Albany Road The Literary & Art Magazine of Deerfield Academy
Fall 2010 Deerfield, Massachusetts
Editor-in-Chief Eliot Taft Literary Editors Lydie Blundon Justin Kwok Anne Mosley Alannah Nisbet Art Editor Becky Levy Layout Editor David Morales-Miranda
Faculty Advisors Andrea & Robert Moorhead
From the Editors— It’s a rare thing to see a blue sky in November. As the freshman settle in to their first term, the juniors study Andrew Jackson, and seniors scramble together their last thoughts for college essays, Deerfield students hardly have time to enjoy the fall sky through the wickerwork of bare maple trees, the last bursts of autumn oak red on the ridge. But from these scenes we make a poem, a short story, a photograph with shadow. Eat and savor a Clarkdale apple in the Dining Hall, decide for yourself if autumn tastes sour or sweet. Read the pieces of this magazine; digest them. Thumb one student’s summer travel journal, another’s Vergil translation. Smell the binding of the book under the apple tree behind Hitchcock House. —Eliot Taft
Minds burdened by labor, souls deprived of tranquility: we reach a point of exhaustion. At Deerfield, time is of the essence. We trot but never stroll, glance but never observe and work without pause. An important element of living is sacrificed to our everysecond-plans: enjoyment. For me, eventually I will crash, strained by the overbearing imbalance between fulfilling my requirements and that of my desires. However, with a healthy dose of leisure comes that needed balance which creates greater focus and passion and allows me to persevere. So my advice is to breathe. Dance with the leaves as they float with the wind, bask in a warming shower after a dark, icy winter day, and enjoy each creative piece in this issue of Albany Road, for in it all you will be replenished with happiness and vigor. —Becky Levy
Fall 2010 | 3
Contents
Poetry
Anna Gonzales Nina Shevzov-Zebrun Ellie Parker Sarah Woolf Julian Gonzรกlez Sarah Woolf
Vignettes Our Dance Translation Bodies Lie Still Nuestro Tiempo Mamma
6 7 12 19 24 34
The Things Sisaket Cinema Orofino Branding Cattle
9 15 21 27
Prose
Nell Volkmann Peera Songkunnatham Nolan Bishop Eliot Taft
4 | Albany Road
Visual Art Miles Steele
Thomas Earle Grace Murphy Ben Bolotin Kelsey Janik Charlotte Kirsten Thomas Earle Lizzy Gregory
Kobold Memories Tod’s Point Walkways Wood Glass Portrait of a Cow Hannah
Cover 8 14 18 20 26 33 35
Fall 2010 | 5
Anna Gonzalez
Vignettes There they stay, Mother with her grey-rooted hair twisted away from her neck, Feet wrapped in tendons turned outward, And arms submerged in soapy dishwater And the sunlight from the kitchen window never sinks from her face. Bent over newspaper, father With his shiny black shoe bent mid-tap on the chair leg, And his page never turns to the next one, And he never reaches for the grapefruit, full, smooth and un-gouged, And upstairs the children’s purply eyelids and small chests Stop half-flutter, half-breath. Outside the leaves freeze in their ruffle And the tomatoes are always nearly ripe. Two thousand miles away, I imagine time stops— Rather, time spills onward but the house is lifted clean from the mess, And when I return I am always surprised It has not.
6 | Albany Road
Nina Shevzov-Zebrun
Our Dance That wick used before, White, blue passion Escaped. I’m still white, larger in five. Wax drippings, choice stains for always, now and ever and unto the digits rekindled with chief’s innocent ire. O assertive mind, Squelch our fire, Quench my blood.
