevin Brown Stickman

I found the stick the day of the locker incident. You have to remember that we didn’t talk about bullying in those days. We didn’t have a word for it. To us, it was what happened every day of our lives. I mean, we had bullies, and, if anything, we were told that we needed to stand up to them, fight them, if necessary, to make them leave us alone. My father told me that almost as soon as I could walk, in fact, but that was back when he talked to me.

I thought that stick would be like Excalibur—you know Excalibur, right?— and I would see it held aloft by the lady of the lake, or something like that. At least I thought that it would be evident where it was and what I was supposed to do. In all honesty, I wasn’t even sure I wanted a stick; I just knew I needed something that day. I watched a number of shows and movies with ninjas, and some of them used sticks (bow staffs, I think), so maybe I thought a stick would make me more like a ninja. When I was a few years younger, I owned a few Chinese throwing stars, bought them at flea markets and such, but I knew better than to carry those around with me. I eventually lost them all by trying to throw them at trees or propped-up plywood, only to see them go sailing past, lost in pine needles or grass. I wondered what would happen when someone mowed over them, but I never heard of any injuries.

I always wanted to be a hero in some way. Obviously I read the King Arthur stories, Excalibur and all, and I went through a serious superhero phase, spurred on by my cousin. He went to comics conventions, back before

they were at least as cool as they are now, and he even had plans for how to be one. He talked about building ultra-lights that would carry us over the city, so we could see crime and stop it. I had no idea how I, a small, frail kid, could stop crime, but he believed it was possible, so I played along. We spent time training by wiggling through city drainage tunnels, lying in small spaces for long periods of time. I’m not sure how that was going to make me a superhero, but he read all about them, so I trusted him. He now practices karate, so maybe he still believes he can be some sort of hero.

I believed I had a superpower once. I had thought about trying to get a spider to bite me, just in case it was radioactive, but I was too much of a coward to do that. My parents weren’t rich philanthropists, unfortunately, and they weren’t going to send me to another planet, much as I might like that, so I didn’t think I had much of a chance. One night, though, as I was taking a shower, I slowly turned the water hotter and hotter. I was in there for a good 40 minutes, and then the water started feeling lukewarm, even though I had it at the hottest temperature. It finally began feeling cold, and I thought I was impervious to heat or possibly had freeze capabilities I just hadn’t tapped yet. I didn’t understand about water heaters and their limited capacity yet.

It’s easy to understand why I was picked on at school. I was one of the smallest kids in my class; I had braces; my hair was greasy, and I didn’t know enough to begin taking showers in the morning to help avoid that problem; and I had acne that was noticeable, but not bad enough to eventually scar me.

I had no athletic ability, but I also wasn’t a standout in the classroom. The problem was that I didn’t really fit in any definable category. I was clearly not one of the popular crowd, but I also wasn’t a geek, though I would

occasionally hang out with them when there was no one else around I knew.

They were always talking about Ents and Tom Bombadil or hit points and spells or 42 and the importance of a towel, seemingly random comments I didn’t understand. I was largely invisible for my first and second year of high school until something happened that made me very visible.

Somehow, my gym class consisted of half of the football team, so whatever activity we were forced to be involved in divided clearly into the athletes and the rest of the us. When we played flag football, we non-athletes played on a practice field, while the others played with the gym teacher on the actual field. When we were playing basketball, then, the athletes were on one half of the court, while we were on the other. We were just shooting around one day until the coach came out to get us started, which he did by blowing a whistle and calling us all to his side of the gym, which was also the athletes’ side, not surprisingly.

Mark, one of my friends, started joking around, trying to steal the ball from me as we went to that side of the court. I was focused on dribbling the ball (not well, remember) to keep it away from him when I found myself on the gym floor wondering what happened. While Mark and I had been dribbling down the court, David had taken a shot on the athletes’ side of the court, and it had ricocheted off the back of the rim and come toward us. Steven turned to get it and ran into me, instead. My head hit his lip, busting it and ultimately requiring several stitches.

