Hawaiʻi Review Number 18: 1985

Number 18

Cover art by Lynne Fitzek

"The Backwater Poets, " copyright 1985 by Frank Stewart, first appeared in Mississippi Review, Fall1985.

Hawaii Review is a student publication of the Board of Publications, University of Hawaii at Manoa. It reflects only the views of its editors and writers, who are solely responsible for its content. Subscriptions and manuscripts should be sent to Hawaii Review, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of English, 1733 Donaghho Road, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822. Manuscripts should be accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

Hawaii Review is a member of the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines. c 1985 by the Board of Publications, University of Hawaii at Manoa.

ISSN: 0093-9625 ii

ZDENEK KLUZAK editor in chief

MARGARET RUSSO managing editor

HOLLY YAMADA fiction editor

DEANHONMA poetry editor

CHARLES MILLER NANCY MOWER JILL WIDNER ROBERT YOUNG ALMA JILL DIZON staff

CONTENTS

FICTION WHAT THE IRONWOOD WHISPERED AN HONORABLE MAN CLEARING THE NEST NAGASAKI FRIENDS

1

Cedric Yamanaka

37 65 93

John J. McCann William Pitt Root Glenn Masuchika Jonathan London

106

POETRY TWO POEMS TWO POEMS THE HUSBAND COMES HOME FROM WORK FILINGS THE WEDDING FEAST TURNING STONES THE PEACOCK HACIENDA SPUMONI TWO POEMS SULFUR ANNIE'S LIST OF LAST THINGS

27 30 32

Michael McPherson Louis Phillips Rosemary Bensko

33 35 56 57 59 60 62 73 75

Angela Ball Lynn Domina Judith Kleck Diana Rivera Charles Edward Eaton Priscilla Atkins Eric Chock Juliet S . Kono Lyn Lifshin

TWO POEMS THREE POEMS NIGHT TRAIN TWO POEMS CANE FIRE DOJOJI DRIVING TOWARDS SLEEP KILLINGS BEST FRIEND, KILLED ON A RIG THREE POEMS INTER-ISLAND FLIGHT

76 78 83 85 88 92 97

Tony Quagliano M.A . Farrell Mary Crow Joseph Powell Fred Baysa Joseph Stanton Jack Driscoll

98 99

Michael Delp Roger Jones

101 105

Frank Stewart Reuben Tam

THE MAN WHO DRANK A THOUSAND BEERS OUTER ISLANDS

117

Mark Spencer

119

Jeff Worley

CONTRIBUTORS

125

REVIEWS

Cedric Yamanaka WHAT THE IRONWOOD WHISPERED

What causes a man to commit murder?

That's what I was thinking about as I stood across from the hard, sturdy frame of Louis Kamaka - eye to eye - separated by the fading strip of white paint that represented the free throw line on the ragged, wet, asphalt basketball court at Lanakila Park. It had rained the night before and much of the pavement was slippery and covered with puddles. Broken pieces of glass from beer bottles lay scattered arounll the court and when the sun caught the glass at a certain angle, they sparkled strong enough to hurt my eyes. I watched Louis's massive chest go up and down, up and d.own in quick breaths and then I looked into his eyes. Louis's eyeballs were large, round, and yellow, and if I looked hard enough, I could see the red, tomato-colored ends where they disappeared into the firm bridge of his nose. Beads of perspiration fell into the lines of his forehead and ran down his cheeks like tears. It was his ball and the score was twenty to twenty. The last basket would win.

He started dribbling slowly and deliberately with his left hand. I watched the ball bounce up and down, inches from Louis's feet and his thin, blue rubber slippers. I hand-checked him, putting my right hand on the damp white t-shirt that stuck to his sweaty back.

He backed cautiously to the basket and, because of his strength, I found myself giving him room. He made a quick move to his right, and I bit. Then, palming the ball with his right hand as if he were doing a hook shot, he pivoted to the left, jumped high in the air, let out a savage yell, and slammed the ball into the basket. His hand banged against the loose, metal rim and the sound was like a can being blown down a sidewalk by a sudden gust of wind. The ball shot through the rim and bounced through the torn, dangling chain nets with a swish and slammed into the surface of the court. Louis landed on top of my back and we toppled to the ground, his arms wrapped around me to keep me from falling. Particles of paint and dirt sprinkled upon us like rain from the still vibrating backboard.

1

I could hear a hum from the metal piples that held up¡ the basket.

My mouth tasted of dust.

"Whew," Louis said, wiping sweat from his brow. "You all right, or what?"

"Yeah."

"Eh, dis game was too close foah me," he said. " You getting bettah." Then he rose and helped me to my feet. • The stories I had heard about Louis were the kind that stuck with you for a long time. When I was over at Kalakauaintermediate, people said he once killed a guy in a fight behind the bowling alley across from the Kam Shopping Center. Choked the guy to death with his own two hands. They said he drove up to Kapalama Heights one night with the dead body and cut the guy up and buried him under piles of fallen ironwood leaves. I don't know ifl believed the stories or not. I guess I didn't know Louis well enough to make up my mind. I don't even know if Louis was aware of what people were saying about him. But I do know one thing. Everyone seemed to know Louis's name, from the teachers in school, to the cops. to the ministers at church. I even remember my mom telling me to stay away frotn him. Like I said, I don't know if I believed the stories about Louis or not, but whenever he scratched his eyebrow or tapped his fingers on the desks at school, I watched his hands with the morbid fascination of someone standing around in a museum looking at a gun that was supposed to have killed many people. I tried to avoid him, but every now and then, he'd call me to play a game of one-on-one basketball. Most of the time I told him I had something to do. But once in a while -like today -I'd lie to my mother and tell her I was going to a friend's house to help paint his kitchen. Then I'd sneak out the backdoor, and meet Louis somewhere. The last thing I wanted was for him to be mad at me. " We go mah house, " said Louis, as we walked to the water fountain. " Still early, ah?" " Yeah," I said.

"Good," he said. "Get someting foah eat." He turned on the fountain and stuck his head under the stream of water. The water splashed on his face and spilled down the front of his shirt. Then he drank long, hard swallows. I could see his Adam's apple moving quickly up and down. A little Hawaiian girl was jumping rope and when she noticed Louis watching her, she smiled and jumped faster and began counting aloud. Louis shook his wet, shoulderlength hair like a dog, pulled it back over his ears and took off his shirt. I walked to the fountain and drank. The water felt cool and crisp. The opening where the water came out was thick with dark2

green moss and the drain was orange with what looked like rust.

After I drank, we headed for Louis's house. The Hawaiian girl with the jump rope had disappeared.

Louis lived in a small, wooden house on Pohaku Street, a block or so away from the park. Across from Louis's house was the Kapalama Canal, a thin ribbon of oil and water and algae and metal and anything else that fell into the rain gutters of Kalihi. The canal, I guess, began somewhere in the rain forests of the Koolau mountains and tapered down through Kapalama, collecting water from gutters and puddles and ground wells, until it met the ocean past the canneries and oil refineries near Honolulu Harbor.

Children from the nearby apartments often waded in the shallow water with their pants rolled up to the knees, slashing the wat er with scoop nets and catching the small, striped tilapia and the brown, slender medaka by the hundreds. While they searched the beds of moss for more fish, they left the ones they had caught in their plastic buckets to suffocate in the sun.

We turned into Louis's gravel driveway. An old man wearing glasses and a straw hat was watering a hedgerow that lined the beige house. He wore a white undershirt and a gray pair of short pants. The old man's hair was well cropped and his gold-rimmed glasses sparkled like mirrors in the glare of the sun. A thick, musty-smelling pomade filled the air. Turning to us with a sudden, anxious movement, he asked, " Where's your mother?" The tops of his thin lips vibrated nervously when he spoke.

Louis looked at the old man. I watched Louis's long lashes and the yellowish colored eyeball and the tomato ends near his nose.

"You went sleep or what today?" he said.

"Yes." Louis took out the housekey that was hidden at t he bottom of an Thorn MeAn shoebox.

"I bought fish," the old man added, weakly.

"What?" said Louis. " Fish. I bought fish."

Louis's mouth set firmly. " What kind fish?"

"Ahi. For sashimi."

"Sashimi? What da hell you tink? We rich or someting?"

"But-" "Stupid." Louis opened the front door. The air in the house ~,., ..J"''"' musty, a mixture of varnish, old paint, wet blanket s and ammonia-like smell of a catbox. When we walked on the floor, wood creaked and the framed pictures of flowers and waterfalls hung on the walls shook. Louis headetl for the kitchen and I 3

followed. A pot of rice lay in the center of the dining table. I could smell coffee and the stench of meat rotting in a milk carton near the sink. Louis opened the cupboard, took out two small plates and a wooden rice scoop, and walked to the ta~le. A small, brown cockroach 路the size of a raisin skittered on top of the rice. Louis swore and flicked it off with the back of his hand. The roach fell onto the wooden floor and ran into a stack of crumpled newspapers and a Life magazine with a picture of John Lennon on the cover.

Louis put the rice on the plates; then he walked to the icebox. The bulb did not work. He took out a bottle of milk and offered me some, even though there was only enough for one glass. I refused, but he insisted I take it. He then took out a pink, tupperware container filled with a dark-greenish brown seaweed dipped in a vinegar and shoyu sauce. The seaweed was fine, like thick hairs. It smelled of salt water and vinegar. With a pair of chopsticks he put a generous portion of seaweed on both plates. " Picked 'em mahself," he said.

"Wheah?"

"Kailua side."

"Haven't done that in years .. .. " "Limu picking. Das one art dat stays with you forever."

Louis sat down on an orange sofa and put his feet on the coffee table. Across from him was a small, black-and-white television. The sofa was dusty and when he sat, it made a loud groan. One side of the couch was covered with colorful cushions. the other side a neatly folded red futon. Louis picked up a copy of the newspaper and looked at the television section. He rose and turned the set on to Gilligan 's Island.

"I saw dis one, " said Louis, as he sat down. "Dis da one Gilligan gotta stay up all night and watch da orange seeds but he went fall asleep and went dream about someting . . . ."

The front door opened and Louis stopped talking. The old man walked in, wiping his feet carefully on a mat. I noticed he walked with his back bent and his head down . He smiled and waved sheepishly and disappeared into the hallway. He closed a door and the walls shook. Louis was shaking his head. "Who's dat?" I asked.

"Who?" " Da old man."

"Ass mah faddah .... " Outside the crickets whirred.

Louis's father walked out. Now he was wearing an unbuttoned aloha shirt- blue with pink hibiscuses- and his hair was parted neatly to one side. In his right hand was a dark brown mandolin.

The metal strings were copper with rust and a thin layer of dust covered the polished wood. The old man was smiling.

4

"Put dat away," said Louis.

His father made a sad, disappointed face. His eyebrows sagged and he looked down at the instrument. He slowly sat down next to Louis on the couch and he began to play. His thin fingers moved clumsily and hesitantly over the strings at first, but in a few aeconds he had picked up speed and began playing the opening atrains of the Hilo March with the fluent and sensitive delicacy of a inan who had played all his life.

Louis watched the television.

"Where's your mother?" the old man asked Lo\,\is. Louis rose quickly and snapped off the television. He walked outside and alammed the door. I could hear the sparrows scream as they IC&ttered off the telephone lines outside. I didn't look at the old man. I followed Louis outside and closed the door behind me quietly.

He was in the garage opening the door to his yellow pickup truck. There were shelves in the back of the garage filled with tools, plastic bottles of Prestone anti-freeze, gar den hoses, cardboard boxes with engine parts, WD-40, mouse traps, Armor-All, and a stack of worn out tires. "We go smoke some pakalolo."

"Wheah?" I asked.

"Da old graveyahd down da street."

"You crazy! My grandma stay buried deah. Besides, I ain't 1oing smoke in no graveyahd with dead people!"

"Nothing foah be scared about," said Louis, looking away . ..Dead is dead, brah."

Under the truck was a thick, black pool of oil. Crab grass and dust had accumulated in the puddle.

"We go beach, den," said Louis.

I got into the truck. The cab had a sickening smell, like 10mebody had stepped into dog crap and wiped their feet on the rug. Louis worked the stickshift and released the hand brake. In ten :U&.uu.• ...:>.,, we were cruising Koko Head- bound on the H-1 freeway.

Ala Moana Beach is a popular beach for locals because. if uuou•.u-. else, it's convenient. I mean it's easy to get to, and it's like the center of town. Over at the beach, there's a place called Magic . . .......u where people gather by the hundreds to jog, toss frisbees. ,DB.ro•~:tcl~e. sunbathe, bicycle, fish, swim and surf. I don't know so magic about the place, but that's what they call it. To the of Magic Island, if you're facing the ocean, is a sort of pool :Ul1t:~a''"u by a stack of boulders that serve as a breakwater. Louis and swam to these boulders. I was pissed off watching Louis and his ...........,v constant strokes while I was left about fifteen yards behind 5

swallowing water and wondering how deep the water was and pumping hard with my legs, feeling the cramp welling in my calves. We climbed upon the wall and sat facing the horizon. The wind felt cool against my skin.

"Rob-boy," he asked, "still working service station?"

"Yeah."

"Wish I had one job," he said, pinching his nose to remove the water. "But who da hell going hire me?"

"Maybe once you graduate, you going-" "Ain't going graduate."

"What da hell you talking about?"

"Screw dat place. No ways I going back .... " A large wave slammed against the breakwater and I could hear the ocean sound rush under the boulders beneath us.

"Eh, brah," I said. "Gotta graduate."

"I no need do nothing," said Louis. The wind was loud and his voice seemed soft, distant. " I going play basketball. Be one millionaire with da Lakers." " You crazy." " Why?" " Get planny guys who good, tink dey can play for da Lakers.

Like da guy from Leilehua- Filipino guy- Bautista. And what about all da guys in New York and Chicago?" â&#x20AC;˘<I scruff Bautista one-on-one."

"What if you no can play basketball?" I asked. "What if you ain't good enough?" There was a long silence and I felt bad about asking the question.