Fall 2010 | 7
Memories Digital Photograph
Thomas Earle
8 | Albany Road
Nell Volkmann
The Things her Mamma Said Her mama said, “Stay inside today, baby doll. You help Lila and you be good. Your Daddy and I will be gone for awhile.” She sounded worried and she patted Birdie’s pretty blond hair with unsure fingers as she tried to hide the scared from her. Then her mama got her hat and gloves and got in the big black automobile and Charles drove them away. So Birdie swung through to the kitchen and got her hands in the cake batter and added some of the bright red spice her mama put in everything, but then Lila said, “Birdie, if you get on and play, you can lick the frosting spoon.” And bang went the screen door she was out and over the lawn and down the hill in her white, white dress. The sun lit up the orchard and brought out the peaches’ smell that was better than baking, better than talcum powder. Her feet beat a path through the perfectly manicured grass and she knew exactly where she was going. The peach trees opened their branches to her and closed around her again, so she could barely see the gardener or the big white house or the curtains Lila had made flapping out her bedroom window. It was a delicious thing to dig her feet into the sweet smelling earth as she walked, slow and slower now, until she found what she was looking for. Daddy had once told her about the snakes that hide in hollow trees and wait for the fingers of little girls, so as she reached her hand into the cavity of the biggest grandfather tree in the orchard she closed her eyes and held her breath and whispered to the snakes that she wasn’t supposed to be out and could they please not bite her today? Birdie stood on tiptoe and reached until her fingers found a curve of wood that was different from the tree’s insides. She tugged it out and all at once she was sitting on the ground and her box was open in her lap. With
Fall 2010 | 9
careful, gentle hands she lifted out Miss Mary and Mr. Barnaby and Mr. Barnaby’s dog and the poor orphan baby that Miss Mary had taken in out of the goodness of her heart. Birdie brushed off their corn husks and smoothed their yarn hair and hummed to herself as she began to build up their world. They were courting you see, Miss Mary and Mr. Barnaby, and every day promptly at teatime Mr. Barnaby would stop by the beautiful Miss Mary’s house and have a mint julep and some cake. Sometimes they would go boating down the stream that ran by or take the baby for a walk, and once Mr. Barnaby had saved them from a bear. Birdie imagined happily as sun pulsed through the sky like blood in a way that her mama said brought life to the South. Ants crawled close by her big green eyes on their way to wounded, fallen peaches as she lay, round belly down in the dirt. She basked in comfort, an excess of it, until her eyes told her they would not stay open anymore and so they closed just as Mr. Barnaby was finally about to propose. She did not dream and woke to a pair of feet so dark they almost blended with the rich orchard soil. They were rough and worn in, in a way your shoes were never supposed to get and it made Birdie wonder where those feet had been. Her eyes slowly crawled up and up, over a pair of overalls that Lila would have made into rags a long time ago and stopped on a face as dark and wrinkled as his feet. Green eyes met brown eyes and he slowly backed up and gingerly, achingly, lowered himself against one of the trees, which took his weight without complaint. Birdie watched him for a while and swirled her fingers in the dirt and kicked her feet against the tree’s soft bark. No shell had formed yet to protect her from too many sensations and her curiosity hummed through the air with the bees until he spoke. He wondered where she lived, he said, and Birdie pointed shyly up at the big white house. He nodded up and down and smiled to himself and took a sip of something in a brown paper bag he was holding next to his heart. Birdie had seen men doing this in town. Sometimes they would shout at her and Lila
10 | Albany Road
as they hurried by. “Mama says god doesn’t like it when you do that,” Birdie told him. He chuckled like he’d seen it all and said, “Your mama should try it sometime.” He said he reckoned if god would try it, god might like it too. Birdie did not know what to say to this so instead she asked him what he was doing in her peach trees. He laughed and told her, “These are some mighty fine peach trees you have here.” And that he was heading north because down here nobody paid no kind of decent wage anymore. He told Birdie that he wanted to fight for freedom and something he called constitutional rights and his eyes lit up when he said this like there was a fire going on inside his head. It made Birdie wonder what it was like to want something so much, even more than she had wanted that talking doll for Christmas. He said that in the north they had big rallies with lots of people that wanted the same thing he wanted and that when it was cold, white rain fell from the sky but those people still fought anyway. The smell from his paper bag mixed with the sunlight and the peaches, and the humming of his velvet voice mixed with the bees’ melody. And gradually Birdie slept again which must have been the man’s intention because all at once she was awake and he was gone. Birdie rubbed her eyes but forgot about the dirt on her dress and when she came in for supper Lila had to clean her up quick so her mama wouldn’t see she’d been out. When her mama did come home she was nervous and fluttery and jumped when the servants walked by. Daddy wasn’t with her. After dinner, full up with courage and coconut cake, Birdie asked, “Mama, what’s something I can fight for?” “Why darlin’,” her mama said, “why ever in the world would would want to do that? You know daddy can do all the fighting for this house. Us girls don’t have to lift a finger.” Nobody could understand why all at once Birdie started to cry.
