Crack the Spine
Literary magazine
Issue 159
Issue 159 August 5, 2015 Edited by Kerri Farrell Foley Collection copyright 2015 by Crack the Spine
Cover Art: “Live Oak” by Jeremy Janice Jeremy Janice is a musician, writer and artist in south Louisiana.
CONTENTS Douglas Cole
Eyes in the Back of My Head
Richard Kostelanetz Endless Knot
Robin White
The Dafflilly Guide
Fred Dale
St. Edward the Confessor
Cliff Simon with Loren Stephens
White Bubble of South Africa
Mori Glaser
Landward to Bare Rock Face
Sarah Glady
Fevers
Douglas Cole
Eyes in the Back of My Head
I drove up into the neighborhood where Thane lived, a funky part of town with mostly old apartment buildings and family-owned stores and coffee shops and cheap restaurants and bars and a few fringe theaters and children in costumes and beggars in doorways, people everywhere, crowds always moving, always prowling. A beautiful sunset pulsed through the bright silver and maroon flowering of high clouds. I parked on the street and walked up to the apartment, a brick building with a courtyard and Rhododendrons growing tall and twisted into Dr. Seuss shapes around the lower windows. Someone was coming out just as I was about to ring the doorbell, so I slipped past him into the carpeted lobby of mirrors and worn couches and fake potted roses. I went up the stairs instead of the elevator, climbing in the windowless odd green stairwell with its black linoleum steps and ancient tenement smell, and came out onto Thane's floor, a dark hallway lined with doors. I found his apartment number, heard the music, started to knock, then went right in. Light flooded through the windows and illuminated the room so that the people there were just silhouettes, shadows, and I could not recognize a face. The furniture had been moved out to the sides of the room, and people were standing in clusters. I stood for a moment, alone, getting used to the light and looking up at a large painting on the wall across from the windows. It was almost entirely black, with a faint, redline shape of a woman barely emerging from darkness. I turned around again and looked into the bright light blazing through the windows and saw the form of someone approaching. "Tom," he
said, and I recognized Thane. "You made it. All right. Hey! I want you to meet somebody." He turned and lifted his arm like a magician and a young woman appeared, wearing a dark purple sleeveless silk dress with faint white designs that resembled the quick slashes of a Zen koan, her long slender arms adorned with tinkling gold bracelets, and her slender form haloed in the light of the window. "This," Thane said, "is Natalie." She put her hand out and I held it lightly, perhaps too long, truly stunned by her green eyes and long black hair. I couldn't say anything but, "Hello," and heard her say it back to me, "Hello," with a beautiful voice like I had never heard...ever, and I looked long into the paradise of her eyes as the light illuminated her cheek, as though she were graced by the last strands of sunlight in a golden zone. For a moment I lost myself in gaze. But my divine vision couldn’t last. There was Thane, standing with one arm clutched around her shoulder like a raven's claw. He was saying something but I didn’t really follow it. To distraction I was drawn to Natalie. She had three little glittering jewel earrings in one ear, and her slender face was a shimmering of beautiful expressions and smiles fluttering from her lips, and she looked at me as though waiting for me to say something, but I just stood there like an idiot, then laughed, embarrassed, as Thane raised one eyebrow and said, "Well, I think you better have a drink." And he thumbed over one shoulder, directing me toward the kitchen and said, "Follow me." I followed him as he cut through the crowd, people seeming to step aside without even seeing him. "This is a nice place you've got," I said, but I was looking back at Natalie who was talking to someone else though she turned nevertheless and smiled at my glance.
"It's all right," said Thane as we slipped between people, none of whom I knew, slick art-types in black with dyed hair and expressions of intensity mocked up for display as though they chose to pose as extras in life. In the kitchen, Thane poured us two tall glasses of straight Bourbon on ice and handed one to me. "To freedom," he said, and he tilted his glass towards mine. "Here, here." I drank. "It must feel good." "It does." He pulled a flask from his pocket and handed it to me. "Here. Try this," he said. I sipped it. It didn't taste like alcohol. "What is it?" I asked, eyeing him narrowly. "Go on. Take a good drink. It's all right. I've been drinking it." I took another drink. It was bitter, earthy, though it had been sweetened with something, honey it tasted like. I handed it back to him. He drank and opened his eyes wide. "The elighter," he said, and slipped the flask back into his pocket. "What did you call it?" "Elighter." "What is it?" "Give it a few minutes." Then he produced a fat bomber joint and lit it and drew in and held it and passed it on to me. I smoked. He exhaled and said in that tight smoky voice "Natalie's a beauty, isn't she?" I nodded. "Definitely." Natalie…but what could I say? She was with Thane. We finished our drinks and Thane poured another one, tall, too much, but I took a big drink anyway.