Steven was one of the most popular kids in his class. He was the backup quarterback, clearly in line to take over the team next year, which he did, and the current safety. He was the point guard on the basketball team, and he dated a cheerleader any of us would have killed for. The day I busted his lip

was a Tuesday; the Homecoming football game was that coming Friday.

Because of his stitches, he was now not able to play. He would miss one of the most important football games of the year, and I was responsible.

Everyone now knew who I was.

The next few weeks went as I expected. I was pushed into the showers after I had already dressed for class after gym was over. People flipped my books out of my hands as I walked down the halls. My friends had largely stopped hanging around me, so I was eating lunch by myself. They didn’t talk to me in gym class or walk with me in the halls, though they would still talk with me before or after classes when we were seated in the safety of our desks. I don’t blame them. They were trying to avoid attacks by association.

Notes were posted on my locker calling me a pansy, some days a pussy or a fag or a homo. I didn’t fight back, of course. I was dealing with football players, and I knew who would win in any kind of fight. Even if they weren’t bigger than me, I would have kept quiet. I was happy just because I wasn’t being physically beaten up, an event that happened often enough through middle school that I knew I didn’t want any more. This all sounds awful now, and perhaps it was then, but I don’t remember it as being so. It was simply part of the culture. I had seen it happen to other people, so I expected it to come my way at some point. As it had passed with them, I assumed it was pass with me, as well. Perhaps I just don’t remember how awful it was now that I’m well past it, which doesn’t help you at all, I know.

What finally changed things, though, was the day they put me in the locker.

It was after school when most people had already gone outside to catch their bus, so I was alone in the locker area. I had forgotten my math book, which I needed for homework, so I had gone back to get it quickly before my bus

came. A group of football players were on their way to practice, and they caught me there alone. I expected the name calling and even the shoving that took place. They were trying to make me cry, and I knew better than to do that. It would have caused them to leave me alone, but I still wanted to keep some sort of dignity. Steven nodded to David, and the next thing I knew I was in an empty locker with the door closing on me. I was small enough to just fit in the full-length lockers in the area, though I had to crouch a bit to keep from hitting my head on the hooks that hung from the top, which I did instinctively when they pushed me in. I heard their laughter as they clicked the door shut and walked away. Luckily, they did not put a lock on the door.

I knew there was a mechanism inside for opening the door, but it was difficult to move my arms, which were pinned near my chest. Getting out would have been a simple matter if they would have been by my sides, but I had real trouble getting them down there. It took a good hour of struggle to move around to even have a chance to find the switch, and, by then, I had to use the bathroom fairly badly. I knew that most of the problem was that I had become nervous. I could have held it for another hour or two if I would have been outside of the locker, but I was so worried about peeing on myself that it made me have to go that much worse. I opened the door ten minutes after I felt the warmth running down my leg.

Thankfully, no one was around, so I went to the bathroom, pulled my pants down, and cleaned myself off as much as I could. I had already missed the bus, and everyone else was gone, so at least no one saw what had happened.

I could have called my parents to come and get me, but my mother was at work, and I would have to explain to my father why I missed the bus and why he had to come and get me, a conversation that would have had

consequences I didn’t want. My mother would have called the office or the other boys’ parents, which just would have made life at school worse; my father would have made life at home worse. I could walk home in 45 minutes, which would still get me there before I would get in trouble for being late.

You have to remember that things were different then. Parents weren’t as protective, so we would walk all over the place when we needed to. When I was younger, in fact, we used to save our money and walk to the Jiffy Mart about a mile away to buy candy or a baseball or whatever else we could afford that we could use up or lose within a day or two. A few of the kids from the neighborhood spent two hours one day trying to find lose change in pay phones and coke machines to get one more dime we needed for a whiffle ball. We spent less time than that actually playing the game.