Fall 2010 | 11
Eleanor Parker
Translation from Vergil Nox erat et placidum carpebant fessa soporem corpora per terras, siluaeque et saeua quierant aequora, cum medio uoluuntur sidera lapsu, cum tacet omnis ager, pecudes pictaeque uolucres, quaeque lacus late liquidos, quaeque aspera dumis rura tenent, somno positae sub nocte silenti. At non infelix animi Phoenissa, neque umquam soluitur in somnos, oculisue aut pectore noctem accipit: ingeminant curae, rursusque resurgens saeuit amor, magnoque irarum fluctuat aestu. Aeneid. IV. 522-532
Literal Translation It was night and feeble bodies were seizing calm sleep through the lands, and the forests and fierce seas had become quiet, when the stars were revolving in the middle of their course, when every field is silent, and the painted birds and flock animals, both those which dwell in lakes widely liquid and those which dwell in countrysides rough with briars, having lain down in sleep under the silent night were soothing their cares and hearts forgetful of their labors. But the unhappyin-soul Phoenician woman is not ever released into sleep or nor accepts night in her eyes or chest; her cares redouble and again her resurgent love rages and surges in a great tide of passions.
12 | Albany Road
Modern Rendition In seeped night as sapped citizens seized a snooze serene; So savage seas fell silent, so shushed each sylvan scene. From fields no sound; the stars spin round, mid-arc in the dark; Below, birds and painted pasture beasts in snortless slumber park. They that in lakes long liquid dwell, or in the briar-brittle dell, Their cares caressed, hearts hard-pressed, now toil-thoughtless, quell. But Carthage’s core-luckless lady, quite unquiet, sidesteps sleep, Neither sight nor spirit hosts night’s haze or dissolves into its deep. Her dousing doubts rebound, rebound, and bore into her more; Love’s urge resurges—splashes passion’s tide against the shore.
Fall 2010 | 13
Tod’s Point Acrylic 24” x 18” Grace Murphy
14 | Albany Road
Peera Songkunnatham
Sisaket Cinema To Giuseppe Tornatore and Ennio Morricone
I sobbed and shook while watching Cinema Paradiso, a celebration of love, youth, and the magic of cinema. In the final scenes where Salvatore de Vita came back to his hometown, the magic took me, far away in place and time, back home . . . Long before I was born, when Bangkok sounded far away from Sisaket as the black and white picture and the poor quality sound of my grandmother’s television might suggest the distance, there were stand-alone movie theaters in my hometown. “At first there was Chumpon Theater, ‘The Old Theater,’ ” my grandmother once told me, “situated just one block away from your house. But then it was burned down by accident.” She told me that it had been enormous and popular, even with only one screen for showing one movie for weeks. (The horror film Who Are You? shown at the theater scared my mother so much when she was a girl.) Then another theater, Chaloemket Theater, ‘The New Theater,’ was built. Another two theaters were yet to come. But now, all the movie theaters were things of the past. Every one of them was demolished, except for Sisaket Rama, whose run-down structure and rusty zinc roof still stood under the sign read “SISAKETRAMA.” I had past the alley of the theater before, but I had thought it was an old apartment, with its bleached sign erect above the rooftop. A few years after I was born, a new three-storey shopping plaza was built, with two cinemas on the top floor. Sun Heng Plaza was right next to my kindergarten and primary school. Before the
Fall 2010 | 15