"I tell you, she's about the closest thing I've ever come to love, my little Natty. Whoo, and she is a wildcat, man, ouch!" I smiled, shaking my head, and returned the smoke. "I noticed you taking a shine to my little Lorelie, too, old buddy." I laughed. "Hey, remember where I'm coming from." He laughed, then stopped short. "Fuck. Sorry, man. Jesus. But you look good," and he stared at me hard, squinting, inhaling another smoke. Then he handed the joint back to me. "So what happened in there?" I took another smoke, held it, handed it back to Thane, sipped my drink. "Time," I said. "A lot of time." "I mean there must have been some bad motherfuckers in there." "There were." "So, what did you do? Did you have to carve a knife out of your toothbrush?” he asked with a creepy smile. “What happened?" "Well, you know me. I played it pretty cool most of the time. It's hard at first, when you're new. Everybody's watching you, trying to figure out how you’ll place in the pecking order, no pun intended. Are you down, are you up. Do you fight, do you give in. Guys who are down want to get you down first because that gets them up a little, you see. Takes the pressure off them and throws it onto you. Guys who are up wait to see how you react, how you place. Are you a threat to them? Can they get anything off you? It's a constant con. And you're alone. And until you've gotten some kind of reputation established you're an untouchable. But it sets up pretty fast because there's always somebody new coming in and it starts all over." "So what did you do?"
"I did what everybody does. I went around with eyes in the back of my head. I didn't approach anyone. I went cold. I made myself invisible. I was ready to kill, though, to die, in my mind. I mean ready to go. I think that helped, actually, though I didn't intend it. If I had intended it I don't think I could have pulled it off. Nothing shows faster than a fake. But if I hadn't been ready to kill or be killed, and I mean that, ready to kill someone and risk staying in there for the rest of my life, or die, I don't think I would have survived. Luckily, neither happened." I was beginning to feel strange, light-headed. What was I talking about? Then I noticed that Natalie was there. How much had she heard? I felt embarrassed, self-conscious. Thane was grinning like the Cheshire cat, and it occurred to me that he might have coaxed me into talking, knowing Natalie was there, trying to make a fool out of me somehow. It was his way. Or I was probably just drug paranoid. "What happened?" Natalie asked, and her face, her spirit just about made me want to drop to my knees, and I would have. I wanted to say everything, but I knew this wave rolling through me was just the combination of the drugs, and I knew what was happening as the thought I had to respond reasonably to her in a simple way became locked out, the language and the thought, and I watched from a great distance from deep inside my own skull as Thane whispered into her ear, and she smiled, sincere, reaching her hand out and touching my cheek, and I thought then that some strange energy current fluctuated between us. And now others were appearing, moving, bobbing around in the living room, little clusters dancing, girls interpreting the music with shiva-like arms in sway, voices rising and falling in concert waves, and I'm smoking a cigarette, a regular one, and then the music changes and I hear Frank Sinatra "I got the world on a string, sittin on a rainbow, got the string around my finger, what a world..." and
I'm standing by some people and they're talking but I can't concentrate on what they're saying and it seems like they look at me strangely but I can't hear them because the music is so loud over everything but out of that strange group I see Allen my old buddy Allen is there dressed in fatigues and slapping my shoulder and shouting something saying "Boy F Doggie" or something and saying "Maneuvers…I’ve been out on maneuvers" and I focus for a moment enough to say "What?" and he laughs and says "You're fucked up!" and I just nod "Yeah, I was smoking with Thane," and he throws his head back and it looks like it’s going to snap off and then he laughs and shouts back at me "Whack man!" but I barely hear and say "What?" and he says "It's whack…he smokes whack…PCP," and I just shake my head which throws me off balance because I feel weighted wrong and heavy and I can barely lift my arms and I remember drinking something too and I pull back drifting up and back and away and that body of mine heavy anchor there leaning by a window and the almost visible thin thread of smoke keeps me tethered and I scan and see other familiar and unfamiliar how did I miss them faces of old friends and friends of Thane sure even Big Jim seven foot three and three hundred pounds we call him the genie of drugs and Horowitz in rumpled suit smoking and spit in the corners of his mouth like loose teeth and he's now in front of me and saying "Hoover…Hoover loved numbers…nine on Kennedy…ninth on king you see?" old Horowitz I hadn't thought about him in years and these people coming into my sphere and I'm having conversations I don't even know what I'm saying and I'm way out here watching it all and seeing again the face of Natalie and she's smiling at me almost sad and a little seductive I think I can't be sure as I lift my hand and she lifts hers wave on wave rolling right through me and radiating from everyone with their burning spirits and marionette forms and out the window I float