"Den you know what I going do? Hah? " He looked at me. He made a fist and the knuckles in his thick hand cracked. "You know da small pond behind Joe Ayala's Bar? Da nice pond dat dey lock up?"

I nodded.

"Get one catfish swimming around in deah. Just one. Big, strong and fast. I gotta catch da buggah. I promise I going catch em."

I hadn't been to the pond in years but I remember it as a very quiet and still place. The water was a dark green and the trees reflected off the placid surface. It was long, maybe seventy-five yards, but not very wide. It would take no trouble to throw a baseball from one side to the other. The water was cold as ice because it was fed by a small underground well. The strange thing about the pond was that as far as I knew, no one ever knew its name.

It was just the pond with the catfish. All the kids in Kalihi wanted 6

to snag that catfish. I once had him, too. I was fishing for some large tilapia that I could sell to the old Filipino men, when something caught my line. The monofilament shot out of my reel and buzzed like a hundred dentist drills. I knew I had the catfish. I fought it for about ten minutes. and I felt it tug and it was like holding a magnet in my hand in front of a large piece of metal. The fish jumped outofthewaterand wriggled in the air. I saw the thick body. and the black, dead-looking eyes. and the long, long whiskers. It was only then, when I saw it curl in the air and shine in the sun, that I knew I really wanted it. I fought it for another ten minutes, and then the slack of my line went dead. I knew that my bait. hook and lead were gone.

My boss Mr. Oliveira is a tall Hawaiian with curly black hair and a tiny wart, the size of a small bread crumb, on the corner of his left eye. When he smiled, his teeth looked yellow from tobacco. He was a fullback for one of the old high school football teams, and he always talked about the time in Honolulu Stadium when he returned a kickoff 78 yards for a touchdown. Not too long ago he had lost his wife in a traffic accident and I only found out about it when I read it in the obituaries. "Why da hell dey gotta print dat kine stuff?" he told me. " Just leave us alone. We tell when we like tell."

I had worked for Mr. Oliveira for a little more than a year. I met him last summer in a pool hall on Gulick A venue. We got together and shot several rounds and we got to talking about different kinds of scotch and what we read in the newspapers. I beat him in three games, won fifteen bucks, and he offered me a job.

"Howzit, Robbie," he said, as I came into work. He was under the hood of an old model Toyota SR-5. The metallic blue color of the car was the shade of faded denim jeans. Mr. Oliveira's hands were big and strong and the cords and muscles in his forearm twisted and danced when he turned a bolt with a wrench or loosened a screw. I walked over to him. He was sizing up the SR-5 for a new radiator.

The grill was cracked and torn. and small flies and moths - white as if frozen in ice- were lodged between the spaces in front of the radiator.

"Mr. Oliveira." I said. " I like ask you one question. " "Look dis baby," he said, gesturing towards the car. "How you figgah?" He smiled and scratched the back of his neck with the crescent wrench . I laughed.

7

" Uh," I started again. This time he looked at me. " I was tinking I know one guy who work hard and looking for one job." " Friend of yours?" Mr. -Oliveira wiped the oil off the crescent wrench with a towel. "Go same school as you?"

"Sort of." " I know ern?" " Maybe." " What da name?" " Karnaka. Louis Karnaka."

He looked at me. I saw a pencil stuck behind his ear. His brown eyes did not move and I saw the beads of sweat in the pores of his skin below his nose. "Louis Karnaka ... Karnaka ... I heard dat name someplace before . . .."

He wiped his fingers on the towel and patted my back. I looked up the hill to Kapalarna Heights and felt the wind in my hair. I imagined the breeze blowing around the fallen needles of the ironwood trees. I wondered if Louis would ever catch his fish.

It was the closest I ever got t o running away from horne.

I was fourteen and in the eig hth grade and it was Halloween night. There were three of us - Keala, the oldest; Foster, the youngest; and me. It was about nine or so and we had finished trick-or-treating. Keala was sti ll wearing his mask, a glow-in-thedark mask of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. I had covered my face with a thick, red liquid that they sold in drug stores that was supposed to look like blood. Foster went trick-or-treating without any mask. Keala said he didn't need one because he was ugly enough.

We were sitting down on the lanai at Keala's house. He lives in one of the low-income housing areas in Kalihi Valley. Keala was eating a Reese's peanut butter c up and I was sucking on a lemonflavored lollipop. In the parking lot, Keala's father was buffing the fender of his Impala. The night was thick with quiet.

"One day we should go up deah," said Keala. He was pointing w ith his fing er towards the dark mountains. " Das wheah supposed to get da guy Louis went kill." 路 " What guy?" I asked. I think it was the first time I had ever heard the story.

"You know da g uy Louis Karnaka? Basketball dude?"

"Yeah."

"H e went kill one guy. Rig ht behind Karn Bowl."

"Nah," I said. " Why?" 8

"My faddah told me. He went choke da guy's 路neck and he drove up da mountain and he went cut up da guy and bury em in all kind places."

"One of my friends knew one guy who found some bones up deah," added Foster. He had a terrible scab on his knee from falling off his skateboard. He picked at the scab and some of the skin was green with pus. The black hairs near his knee curled and tangled in the softness of the raw skin.

"We go up now," said Keala. He was smiling and looking at me.

"We go get one shovel and dig da guy up!"

"You crazy," I said. "Mah faddah would break mah ass ifl went up deah at night."

"No need tell em."

"Noways."

"Why?" he asked. "Scared?"

"No, but-" "Panty."

"Wheah we going get da shovel? No more shovel - " "Your old man get one," said Keala. "I seen em - " "You nuts," I said. "Mah old man would bust mah-" "Panty."

The first thing I always remember about that night up on the mountain was how dark it was. When I put Keala's flashlight against the inside of my palm, I could see the bones and veins -all orange- right through the skin. And when I aimed the flashlight into the ironwood trees, I saw the beam of light reach through the ehadows like those spotlights the airport uses on dark nights. It cold and we kept warm by wearing two jackets each. Keala led the way with the flashlight. I felt secure being second.

There was no moon and no stars and once we were up on the mountain, no one mentioned Louis or the body. The ironwood needles on the ground were wet and slippery. Foster carried my father's old shovel over his shoulder. No one said a word but our ctn.ntcrtAncr were very, very loud. Keala was the first guy to stop. I feel my heart pounding in my chest and throat. "Pass da lhovel," he said to Foster. Foster gave him the shovel and Keala ltarted to dig. He was strong and did not have much trouble .,&,.,...... u,,~ the soil. It had rained earlier and the ground was damp soft. I could smell the soil. Foster held the flashlight and aimed the deepening hole. Several pill bugs ran out of the hole and beneath the fallen ironwood leaves.

"What if Louis watching us?" asked Foster in a whisper. " What he like kill us?"

9

The air was getting colder. I did not say a word. Keala dug deeper.

Somewhere down the valley. someone was chopping wood. I could hear the hollow thud of the axe, steady and hypnotic like the sound of an old clock.

"What da hell is dis?" asked Keala suddenly. Foster knelt and picked up a small white fragment, maybe an inch long. Keala aimed the flashlight at it and dusted it off with his finger.

"Das part of da ribs!" said Foster.

"No," said Keala in a louder voice. " Ass part of da tree." He threw the branch away and we moved to another spot deeper into the dark forest.

We walked for another ten minutes and the grade of the mountain got steeper. We had to grab hold of roots and vines to keep from falling off the sides. I could hear Foster breathing heavily behind me. The spaces between the trees were pitch black.

He stopped and stood at the edge of a cliff. We looked at all the lights of the city and we saw the dark ocean. "Can see mah house, or what?" asked Foster.

"Right deah," said Keala. " By da freeway."

"Wheah da freeway? " "Dose row of lights. So bright! Blind or what .. .. " Silence.

Keala looked at me. He had heard it, too. " What da hell was dat?" I asked.

We stood silent and we heard the sound again. Footfalls in the grass.

"You hear d em?" Keala asked.

I nodded.

We turned and scrambled down the mountain, falling and scraping our knees and arms and faces. tripping over each legs, s napping branches with loud cracks, and all the while, Fo screaming behind us, " Was Louis! I saw Louis! He had one knife.

Hurry up! He coming after us .... " I never learned what the hell those sounds were. May be a pig or one of those mountain men who plant pakalolo or the or maybe just our damn imaginations. Imaginations, shit. next day I got dirty lickings and was grounded for a week because had left Dad's shovel up on the mountains to rust and be under the needles of the ironwood trees.

I hadn't s een Louis for the next couple of weeks so I decided 10

walk over to his house and see if everything was all right. Several Filipino boys were playing Hawaiian-style football in the street.

The main difference between Hawaiian and American-style football is that with Hawaiian-style, you can throw the ball as many times as you want. I looked at the lawn and the mailbox and the house. A faucet against the wall dripped slowly, plopping water into a small puddle in the well-cut grass. The pickup was in the garage. The fenders and windshield were covered with red dirt.

Through the curtained plate glass window of the house, I could see the black-and-white flickerings of the television set.

I walked up the steps and the wood creaked loudly. There was a small, white doorbell, but I knocked on the wall instead. I heard the television go off and then I heard footsteps through the house. The door opened. Louis wore a thick beard. He stroked it and looked at me for a while as if he didn't recognize me. His eyes were very red.

After a while, he invited me inside. The air was cool because a breeze was coming in through one of the open windows but the catbox smell of ammonia still lingered in the house. I heard the crickets chirping outside and the faucet below the window dripping. Inside, the icebox hummed monotonously. " What's up?" he asked.

I sat down on the sofa. From a crack in one of windows, I could see the mountains of Kapalama Heights and the tall ironwood trees resting still in the breeze.

"Just seeing how's everyting."

"Still alive." He sounded annoyed.

Louis walked over to an embroidered flower design that was framed and hanging on the wall. He straightened it. " Nice, ah?" he asked. "Mah muddah did em."

"Yeah," I said. "Must take long time."

"How's school?" he asked.

"Still deah."

Then I said, ''Miura said foah tell you come back school. You can still graduate if you study up. He said you making one mistake."

Miura was the school counselor. He was also Louis's basketball coach.

"Tell em I said no need school." Louise sat on the coffee table and picked up a forty-pound barbell and started doing curls with his right arm. The muscles in his forearm vibrated to the rhythms and clankings of the metal weights and the veins in his biceps pressed insistently against the dark skin. His fingers looked thick and firm wrapped around the metal pipe.

The sound of the mandolin came from the hallway. Louis placed 11

the weights on the floor and the walls shook slightly. The music stopped and I heard a door open. I sat watching the afternoon sun high over the mountains. The air looked gray. The old man's shadow appeared from the hallway and fell upon a bookshelf filled with empty liquor bottles. Louis stood up. His fist was clenched. I stood up also.

"Louis?" said the old man gently. "Did your mother buy groceries today? I told her to pick up some-" "What I told you?" asked Louis. ''1-''

"I told you foah fucking stay in your fucking room! " He was shouting. He punched the wall and the house shook. Several of the framed works of embroidery fell to the floor. " You deaf or what, you bastard?" He punched the wall again and the glass in the window rattled. The old man, with his head down, disappeared quietly into the hallway. Louis followed. I heard him say something. Then I heard him slam the door. Louis came back into the living room, his fingers twisted in his hair. He shook his head and sat down. I got up to leave.

Someone had vomited outside of the bathroom at the gas station over the weekend, and the pungent smell coming through the Kona Wind made me gag. I stood over the bucket hoping that the Pine Sol would drown out the bitter, sickening smell, but my stomach still turned uneasily as the mop smeared the brown, sand-colored puddle into a mess of chunks of orange like carrots and greens like lettuce. Then, when I rinsed the mop in the bucket, the puke caught and dangled in the rope ends. I swore at the bastard who did it, whoever he was. I saw the empty case of Heinekens in the back of the garage when I had to sweep up the broken, green bottles. I could tell that they had cracked the bottles by throwing them against the wall. The sun was high over the afternoon and I felt my back sticking to my shirt. I took out the bathroom key and opened the door. The floor was wet and slippery. The drain in the toilet had clogged with toilet paper and the water had overflowed. I swore and mopped my forehead with the back of my hand.

"Howzit," I heard. I turned around. Louis was eating a bag of li hing mui. It was a big bag- the expensive ones that run about a dollar - and I declined when he offered me one. "Hoooo, what a mess. What da hell happened?" He路was carrying a fishing pole. a small tackle box, and a plastic bag filled with what looked like bread crumbs.

12

"Somebody went puke over heah." I explained about the case of empty Heinekens in the back of the garage.

"Jeez," he said. "You know what you should do?"

"What?"

"Next time, hide over heah. Then when dey come again, nail urn.

Punch da lights out. Just hide. Like in da bushes or someting . ... " "Wheah you going?"

He smiled when I asked him.

"I going catch dat damn fish."

I don't know what made me go over to the pond that day after work, but I did. The fence was locked with a bicycle chain, but it wasn't very high, so I climbed over. Once on the other side, I felt the soft mondo grass and I listened to the birds and the crickets and an occasional plop when a tilapia broke the surface of the placid water. It was a shame the pond didn't have a name. For the longest time, I thought it was the most beautiful place in the world.

On the bank adjacent to the canal sat Louis, wearing a baseball cap, a blade of grass in his mouth. Next to him was a small Hawaiian boy. Louis's hand was on the boy's head and the boy's head was resting on Louis's shoulder. The boy's smooth, sunstreaked hair looked reddish in the sun. Louis looked up and smiled when he saw me. I waved and walked over. "Any luck?" I asked.

"Naw," he said. He had a small Garcia reel, the kind my father uses when he goes shore fishing for oio or weke over down the Waianae coast. Louis's denim jeans were rolled half way up his calves, and the curly black hairs were wet and stuck to his brown skin. The boy next to him was playing with a dark red crayfish, teasing the legs and watching them paw at his finger.

I looked into the pond. There were three large rocks in the deepest part, right in the middle. The rocks were covered with moss. Occasionally, sparrows and mynah birds sat on the rocks and picked at their feather. I don't know how long we sat there, the Ulree of us, talking about everything that came to mind: cars and beers and cartoons and cheerleaders. The sun started to sink behind the mild-white apartment houses. The laundry lines and antennae stretched against the darkening sky like the silhouetted legs of large insects.