time I could remember, my mother and father had taken me to the cinema quite a few times. “You laughed joyously when Simba and Nala danced and sang with hippos, giraffes, and other animals,” my mother told me when we talked about The Lion King, ”but when Scar sang with the hyenas in the dark you started to bawl and we had to take you out of the cinema until the end of the scene.” I grew up in my preschool years watching VCR tapes of Jurassic Park and The Lion King over and over. I grew up in my primary school years walking past Sun Heng Plaza from school to my old house where my grandmother lived. And there, at the intersection, I always saw the colorfully painted billboard of now-showing films. I remembered watching Star Wars (Episode 1 or 2, I’m not sure) in the Sun Heng cinema full of people; along the left and right aisles were rows of extra folding chairs ranged from the screen right up to the back. I remembered the paper ticket on which the seat number was written. I remembered spotting scribbled random letters “F39” “H-80” fluttering on the screen. I remembered the scratches and grains embedded in the film like pouring rain. I remembered the musty smell of springy seats and the crunch of popcorn. I liked to turn my head back up to the projector room, and remembered seeing the gold ray of light shining through the floating dust, moving the picture. I grew up in my secondary school going to the cinema from time to time with my friends or my younger sister, who would otherwise ask her aunt to take her to the cinema. It was the time when I did not know what cinema really meant to me. VCR became outdated; the VCR renting stores evolved into VCD stores; VCD (and DVD) piracy took away some of the cinema goers. I moved to Bangkok to study in high school when I was fifteen. There, my love for cinema blossomed. I went to film festivals and watched all foreign films in the original, unlike at the Sun Heng cinema where every foreign film would be dubbed in Thai. Only two or three times a year did I come back home, mostly by train. I would
16 | Albany Road
imagine that the side window of the train was the screen, and the running scenery the reeling film, from the vertical urban Bangkok, the scenic green mountains and infinite rice paddies of the Northeast, to the horizontal train station of Sisaket. During the time I was away, the chain store companies managed to build their shopping centers near town, bringing the so-called development to the rural Sisaket. Now the Sun Heng cinema had a possible rival: the three movie theaters at one of the new shopping centers. There was also a fire accident that damaged the first floor of Sun Heng Plaza; It was closed for repair and renovation for a few months, including an upgraded cinema. When I was home, I would take some time to watch a mainstream film shown at the Sun Heng cinema alone, or sometimes with my sister. The cinema changed its booking system from crossing out the seats on paper to clicking the blocks on computer screen. It had a new aroma, a bigger screen, and a slightly higher price. Most Thai films had English subtitles. People who crowded the cinema were like in the past: teenagers in groups and pairs, country people who came to town, parents with their restless children on their laps, and a few others like me. Despite all the chattering and noises in the cinema, I felt at home. At one time I also went to the newly-built cinema, but I was dismayed by the fact that the bathroom was better than the cinema itself. Once, I walked aimlessly in the town of Sisaket, not far from my old house near my primary school. The sun was hot. I saw the billboard of the now-showing films at the same intersection. The same artist still colorfully painted the faces and the texts on it; my heart felt warm at this realization. I walked on for another block, and all of a sudden big raindrops poured down. The musty smell of earth and rain seeped in my clothes and skin. Dust floated in the air where the golden light had shone. I found cover under a building at another intersection, the place that, decades ago, had possibly been the site of the Old Theater.
Fall 2010 | 17
Walkways Digital Photograph Ben Bolotin
18 | Albany Road
Sarah Woolf
Bodies Lie Still Bodies lie still, Arm upon waist, Ankle upon calf, Head upon breast, Twisted, contorted, And they breathe slow, Heaving together Up and down with Rhythm of dream No care for sight Or sound Or taste But sensation Skin on skin on skin Naked embrace Near dead Asleep.