"What a world what a life..." apartments in scatter light glow and the bay flowing out there like the watery page upon which this is all written then Thane's got an arm around my shoulder bringing me to earth saying "Listen…listen carefully…you listening?" I nod and nod "Yeah, yeah" and he says "Now I know you're working, and I know you want to steer clear…I understand that…I do" and he's looking deep into me with those black jewel eyes and a finger leveled at me "If I were in your place I'd probably do the same thing…but I just want you to know…just to think about…don't even answer now…just think about it…a few contingency plans…nothing firm…just ideas…no pressure…just think about it…all right? You listening? All right?" and I'm nodding "yeah…yeah, I'm listening," and he says "So when you're ready—" I put my hand out and it feels like long dead numb flesh and I try to push him away "No…wait" he says "wait…just listen...if…now…if you're ready...all right…now if you—" I push at him with my marionette hand "Nah nah nah nah nah" I say and he laughs pushing my hand down saying "You know you probably won't remember this anyway," and we both double over with laughter "Just listen…can you do that?" and we laugh again "Listen…listen...if you want I've got a light little project that's easy...safe...clean...fast," he poises one hand as though conducting an orchestra "Three four guys tops—and I just want you to know it's there, all right? Now…I've said it…I've got the details in place…I've already done the mental work...It's a pure walk-through…All right? I mean, look at me. Am I hurtin for money?" he keeps wavering from my field of vision, "Am I going to take unnecessary risks? Am I going to be like these soulless ghosts?" Sometimes it seems like he’s standing behind me and then he’s in front of me, "I'm not going to take any chances...I've got a beautiful girlfriend…I'm not going to risk losing that! I'm probably going to marry her," and I lean in, "Really?"
and he leans back, "Now don't go telling her I said that. Just keep my offer in mind…if you're interested…it's here…I'm here. All right?" "All right." "All right," then Natalie materializes and slips beneath his arm and says, "Don't be too hard on him, Thane, he's a gentle spirit," and he says, "She's defending you from me. How do you like that?" and he sweeps her away and I try to follow for a moment then feel foolish and lost and find myself standing in the middle of the room completely cut loose from any anchoring object or person in a whirl of faces and I’m sorry stumbling and righting myself and feel sweat on my face and a rush of overwhelming wave after wave of nausea and can’t breathe so close to so many and I look for Thane and see him for a split second flash then gone and I see Allen and then Horowitz and then Natalie beneath the painting of the woman emerging who I now see more clearly on the wall above us with her arms reaching outward with the faintest gossamer of wings flowing back as I then make it at last to the door and out of there— —quiet hallway in green glow of fuzzy bulb and double row of identical doors warping like jellyfish as I move alone and now in terror of seeing anyone knowing at least in a distant way my condition and how vulnerable I am and that I could even get arrested and break parole and overwhelming have the desire just to get home going down twisting stairs that telescope from my feet and seem unreal as the green walls pulse and sway like inner organ flesh leaching wet emulsification that bubbles up bursting and breathing and I pray not see another person as I open into the lobby and the mirrors and see my face all ash and shifting serpent white hideaway criminal monster mask as someone's coming down the elevator and I hear its engine churning and cables whining and door sliding open like a gorgon mouth so I slip phantom quick outside into the protective nightland of tilting streets swaying under a wobbly