However, instead of going straight home, I decided to walk through the woods. I had played in these woods since we moved to the neighborhood when I was eight, and I knew them well. There were remains of forts we had made in middle school, which I thought of as ruined castles representing a lost empire, one that was conquered by the concerns of high school and puberty. There were trails my friends and I had cut ourselves, not with a machete, but just by walking through time and time again, looking for some sort of adventure that went beyond our suburban lives, or just looking to be away from our houses as long as we possibly could.

I didn’t know what I was looking for that day, but I knew I was looking for something. I came upon one clearing that I hadn’t seen in several years, but someone had clearly continued to come on a regular basis. On one edge was a limb propped against a large stump, one I remember trying to count the

rings of years ago, losing track by the time I hit thirty. I tried to break the limb by kicking against it, thinking it would snap in two with just a few blows. The sound of a breaking limb sounded good to me right then. After around ten kicks, I got angry at the limb for not breaking, so I began trying to jump on it, despite its odd angle. I had a vision of myself breaking an ankle instead of the limb and dying in the woods when no one missed me.

Even jumping on the limb didn’t work, though, as it was so solid I felt I was jumping on an angled brick wall. There was no give to this limb. I had no idea how long it had stood there, but I imagined it standing there for centuries to come, no one able to break it in two. I knew I had found what I was looking for, but I didn’t know what I wanted from a limb, of all things. I knew that I would be back the next day to get it, though.

The next morning, I took a saw from my father’s toolshed, snuck it to my locker at school, so I could use it on my way home that day. It took me about an hour and a half to saw it off, as the wood was as strong as I thought, and I was not very good with tools. Every day for the next three weeks, I took the pocket knife my father had bought me when I was in the Boy Scouts, back when he was trying to make me into a man, to school and back, so I could stop and whittle the limb down. I didn’t want anyone at home or school to know what I was doing. I knew I couldn’t get rid of all of the knots, but I wanted it as smooth as possible otherwise. I used duct tape for the grip when I was finished.

At the end of a month, I had it finished, but I wasn’t exactly sure what to do with it. I didn’t know why I was so drawn to it in the first place, so I hadn’t given any thought to what purpose the stick would actually serve. I just knew I needed it in some way, maybe like a lucky charm or even a security

blanket, though I never would have called it that then. It was simply “the stick,” and it mattered to me in some way. It’s no surprise, then, that I started carrying it to school.

The smartest and easiest thing would have been for me to keep it in my locker, as it would have just fit, if I put it in diagonally, but I carried it with me from class to class, though I was sure to lock it in my gym locker when I went to that class. Teachers seemed not to notice I was carrying it. If they did, they didn’t care. This was before the days when kids took guns to school and school shootings were in the news, and teachers were much more apathetic about our behaviors. I once saw a freshman boy with a knife sticking out of his back pocket, pushing his shirt up, not trying to hide it at all. There was supposed to be a large fight that day, the punks versus the rednecks, but one of the senior football players, Jeff, talked both sides out of it. His younger brother, the freshman, was a punk, and most of Jeff’s friends were rednecks, so he was trying to protect both groups.

Even with the stick, the notes on the locker continued; Steven and friends continued their random abuses, as well. I continued to take it all. Other kids at school started to make fun of me after I began carrying the stick. I would overhear them as I walked by: “The girl is so skinny, she looks like a stick, man” or “I can’t wait to drive, but I want to learn to drive a stick, man.”

Typical high school passive-aggressive humor. They sensed someone who was weaker than them, so they attacked, though that word is too strong. It implies enough energy to actually care what happened to me. I was nothing more than a pastime to most of them, but Steven and his friends were obviously not going to let up.

Two weeks after I began carrying the stick, they put their plan into action.

When I was leaving school at the end of the day, I began walking home.