"Next week da big day, ah?" asked Louis, slowly reeling in his line.

13

" Yep," I said. "Just bought da cap and gowns and all. So damn expensive and all you do is wear em once. Mah folks, dey pretty excited .. . ."

Louis smiled distantly. "Ass good." He opened the plastic bag and rolled a small piece of bread in to a ball between his thumb and index finger. Then he put the ball into his mouth and wet it. He fastened the moist ball of bread onto the hook and cast his line into the green belly of the pond, the space between the three large boulders. That's the place I first hooked the catfish.

"What you going be doing from now on?" I asked Louis. I scratched my nose and I thought I could still smell the vomit on my hand.

He pointed towards the pond. "I told you already. I going hook dis catfish."

"What happens after you catch em?"

There was a long silence. The boy let the crayfish go and it skittered into the shallow water and disappeared.

"Ask me when it happens."

I have forgotten the name of the small Hawaiian restaurant on King Street that always looks closed. It has red-framed windows and dirty-colored bricks, and smoke from the kitchen flows through a smokestack on the roof. Behind the place is an apartment surrounded bf laundry lines and old shrubs. Old ladies from the apartment are always washing their clothes in the basin near the parking lot of the restaurant. The parking lot is unpaved and when you drive through it, a lather of white dust billows in the air and you have to roll up your windows. Louis called me up the day before graduation and asked me to meet him at the Hawaiian place for lunch.

I got to the restaurant first. The air had a funny smell, strong and not very pleasant - the smell of pork and dishwater and coconut and fried fish and cooking oil and crushed taro leaves.

Ferns hung from straw baskets dangling from the ceiling. Every now and then, a hum came from the soda machine. It was lunch time but I was alone in the place. An old radio on the wall played classical music.

Louis came in fifteen minutes late and sat down. An old Portuguese lady came out with a notepad and Louis o rdered laulau, poi, salmon, raw Maui onions, and two Primos. He didn't even look at a menu. The w aitress stuck the pen behind her ear, and 14

repeated the order. I wondered who the hell was going to pay for all of this.

"Sorry I late, " said Louis. There was a patch of dirt beneath his thick fingernails.

"Ass all right."

The beer and the onions came first. The lady placed two cocktail napkins on the table and set down the cold, brown beer bottles.

Louis told her that we wouldn't need the glasses and she nodded without smiling. Then she put down the Maui onions with a side order of Hawaiian salt. Maui onions are the sweetest in the world.

We sprinkled the salt on the onions and ate them raw, like apples.

Louis smiled and drank his beer from the bottle. " Eat up, brah. Dis mah what-you-call, graduation present to you."

"Present?" I asked. "Wheah the bucks come from?"

"Nah mine," he said, making a face. " Just eat up."

The laulau came. The steam from the taro leaves rose like ribbons into the ceiling fans of the warm restaurant. Louis started eating. The food was good. "So what, school-boy?" he asked, between bites. "What you going do now dat you going be out of school?"

"Work. Fix car-" "Clean up vomit."

I looked up. Louis smiled disarmingly. " Nah brah. Take it easy.

Only joke." He sipped his beer and laughed loudly.

"What about you?" I asked. " What you going do?"

"I get by."

"What you going do foah cash?" " No worry about me," he said, finishing his beer. " Planny money."

"You tink you can live off your parents forever?"

He put the empty bottle down and peeled at the wet label.

"My parents," he said, quietly. " Shit."

I've known Louis for a long time, at least I've known who he was for a long time. I think the first time I ever really met him was at basketball tryouts. We were both sophomores in high school but he was already starting and averaging about ten points a game. The papers called him a dangerous player because he was very physical and moved quickly. When you pla yed a zone and left him alone in the perimeter, he'd hurt you with his twe nty-foot jump shot. When you played a man defense, he'd move you into the key and with his speed and aggressivene ss, he'd get his position for the 15

路 lob or the dunk. Anyway, he was at tryouts, standing on the bleachers watching us, popping his gum and spinning a ball on his finger, while the rest of us grunted and sweated and swore and cried through sets of lay ups, wind sprints, five-on-fives, and rebound drills.

Once I played against Louis and he sent an elbow into my chest.

I lost my breath and had to gasp for air. My eyes were open but all I saw was blackness. A small Filipino boy named Antonio something came over and helped me to my feet. "Ass da guy who went kill somebody. He play dirty, yeah?"

I never made the team. I was cut in the last round. But I still went out and watched the games now and then. Louis was listed as guard on the program, but because of his large, thick frame, he often played at forward. I remember a game against McKinley. Near the end of the game, with Farrington well in control, a McKinley guard was driving down the floor on a fast break. Louis sprinted down court and laid an elbow flush against the guy's head. The McKinley guy fell and his head hit the floor. The trainer had to come out with a towel and wipe up the blood. The crowd booed, even the Farrington guys.

The next day I was in the weight room doing bench presses.

Louis was in the corner by himself doing squats. It was early afternoon, just before lunch, and the air had a dusty, yellowish color. Louis came up to me and asked me if I had a cigarette. I told him no and he walked away. Three guys came into the weight room and asked me if I knew a guy named Louis. I pointed him out. The three walked over to Louis, and when he saw them, he rose slowly to his feet. The three boys jumped him. One guy got his throat, one guy got his hands, and one guy tried to tackle his legs. Louis spun around, and with a loud scream, picked up a long, thick weight bar.

He held it, parallel to the ground like a sword, and screamed, " What? C'mon you bastards! C'monl" The three made a hesitant circle around Louis. One guy pulled a knife. Louis swung the bar and hit one of the guys square on the temple. It made a horrible, dull sound and I heard a crack. The boy fell to the ground and he was bleeding from his ear. Once he was on the floor, he did not move.

Louis watched the two other boys. "Who next? " he said, quietly.

"You tink you big with dat pole, ah?" said the larger of the two standing boys. He was wearing a gray sweat shirt and a headband.

"Put em down," said the boy with the knife. "No need weapon, brah."

16

Louis threw the bar down. It made a high pitched sound that echoed in the hot, small room for a long time. Like a tuning fork. " What now?" said Louis. "Outside, you bastards."

Both boys laughed and the one with the knife charged Louis and stabbed him in the stomach. I didn't know what the hell was going on. Everything was moving in slow motion, like in a dream. A fucking bad dream. I saw the blood spilling from the spaces between Louis's fingers. It was a dark color. almost black. Louis's yellow eyes were on fire and his teeth were set in a tight, trembling grimace. He tried to reach for the bar but the boys ran out of the weightroom. The dark blood was on the concrete floor. and the red splotches - the size of raindrops - fell like wet paint onto the benches and equipment. Louis stepped over the third boy. who was still on the floor, and slowly grabbed a set of weights for support and gently set himself down upon a bench. He put his head down and placed his hand on his stomach. He swore and a thin ribbon of blood began to spill out of the trembling corners of his tight lips.

"I going call Mr. Ahuna." I said. Mr. Ahuna was one of the physical education teachers.

"Nah, brah," said Louis, standing up slowly. He tried to smile.

"I all right."

And he left, just like that.

I watched Louis walk out of the dark room and then I looked at the boy he had hit with the bar. He was still lying on the floor. His hair was dark and sticky and wet, but it didn't look red. It was like he had just gotten out of the shower. A custodian came in with a mop and bucket. He looked at the puddles of blood and the red fingerprints on the doo r and the weight machines and the benches.

Then he looked at me.

"Damn you kids," I heard him say. as he shook his head. "Damn you no good kids."

"What's your problem? You no like poi?"

I looked up. I was jabbing my spoon into the brown mound of poi in my bowl. "I do," I said, laughing. " Hope so," replied Louis. "You Hawaiian, ah?" A pretty Chinese waitress came out of the k itchen and Louis ordered two more beers.

"Half."

"What da other half?" He gave me a piece of his laulau and said he wasn't hungry.

"All kine. Portuguese. Japanese, little bit Filipino, some English .. . ." I raised my knee and it bumped the underneath of the 17

table. Someone had stuck a piece of chewing gum there and U caught on my corduroy pants.

"So what," asked Louis. "All your folks going be deah tomorrow?"

"Yep," I said. "My old man going take pictures. Mah muddab stay picking maile with my aunty from Kauai. My uncle bringing couple cases of Budweiser ... ."

"Lucky you get nice family. " I smiled. The Chinese girl brought the two beers and Louis gave her a dollar bill.

"Yep," said Louis. " You damn lucky."

Mr. Oliveira said that he would slap my head if I didn't take the graduation present he stuck in my hand. It was an old, envelope and I opened it under the lightbulb that hung from a chain on the ceiling above his desk. In the envelope was a crisp dollar bill. "I knew you could do it," he said. " You get brains. You one good boy."

I smiled and he patted me on the back. " Now I can work real foah you, " I said. "I can learn how foah fix car and do da body work like how you wanted me foah learn. " Mr. Oliveira was looking at me. He ran his hand through hair. " I don't know," he said. " Mr. Oliveira. You not going fire me, ah? " He smiled and his grayish eyebrows sagged. "No, Rob-boy No .. .. " I was relieved. " I was just tinking, good boy like you . . . should get da skills foah work someplace else. No waste your dis kine place. Maybe learn electronics. Das wheah da money Electronics.

"But I like learn how fix cars. I like it here. You one teacher." " You tink I like seeing you clean up vomit? Scrub toilets? Y better than dat, Robbie. " " But . .. ." " You go out look foah another job. Wheah they treat you like one man. Wheah you can make one name foah yourself. wheah you can keep your hands clean and make planny money. you no can find one place like dat, and you decide you really like car and get your hands all dirty and covered with oil, if you you like work ten hours a day, move around engines, den I'll happy to take you back."

18

He put his large hands on my head and looked at me. I could see myself in his irises. Behind him was an old Playboy magazine calendar and a row of old boxing posters. " Dis is always your home, " said Mr. Oliveira. "If you no can find anyting better, you can always come back."

I clutched the envelope in my hand and knew that whether I actually wound up with another job or not, the hardest thing in the world would be to walk once again into Mr. Oliveira's gas station.

Graduation Day was a shower of color and the air was thick with the smell of carnation, plumeria, rose and pikake. Eighthundred of us- the largest senior class in the state- cloaked in maroon and white, walked two-by-two in straight, disciplined lines as the band under a canvas tent in the corner of the amphitheatre played the strains of Pomp and Circumstance over and over and over again.

There was a light rain falling from the mountains and I remember thinking, as the flutes trilled and the drums rolled and the cymbals crashed, about the many times in study halls and cafeteria lines and homeroom periods that I had wondered and dreamed about this moment.

I was in line with a guy named Ben Puahi. Puahi, or Puhi as we used to call him, was my oldest and best friend. We went all the way back to the days over at Kalihi Kai Elementary when we used to raise pigeons and go hunting for hammerhead sharks under the bridge at Sand Island. Puhi was a big dude. He was the catcher for the baseball team and batted three-hundred four years in a row. He was also the runner-up in the state wrestling championships. He lost in the finals against some Japanese guy from Pearl City who was a black belt in judo. The Pearl City guy swept Puhi's legs and then used a hip throw to slam Puhi to the mat. Then the Japanese guy pinned him, all in less than a minute. When Puhi got up, he patted the Japanese guy on the behind and smiled. That's one thing about guys like Puhi. They know how to win and they know how to lose.

There was a large crowd standing behind the roped-off areas of the walkway. Mothers and fathers and little sisters and calabash cousins and big brothers were snapping photographs and thumbing through programs and pointing and clutching sweet-smelling plastic bags full of leis. I felt the smooth gown on my arms and I remember fixing my cap nervously several times.

19

"Well, my man," said Puhi. " It's all over." It seemed stra nge to see him so well-shaven. All the boys stood tall with clean faces newly-cut hair. It was the damndest thing. ''Yep. " " N o more waking up six-thirty in da morning. No more u....,.v,,...,.l

..

" Kind of s ad, though. " Puhi looked around at the pink-colored buildings. " Yeah," said. " I know what you mean."

I heard our names over the cra ckle of the loudspeakers. ' n ...,._,,., Kahoano and Ben Puahi. " Puhi raised his hands in the air.

"Dis place going get some memories, " he said. " Remember game against Kaiser where I hit da tree-run homer over Lanakila Park and da baseball went hit da bus?"

I smiled. " Everyting going be different from now on," he added.

As we marched up the bleachers in straight lines, I ~........A.about everyone in high school and what Mr. Oliveira told yesterday and I wondered what the hell we all would be doing, a year or two from now. Puhi waved at a girl and I smiled. She was pretty Filipino girl and she wasn't wearing makeup. None of girls wore any makeup; they didn't want the tears to smear it.

The band played the alma mater and then everyone sat The principal was introduced and he started to speak. I could the wind blowing over the microphone. From behind the un>a...â&#x20AC;˘uv,u where we stood, someone called my name. I turned around. It my cousin Kawelo. Kawelo was rich as hell because he manager of several fighting chickens and he got large .... vJLu.u....... sions off the cock fights. He even made the razor-sharp knives they tied to the roosters' feet. I smiled at Kawelo and he held up large bottle of Jack Daniels.

Then to the right of him, I saw Louis. His yellow eyes mine and he held my glance but he.did not smile. He was looking me and slowly nodding his head.

By the time the principal had finished talking and we officially declared graduates of the Farrington High School of '78, everyone threw their caps in the air and firecrackers went in the bathrooms. I turned to the spot where I had seen standing next to my cousin, but he was gone.

An old Hawaiian lady with her gray hair in a neat bun picking mangoes off the tree in her. yard. She had woven some 20

wire into a round cup -like a scoop net- and connected it to a long piece of bamboo. She stroked the branches of the large tree a nd caught the fruit in her n et . The Filipino boys were playing football in front of Louis's house. I watched for a while as one boy ran deep, stumbled on a rock and fell down. The ball landed on Louis's mailbox and bounced back into the street. I picked up the ball and threw it back to one of the boys. The boy who had fallen down saw me walking into Louis's driveway and shouted. " He no stay home."