orange moon orbing over the towers as cars bend by with warplight faces of gamesters and jesters with siren calls issuing from hideous mouths distorted as other nightmare insects with articulated limbs and prowling feelers insert themselves onto the city scrim of this scary movie-reel my friend has given me and I take long strides in slow motion fast motion stop motion jumping jittering in and out of time down the steep hill and under troll arms of oaks and elms and onward down where I don't know and I think of finding my car no no no can't drive and I go under a red swaying single Cyclops eye with horns howling and cars sweeping by and bulls lunging past me with flaring nostrils and fists in windows of liquid streaming like a circus of horror as I stumble down through the empty market spaces and through a tumble of papers that wrap themselves around legs and lamp posts and take on grotesque shapes and there at the edge appears a long coat with eyes that watch as I slip away on down a set of cement stairs with no railing on a sloping field all cockeyed with weeds dancing and creatures leering through wall cracks and hovels made out of overturned grocery carts and cardboard boxes with cookfires and shadows and twitching faces burning in overpass recesses under the freeway bridge and overhead a howl of angry vehicles and the scry of the city dragons and I see animal movement on the perimeter with my feet now gliding sure soft down steps down and over railroad tracks how far I've walked I wonder and into pier lights and people on the stroll from whom I back away like some swamp thing exposed to acetylene light and creep crawl to an empty pier space and wooden steps and a ladder going down to a swaying boom dock where I crouch in cloacal dark on the water surging with green phosphorous serpentine forms and other deep suburnal imaginings of sunken cities dreaming their leviathans deep rolling and deeper still the mind goes down the tether taut past sound and
sight and singing where motion still and rocking will to sleep it must and dreamless there repose with night upon my back though I can't sleep don't sleep my brain a fright of nightmare visions and bandits and cops and all kinds of nefarious phantom visitations I perpetually swear off as projections of the mind nothing more than projections of the mind and the rolling black water issuing up its drift dream debris of demon arms and murdered flesh and the sky’s black mouth above coming down with cavernous hunger and devouring intent as I huddle inside the unveiling grainy insect hopping of things aflutter around my eyes and the race of the mind quieting as hour after hour I sing a little song to comfort myself: oh hey oh hey come on home come on home‌singing this as a prayer as dawn light comes back sempiternal overall at last. I rose and climbed back to the empty street like I was alone on earth. I walked through the gray world uphill through the ashen dead tower faces of gray buildings and closed kiosks and gravel lots and cold railroad tracks and the silent makeshift camp of the transients, and all around me the city slept on, papers tumbling like slow dream ghosts through the streets. I made my way back to my car, climbed in and turned on the engine and headed home, singing as I drove my vehicle through the empty streets, though stopping at every street light, hey oh hey oh come on home come on home hey oh hey hey oh hey.
Richard Kostelanetz Endless Knot
Robin White
The Dafflilly Guide
When Emily Dafflilly was seventeen, she was attacked by a black bear. Bent over, tugging at the California earth, she’d felt it before she saw it, the invasive self-awareness which comes with being no longer atop the food chain. She was dinner, she was chicken, she was biscuits and gravy in a chalk-blue blouse and a wide brimmed hat. She straightened before the bear and balled her neat hands into fists. ‘Bear.’ She nodded. It nodded in return, reared up onto its hind legs and roared. She aped its cry, opening her lungs, furrowing her brow and forcing a guttural howl through her teeth. Part of it became lodged on the way out, sharpened her incisors and was, her siblings insisted, the reason she was so unforgiving in later life. ‘She was kind,’ they said, ‘until that howl got stuck at the end of her tongue.’ 1. Do not run from the bear. Run from the bear and it will kill you. 2. Challenge the bear. Make yourself big. Scream at the bear. 3. When the bear charges, charge back. 4. When the bear is trying to bite your face off, claw its eyes out. 5. When fleeing the temporarily blinded bear, stop to check if your chalkblue blouse has been ripped. Dad’s friends will get a whoop from the sight of your bare chest. 6. Don’t tell Dad about the bear. He’ll shoot it. When she was twenty five, she found herself remembering the bear and wondering, not for the first time, if it had really happened. She bore the scar on