Going to the woods every day had become a routine, and I continued it even after I could have started riding the bus again. I would go there and practice with my stick. I could throw it fairly accurately, and I could definitely battle any tree that picked a fight with me. I began to believe I could even take out a football player, but they removed that illusion fairly quickly.

They were on me well before we got to the woods. Once we were out of sight of the school, they came up from behind me quickly, a few circling around to the front. Steven demanded the stick, but I refused to give it to him. I can only attribute my refusal to my newfound belief that I could actually use the stick to defend myself, as I would have never hesitated to give him what he asked for in the past. I avoided fights more than anything, and no one was around to see my humiliation in giving in to him, so there was no reason for my not giving him the stick.

Someone came up behind me—I’ve never found out who it was—and grabbed me, pinning my arms to my sides. Steven grabbed the stick and began trying to pull it out of my grasp. I held on much longer than I would have expected, but Lee punched me in the stomach while I wasn’t looking. I went straight to the ground, and Steven took the stick. Not one of them looked back as they ran off with my stick and got in Steven’s car. I didn’t know where they were going or what they were going to do. I knew, though, they had the rest of the day free, as football season had ended two weeks before. I knew, too, that I wanted my stick back.

I didn’t know exactly where Steven lived, but I knew the neighborhood, and I had just seen his car, so I wandered in the cul-de-sac until I found it.

The house was certainly larger than ours, and it was clearly better taken care of. One or both of his parents must have had good jobs, and they either spent their weekends working on their house or yard, or they made enough money to hire someone to do so. They had newer trees, mainly oak and maple, in the front yard with mulch surrounding them, the grass edged perfectly around the sidewalk and driveway. The house appeared to be newly painted, but it could have been siding, a relatively new craze when I was growing up.

A few kids in our school had that kind of money, but I would not have thought Steven was one of them.

All of this stands in stark contrast to where I lived. We weren’t in a trailer park, which would have been a clear sign of poverty in our school, but the house we lived in was small and felt transitory, even though we were actually paying on a mortgage. My father made me mow the yard, which I did in a cursory fashion with a mower he had bought at a garage sale and repaired until it was just able to run. There was no side guard for the clippings, so I ended up covered in grass within the first five minutes. There was also no rear guard, so I was hit with sticks on a fairly regular basis. My shins looked like those of a soccer player every time I finished.

We couldn’t afford much better, as my mother worked as a secretary in a dentist’s office and barely made enough to cover food and the mortgage after her insurance and retirement was taken out. My father worked odd jobs when he could find them, doing repair work on other people’s cars and houses, which is why he never worked on ours. We were missing one gutter and a couple of shutters, and the back porch leaned precariously, so we never used it. There was one car that did not run in the driveway, which was not

paved, but no one could have been able to determine it did not work, which saved our reputation a bit.

We could have had more money, but my father spent most of what he made on beer, the cheaper the better, as it lasted longer. He drank throughout the day when he did not have work, but saved it for weekends on busy weeks. If the Falcons or Georgia Tech lost on football weekends, which was often, he drank more. He was not a happy drunk. He had taken out his frustrations on me before, occasionally my sister, though not often, mostly on my mother. It could have been guilt at having to live off of her work—and she worked long hours at a job she hated—or it could have simply been that she was too tired to fight back.

I knew enough not to go up to Steven’s door and ask for my stick, so I wandered around to the back porch to see what they were doing inside. I tried to pry open the sliding glass door, but I was clearly not strong enough to do so, and I was afraid of making too much noise. I could hear loud music—mainly AC/DC, it sounded like—but I could not see anyone. I left the porch and moved into the back yard to see if the second story windows would show anything. The one on the far right clearly showed people moving around, so I found a tree on the left side of the house and climbed it.

I could just reach the roof that covered the back porch, which would give me access to the windows.