Fall 2010 | 19
Wood Watercolor and Tempera 10” x 18” Kelsey Janik
20 | Albany Road
Nolan Bishop
Orofino July 12th, 2010 – Orofino, ID – 535 miles The arid mountain air around us had begun to grow cool as the sun sank behind the tall conifers of the Bitteroot Mountains. The clean rush of the Clearwater River, just twenty feet to my left, was reassuring, and the burbling sound of white water over smooth stones relaxed me. It had been a long day of riding, crossing the state line, leaving behind Washington, and with it the desert and unrelenting sun of the Cascade Mountain’s rain shadow. No sooner had we crossed the Snake River from Clarkston to Lewiston then we started to see the abundance of green that so characterized the beautiful northern Rockies of Idaho. However, with the splendor of the forests, came the excess of logging trucks. Close encounters with the behemoth vehicles, all of whose drivers were oblivious to cyclists, kept us on our toes all day. To sit near the camp stove with a tin of baked beans, corn on the cob and boiled potatoes was particularly satisfying. Looking around, everyone else in the RV park where we were staying was feeling equally languid. Families shared stories around fire pits and a lone biker leaned against his Harley, dragging on his cigarette. A boy, with long, wild blond hair rode a broken and rusted BMX bike up and down the aisle of campers and cars. Intrigued by our comically large quantity of gear and the stack of bikes laid out next to the tents, he eagerly came over to see what was going on. I had seated myself further from the rest of the group in order to better enjoy the July evening, and so it was me that he first approached. His face was sharp and his piercing blue eyes met mine. He gave me a sort of half grin and asked: Fall 2010 | 21
“Where are you from?” He stuttered a little when he talked, and when he got whole words out, it sounded as if he were speaking with marshmallows in his cheeks. I shared our story with him: how we were biking from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean, and how we would be traveling for another five weeks before reaching Portsmouth, New Hampshire. His interest was piqued at the mention of Washington, and he asked if we had been through Spokane. He said that his family was coming from that direction as well because they had been in Spokane to see a doctor. As it turned out, this little boy, no older than eight or nine, had cerebral palsy, and with it, three brain tumors. He seemed blissfully ignorant of the severity of his situation, unaware of what this debilitating illness might mean for him. He was content to ride his aged and much-loved bike around the parking lots of all the RV parks where his family lived. When I asked him where he was from, he told me he was from everywhere; his family had been moving from city to city for years. “First it was Denver, and then we went to Phoenix and Las Vegas and Salt Lake and Salem and Spokane and now we’re here,” he told me in his wobbly voice. The sun had sunk completely behind the steep embankments of the river valley and the deep orange of the sky was the only light left. The purple lines of the clouds emanated from behind a hill to the west. The first stars had started to appearcrystal clear in the sky that hung just above our heads. I was stunned by the weight of the situation and the way the young boy bore it as if it weighed nothing at all. He gave me that half grin expression again and asked if I would sing “Wish Upon A Star” with him. I told him I didn’t know the words, but he said he would sing twice as loud. His voice was still unsteady, but now I knew why. The beauty of it was that he did not know the difference. Even living constantly on the road his family kept him isolated inside the world of RV parks and state highways. To him, having some complicated illness was not the end of the world. It was simply who he was: something
22 | Albany Road
immutable. When he finished singing, he told me that he wished for our safe arrival wherever we were going (he had already forgotten our destination and our starting point). I knew what I was wishing for, but I could never tell him. If you don’t keep it a secret, it might not come true.
Fall 2010 | 23
Julian González
Nuestro Tiempo Juntos I keep your memory in a cast-iron genizah hidden in the sunlight. Our shared times littered across every surface dancing mockingly in the murk, secret names and jokes on each frayed sheet— I try to remember how long it has been. I seek your face, for only with you could I finally find Lucero, the greatest treasure, ever-guiding, kept from me by jealous streetlamps. How long has it been? Time has moved faster than my pace and Teo’s unfinished motorcycle, nor can anyone else. But I can still remember your radiant face clearly. My ennui brings it all back as if we were here and elsewhere existed not. I dream about moments 24 | Albany Road
where the real reality has no hold, and we sit discalced under that tree, where I realize: It has been always.