her forehead, a pink etch where her eyebrow met the side of her head. Her father had the bear itself -- stuffed, on a plinth and smelling of earth. Her forehead was itchy, that morning and she stumbled when she tried to scratch it, unable to keep hold of the bar which kept her stable on her subway to work. She fell into the lap of a young woman, with whom she promptly started the sort of affair they didn’t talk about back in her part of California. The woman’s name was Christina. She had red hair, pale cheeks and, as she told the boy who worked her reception area, a wicked little mouth and a devilish tongue. 1. When falling into the lap of the woman you love, do not blush and do not stutter. 2. When on your first date, do not stare at the vein on her right breast. 3. When in bed that night, do trace that vein with your finger. 4. When bringing her home to your father, do not tell him that you two are an item. 5. When leaving your father’s home, do not let her call him a ‘redneck motherfucker’. 6. When she calls him a ‘redneck motherfucker’, do not laugh on his porch -- wait until you’re back in your car, heading east. She returned to her father’s farm three days after he’d died. Found by Emily’s brother, at the edge of the family land: heart attack while weeding. She knew little about him, the age gap meaning that they interacted with little more than a wary nod and a cliche about the sadness of the world. She stood, just off his porch, and drank iced tea from a long glass with a straw just too short for purpose. Unwilling to step inside, she watched while family, friends, neighbours and the passersby who stopped in to such things hoping for
free food, meandered into the house. They each ducked backwards in the shadow of the black bear, casting a glance at its claws and crossing themselves against its presence. Everything smelled the same. Everything smelled of earth. 1. Do not run from your father. Your father is not to be afraid of. 2. Do not bring your wife to his funeral. 3. Do not allow your wife to talk to any of your relatives. They will smile unbearably sweetly in your direction. You will want to slap them. 4. Do not get drunk and make out with your wife. 5. Once you’ve done so, do not let her knee your brother’s horny friend in the crotch. 6. When she knees him in the crotch, do not laugh, call him a pussy and leave the funeral. When Emily grew old, her hands began to shake. Her eyes were dimmer and her legs had grown fat, then thin, then weak. Christina had died three years before, though Emily, when she spoke about her, would only comment on how lucky she had been. Sitting on a dirt-brown chair at her kitchen table, she gazed into the darkness which engulfed the other end of the room. It was deep, the unforgiving dark which exists in your head and nowhere else. Emily opened her lungs, furrowed her brow and howled. The bear, lumbering out from the hungry dark, was silent. ‘Bear,’ she said. ‘Emily,’ it said. ‘You’ve never spoken before.’ He shrugged. ‘You owe me a debt.’ ‘I’ve incurred no debts.’
‘You incur the debt the day you’re born. I’m just here to collect.’ She thought. ‘Is there interest?’ ‘There’s always interest.’ ‘Ah. What would you like me to do?’ ‘Slide back on your chair. Come take my arm. Come into the shade. It’s for you.’ The bear’s paw, she saw, had become a hand. Its body, human. Her wife stood before her, as did her father, her brother and still, the unchanging outline of the Black Bear. The figure smiled and it poured into Emily’s soul, old cracked earth, getting a drink of rain. 1. Do not sit alone, in the darkness. 2. When you do, do not be afraid of what comes. 3. When you are afraid, remember that at worst there is nothing. And that nothing is not so bad. 4. The bear is your friend.
Fred Dale
St. Edward the Confessor A fragment of his bone was said to be asleep within the white stone altar that bore his name. Of all the mysteries in this church, the relic itched the most. Edward’s salvaged ingredient whispered hello to those of us who knew he was there. It can’t be helped. The virus of myth seeks the child—the vision of the bone’s sacred passage from Europe, the solemn ceremony of midnight priests, incense swarming low candlelight, and the sigh of the perfect fit as he was imbedded for us. I’d lift the cloth when the church was empty to see the scar of their claim, the resting spot of our possession, his bone waiting patiently within to spring back into a man, so close to the sainted dead and the heaven sent to watch him, closer than I could have ever hoped to be to the pirate Jean Lafitte—another saint, another myth, likely dragging himself out of Barataria in search of a treasure such as this. In the play on Edward’s life, I was the devil, chosen aptly by nuns, the natural audition of my behavior leaving little doubt. Against the evening of our debut, the saint, leaning in the doorway of his home, was shot in the head by a neighborhood kid, an act of casual brutality whose reason stands on its own as unknowable. The BB passed through the soft tissue of his temple, absorbed forever by his mind, no different than anything else he encountered to that point—the love of a mother and a sister and a father gone
to war, and then it dropped into his head, wrecking him, but thankfully not to death, the relic of mischief sealed within the grey plains of lives that might as well have been imagined, their stories calcifying around the defining pearls, stone ribs to hold the damage, the role of his life forgotten, its shard, nevertheless, tucked away.