They had left the middle and right windows open to let out the aroma from whatever they were smoking, so I peeked in the middle window. No one was there, but the stick was. It was propped up between two milk crates, and there was a saw nearby. They had clearly planned to ruin the stick, but they must have gotten distracted and gone to the other room. I was not going to

see what they were doing there, as I simply wanted to get my stick and get out of there. I crept in the window and quietly inched to the stick. Just as I grabbed it, Steven walked by in the hall, laughing. He stopped when he saw me, yelled for everyone to come quickly, then moved toward me.

I turned and ran for the window as fast as I could. I knew he could outrun me, but I thought I could at least make it out the window before he got me. I thought I felt him right behind me, just as I got to the window, so I turned to see where he was, face him, even, if I needed to. I thought that, perhaps, I could talk to him and just get him to let me leave with the stick. I wasn’t thinking much at all, clearly. When I turned, though, my right arm, the one with the stick, flung out, as I turned much faster than I expected. The adrenaline must have caused me to spin much more quickly than I expected.

I felt the stick hit his head, much the way I felt a wooden bat hit a ball when it was cold out, back when my father wanted me to be the baseball player he never was.

I heard Steven hit the ground. David, Alan, and Chris were standing in the doorway by that time, and, when I moved to get the stick, which had fallen out of my hands once I made contact with Steven’s head, then rolled closer to him, they moved back. None of us were sure Steven was even breathing.

When I picked up the stick, I saw his chest moving, so at least I knew I had not killed him. No one spoke or moved as I climbed out the window, on to the roof, then jumped down to the yard, but I heard them as soon as I hit the grass. They all must have rushed forward to see if he was alive.

I went to the woods for an hour or so before heading home, as I needed time to decompress. My hand still stung from the vibrations that passed through the stick when it hit Steven’s head. I had never punched anyone and

never hit anything other than a tree with the stick. Even then, I did not hit them hard or with a solid swing. I had been playacting what I had seen on television, but I was too worried about breaking the stick to do anything more than jab and feint a bit. It was getting dark earlier since winter was coming, and I was getting cold. I knew I needed to go home, but I wanted more time to think about what had happened.

When I got there, my mother was almost finished with dinner, and my father was sitting on the couch without the television on. That was not a good sign. He called me in to where he was sitting before I could get upstairs, before I could put the stick away, which he had never seen. He told me Steven’s mother had called him, that Steven had a concussion, and they were thinking about suing us. It was the us that worried me, but not my father. He laughed. He complimented me on standing up for myself and showing Steven who was boss. He said that he would have done the same thing when he was my age, though he wouldn’t have needed a stick to do so. Even in his praise, he was critical. When she had threatened to sue, he had laughed, said, “Sue us for what?”

Dinner that night was one of the happiest I can recall. He asked me to recount exactly what had happened, so I did, though I was vague on details. I knew he would fill in the story he wanted to hear no matter what I said, so I let him create a myth of my heroism. It didn’t take long before he started telling stories of when he was a teenager, the fights he got into. He drank more than normal at dinner, as excited as he was. These stories of his youth should have made him happier, but he seemed to grow more and more sullen as his food grew cold. Instead of reminding him of how great he once was, they seemed to remind him of all he did not have now, of all he had lost as he

had gotten older, of all he was not. I left the table before things got bad, but I reminded him the Falcons were getting ready to play on Monday Night Football, hoping to distract him.

He got up to watch the game, leaving my mother to clear the table and do the dishes. She came upstairs not long after me, went into their bedroom to do whatever she did when he was not around. I never knew much about her activities, as she seemed to slide along the margins of my mind in those days.

My sister was eating with friends, so the only noise in the house was the football game. After an hour or so, I heard a stack of cans fall over and my father’s curses growing louder. The game was not going well. He started yelling at the players, but then that shifted to yelling about my mother and the lousy supper she had fixed and the awful life she had given him. He shouted about how great he was in high school and how she and I and my sister had ruined his life for him.