"Wheah he went?" I asked. " I don't know," the boy said. His knee was bleeding and he limped back to the huddle. " Everytime nowadays, Louis no stay home."

"Wheah he go?"

But the boy did not answer. He was in the huddle. Louis's truck was not in the garage and the curtains to the house were drawn tight. I turned around and left. They sent the boy with the bleeding leg deep again. " Boy! Boy!" The old lady was calling me.

I turned around, smiled and walked over. Her property was separated from Louis's by a scattered row of lichen-covered rocks.

She had a laundry basket full of ripe common mangoes. " You looking for Louis?" she asked. " Yeah."

"You one friend of his?"

I didn't answer. " I no see da boy long time. All time he go out.;, I thought about the bag of li hing mui and the ten dollar lunch and the tip to the Chinese gir l. "Does he come home?"

"Night time he come home. Yell at da faddah."

"How come he yell at da faddah like dat? " "Wha?" " Da faddah. How come he yell at da faddah? " "Louis?" " Yeah."

"Da faddah pupule. Nuts. Da buggah crazy."

I looked at the shuttered windows.

"What you mean pupule?" I asked.

"When Louis was one small boy, da faddah came home one day and caught da wife screwing around with one other guy. Louis's faddah went take out one hunting knife and went chase da guy out.

Den he went after da muddah, but she ran away and she came running into my house. I hid her."

"Jeez ...."

21

"She no come back. Been years. She ain't never going back. Louis's faddah. Da buggah went crazy. Talk to himself night. Waiting foah her. Sometimes I hear him crying swearing. Give me da creeps. And all da time I hear dat ..........,uâ&#x20AC;˘â&#x20AC;˘LIII He play one mandolin, you know. So lonely sounding. I close curtain and shut my ears. When he and Malia- das his name, Malia- was in happier times, dey would sit outside Louis and da old man would play his mandolin. Sometimes I Louis .... " "But .... " "Da old man is good-for-nothing. Useless. Pupule."

I turned around to leave and the lady asked me to take some mangoes. I smiled and refused. The Filipino boys were playing football but the boy with the cut leg was nowhere to seen.

Mom insisted that I go to the cemetery and drop off a lei for grandma and tell her that I graduated. Grandma died when was still in kindergarten. The two things I remember grandma was her squid luau and the way she smelled when walked past me. She taught me once how to dry squid and make legs curl so that they would be more tasty in the garlic sauce. held the squid and dipped the legs into a bucket full of white She would never tell me what was in the white sauce because it a family secret. Now, only me, my older brother Mitchell, my and my mom know. The other thing about grandma was the her clothes smelled when she walked past me. She always ctuJLcou.,. like aloe because she tore the plant and rubbed the sticky liquid the burns on her arm and on the blackened, rotten gums in mouth. Now, once a year- usually near Easter when the ladies up booths outside and sell lilies- I visit grandma and bring her pot of flowers or a bottle of beer or a cigarette and I sit down her and talk out my problems.

It was early afternoon but the graveyard was cool because was shaded by tall, thick brushes of oleander and plumeria. I m my way through the heavy, yellow brush, past the short, Da.Jrol!a wire fence, and found grandma's stone. The tombstone was more than a foot high piece of cement, shaped something like washboard, w ith her name, birthdate and date of death. It caked with red dirt and sparrow crap. I knelt down and placed carnation lei on the dried g rass around the stone.

22

How you doing, grandma. I graduated yesterday. Now I going be one good boy. No need wor.ry about me. â&#x20AC;˘ I could feel the wind at my back. The birds were loud in the trees.

Birds always sing loudest in cemeteries. That's what dad always tells me.

I not going be missing school too much. I mean, I still going be playing basketball with Joe and Willie and Mario and Sammy.

Maybe we go out shoot couple rounds of pool, go on Grant 's boat dri nk beer and cast tor papio.

I ran my fingers on the tracks of the headstone made by slugs.

The carnations still had a sweet, rich smell. Behind me I could hear the dull sound of shovel scratching soil.

Should have been at da graduation yesterday. With all da flowers and everyting. I marched with Pubi. Had one big bash over at his place aftabs. Drank one whole bunch of Lowenbraus and Tequilas. Drank da bottle and swallowed da worm. Got so wasted and lu . . .. I winced. Nab, Grandma. Wasn't dat bad.

A cardinal sat on the sharp edges of a chain-linked fence.

Still working lor Mr. Oliveira. But I don 't know. He said dat da money stay in electronics. He like me make one name loab mabselt. Electronics . . . .

The sky was blue and there were no clouds over the ocean.

What does Heaven look like grandma? Is it like in da books?

I could see a line of red ants cut through a patch of withered blades of grass, carrying a long, dead gecko.

On weekends, maybe, I can go over to da pond and t.ry snag da catfish. You know da one I always tell you about? Da one I bad on my line? You would have been proud if I snatched dat dude. Was bigger than da ulua dad caught on Lanai. I extended my hands about a yard apart. Nab . .. maybe not d at big ... . Lots of guys t.rying foab snag da catfi sh. Get dis one guy, Louis? Remember him? Itoldyou about him. He da guy who went kill one guy. I don't know bow anybody would be able to do something like dat.

Kam Bowl was a block away from the graveyard and ifl looked hard past the trees and the yellow flowers, I could see its white concrete walls.

Mom 's all right. Still working at da delicatessen a nd complaining about her back. And dad stay worki ng on one bouse in Moanalua, by da airport. He said be might take us camping next week. I kinda remember b ow you J,Ised to like to come camping with us. I remember da time in Kauai w hen was real cold and y ou went lend me your sweater . Where was dat ? Haena side, ab?

23

I watched a white moth fly into the sky and disappear in the g lare of the sun.

Someone tapped my shoulder gently and I turned around quickly. Loui s smiled and tapped my cheeks. His forehead was smeared with dirt and his hands were caked to the elbows with mud. He was carrying an old, rusted shovel made of metal that had been painted red. "Dis your grandma?" he asked. " Yeah."

Louis squinted and cleaned the dirt off the headstone with his fingers. " 1880 to 1965. She lived long . . .. " "Yeah."

"She was happy. I can tell."

I smiled. Louis was wearing denim jeans and a torn, white t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. His big hands were wrapped around the handle of the shovel. " What you doing heah?" I asked. " Dis mah place," said Louis, spreading his arms. "Mah job." " Yeah?" I asked. " Since when?" " Last week or so." " No scared, or what?" I asked. " Work graveyahd?" I remembered the stories people told me about the graveyard. Once there was this old man- an ambitious Korean who had two families and was blind in one eye - who sold bubble gum and cheese cake and ice cream and bowls of noodles in a small van parked alongside the cemetery. He was a greedy man, and he worked late hours. One night, people heard him scream and they heard the windshield and windows of his van cracking, as if someone were throwing stones and shattering the thick glass. The next morning, the old man was found curled in his van- his eyes open wide in death- the streaks of blood running parallel down his flesh and the white walls of the van. The slices on his chest were clean and precise, like claw marks. The cops burned the van in an empty lot on Sand Island and in the graveyard, the grass never grows near the place where they found the body. " Come," said Louis, putting his hand on my shoulder. " I like show you someting."

I followed. Louis was whistling an old Hawaiian song that they always played on the radio. He led me to the ditch he was digging.

The smell of damp soil filled the air: the smell of lichen and mold and humus and dried root. It smelled like the mountains after a hard rain.

He put his arm on my shoulder. ''Tell me da truth, Rob," he said,

24

gesturing towards the pit. " Da ting straight, or what? One side look kinda crooked?" " Uh .. . ."

"Tell da truth. Dis mah first job. Did em mahself. What y ou tink?

I should fix da edges. or what?" The hole was shaped like the nameless catfish pond, long but narrow. In a neat pile next to the hole was a mound of dirt. On the dirt were cubes of cut grass. I looked deep into the pit. The dirt was rich and brown. " Nobody went help me on dis buggah. Did em mahself."

I smiled. Louis stared at the hole and closed one eye. " You sure not lopsided?"

He took me once more by the arm. His fingers were hard and callused. We walked through the thick yellow grass with the smell of blooming plumeria sweet and milky through the air. I stepped cautiously. not wanting to walk on any of the markers. Louis was wearing his thin. blue rubber slippers. I read the names on the headstones. Many were Hawaiian, with inscriptions and oval, black-and-white photographs of grandmothers and little children and wives and husbands and fathers . I wondered who took all the pictures and what happened to all of the people and their sons and daughters.

"Nothing foah be scared about," said Louis. "Everybody gotta die. Ass da least ting for worry about. Da least ting .. . ." He bent down and emptied a vase full of dead flowers. Then he poured the putrid smelling water into the dried soil and emptied the flowers into an empty trash can. The smell of the old, gray flowers was as bad as the dark-colored water.

We reached a small wooded shed with a corrugated roof. Louis opened the combination lock and we walked in. Inside was a chair, a table, and a small basin. On the table was a transistor radio, a deck of cards and a thermos. The air smelled of sawdust, rust and coffee. "Dis mah office, " said Louis. " Dis mah place. After I walk around and cut da grass and trim da h edges, I can come in heah and sit down and tink. " Louis was nodding. He placed the shovel against the wall, next to an old manual lawn mower. broom and dustpan. hoe, hand truck, and a wheel barrow half filled with gravel. "Dis whole yahd. It's mah responsibility. Louis Kamaka's place. Rob-boy, you see what I'm saying? Dis mah place."

He smiled and looked at the corrugated roof of the shed. Then he picked up the shovel a nd we walked outside. The sun was bright. I followed Louis as we w ound our way through the cemetery . I could see the muscles in his shoulders and bac k moving up and down, up and down.

25

"But what you g oing do foah da rest of your life?" I asked.

"What you mean?" " You cannot go digging graves foah da rest of your life . . . ."

Sweat ran down his armpits and onto the mud on his chest and forearms. He squinted as he looked at me. " Why?" " Nobody digs graves foah deah whole life," I said. I could not explain.

"What dey do?"

I paused. " Maybe electronics or so meting. Wheah you can make one name foah yourself."

Louis was shaking his head. " I happy heah. With da soil and da worms and da shed . . .. " "You crazy?"

"What da hell you talking about?" " I mean ... you young." " I going wait foah you at da catfish pond." " Wha?" " Ass what I going do. I going wait foah you at da pond."

He stuck the rusted, brown shovel into the gravel and the shadow of it, and Louis's stooped back, pointed directly towards the ironwood trees swaying gently in the breeze on Kapalama Heights.

26

LIPSTICK IN YOUR VOLVO lorD.L .S .

The bar closes.

In the car your husband chats up the dishwasher, one of several spies.

I watch a young girl park a Volkswagen sideways, roll back and stop.

A looker, bad tucked up on pills.

Sees me and starts over. Before I can stand she's in my lap, crying her makeup away. Help me.

None of us knows her.

Her neck smells like violets.

Easing her out of the car I nearly fall.

White jeans and green silk blouse.

I bend over to pick up her shoe, she tears the top two buttons off my shirt.

Pressed against her bug she gets a little calm, then regrips my collar.

I don't see her fellow coming, your husband does and is halfway around the Volvo as he rages past, slams the red croton a roundhouse right.

Your husband starts the motor, calls my name. Let's go.

Her friend looks at me, her nails imbedded in my chest. turns and bounces off a customer 27

coming out, books it.

I step back and she falls, whacks her head hard on the door going down.

Tears on the blacktop, no no don't go.

Standing with her shoe in my hand, people at the windows watching.

The Volvo idles like a watch.

Your husband with his thing in his sock.

Me, it was me again.

Those smears on the upholstery, it was me.

28

THE ALIEN LOUNGE

Next to the Mexican food joint some Filipinos are killing a goat.

Here on the veranda my margarita tastes strange, like blood running down into a pan. So you're going back to California- but why? Dear, Maui is California. Up at the Chinese church the parking lot is all Volvos and Mercedes, the priest wears a dress.

For Thanksgiving they donated plates to all the old pakes whose families had forgotten them. Oh, senorita.

Miss, fill this thing with salt.

My fishcake's gone back home to find the place that's come to smother mine.

29

Louis Phillips BEAR IN MIND

Pulling up Goldilocks (Linosyris vulgaris)

0 shaggy flirtatious me, Allday long I have been thinking What to do with my life, Its paws, its claws, Free-verse breath Hot upon the face of the world.

Shambles. All shambles.

Ursa Major. Ursa Minor.

Those Winnie-the-Pooh Constellations Of faded ambitions Stuck like a broken record In the sky. A broken record Of myth. Starfest.

Moonfest & planet shine Thru the mizzle.

Raven the heart, old smeller.

Someday, I shall set aside self-pity & roll about the purple days, Drowning in stolen honey Like a rough-haired beast.

30

I HAVE NO CHOICE IN THE MATTER

The Fates upstairs are stitching a life, Their one way sewing machine Thrumming & humming with needling cry, One antique Singer Rusty at treadle.

Downstairs, my wife, on the phone, As usual laughs, Her laughter spilling into our bedroom.

The blind, who can read laughter, Might say: You cannot love Unless you embrace Ordinary joys rippling with life.

Clotho. Lachesis. Atropos.

What do those old crones care?

In the dark, we trip over their thread.

Of course, I'm going to die, But there is always the chance I, Lothario of the infinite, can come back.

Ho. Ho. Hum. Hum. Hmmm.

I have no choice in the matter, But let me return as my wife's laughter.

31

Rosemary Bensko THE HUSBAND COMES HOME FROM WORK

He doesn't make the banana tree, the pine prickle, the sawing sound next door, and the faun statue he walks by stick together.

So I love him? Because I hate connections stubborn and closed-faced.

We are settled, yes I know, in a house, we are more or less monogamous.

But he is not serious, does not dress well enough in his shorts too long, and pallid shirt, to force details together in a scary final way around me, as I wait on the steps to hear his small stories of the day rust is dripping bars on the walls, friends are guessing with Italian endings .. . .