Cliff Simon with Loren Stephens White Bubble of South Africa
Johannesburg, 1974. I looked back at my mother standing on the lawn of our house, the last rays of burning sun making her hair gleam like gold. She waved and then yelled at my father as he backed his brand-new Jaguar out of the driveway. “Mannie, be careful. It’s going to start raining soon. Promise me you’ll stay off the water if the storm comes up. I don’t want Cliff getting hurt.” My father lit a cigarette and laughing, turned to me. “Your mother worries too much. You know how to take care of yourself, don’t you, Cliff?” I nodded and looked out the car window as we passed other big, fourbedroom houses in Glenhazel, a predominantly Jewish suburb of Johannesburg. One lawn melted into another; there was no need for security gates to separate the residences. Glenhazel was a whites-only neighborhood in Johannesburg. The only blacks permitted in and out of the area had work permits in their I.D. books like our nanny, Peggy, who lived with us in a small apartment separated from the main house, taking care of my three sisters and me. On holidays she’d go home to the all-black Soweto Township to see her children and her husband who was a member of the African National Congress. He was a tough guy who resented that she worked for a white, Jewish family, but he gladly took her paycheck. She didn’t tell him what went on in our household, afraid that he would beat her and make her quit. My sister used to hear her bragging about us to the other nannies:
“Mrs. Simon, she is so beautiful in her new blue dress. Mr. Simon just gave her a diamond pin for her birthday. And Mr. Simon. I swear he looks like that movie star, Omar Sharif.” “Where’d you see his picture?” “In Mrs. Simon’s movie magazines. She lets me look at them.” “You’re lucky to work for such a nice family. That boy of theirs, Cliff. He’s going to be handsome like his father when he gets older.” Peggy answered. “He’s wild sometimes. And spoiled. Too many girls in the house. But he’s still my baby.” “You be careful. He’ll be indoda soon. How old is he?” “Twelve. He’s strong for his age from all those swimming lessons and gymnastics. He’s training for the Olympics. That is what his parents want for him.” “Uyaphupha. You are dreaming.” “No. I mean it. You’ll see.” “What are you talking about? You brag too much, Peggy. You think it makes you look more important to us, but it doesn’t.” And then they all laughed and went back to work. My father was anxious to get in a good sail before the rain started, so he drove the forty-five kilometers to the yacht club faster than usual. We sped through Vanderbijlpark, running a red light, but no one bothered to stop my father. He was lucky that way. Recognizing my father, the guard tipped his hat and opened the “membersonly” gate. The parking lot was already emptied out; more cautious sailors had called it quits. The air was redolent with humidity, and twittering birds flitted from tree branch to tree branch, nature’s harbingers of the building storm.
My father and I slid our fifteen-foot Tempo racing dinghy off the banks of the Upper Vaal River. Mosquitoes buzzed around our heads, and a swarm landed on my bare arms. I refused to wear insect repellant. That was for sissies. In no time, I was bitten up, but I didn’t want to complain to my father. The river water – normally tawny brown from the silt on the bottom of the river (Vaal means dull brown in Afrikaans) -- was black, reflecting the darkening sky overhead; the waves hit the hull as we maneuvered the boat from the shore. We choreographed our movements so as not to bump into one another in the tight quarters. I adjusted my life jacket, pulling it close onto my body. We reached the middle of the river, about one hundred meters from shore. My father yelled at me over the wind: “We’re turning around.” I didn’t want to admit that I was scared, but I felt relieved that we were heading back. I bent down as the boom swung around, the ropes straining against the force of the wind. My father jumped out of the dinghy. I asked him, “Shall I pack the sails?” “No, I want you to take the boat out again. Without me this time.” The rain had started and I could hear thunder from the west coming from the mouth of the river. “Dad, there is a storm coming. I can’t handle the dinghy by myself.” He shouted at me, “I want you to sail to the middle of the river and back. You can do it.” He had a look on his face that left no room for an argument, but I persisted. “What if I fall in?”