He was moving toward the stairs to come up, and I knew what would come next. I took my stick from the far corner of the room and went to the top of the stairs to wait for him. It took him five steps up before he saw me, but, when he did, he stopped. He mumbled something about my not standing in his way, something about my getting too big for my britches. I didn’t raise the stick. I didn’t respond to anything he said. I just stood there, making sure he could see that I had it. I don’t know what I would have done if he would have kept coming, but I wanted to try to protect my mother for once. He grew tired of listening to himself, so he went back downstairs and collapsed on the couch, still swearing in his sleep, and I went to bed.

I never had any more trouble at school. Steven and his friends made a wide path around my life, as I did theirs. I expected him to find me that next

day and take out his humiliation on me, but he left me alone then and every day thereafter. My father slept on the couch more often until my mother left him as soon as my sister and I graduated high school and found lives of our own. I did not visit him often, saw him around town from time to time, but I heard his life never really improved.

Maybe I’m not a hero; maybe I was just lucky. But something about that stick spoke to me and changed my life, changed me, like Excalibur changed a boy into a king. I don’t know that that’s helpful to you in your situation, but it worked for me. Look for a stick, whatever form it takes; that’s my advice.

Now, it’s getting late; go to bed. I’m sure things will look better in the morning.

Contributors Kevin Brown Kevin Brown is a Professor at Lee University. He has published three books of poetry: Liturgical Calendar: Poems (Wipf and Stock, 2014); A Lexicon of Lost Words (winner of the Violet Reed Haas Prize for Poetry, Snake Nation Press, 2012); and Exit Lines (Plain View Press, 2009). He also has a memoir, Another Way: Finding Faith, Then Finding It Again, and a book of scholarship, They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels. He received his MFA from Murray State University. You can find out more about him and his work at kevinbrownwrites.com Kevin Casey Kevin Casey is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and received his graduate degree at the University of Connecticut. Recent works have been accepted by Grasslimb, Frostwriting, Words Dance, Turtle Island Review, decomP, and others. He currently teaches literature at a small university in Maine, where he enjoys fishing, snowshoeing and hiking.

Stuart Friebert Stuart Friebert has published 13 books of poems, 10 volumes of translations, several anthologies; and Black Mt Press in 2015 will publish "The Language of the Enemy": stories & memoir pieces.

Lisa Jay Lisa Jay is an artist and writer living in Houston Texas. She graduated from Stephen's College with a BFA in Fine Art, and spent a semester studying at Oxford University before entering the Master's program in Art History at University of Missouri, which she didn't finish. She was then uniquely qualified for her long career as a cocktail waitress. During this time she developed several dubiously useful skills: private pilot, black belt in Kung Fu, world traveler, mother, and collector of small and obscure object so no real value. She hopes to someday learn to laugh without ruining her makeup, and actually make money for her art, a novel and crazy concept.

Melissa Ostrom Melissa Ostrom lives in rural Western New York with her husband and children. She teaches English at a community college, serves as a public school curriculum consultant, and writes whenever and however much her four-yearold and six-year-old let her. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Monkeybicycle, Oblong, decomP, Cleaver, and Flash.

Michael Salcman Michal Salcman, poet, physician and art historian, was chair of neurosurgery at the University of Maryland. Recent poems appear in Alaska Quarterly Review, Hopkins Review, The Hudson Review, New Letters, Ontario Review, and Rhino.

Poetry books include The Clock Made of Confetti, nominated for The Poet's Prize, and The Enemy of Good Is Better (Orchises, 2011); Poetry in Medicine, his anthology of classic and contemporary poems on doctors and diseases is newly published (Persea Books, 2015).

Mike Scofield Mike Scofield lives on the great frontier of upstate New York where he tells himself stories to make sense of it all. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals.

Paige Simkins Paige is a poet who lives with her dog, Sir Simon, in Tampa, Florida. She holds a Bachelor degree in English (Creative Writing) and a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science. She works as a Public Librarian and is very passionate about poetry, libraries, VW Beetles, and visual art.

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