Fall 2010 | 25
Water Glass on Collage Mixed Media—Digital Photography & Collage 24” x 30” Charlotte Kirsten
26 | Albany Road
Eliot Taft
Branding Cattle Shaw could hardly see the road through the morning mist. The sunrise half-light struck the halo of fog enveloping the two young men leaning against the cattle fence and burst the vapor into a luminous blood orange billow. The beams from daybreak combed the land and darkened the hills and distorted the browned fields rolling up to the black horizon. Through the ochre hue, the vista looked like a candle: the tanned pastureland, the wax, the tree line, the burning wick. The remnants of the spattered stars, burning cold in the bell shape of the sky, dissolved among the rising sun. Shaw stretched his neck from looking upwards and gazed into the slanting light and shifted his weight against the wooden pen. Inside the fence stood about seventy head of cattle, russet colored like the cauterized landscape, aglow from the illumination of daybreak. Their horns curled towards their skulls, their cold breath misty and stertorous. Some of the cattles’ horns had been cut with pliers to prevent the tips from growing in a curve into the brain. They all had to be branded, and the morning cold would soon smell of burning hair. J.C. spat in the pen. The barrier creaked with the two of them leaning against it, deciding over what to do with the many brownwhite faces splattered with rheum. The cow’s hoofs pressed manure into the cement stucco flooring, into a drying intaglio of rounded stamps. The cattle had arrived the night before. In the darkness, one steer had lost its balance on the loading ramp and was trampled by the frantic bovine pouring out of the vehicle. Its body lay bloody and
Fall 2010 | 27
contorted, skull stripped bare by the ranch dogs. Sooner or later, the men expected another vaquero would pull the corpse by tractor into a distant field, to decompose where no one would smell it, further transforming the plain land into a dried ossuary, a shrubscape of brown and specks of bleached white. “Think they know they’re going to die when they’re dying?” J.C. asked. “What?” said Shaw. “That one there, got the shit stomped out of him and was still groaning and moving its neck. Only, it wasn’t trying to get up, just lying there in the dark. Think he knew he’d be dead by morning?” “I hate to think that those dogs got at him before he finally gave out.” “No what I’m saying is, do you think animals have the same sense of dying that we got? Think that when they see another dead animal, a lamb sees its slaughtered mother, it thinks about being gone? Think it ever thinks about what it’s like being dead like we do?” “It probably don’t think about nothing at all.” “Well, that’s probably the truth ain’t it.” “I don’t know. How about starting up that oil drum?” Within minutes the little window cut from the rusted oil drum blazed with sharp, curling flames. Two branding irons glowed in the flickering embers of oak logs. Four more sat in a bucket of sheep fat. Late winter flowers bloomed among the steel canister, twisting upwards and drooping their pale heads, lining the base of the pen where the cattle shifted restlessly. Their tails swung in uncertainty, leather pendulums propelled by a biologic force, fueled by the blood and the prairie grass and the heat of their bodies. These were animals born and bred to die, mothers inseminated to bear calves
28 | Albany Road
for slaughter. Branded, marked for a future of polished steel cutting their blood vessels, piercing the muscular necks. Jugular, carotid artery, trachea. Exsanguination. J.C.’s face blushed red as he slid open the wooden door to the branding stalls, creating an entryway into a long thin chamber from the cattle-pen. Shaw jumped the fence and flushed the animals in single file, kicking away the dogs snapping at the cow’s hoofs from outside the pen. His boots depressed into the mud as he pushed the massive bodies forward. Bare handed, he grabbed the tails of the livestock that refused to move and hoisted the tails upward in a contorted arc. Pain would push them further. Then J.C. circled around the chamber and slapped the first animal in line. It lurched forward. J.C. pinned it by wooden clamps around its neck, its leg shaking and exposed. A vein bulged along the eyebrow, the blood beat of the animal rhythmically pulsing above one dull glassy eye. They waited just a little longer for the irons to heat up. The fog cleared. They split a piece of bread, watching the fire glow in the furnace covered with corrugated tin. The leaves smoldered on the top-metal, disintegrated into white charcoaled dust and oxidizing into wisps of thin black smoke. Rising and righting upwards, into the view of the plain land. Beyond the gaseous mix, a figure lurched itself along the road towards the branding site. It was a man bent over a worn bicycle, arms akimbo to the handle bars, curved in a grotesque cruciform. As he neared, the spokes of the bicycle looked to have been broken and repaired many times. He was covered in dirty rags. “That ain’t no Texan,” J.C. whispered. “Hay algo para comer?” the man asked. He spoke like the true country folk of the mountains south of the border, slurring his words together at a rapid pace. His face