If he had a steel-blue accent,

velvet in the background, and wore swelling music, then the statue and pinpricks would mesh together into messy romance.

Should I thank him since he is not gypsy, not exotic enough to make things go?

32

Angela Ball FILINGS

I saw it far off, a stain like a birthmark on the ocean, indigo hovering to shore as if by iridescence alone: a visitation of fish, tiny and tiny fish like iron filings naming North.

I wished it were us, our love floating its own in the clear ocean.

In another life already, I said I'm here to you, both night and the bed narrow as steps, ceiling I could reach up and touch as if to steady it, never see this again I thought but couldn't say.

Outside, the sky locked in the unison of wind, a stream crooked across the edge of stars until it came to morning.

In a country where I went to forget the thought of you- a disused aquarium of a restaurant (the "modern" one

33

suggested in the guide). What to drink? Coca. A tiempo, glass of ice fly-specked like the glass wall.

To eat? Stew. French fries possibly?

Yes. I sit facing discretely away from the kitchen, swigging from the bottle and watching the aquamarine swatch of ocean. Some banging. Some sort of sizzle. Then nothing pressing the back of my neck till I look around - no one anywhere. I turn back to the sea, happy for the blankness, sad for my french fries.

And now, and now you are here, and maybe won't be gone, I think on shore of weak near morning, with shapes of a boat and men doing things of dawn, being ghosts that won't materialize or disappear, shadows in place of shadows.

I left you sleeping in our room. Maybe you are awake.

34

Lynn Domina

The groom's white sleeve brushes against my arm while other men dance with his wife.

Holding crystal cups of sherbet and champagne, we both watch his great aunt extinguish her husband's cigarette, then four candles with the center of her palm.

I lean forward among the loud crowd of spectators as she explains her disorder: severed nerves, the inability to feel pain.

Sometimes, she says, she simply strikes a match to watch the flame whisk across her skin. When she lifts her hand, her palm is crinkled with scars.

My own thumbs search the hollow of one palm, the other, d i scovering nothing.

Cutting between us, her son grips her wrist and plunges her hand into a water pitcher, and the water clouds with ashes. Pressing an ice cube against her burns, he thrusts her toward the dance floor where no one will cheer or jeer or overhear his instructions, to fill a large jar with water. He will cleanse her wound and wrap it with white cloth.

35

When the groom grips my elbow with his empty hand, I turn to him, ready to explain. But he would like this last waltz; all evening I have been declining his offers in favor of the chance to see a small flame changed into the furious brand of a lover.

36

John J. McCann ''AN HONORABLE MAN''

I was sure he had stumbled. It seemed the slightest of missteps, but by the time the full effect reached the upper portions of Father Alexander's body, it had become a lurch, so mag nified was it by his immense size. I looked to see who else had noticed, but the small congregation seemed intent on the reading of the Collect.

I had been a member of St. Anselm's only a short while before the Reverend J . Deaver Alexander was installed as the new rector.

My own arrival at the venerable church marked the end of along and, at times, difficult road that led from faith to agnosticism and back again, taking me through the years of college, marriage, children and finally divorce, until suddenly one day I realized I was very much middle-aged. But the Holy Roman Catholic Church I had left in the mid-fifties, "unam sanctum catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam," was no long the same church.

"David, you at St. Anselm's? An Episcopalian?" It seemed less a question than an accusation. Harry smiled. " I thought you were supposed to be the model agnostic." It was the mild scoffing he reserved for someone he trusted.

Harry Wilcox was the perfect CPA, honest, thorough, and he still wore the short military haircut of his Army days in Korea.

Every spring for fifteen years this good friend and neighbor came to my house at tax time. We drank too much coffee and wondered how a college professor like me could know so little about money.

By the end of the evening, the arcane forms completed and ready for filing, we would be comfortably settled into the musings of men sadly aware of how long ago their boyhood had been, certain the world was no longer the wonderful place it used to be. " I should think you'd be happy to have a new member at your 37

church. The thing is, Harry, Anglo-Catholicism is the perfect combination- the ritual I grew up with as a boy, yet with respect for individual conscience."

But in truth it had all come about because one Christmas eve I was lonely. It was the year of my divorce, the first Christmas there would be no wreath on the door, no greeting cards strung from the mantelpiece, no tree under which to lay gifts. I had gone to a party that night, but I wasn't having much fun . It all seemed so silly for a Christmas eve. And then there came back to me the gentle voice I had heard on the radio that afternoon, a priest's voice inviting all who sought " the peace of the Lord" to celebrate with him the birth of the Christ Child. There was to be a midnight mass at the Church of St. Anselm, Charpentier's Messe pour minuit, and the Fairmount String Quartet would perform Beethoven's Quartet No. 7 in F major. That's Harry's church, I remembered, and I wondered if my friend would be there with his family, if his eldest son John would be one of the al tarboys. For a moment I saw myself standing next to Billy Meehan, our first Christmas together on the altar. We were wearing identical red cassocks and white linen surplices, carefully holding our candles so as not to spill wax on the sleeve and provoke Sister Agnata.

When I arrived at St. Anselm's that night, mass was already in progress, the church thick with incense. Hundreds of candles played out their mesmerizing flicker against the marble and brownstone interior. Rows of red and green poinsettia lined the altar where priests moved confidently about in elaborate patterns of a former time and place. Huge medieval-looking banners of the Virgin, Saints Michael and Andrew, and the Holy Angels hung to both sides. Overhead a red sanctuary light announced the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. A priest in a century-old white cape with gold inlay turned to face the people. " The Lord be with you."

"And with thy spirit."

I wondered whether this was the same priest whose voice I had heard on the radio. He was tall and thin and slightly stooped, somewhere in his late fifties. I could tell he was a kindly man by the patience in his voice, and his face had the tired smile of someone who has known for quite some time how hard life could be.

I knelt in the back of the church behind the last pew, apart from the others, distanced by the blur and confusion of twenty years. I looked for Harry, but couldn't find him in the crowd. Was the priest with the gentle voice looking at me? Would these people wonder who I was, an intruder at their sacred rites? The floor felt cold 38

against my knees. A shudder forced its way up through my body to my head and shoulders.

"Kyrie Eleison" " Christe Eleison" " Kyrie Eleison. " The rich polyphony of Charpenti er's music rose upward over the silent congregation, entreating their unseen God to have mercy. Soon the once-familiar Greek intonations, the soothing repetition of the ancient litany began to quiet my trembling. A calm expectancy was settling over me, seeping in like the pungent incense that pierced my nostrils and permeated my hair and clothes. I thought of the boy I had been, the acolyte in red and white, and how he had wanted to be a priest, how he had read The Life of St. John Bosco, and for him there was nothing more important in all the world than a life serving God and man. But I also knew what he could not: a boy's dreams change, a nd for men there are days so cruel there are no dreams.

The Kyrie was over, and the trembling had stopped. Someone was making room for me in a nearby pew. " The Lord be with you, " the priest said as I took my place next to the smiling stranger.

"And with thy spirit," I heard myself answer along with the others. Could I believe again? I wondered. The thought fluttered over me like a bird that hovers, and then passes on.

There was no mistaking it now; Alexander was limping as he made his way down the altar steps toward the sedilia for the singing of the Credo. There was sweat on his forehead, and his eyes screwed up into narrow slits. He looked hurt, resentful that something so trivial as bodily pain could interfere with his priestly duty. The mass must go on, his eyes blared. Nothing must be allowed to disturb the communion of the faithful. Yet why, on a summer's day in this most beautiful of churches, were the pews so empty.

" Things might be a little different here than what you're used to," Harry had persisted. " St. Anselm's is a fine old church. We like to think it's Anglo-Catholic worship at its finest. But whe n you have a parish where the people are s o involved, there are bound to be problems, aren't there?"

39

"What problems do you mean, Harry?"

He took two short puffs on his pipe, a hint of mischief flitting at the edge of the smile in his pale gray eyes.

"You '11 see soon enough," he said.

Harry was right, of course. There were problems at St. Anselm's. " A tough parish, hard on rectors," was the unofficial word throughout the diocese, and the parishioners themselves seemed strangely proud of their reputation. It was almost impossible for a newcomer like me to sort out the innumerable factions whose struggles kept the venerable parish in perpetual ferment. Nor were the people what I had expected. For me the word " Episcopalian" had always meant ivy-laced stone churches where fair-skinned men and women in tweed gathered politely to thank God for the many blessings of their privileged life, people who sent their sons and daughters to schools with large playing fields and English-sounding names.

St. Anselm's was distinctly less homogeneous. To be sure, there were still a handful of the old Philadelphia families, Wainwrights, and Salisburys who ventured in from the remote security of the Main Line to pray once a week at the family church, or to make the annual descent to the crypt where lay buried their splendid ancestors. But there were more of the "new" people, blue and white collar workers from two-story row houses in Southwest Philadelphia, middle-income professionals living in the bland high-rise apartment buildings of glass that had replaced the once proud townhouses of Rittenhouse Square. Some were Irish, some Polish, a scattering of blacks. There were a few families and scarcely any children. The single women were mostly older, an occasional widow, more often " spinsters," gentle ladies, faded like yesteryear's envelopes, who were far too willing to serve whenever the rector saw fit to call upon them. Like me, they came to the church alone, quickly finding their favorite pew. Kneeling among them I would often wonder what had brought us all together.

The Credo was over and the three priests began their ascent to the altar. Alexander moved slowly, more deliberately than before.

It was evident that the pain had grown worse. The look of hurt turned to anger, the slit eyes and clenched teeth seething with determination to go on at all costs. It had become a struggle of will, the spirit against the flesh, and it was clear Alexander would not

40

give in. The deacon and sub-deacon nodded as if to assure each other the best course was to wait and see. There was a look of bewilderment among the acolytes.

J. Deaver Alexander had seemed the ideal choice for St. Anselm's. There had been a succession of interim priests-in-charge since the retirement of Father Kendricks, and the parish had deteriorated badly. I had never met Father Kendricks. He left St. Anselm's the year before I arrived, but I knew, of course, about the "retirement" in Florida, what great lengths the parish had gone to conceal his problem, how the Bishop finally had to step in. Yet everyone at St. Anselm's seemed to speak well of him. " It's a shame he had to go," they would say. or ''a good man's failing! '' But now there was talk of closing the church, and what the parish needed was a strong rector to pull things together. None other than the Bishop himself re9ommended Father Alexander, who, while an American and Virginia-born, had spent most of his priestly life in , England. It was Stuart Bains, senior warden of the Vestry and a man whose family's involvement dated back to the very beginnings of St. Anselm' s who placed Alexander's name in nomination.

"Both the Bishop and I feel he would make a good choice," Stuart concluded. He spoke in the soft but firm voice of a man used to being listened to.

"Yes, yes, of course. Alexander's just what we need. Highly articulate chap, civilized, if you know what I mean," said Dr. Turner, a retired physician with a taste for Jane Austen.

Father Alexander's interview with the Vestry had been a definite success, and the members were anxious to bring things to a vote. Harry Wilcox was the single exception. " I don't think we should be in such a hurry. A fter all, how well do we really know this man? Has anyone even bothered to write to his old parish?" As accounting warden to the Vestry, Harry was used to exercising restraint over the periodic fancies of the less realistic members. " What's more, I don't like the way he's already talking about changes when he doesn't even know the parish."

"I think some change is in order, and Alexander' s the one to do it," offered Cecil Rose,left wing of the Haverford lacrosse team the year they won the Eastern Pennsylvania State Championship.

"He's a strong man with definite ideas, and that's what we need.

There's nothing wishy-washy about this one."

41

" What do you think, David?" Harry asked me. "A fresh outlook like yours should be helpful. " " Alexander comes highly recommended, and he's certainly the most intelligent of the candidates. I especially like what be said about restoring St. Anselm's to its former greatness. The trouble is, he's been out of the country for such a long time, I wonder if he really understands our situation."

"I'm sure he does, David. Don't you see? Alexander's exactly what we need, someone who can take charge and make St. Anselm's what it used to be, just the way he said he would, " said Flavia Downs, smiling. She was a well-tailored woman whose late husband had been Chairman of the Board at ASB. " We need a real man."

And indeed Alexander looked the real priest, a big man with a no-nonsense look of someone who had once played rugby. He wore a long black cassock with cincture and matching scapular. A large wooden crucifix hung down his chest.

"Alexander's very high church. Solid Catholic theology," said Mrs. Flemington-Porter, eldest living member of the parish, and it was immediately clear to all present there was no further need for deliberation.

The people of St. Anselm's liked their new priest. He spoke with a British accent, walked the parish grounds with the assurance of a retired colonel, smoked a favorite old briar, and spent Sunday afternoons visiting museums. Apple-red and round cheek bones rose high above a full beard thick with grey like the hair on his head. Small, octagonal-shaped, wire-framed spectacles rested slightly foreward on his nose so when he spoke, he had to raise his big head upwards as if bird watching. He looked robust, not quite portly, and he wasn't above having a glass of sherry from time to time, someone had said. There was no defense against his smile, a reassuring acknowledgement of the ultimate rightness of the world that took its shape slowly, but once formed, lingered long past the immediate occasion. And yet at time, there was a weariness in the way he moved, a slight hesitancy that made him seem unaccountably older than his years. " How do you like St. Anselm's by now?" I asked him one day that summer. We were drinking lemonade in the garden by the south portico. It had been unusually hot in church that morning; the men in 路their seersucker suits and the women in their near transparent summer frocks were quick to seek out the shade of the giant sycamores lining the garden fence. Their conversations aimed at encouraging the light western breeze coming off the 42

river, but the leaves on the branches above remained unrepentantly motionless. It was the Sunday of Alexander's formal installation as rector, and the people at the reception were eager to be recognized by their new pastor. I was sure it boded well for the church. " Quite nice really, and everyone's been so kind," Alexander replied with a. smile. "I'm especially pleased to find someone like yourself on the Vestry, someone I can talk to about things other than budgets and building funds." He paused, and the smile eased momentarily from his face. "There have been times in the past when I felt quite isolated being rector of a. parish. But I'm sure that won't happen here." " Another glass of lemonade, Father?" asked Flavia. Downs. " Why, I think I shall. Thank you ever so much, Mrs. Downs."