He slapped me on the back. “You’re a good swimmer. What have all those lessons been for? If you end up in the water, you can swim back to shore. Don’t be a mommy’s boy.” That was it. I pushed the dinghy back into the water. Shivering and shaking from the cold, I grabbed the tiller and ropes. In the distance a bolt of lightning hit the water. Fear gripped my throat, but I had no choice but to keep going. I didn’t want to disappoint my father. I made it to the middle of the river. Struggling to stay in control, despite the rocking of the boat and the ferocious wind, I managed to turn the boat around and get back to shore. My father stood at the edge of the water, his white shorts soaking wet, and his thick, black hair plastered to his head from the pelting rain. He leaned over and helped me pull the boat in. We folded the sails, heavy with rainwater, and stuffed them in a canvas bag, following our usual post-sailing protocol. He didn’t say he was proud of me, or hug me. He wasn’t a demonstrative man, but he wanted to teach me a lesson, which has counted for more than any words of praise: Face your fear, and you can do anything. Back in the shelter of the Jaguar, Dad lit a cigarette and turned on the radio. The announcer reported, “The President of the United Nations General Assembly has ruled that the South African delegation can no longer participate in the work of the Assembly.” I asked my dad, “Why?” He grunted. “Apartheid. The other African countries represented in the U.N. are all against us. The United States has already put economic sanctions on us, and it’s going to get worse, especially for the Jews. One of these days, we’re going to have to get out.” “I love it here. Where would we go?”
My father took a drag of his cigarette and then crushed it in the ashtray. “That remains to be seen. Maybe London. I’ve got business contacts there, and London has a nice Jewish community. We’d fit right in.” I was too exhausted from my ordeal to carry this discussion further. Silence hung between us. Then my dad looked at me. “Listen, Cliff. Do me a favor. Don’t tell your mother what happened today. If she gets wind of it, she’ll make a fuss the next time we want to go sailing. It’s just between us boys, right?” “Right, Dad.” “One more thing. Don’t say anything to Peggy either. She tells your mother everything about what goes on with you. She can’t keep a secret.” By the time we got home, my teeth were chattering, and my skin felt like ice. All I could think of was getting into a hot bath. I dropped my wet clothes on the tile floor and sank into the steamy water, reliving the adrenaline rush that came over me as I fought the wind on the river and pulled the dinghy ropes tight between my wet hands. I couldn’t believe how strong I felt in the midst of my fear. I got dressed for dinner. Peggy was in the kitchen preparing supper. Despite my dad’s admonition, I was bursting to tell her about my adventure. I was very proud of myself. Peggy was wide-eyed and happy for me. “So the lion took you out and taught you how to hunt, my baby.” “I guess so.” My mother overheard our conversation and, at dinner, confronted my father. “Mannie, how could you have put our only son in danger? He could have been hit by lightning, or fallen out of the boat.”
My sisters looked down at their plates and held their breath, hoping my father would say the right thing and avoid a fight. “But he didn’t, Phyllis. He is strong enough to take care of himself.” That was about as close as he would get to giving me a compliment. My dad had a nervous laugh when he knew he was in trouble with my mother, and was backed into a corner. He smiled sheepishly, and winked at me. We were partners in crime. My mother picked up the dinner bell and rang it to summon Peggy to clear our soup bowls and serve the first course: boboti, a typical South African entrée, a spicy version of shepherd’s pie. Dad tried to charm my mother. “You have turned Peggy into a gourmet cook, Phyllis.” My mother was onto my father’s game. “Tell Peggy, not me.” We finished supper in silence. I went to my room, and opened my Hebrew book. On the right page was the Hebrew, and the left was the pronunciation written phonetically in English. My job was to memorize a portion of the Torah reading for my bar mitzvah. I soon lost my concentration and put the book away. I crawled between freshly-laundered sheets. The storm had finally blown over, but I could hear the raindrops falling off the thick foliage around the house. Down the hallway my parents were arguing. I suspected that their fight had something to do with what had happened on the river, but I wasn’t about to tiptoe in the dark to listen in. Their fights were becoming more frequent. I almost wished they would divorce, but that would mean the end of our family as I knew it. And then I might have had to take sides, which would have been impossible because I loved my mother and father deeply for different reasons. I
realized I was crying what my father would have called “crocodile tears.� If he had walked in on me, he would have been horrified, and my mother would have been heartbroken. I buried my head in my pillow and finally fell into a deep sleep.