Fall 2010 | 29
was brown and stubbled, a Hispanic whose ancestors arrived in the country long ago, mixing and remixing with Mestizo blood. His shoulders bent. He looked rachitic. Tired and desperate. J.C. looked disgusted; he had dealt with these vagrants before, hated to feed them and see them again the next day. He spat on the ground and turned away. Shaw leaped the fence onto the roadside. The cattle twitched their hide from the pressing cold. “No hay nada. Perdonanos,” Shaw said. The dawn light brightened towards the clearer visibility of mid-day. A bell tolled eight o’clock in the distance. Ringing, acknowledging a moment already past. In the silence following the echo, the man shifted uneasily, his torso swayed, illuminated. His eyes were fixed on the bread basket half covered by a saddle blanket. His teeth were brown among his brown lips, his dirty clothes even browner. “Necesito Algo.” “We don’t got all day to sit here and tell this dirtbag to leave. No hay nada, sal, sal de aqui.” J.C. said, stepping forward. The man stepped closer to the cattle pen, ten yards away from J.C. He still held on to his bicycle, his eyes flickering between the two men, the bread basket. “Por favor . . . ” Shaw said, taking one more step. Before Shaw could finish his sentence, the man let the bike fall on its side and held up a small steel knife. The handle was small and made of cow horn, the blade luminous, coruscating in the morning light. His jaw muscles bulged from his tight thin face, and he stepped towards the bread. “Just let him have it,” Shaw said to J.C. J.C. pulled out his knife, three times the size of the other man’s, a vaquero tool for cutting fence line.
30 | Albany Road
“Puto, tu” J.C. said, spitting his words through clenched teeth. The man halted his careful stride. Anger and blood and the heat of the moment coursed in both men. There was a standstill. The man looked desperate. “Por favor,” he took one more step. J.C. stood still. Then in a furious rush one of the dogs hurled itself at the man, locking its jaw below the man’s calf. The man dropped his knife and fell to the ground, kicking at the dog with his free foot. “Capi! Capi, Capitan, ven aquí,” Shaw yelled. The black dog released the man and stepped backwards, still growling. His canine eyes dark and furrowed, whiskered muzzle twitching. The man rolled once on the ground, groaned and slowly stood on both feet. He limped back to his bike; right leg in palsied shock, torn and cut from the dog’s curled white fangs. Two long black gashes bled above his heel, deep and charcoal colored as if seared into his very flesh. He balanced himself on his bike and crutched down the road. “Hey! Hombre,” Shaw called and tossed the man’s knife three or four feet behind him. He picked it up and left. They turned back to the cows locked in the pen; the steer still clamped in the stall snorted impatiently. The oil drum smoked with sufficient embers, its rusted shell mimicking the bulges of the cow’s orange, mud spattered backs. In the distance, the remnants of the morning fog settled in the depressions of the plain. The mist swirled like water, dense and collective and lighted yet by the rising sun. J.C. sheathed his knife. “Well if they don’t know they’re going to die, they sure as hell can feel all the pain that leads up to being dead.” J.C. said,
Fall 2010 | 31
handling the iron as it glowed in the embers. “This brand promises for that.� J.C. pulled out the tool and as he carried it, the glow left a faint trail in the air, revolving in orange streaks, glimmering through the dissipating fog. Shaw looked back at the man crutching away, his lighted semblance diminishing into a solitary speck on the plain. Shaw glanced back to the stall, at the steer writhing its brown neck. J.C. thrust the iron onto the steer’s outer thigh muscle, burning the hair. It bleated into the morning cold for the others in line to hear.
32 | Albany Road
Portrait of a Cow Digital Photograph
Thomas Earle
Fall 2010 | 33
Sarah Woolf
Mamma Mama, it’ll. Mama, I’m gonna howl Like I’ve been raised To yell across starless Moonlight-cloudied skies and Mama, don’t worry none About me because I’ll be fine And I’ll always survive (even when I don’t and Mama you taught me that one is so). It’ll sting, Mama, to stare the milk-spilled grey With no pricks of white Against big black emptyful, but It’ll mark me, Mama. And when that howl’s done, The echo faded to eraser shavings, A mark’s gonna show on me And I’ll never forget, not if you want me to, Mama, Not if I want me to.