From silver pitchers spotted with beads of sweat rolling upredicta.bly downward, Flavia Downs served her homemade lemonade. Only real lemons would do, she always insisted. She stood behind a. folding card table, dabbing at her forehead and neck with a. lace handkerchief smelling of rosewater. Two bees hovered in tandem over the remaining chocolate-chip cookies. " I do think, however, there need to be a. few changes in the way we do the mass," Alexander continued.

"What do you mean, Father?"

"Too many irregularities in the liturgy. Not quite canonically correct. That sort of thing. Don't you agree?"

"But I think the mass is beautiful the way it is."

"Yes, yes, of course, but ... ."Alexander hesitated, his face contracting into the near pout of someone mildly perplexed. " And I was rather hoping a. committee of the men might re-do clergy house. Do you think that can be arranged? There's so much cleaning and painting to be done, especially now that we'll be using the third floor."

"The third floor?" " Yes. I've told poor Mr. Phelps he could have the room at the back till he found a place of his own."

"Do you think that's wise, Father? We don't know anything about the man. He's not even a. member of the parish."

"Surely, David, you'll agree I don't need all that space for myself, at least not until the new curate arrives." " Harry says Phelps is not to be trusted, that he uses people."

"But I'm a priest, and the man needs a. home. Besides, what do you think he would have done?" Alexander asked, motioning across the churchyard to where rows of forsythia. and iris lined the 43

flaking sandstone wall of the church. There in the midst of the flowerbeds , arms outstretched as if to welcome the neighborhood birds, stood the solitary statue of St. Francis of Assisi, his beatific countenance softened by time and the milky-grey droppings of pigeons. A smile of mischievious satisfaction had begun to fill Alexander's face as if, having just discovered an explanation better than anything he had planned, he was somehow proven right.

"But if I were you, David, I wouldn't bother to tell the others.

They might not understand. And besides, they'll find out soon enough, won't they?"

Alexander could not go on. They interrupted the mass, and the sub-deacon helped him down the altar steps to the sedilia. The church grew quickly silent, the music not so much stopped but suspended between ritual. The organist looked to the deacon for direction, but none came.

It had been the final meeting before Christmas and the Vestry was busy making last minute preparations for midnight mass. The rectory looked unusually festive that night, red with poinsettia, berry and bittersweet, green with holly and wreaths of freshly picked conifer and p ine cone. A select if small array of Christmas cards lined the mantel above the fireplace where red oak logs from Chester County spread their warmth throughout the room. " It doesn't matter if that's the way it has always been," Alexnder exclaimed, rising to his full height, his eyes firmly fixed on Stuart Bains. " It's simply not fair to the other people, and I won't have it in my church." " There a re certain families, Father," Stuart began slowly, " few in number, I grant" - I had never seen Stuart blush before- " but it is they who are the strength of this church, I assure you." He paused, took from his vest pocket a watch with the well preserved look of an heirloom, ran his finger s gently over the casing, and returned the timepiece to his pocket. " It is these families who have provided St. Anselm's with the continuity and tradition that have made it a great parish all these years. Is it asking so much that we be allowed to have a small number of pews reserved for our families and friends?"

44

"All the people of St. Anselm's are privileged, Mr. Baines, and more privileged than the other. That is the way it shall be so as I am rector here. " A log sputtered and fell to the fireplace floor.

"But it's only for this one mass. My guests are used to .... " "I believe, Sir, the matter is closed. There will be no special . We must all be humble before God." Stuart started to speak, surveyed the room as if to reaffirm who there and then proceeded. "Must I remind you, Father Alex, that it was I, at the suggestion of my good friend the Bishop, recommended you as rector of this church?"

"And that, I promise you, Sir, is what I shall be. I am. the priest and it is I who shall determine what is right forSt. Anselm' s." ruc,AeHnu:a adjusted his clerical collar. " Ever since my arrival you sought to control me as you have controlled my predecessors.

I assure you that is over now."

Harry and I left the meeting together. A light snow had begun on the churchyard, lacing the empty flowerbeds and stone s. Small mounds of snow filled the outstretched hands of the from Assisi, covering the palms where the stigmata had I thought of summer and F'lavia, hovering bees and homelemonade.

Harry was smiling. " Alexander really laid it on old Baines UUlLJi!,U. ~, didn't he?"

"Stuart didn't leave him much choice, Harry. How would it look Alexander let him and the others have their own special pews? was only being fair."

"Are you kidding? He's been waiting for the opportunity to put in his place. It was like watching two old bucks battle over same turf."

"You know more about these things than I do, but I still think just doing what he feels is right. The rector's job is to charge, isn't it?"

"Oh, don't worry, he will," said Harry. " He will."

A shaft of sunlight filtered through the stained glass windows 'he sanctuary and made its ways across the marble floor to Alexander sat alone, head bowed, on the sedilia. People to whisper. A man I never saw before turned to the woman at side and shrugged his shoulders. A mother and daughter

45

shuffled in thei r pew. The light reached Alexander, seemed to p a use, but then moved on, climbing the altar steps with unflinchi ng inevitability until it fell at last upon the deacon. The young priest bowed his head and the mass continued. " Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts, Heaven and earth are full of Thy glozy: Glozy be to Thee, 0 Lord, Most High. " Alexander did not look up.

Lee had already fallen asleep that cold February night. When I heard a knock at his door, I answered it for him. It was Alexander.

Dwight " Lee" Clemson was a very sick man, perhaps a dying man. At least that's what he told Harry. Harry wasn't so sure. " After all," he had said, " how many times have I rushed over to see the old man, and two days later he's in Rittenhouse Square watching the young girls come home from work?" But I wasn't taking any chances. Maybe this time he really was sick, and besides, it had to be hard living all alone with no family, most of his friends already dead. " How is he, David?" Alexander asked, laying his long, black cloak onto the chair by the door.

"Much better, Father. He's resting now. But what are you doing here? I thought you had the flu ."

"That's what the doctor says."

Alexander lit his pipe, the sweet familiarity of its aroma spreading calm like incense over the room. I thought of my undergraduate days at Penn, how earnesUy I had tried to be a pipe-smoker myself.

"Why didn't you send Father Toller?" " Richard's a fine curate, but what can a young priest know about old men and dying? Besides, Lee called for me."

Alexander coughed twice. Was it the flu, or smoke from his pipe?

"Now that I'm here," he continued, " why don'tyou go? There's no point in both of us staying, especially if he's sleeping." " I still think you should be home in bed." " Now let's hear none of that. I can be sick here just as well as at home. At least here I might be able to do some good."

He even looked tired, and I wanted to reach out and touch him.

46

for the good in him, the stubborn good wherever it came from, the part of him that I wanted him to be. " Now out you go," he said, " and remember, not a word about this to anyone. You know how they are."

Alexander looked puzzled as the mass went on without him. I wanted to read his thoughts, to see beyond the pain in his face, beyond the determination that drove him to remain on the altar as if only his presence could ensure that things would be properly done. Now for the first time he looked cautious, even unsure of himself, and I wondered if as a young priest he had ever dreamed &he day would come when he could not finish a mass, and that on &hat day his church would be nearly empty.

It had been raining all morning, the thick, penetrating rain of an April downpour, and it was damp in Great Hall. Steam from coffee pots lining the tables along the wall rose upwards to the oakbeamed ceiling high abov e, past portraits of stem-looking rectors no one remembered. The cake Flavia Downs had baked for the Sunday reception didn't taste as good as it looked, and it left my fingers sticky with chocolate icing. But at least the tea was hot, brewed strong to my liking, and it helped to take away the chill. I was standing alone, as close to the radiator as possible, wondering why I always seemed to be the one who had to initiate conversation, when I overheard Madge Graham and Frank Mellon.

They were talking to Alexander.

"It's not just Frank and me, Father. There are others who think the way we do," said Madge, forcing herself to look up into the priest's face. She had been a widow for almost eight years, working full-time as a cutter in a canvas mill in order to raise her three boys, and the hard life showed on her once-pretty face. St. Anselm's was important to her-" a place of refuge," she called it- and she was always one of the first to volunteer.

"That's right, Father," Frank quickly added. " There were quite a few of us at my house last night. They asked Mrs. Graham and myself to speak to you."

Frank had cut himself shaving again. There was a nick in the deep crevice between his chin and l ower lip. A bachelor who had 47

recently retired, Frank lived alone and said he liked it. Sometimes on the weekend he and Madge went bowling together.

"But I should think that's an issue to be taken up with one of the vestrymen," Alexander said. He was holding an empty glass of sherry and looked impatient. Serving sherry at the Sunday reception had been one of his many innovations during the first year, and it certainly seemed a good idea on a day like this. " That's the very problem," said Frank. " They won't listen.

Many of us feel the Vestry no longer represents our interests.

Nothing we ask ever seems to get done. That's why we've come to you." " I can assure you, Mr. Mellon, that the Vestry has your wellbeing at heart. These people work hard, giving generously of their time in your behalf. " " But it's always the same people, Father," said Madge. " It's become almost a private club." " They are chosen, Mrs. Graham, because they are the most able and distinguished people in the parish. We do well to rely on their experience." " But Father," Frank insisted, although by now his voice was more pleading than demanding, "I've been asking Dr. Turner for almost three month to distribute committee appointments more evenly among the other parishioners, and nothing's happened." " Yes, yes, of course, and well he should, but you must have patience. The Vestry and I are in the process of making certain changes, but it does take time." " I don' t think we're ever going to change Dr. Turner," Frank said, the nervous laugh in his voice balancing the words half-way between a joke and seriousness until he could determine their effect on Alexander.

"I must confess I am somewhat disheartened by your lack of faith. I had expected more of you both." ''I'm sorry, Father," Frank said, his face obviously pained at the thought he had gone too far. "We only want what's best for Sl Anselm's."

"Then we must all be prepared to make sacrifices if the parish is to reclaim its proper place in the diocese. I do hope that, henceforth.

I can count on both of you to put aside this pettiness and support our church to the best of your abilities."

"We shall do as you see fit, Father, of course," Madge said. She was no longer looking into his face. "You know how much Sl Anselm's means to me."

48

"Then you must have faith, faith and humility. It is pride that makes us question our chosen leaders."

Alexander was right, of course. The Vestry was doing its best, but I was glad Harry wasn't there just the same.

Alexander did not look up, not once, as the mass continued, the rigorous certainty of its ritual moving inexorably forward through the drama of sacrifice to the triumph of communion and solace of last blessing, " The Peace of God, which passeth all understanding." Was he thinking about Stuart Baines gone off to the nearby parish of St. Barnabas, why Madge Graham and Frank Mellon were no longer there, perhaps about the long Saturday afternoons he waited in the confessional box at the back ofthe church, when no one came?

" His theology's good. It's just that he's not a sound administrator," said Mrs. Flemington-Porter as she removed her white cotton gloves. It was a Saturday afternoon, and the Vestry was gathering in the drawing room of Dr. Turner's suburban Norman home. The rector's warden had reluctantly called a special meeting to see, he said, " what could be done about these irritating complaints." It was the first warm day of May, the French doors were open, and from the sloping side yard came the sound of the gardener cutting the lawn.

"The people just don't like him. That's why they're leaving. It's as simple as that," Harry Wilcox broke in.

"Good riddance to them, I say. We' re better off without the likes of that sort," said the doctor.

"I think it's just Alexander's way," I offered. "Sometimes he can seem a bit abrupt, but I'm sure he means well. Maybe it's a question of our getting used to each other." " But David, it's been a whole year and we'r e worseoffthanever.

We've already lost fifty people, twenty in the last two months. " Harry held out a list of names, but no one took it from him. " I just don' t understand. Alexander's a perfectly delightful man, and so literate. Many's the fine evening we've had right here," said Dr. Turner. He pointed to two large Queen Anne armchairs facing the fireplace.

"That's all well and good," Harry went on, " but the people say 49

he's not interested in them, that he's impatient and won't listen to their suggestions."

"They're just angry because they can't push him around the way they did poor Father Kendricks," said Flavia Downs. " And what about his health, the way he doesn't take care of himself. I've even heard talk of his drinking," Harry said, "and doesn't he have diabetes?"

"Yes, he does, the poor man, but what of it?" snapped Flavia. " As for the rest, rumors, nothing but rumors. Are we to let ourselves be guided by rumors?" " If only he could communicate better," I said, .. spend more time at the Sunday reception, let the people get to know him. He's really a good man at heart." I thought of Lee Clemson. ''I'm sure there's a lot Alexander does we're not even aware of. And look at all the improvements he' s made in thl) liturgy."

"Yes, David, but he's so pompous, so goddam British. Someone should remind him this is Philadelphia and not Wittingham.

Sometimes I think he's more British than the Queen." " Mr. Wilcox, I'm sure you'll agree Alexander has brought us back to our Anglo-Catholic tradition, and for this we should all be very grateful," said Mrs. Flemington-Porter. She turned to face the others, leaning forward on the silver-handled walnut cane she . always carried but seldom used. " I think it's just a question of Father not being cut out for parish work, not having- what shall we call it? -the flair for dealing with the people. And it's true, there is the question of his health."

"Perhaps we should meet with him, let him know what's going on," suggested Cecil Rose. " After all, Alexander's a reasonable man."

I could sense the congregation stirring as the mass drew to a close. The man and woman I had not recognized were now whispering almost continuously to one another, the mother and her daughter shuffling even more vigorously in their pew.

Scattered coughs answered each other across the cavernous church. I felt sorry for the deacon. He was rushing to finish the mass as quickly as possible and yet retain the dignity that was the hallmark of devotion at St. Anselm's .

50

Alexander had stood at the center of the rectory parlor.

"I am aware there are those few who are dissatisfied. And well they should be! What they want is impossible and harmful to the life of this parish which I am committed to revive no matter what the opposition."