Mori Glaser
Landward to Bare Rock Face Beyond the snow line I happen on a nest of vipers still writhing slithering frigid and shaping infinities on ice. I recoil downstream where lucid currents flood my silted bed and my frosted lens marvels at briny eyes refracting sea change underneath the breakwater. Although I wake to the dawn through a reminiscent tangle of winding sheets my muffled footprints still slip on greenscapes plunging landward to bare rock face cragged and pitted across my horizon.
Sarah Glady Fevers
I have this canker sore that I keep biting, (on my tongue) and I wake up every morning and it is bleeding. I try to stop it, (I think it’s from too much wine, too much Vitamin C), but it just keeps growing. There is pain. I wish I had pierced my tongue. It grows, this cold sore on the sides of my lips and tongue, and I know it’s from the things he didn’t say, from the times he was probably with his dad at the shop or probably with his friend at the military surplus store.
Contributors
Douglas Cole Douglas Cole has had work in The Chicago Quarterly Review, Red Rock Review, and Midwest Quarterly. More work is available online in The Adirondack Review, Salt River Review, and Avatar Review, as well as recorded stories in Bound Off and The Baltimore Review.He has published two collections of poetry, “Western Dream,” through Finishing Line Press, “Interstate,” through Night Ballet Press, as well as a novella, “Ghost,” through Blue Cubicle Press. He received the Leslie Hunt Memorial Prize in Poetry; the Best of Poetry Award from Clapboard House; and First Prize in the “Picture Worth 500 Words” from Tattoo Highway. He was recently the featured poet in Poetry Quarterly. He is currently on the faculty at Seattle Central College. Fred Dale Fred Dale is a husband to his wife, Valerie, and a father to his occasional jerk of a dog, Earl. He is a Senior Instructor in the English Department at the University of North Florida, and an avid cyclist, but mostly, he just grades papers. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Chiron Review, Wild Violet Magazine, Indefinite Space, glassworks and others.
Sarah Glady Sarah Glady writes, teaches, hikes, and lives in Phoenix, Arizona. She holds an MA in literature from Arizona State University. Her recent work can be found in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, PANK, and Cartridge Lit. Mori Glaser Mori Glaser grew up in the UK and moved to Israel 30 years ago. She has written a variety of articles, blogs and creative non-fiction throughout her career in cross-cultural facilitation, community development, and international relations. Mori writes poetry and fiction as a member of creative writing groups in Jerusalem. Her poetry has been published in online lit mags, including Writers Hub, Persimmon Tree, Women in Judaism, and A Quiet Courage. Her prose appears in the Akashic Books web site “Thursdaze” series and in Arc 2015, the journal of the Association of Israeli Writers in English. Jeremy Janice Jeremy Janice is a musician, writer and artist in south Louisiana. Richard Kostelanetz Individual entries on Richard Kostelanetz’s work appear in various editions of Readers Guide to Twentieth-Century Writers, Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature, Contemporary Poets, Contemporary Novelists, Postmodern Fiction, Webster’s Dictionary of American Writers, Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, Directory of American Scholars, Who’s Who in America, NNDB.com, Wikipedia.com, and Britannica.com, among other distinguished directories
Loren Stephens Loren Stephens is president of Write Wisdom and Provenance Press based in Los Angeles. Her essays and short stories have appeared in MacGuffin, the Sun, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Summerset Review, the Montreal Review, and the New Plains Review, to name a few. She was nominated for the 2015 Pushcart Prize by Forge for her short story, “The Sushi Maker’s Daughter.” Cliff Simon Cliff Simon is a well known television actor, born in Johannesburg, South Africa. He appeared for seven seasons as the villain Ba’al in the sci/fi thriller, Stargate and Stargate Continuum and has had guest appearances on Castle, Twenty-Four, the Americans, and theNCIS franchise. You can visit Cliff on IMDb. Robin White Robin is a twenty six year old writer from the United Kingdom. His work has previously appeared in Dogzplot, Bartleby Snopes and others besides. He is an ardent consumer of fruit roll-ups and maintains that they’re a perfectly sensible food for grown-up consumption. Fruit can come in boxes, kids.
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