34 | Albany Road
Hannah Magazine Cutouts and Charcoal 10” x 25”
Lizzy Gregory
Fall 2010 | 35
Contributors’ Notes Nolan Bishop was born in Northampton, and has lived there his entire life. Outside of school, he enjoys trying anything that could be considered a challenge, riding his bike and playing music. Ben Bolotin, class of 2012, is currently taking AP Photography. He also is a photographer for Deerfield’s newspaper, The Scroll. Thomas Earle, from Concord, MA, is really excited to be in Albany Road for the first time. Although he mostly is seen taking sports pics for yearbook, he really loves artsy photography. He’s also a pretty cool guy. No big deal. Lizzy Gregory. The only place Lizzy is sure she resides is in a single-roomed double in Shum 1. Her current obsessions are crazy Christmas sweaters and tiny stuffed animals. Anna Gonzales will be your teenage dream tonight. Julian González estas novjorkano lojala- li opinias ke lia urbo estas la plej bona de la mondo, ĉar ĝi estas la mondo en urbo; tial li aspiras esti kosmopolita, liberala kaj bone edukita, « homo de la mondo », alivorte. Li ŝatas rajdi la Metroon ĉar estas la plej egalrajteca kaj ordinara transportilo; oni akiros sento por la diverseco de la Urbo kaj estas entute amuza sperto. La Metroo estas mia plej ŝatata maniero movi ĉirkaŭ, kvankam piediri estas pli bona maniero sentiĝi por la Urbo ĉe estas plej kruda kaj bona. Estas tiom sperti tie—vidoj, odoroj, sonoj, kaj gustoj—ĝi neniam povas brutiĝi, kaj oni ĉiam surpriziĝos. Novjorko, mi amas vin.
36 | Albany Road
Kelsey Janik is writing her contributor’s note next to David Morales, who is impatiently waiting for it. Lately, she seems to be turning in a lot of things last minute. She likes llamas, food, and staring at walls. She is a senior from Shrewsbury, Vermont. Charlotte Kirsten has two first names. She has met few people in her lifetime who have successfully pronounced her name, and in the correct order, on the first try. No need to stress though; she responds to Kirsten Charlotte, Kristen Charlotte, and Kirstein Charlotte almost as readily as the real thing! Grace Murphy is an artist, dancer, runner, future engineer, and twin. She likes frozen yogurt, the color purple (light or dark, not medium), and books by F. Scott Fitzgerald. She can spend an entire day at the Metropolitan and believes she is from Barcelona, although it is only wishful thinking. Ellie Parker is a 4-year senior from a bucolic hamlet, home to the world's largest glitter manufacturer. She has turned cars, bicycle tires, and a Nimbus 2001 broomstick in to Albany Road, but never yet a literary submission. Nina Shevzov-Zebrun often finds herself inundated with poems, Pointe shoes, and pursuits, and unfortunately doesn’t have a Russian accent. Peera Songkunnatham is a one-year post graduate from Thailand, but he doesn't come from Asia proper (and he isn't in the math team!) He feels like a published author when he posts notes on Facebook and his friends ‘like’ them.
Fall 2010 | 37
Miles Steele works best when he is supposed to be doing something else. He likes patterns, fire, and microscopes. Eliot Taft wrote this piece for his creative writing class. He set it originally in South America. Nell Volkmann was born in New York City but sadly has since moved to Northampton. She enjoys shopping, running, her friends, and summer and hates snakes and the cold. She has never been to the South but would love to go! Sarah Woolf lives in the Memorial Building at Deerfield Academy with Desmond, her ukulele. She enjoys discussing hipster subculture with her teachers and she occasionally suffers sneeze attacks when listening to dubstep.
38 | Albany Road
Fall 2010 | 39
tiger press n o rt h a mp t o n m a s s a c h u s e t t s p r i n t e d i n t h e u n i t e d s tat e s o f a me r i c a d ecem b e r
2010