The Vestry had requested Alexander to meet with them, and for the last half hour he had been listening to their long list of grievances: how Stephen Andrews resented women in the traditional all boys choir, how Professor Wade felt personally rejected when Alexander refused the use of Great Hall to the "Coalition for Dignity among Gay Men." Elridge Cox was convinced St. Anselm's was no longer sensitive to the needs of its minority members , and Major " Jack" Reavis had demanded a return to the former and less "Romanish" liturgy of the past.

"We just won't tolerate that sort of thing," Alexander continued, "people trying to tell their priest how to run the parish. I say, 'Good Riddance!' " " Hear, hear!" applauded Dr. Turner.

"But Father, our congregation is seriously dwindling. There's even talk of seeing the Bishop." said Cecil Rose. "Won't you agree that something must be done to quiet this unpleasantness?"

"I say. what if we do lose a few weak sisters on the way? We shall find others, stronger, more committed to our Catholic tradition. It's only a question of time, Mr. Rose, and with God's blessing and the continued dedication of the Vestry. we shall turn this parish around, and then they'll clamor to come aboard."

It was to be a long meeting, but by late afternoon, Father Alexander had quieted many of our doubts. Yes, he would take better care of himself, he promised, but it was really a matter of faith, faith in St. Anselm's, in our Catholic mission. in him. We need only stand firm together. whatever the cost, and we would all move forward once again.

"What do you think?" Harry asked as we left the rectory.

"I don't know. He sounds so convincing. " Harry smiled. " Did you ever wonder who 'little Deavie' was?" he asked.

"Who?" "What Alexander was like as a boy?"

"I guess I never thought about it."

"Didn't you ever wonder what happened to make him grow up

51

like that, going off to another country, becoming British and everything? I suppose it has something to do with his father."

"What about his father?"

"He never talks about it, but I did hear something about his father taking off when he was still a kid."

The deacon turned and faced the congregation.

"Go, the mass is ended."

Two acolytes helped Alexander to his feet, and the procession advanced slowly towards the sacristy. The thick wooden door swung open. Alexander paused, moved forward, and disappeared as the door closed behind him. The people hesitated, then rose to leave the church.

It was as I expected. Everyone at the reception was eager to know what had happened.

"Was he drunk?" Harry asked when we were alone. " I don' t think so. I hope not. At any rate, he was limping badly."

We stood apart from the others, near the statue of St. Francis, the wild roses at his feet already in full bloom. How different things had seemed only a year ago! Flavia Downs was making her way toward us through the cluster of twos and threes that dotted the churchyard, entering and leaving their conversations with the grace of a swan among the lilypads. I could tell by the look on her face that she knew what was wrong with Alexander. Flavia was always the first to get the inside story. " It's a perfectly horrible sore on his left leg," she said. She spoke with alarm, but in a whisper. After all, her voice insinuated, what she had to say was not for everyone. "Richard (Flavia had taken to calling the new curate by his Christian name) has been trying to get him to see a doctor all week. Now it's festering, and you know how dangerous that can be with diabetes." " Where's Alexander now?" Harry asked.

"Richard insisted on taking him to the hospital. They just left in a cab."

We stood around the hospital bed as Alexander led us in prayer. " Grant us the wisdom that in all things we do thy will, 0 Lord." It 52

all seemed so natural, as if the leg were still there under the sheet, the meeting taking place in clergy house. It was hard to believe only three weeks had passed since the Sunday he had stumbled on the altar. " Oh, yes, I test their patience. Nurse tells me I am the most persistent of fellows ," Alexander said with a smile, obviously anxious to share with us the woman's opinion. "But it has paid off handsomely. I have convinced them to let me say mass here in my room as soon as I'm up and about."

I was surprised at his good spirits. I had expected something else: a voice, diffident and muted, telling us he could not go on, that we should begin looking for a successor. The loss of his leg, he would say, was a sign. " I suspect you're anxious to know why I've called you here," he began, his eyes moving steadily and with assurance from one vestryman to the other. "It's because I wanted all of you to see for yourselves how splendidly I'm doing. The doctors tell me the prognosis is excellent, and I want to reassure you first hand of my recovery."

He paused and seemed to delight in the mood of expectancy his sudden silence had created.

"I have decided that in gratitude for my miraculous recovery, we should dedicate a shrine to Our Lady of Wittingham. I have been spared so that I might continue my work among you, and it is only fitting that we honor Mary the Intercessor for the munificence of this gift."

No one spoke, the silence of the room riveted to our consciousness by the whir of cool air being pushed through the vent above our heads.

"I have already contacted my good friend Bishop Langley of Wittingham, and he has graciously agreed to preside at the dedication. So you see," Alexander concluded, pointing modestly to where the lower half of his left leg would be, "this small sacrifice is, in its own way, really God's reward."

The room seemed fixed forever, a still life whose only movement was the steady rising and falling of the sheets on Alexander's bed.

Surely Harry would speak up, I thought, but when I looked across the room, I could see how tired he was, a diminished man who had done all he could and finally just wants to go home.

Cecil Rose was the first to speak.

"That's a fine idea, Father. A shrine to Our Lady would be most appropriate."

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â&#x20AC;˘

The rest of the Vestry quickly agreed that, indeed, there should be a shrine, and the meeting came to a close.

"You mustn't tire Father," the nurse reminded us, her smile practiced and official, and we began taking our leave. " David, would you stay a moment like a good fellow?"

Alexander called after me.

"Nurse said you're to rest." " Yes, yes, of course. But do stay a moment."

I walked back to the bed. " Do you have a cigarette?" he asked.

I hesitated.

"What nurse doesn't know won't hurt her. She's such a busybody anyway. Tells the doctor everything. Besides, we all have to go sometime or other, don't we? Sooner or later, I mean."

He lit the cigarette, the delight with which he held the smoke deep within his lungs making it abundantly clear why he smoked. " I've never quite understood the great need people have to live forever. After all, it's no great shakes really, is it? Even at St. Anselm's among fellow Christians, look how some of us are made to suffer. " He hesitated, and his eyes grew distant with a sadness I had never seen in them before.

"Do you ever wonder what all the years add up to? All the work, the suffering? For what? To end up abused by the very people I've come to help. But this," he said, and his voice grew excited as he pointed to the space where his leg would be, "this is my vindication.

How can they deny this?"

He paused, and when he began again, his voice was exultant.

"I have been right all along, David, and that is why I must continue. That is why we shall have the shrine."

I felt guilty taking his blessing. I had said nothing, and there was no way he could know I was leaving the parish.

"The peace of the Lord be always with you."

"And with thy spirit," I answered, but all I could think of was Alexander limping about the altar like the wounded Ahab on the deck of his ship. In summer the air from the altar fan would fill his full-length alb, pushing it to the side like a woman's skirt caught in the wind, exposing the formless black silk stocking that covered his prothesis.

As I left the room, I looked back one last time at the big man lying on the bed. He was lighting one of the cigarettes I had left 54

behind, a book already open in front of him as if I were no longer there.

55

Judith Kleck TURNING STONES for Joe

I refuse to count days hearing a marriage that lasted seven years would last forever. Now beneath the bridge I used to cross, wanting a way out, or in again, we've stopped to turn stones, searching for an agate this valley and Tibet provide. We refuse to undo this puzzle, roughly exotic, return each rock to its familiar place.

Blue one, blue one. My words weave

the grasses leaning with the river.

Evenings we mark time by the pages turned and I imagine we read the same words, in different orders. taking separate languages to a common bed: your reticence undone by the body's stark commitment, your shoulders knotted as the rocks I turned in my hand.

Blue one, blue one. Your love's a stone

I take, I give back again.

56

Diana Rivera THE PEACOCK

His white hen sits on four shiny brown eggs, quiet, lulled, concentrated on intangibles, waiting patiently for her miniature ones to make their way clear.

She's gaining weight, she misses her graceful afternoon walks, one leg clawed, anchored, the other slowly breaking air, her evening's low flight towards the paddock fence.

Her lover's always near her in the daylight, he who she quietly admires his iridescent-blue neck, a question mark, upon descent.

He's grown taller, fuller, transitorily clumsy, almost stubby, his new tail feathers now on their early way out will soon be seven times longer than his body, will glimmer with the sun, sun, within sun, within sun fluorescent-green, copper-sheened, dotted with his multiple black eyes.

A bit gaudy, but also quite glamorous, when he opens his taillike a fan and walks within his closed, tight circle of self-hood flaunting his best qualities, he's simply irresistible.

57

Then he paces, ordinarily among low-ground ducks, the worried-sick geese, keeping distance.

Mor e elegant, contemplative, altruistic, his silence shines in high places, his feathered deeds under r a fters , his Greconian elongations of forms stretch towards the sky.

The peacock flies to the barn roof turned on as the sun is setting, letting loose a few loud, innocent (suddenly dilettante) haunted, machiavellic screams.

Horns and harps bounce from the mountains!

After the moody garrulous he will doze into the darkness, high-up, alone, offsetting the dark of darkness with random illuminations.

Long-necked, wild and introspective his beak kisses gold stars, one hundred moons.

58

Charles Edward Eaton HACIENDA

Hung with purple bougainvillea, the walls washed white, The hacienda obsesses me as the place not found: It comes and goes as in the soul's most vacillating light.

The picture floats with extraordinary joy and shoots with pain Someone is beating horseshoes on an a nvil, someone is picking fruit: I am there, I have been there often, and I will not come again.

Where is that dusty case, and those binoculars? I c a n see the drunken cowboy leering from the barn, Someone has picked my heart of strings for those guitars.

The summoned scent of all the flowers never liesIt is as though some wayward woman sprayed this aura in a room And I were kneeling at her feet to plead: I breathe, I breathe you atomize.

Which is not to say in some other guise it will not surface The luck of the Bougainvilles changes, waxes, wanes, And, saturated, scented, sotted, I will look forever for the great good place.

I may be with you in the mountains, by the sea, but any moment will repair To something like that white, low-slung house wreathed in purple, And will not mind if you should call a great distraction my hacienda stare.

59

Priscilla Atkins

SPUMONI for Mary Bell Sard

Every week the piano lesson nestled between the vines of your gray house.

Notes sounding out in a yellow-lit parlor.

Familiar shapes cut into the oriental carpet beneath my feet.

Always a cat from the Shakespearean league for many years Prospero and then later, Prince Halcurled in sofa pillows. listening: you let me see what a cat might mean.

My first Bach, my first octave I stretched years into your piano, your gray house.

My warm retreat from slung snowballs on my way home from school in winter.

Tears softened by sponge cake and milk in a yellow kitchen.

My cool haven in summer: Scarlatti in June humming through the green shade that hugged your home.

One hot day you gave me a plate of ice cream sliced neatly with a knife: its rippled newness made each mouthful a celebration.

60

Now. sometimes during Mozart, I feel warm yellow, green on gray, and have the urge to buy a kitten for my sofa.

Once in a while I eat spumoni at a restaurant: my own sweet madeleine and tea, it catches in my throat, every time.

61

Eric Chock LILY POND

He crawled in the river grass stalking the fish he believed couldn't see him through that invisible skin they lived beneath.

But blurred as their vision would be, they must have seen his brown face, sunburned hair gleaming above cheeks and eyes that spent hours studying the way water wrinkled and cleared on its steady downstream path to the sea.

As he crouched among the fuzzy. knife-edged leaves he observed their habits, the way they would drift in two's or three's , the way they would nibble what came within their reach, unless it made too loud a splash sending them into the deep, where they could gather strength from the dark soft belly of the stream.

Then it was like they were praying.

Like when there is nothing else but the anxious feelings that come from somewhere inside,

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â&#x20AC;˘

and all you can do is go to that place where you're alone but not lonely, content to just sit and contemplate the depth of the water and the way dark shapes will eventually rise to the blurred vision of the one who waits.

When they come face to face the tension on the water will wrinkle and clear till there is nothing between them. nothing that can break between the eyes of fish and the eyes of a boy who one afternoon have come together and prayed.

63

THE MEANING OF FISHING

You know when you go fishing and you whitewash, nothing, you know the feeling, right?

You no can even say was too small and you threw em back.

At least if you when hook em, if you when feel the muscles of something big pulling your line out to the ocean, then you would feel good!

But even then, if you never land em, no count eh?

No matter how close you brought em in, even if you saw the blue scales shining in the shorebreak, even if you when drag em up on the sand, still yet- if got away, you whitewash.

Even if you woulda let em go anyway after you caught em, if you never catch em and hold em in your hands, you think you know the meaning of fishing?

64

William Pitt Root CLEARING THE NEST

My best friend in those days was Eddie Arnold. Not Eddie Arnold the singer, but Eddie Arnold my cousin. At least everybody told us we were cousins. What we had was that sort of shirt-tail relationship so distant and complex nobody could quite pin it down. Distant cousins maybe, neighbors for sure. And at fourteen being neighbors counts, especially if you know your neighbor has a secret so horrible he's never supposed to tell a soul. Not even a cousin.

From hints and references I'd heard- or overheard- from my mother, I understood the secret had something to do with the muddled state of our relations, his and mine. His parents weren't really his parents at all. He was adopted. His real parents, he told me, had been killed in a tragic automobile accident. That information, at first, made me feel another stronger kind of kinship with Eddie, since two years earlier my own father had died in a hunting accident. Eddie didn't want to talk about it, said it happened when he was so little he couldn't remember much about them, only what his adoptive parents told him. His new mother, he said, really was his aunt, his mother's sister. But she didn't like to talk about it much, either.

I knew that Eddie was supposed to be some kind of problem, and I was supposed to be a good influence. I knew better; so did he.

From the first time we met, under circumstances very much like a setup blind date, his folks told him how much he was going to like me, and my mother assured me more than once that Eddie was a nice kid "under it all."

"You throw hatchets?" he asked, right off. I saw his folks, as he called them, wince and look apologetically at my mother. His face fixed when I told him I did. My mother pursed her lips, his folks relaxed. So we went outside. I had to share Eddie's hatchet with him, not having brought my own. My morn had said it was going to be a "social visit" for Eddie and me to get acquainted. I was glad to 65

have it pick up like that.

He threw first, aiming at the stump in the backyard. It was hacked and scarred from long use as a target. The hatchet stuck near the stump's center. "Not bad," I said. Then I took aim and threw, catching the stump at the crown to rock it with the hatchet's weight.

"Better than you," Eddie said, disappointed to see me stick his hatchet on the first try.

"What do you mean better?" I asked. " I hit the middle, you just barely got the top." " What kind of sissystuff are you playing anyhow?" I told him.

He looked baffled. ' 'I'm not throwing at any dartboard, you know.

I'm throwing at a man. You got him in the stomach but he could still shoot you before he died of blood loss. I split his head open like a cantaloupe."

Eddie stared at the stump. His face was pale when he turned to me. "What if it's a woman? What if it's a woman whose head you split open?" And then he was sniffling.

So what do you do? And that's the way it was with Eddie. He'd cry for no apparent reason, mope off to be by himself. And he'd lie sometimes, little stuff mostly, for no reason. Like about how long he'd lived with "folks." They had lived out there in Green Hills Estates a long time, but he hadn't . My mom told me he'd only been there a year. He wasn't exactly a new kid at school like I was, but he didn't have any friends there so it was the same difference. Neither of us had friends so we became friends. Sort of.

Neither of us knew anyone else who threw hatchets, for instance. I mean, not many kids do that, even now. We threw for different reasons, though. I knew that much right off. He threw like he was trying to fend something off; I threw to kill. I was killing the guy who'd shot my father and left him in the woods to bleed to death. They'd never caught him. They said they couldn't even be sure he knew what he'd done. But I knew what he'd done, and I threw to kill. I had a chip on my shoulder. But sometimes Eddie would start to whine as he threw, more fear than anger. He didn't say anything about it fo r a long time. When finally he did, I wished he hadn't.

Neither of us had money. My mother was 路broke. We lived in a trailer and I envied Eddie his fancy house. But his folks thought allowances spoiled kids, so we ended up equal anyhow, in a sense.

Br oke. So we would spend time out on the golf course a lot on 66

weekends, picking up lost balls and taking them to the ball-wash machine, then selling them to golfers too chintzy to buy new. There wasn't much money in it but it was all we had. Enough for movies and school clothes, if you didn't see too many movies or need fancy clothes.

Some days were good, some were lousy. Someti~es the balls would be everywhere, like Easter eggs hidden for the simpleminded by the myopic; sometimes they seemed to have sunken into the earth itself and if you did find one nestled in the deep grass at the edge of a fairway, it would turn out to have a slice in it no amount of paste and paint would disguise. Those days, the bad ones, still were worth it. We would find birdnests in the trees, rabbit hutches in the roughs, turtles and frogs in a creek that wound through the course. And sometimes we would talk.

This particular day had been spotty. By noon, Eddie had half a dozen balls worth keeping to wash or paint and I had about as many more. We could sell them anywhere from a quarter up, depending on brand, condition, and weather. Those cheapskates paid more on a sunny day. It was still sunny as we ate apples and drank cokes for lunch, but there seemed to be a storm moving in. " If we sell what we have now we'll make more. If it starts to rain we won't sell anything. They'll all go home," Eddie argued. He was right, I knew he was, but I was too restless to head home yet.

"Let's go over to the 9th hole and look around in the creek first. If there aren't any balls we can watch the turtles." Eddie liked to watch the turtles. "And plenty of those guys lose enough balls by the 9th to buy from us."

So that's what we did. On the way, I found a brand new Spalding worth maybe a buck and a quarter, and Eddie found a quail's nest.

It was full of tiny little speckled eggs. The mother gave herself away when she tried to lure us off with her injured act. We knew enough to look in the opposite direction and sure enough, finally, we discovered her nest, cozy as could be, among the weeds. The eggs were so small, so vulnerable looking, I wanted to pick one up, even though I knew better.

"No!" Eddie insisted. " Leave them alone or she'll never come back, she can smell you on them." " What you guys up to here?" It was Randy Rydell, a kid from school. " You doing any good?" Randy hung out at the golf course sometimes, usually with his friends. They were bullies who would steal balls from other kids and sell them to buy beer and smokes.

We were always careful to stay clear of those guys.

"Not much luck today," Eddie said.

67

"Yeah, well let me just take a look-see," Randy said. He saw the nest. "What have we here?" he asked, reaching toward the eggs.

That's when Eddie screamed and shoved Randy. It was equal parts panic and courage on Eddie's part- panic, courage, and folly, I should say. Randy was two years older and bigger than us. He had a mustache, almost, and a two-tone tattoo for sure.

"You runt," he said, getting back .on his feet and brushing himself off fastidiously, smiling at Eddie. Eddie's face was flushed and desperate. Randy looked down at the eggs, deliberately held one foot above the nest, and stared with mock innocence at Eddie. " Hey, Eddie, you hear that music? No? Well I do believe that's dancing music. You want to dance with me, Eddie?"

Eddie tried to dodge. Randy was too fast. He lifted him and held him kicking and clawing over the nest. "That's right, a fast little tune. Scramble step." And he started to lower Eddie onto the eggs.

Eddie was going "Uhhhhhhhhh- uhhhhhhhhhl" trying to keep his feet to either side of the nest, but Randy was picking him up and dropping him so fast Eddie couldn't aim his feet. That's when I kicked Randy in the ass, hard as I could, and yelled for Eddie to run.

Randy just stood there for a few seconds as we took off. I could tell from his face that even from behind I'd got him in the balls. He watched us running with a grim dark look on his face. Before he started out, he stomped the grass once, then lumbered painfully after us, bowlegged at first but gaining on us soon enough. I couldn't understand how he could run so fast. He smoked, he drank beer, and he still was the school's fastest miler. The coach kept threatening to drop him from the team but he never did. He was too fast. And he was gaining.

"The creek," I gasped. "Let's get across the creek." It made no real sense- he could cross the creek as easily as we could- but it gave us a goal, a direction. We could see plenty of golfers but they were all too far off to do us any good. And most were hurrying back to the club to avoid the storm. A wall of rain was heading in from the east. We ran toward it as fast as we could, sobbing with exhaustion and terror.

"It's no use," Eddie cried out at the edge of the creek. " He's got us." And sure enough, he did. He stopped running several yards from us, tucked in his black T-shirt with the Chesterfields rolled into one sleeve, adjusted his jeans which hung low on his hips, and checked to make sure the rat-tail comb was still there. He looked at me, then at Eddie.

"What are you sniffling for, kid?" he said.

"I'm- I'm not s-sniffling," Eddie said. "I'm n-n-not." I'd never 68

heard Eddie stutter before. but suddenly he was stuttering and stammering. " Well, wh-wh-what are you duh-duh-doing then," Randy mocked, smiling. He put one hand in his pocket and kept it there. It worried me. The rumor was that those guys used brass knuckles and knives.

"Look," I said, "we're just trying to make a little money selling balls, that's all. Just leave us alone why don't you? " " Selling balls? You two don't have any balls." I played dumb.

But Randy turned to Eddie and asked him, "Do you? " " Some," Eddie sniffled. " Let's just see," Randy said.

Eddie held out the balls he gathered from his pockets. Randy took them. He held each one up, examined it, tossed it into the weeds of a small island in the middle of the creek. â&#x20AC;˘'Nothing worth bothering with there, kid. How about you, wise-guy?"

I started to fetch the balls out of my pockets, then stopped.

"No balls, right? That's what I figured, you punk."

He gave me a shove. I ended up still on my feet, knee-deep in the creek. " Now you got any balls, you little creep?" He started in after me. I quickly pulled the balls from my pocket and threw them onto the island. I didn't want him to do it. This was the only way I knew to stop him. And I couldn't stop myself from adding, "Here, you want to see them then you go get them."

He stopped at the water's edge. He was re-evaluating me. He waited until I had thrown the last one.

By then I, too, was crying, with rage and frustration. Randy's attention was on me anyhow, and I saw Eddie taking off behind him, a few backward steps first, then he turned and ran. Randy knew what Eddie was doing and he didn't care. It was me he wanted. I'd been worried about Eddie more than myself when I saw how vulnerable he was. Even so, knowing that Eddie could be no help - he was too scared, too little, his anger turned too entirely into something that seemed to wound him inside - I still felt betrayed and alone. I was scared.

Randy held out one hand and motioned me back onto the bank. I atood a moment, then started climbing up the mudbank. His foot caught me off- guard, on the top of my head, and I went sprawling backwards into the water. I went completely under and came up aputtering. I was mad and immediately began to crawl up again, but suddenly I was looking up through the amber-green underwater gloom again, choking on the water, unable at first to regain ¡ 69

my footing, my hands grasping along the bottom. I came up with a stone.

"Come on, little fella, let me give you a hand," Randy said, smirking, leaning toward me. I threw the rock at his smirk and hit him in the shoulder. He leapt on me, pushing me under again, striking at my face through the water. Then he held one hand over my face to keep it under. I bit his thumb, ha rd, the water between us muffling his howl. I held on with my teeth and he yanked my head up into the air like a trout on a line, and I let go to gasp before he could force me under again. He slapped me with his free hand before pushing me down, straddling my body. I arched up but he rode me and I couldn't free my face from his hand this time. He had me by the hair. I found another stone and desperately struck up blind through the water at his wavery figure, again and again. He grunted when I felt the stone connect, and he let go and rolled off.

I got to my feet as he thrashed around in the shallow water, holding the side of his head. I scrambled onto the island and looked back, panting, wiping my eyes. When I could see him I saw the blood run over his hand and spread out in the water where he knelt swearing. But when he saw all the blood he sounded scared as well as mad. He stabbed his arm into the water, staring at me, teeth clenched, fumbling on the bottom for a rock. I turned to run but an instant later felt and heard the whack of rock on bone and fell forward into the blurring grass.

When I came to, I didn't know what had happened until I sat up and saw Randy trudging slowly off in the distance, staggering, holding the side of his head. I felt dazed and cold. It had started to rain. The rain was cold. I put my hand to my head and felt warmth, then looked at the blood on my fingers. For an instant I thought I was going to die there and I thought of my father left to die, and I cried. I cried because I knew I was not going to die. And because I was glad. And because he was dead. The rain made me shiver, or I thought it was the rain. When I finished crying and stood up and saw the deserted course, I remembered Eddie - the way he had looked as Randy dangled him in the air, the stuttering. I knew I had to find him.

He was kneeling in grass by the nest. When he looked up his face was wet with rain and tears. His eyes were swollen and h is nose was red. He was whimpering. When he saw my bloody hands he stopped and stared like he'd seen a ghost. His mouth dropped open.

He just stared, hands frozen on his drenched knees. " It's nothing," I said. ''I'm okay." " You're ... ? " he started, incredulous.

70

" Sure. I'm fine," I said. "How about you? " "I'm f-f-f- , I'm f-f-" and I could see that he wasn't , not at all. He just kept making noises there on his knees. Then he stopped that, and he looked down into the nest of smashed eggs and began crying again. Now it was raining hard. I couldn't even see the clubhouse.

The sound of the rain in the tall grass all around us was loud and comforting. I hunkered down next to Eddie and put my arms around him. He d idn't resist and he didn't stop crying.

"It's okay, Eddie, it's okay." Ididn'tknowwhatwas supposed to be okay, and I strongly suspected whatever it was, it wasn't okay, but I didn't know what else to say. I looked past his hands at the ruined nest. The bits of egg shells floating in the ooze, clear and golden, made me sad too. I remembered the urgent concern in Eddie's voice when he told me not to touch them. " Eddie, you didn't do it. Randy did it, you know. I saw him-" but Eddie interrupted, turning to me with a wild expression. " Is-saw them," he cried. "I was the f-f-first one there and I saw them. I tried to . . . help, I tried to h-h-help," he said, almost crying for help as he said the word. He said it again, and again it broke in his throat. " H-help, I tried to help. But it was too late. The b- b-blood," he said, confusing me. I could see he was staring at my bloody hand on his arm, but the rain had washed it nearly clean.

"There was s-so m-much of it, s-s-so, m-m-much, I couldn't s-stop it, he was s-s-still breathing and I c-couldn't . . . h-h-help."

I felt like I was in somebody else's dream I didn't know what Eddie was talking about, but it seemed to be happening again in his mind as he told it. I knew he needed to get it out and I let him go ahead with it. The horror in his eyes and voice was contagious. I found myself shivering right along with him. Then he pulled free and turned to look at me.

"Papa?" He wasn't looking at me but through me, to some other time and place. He touched my face and looked at his hand, the blood on it. He looked at the nest. " Mama? Oh mama . . .." His eyes were squeezed tightly shut. I continued to hold him a long time, waiting for him to stop weeping and s haking. From a distance the mother quail watched us, making little murmuring s ounds now and then. Rain dripped on her from the arched g rasses she stood below, watching, cocking her head. Some of my blood had fallen among the broken eggs. As I listened to Eddie sobbing, I watched the rain drive my blood through the yolks in delicate red wisps.

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From the clubhouse I called my mother to drive us home. By then the rain had stopped, but we were drenched and cold and Eddie was exhausted, silent. He never did explain what had happened.

My mother did, later. By that time I had begun to figure a lot of it out for myself. There never had been an automobile accident. Eddie had come home from school one day to find his mother and father like that. His father had taken an ax to his wife when he discovered she was going to leave him for someone else. Then he shot himself in 路t he head. And was still alive when Eddie found him. Still breathbg anyway. When they found Eddie he was holding his mother in his arms, and was so bloody they thought, at first, that he, too, was hurt. His aunt and uncle took him into their home, made him go to a psychiatrist, did what they could for him. But at the new school he never made any real friends.

I was as close a friend as he had, and after that day at the golf course he avoided me as he avoided everyone else. A few weeks later, Randy and some of his friends cornered me after school.

When they finished with me I had no objections to my mother's decision to move to another town, where she had found a better job.

I'd pretty much forgotten the entire episode - well, not forgotten it really, but shoved it to the back of my mind- when I got the letter from Eddie, the last contact I would have with him. Just a note. It said he hadn't run away because he was afraid, he ran away because he wanted to make sure that all of the eggs in the nest had been broken. He wanted to make very sure there were no eggs left.

It is absolutely necessary, he wrote, underlining the sentence, that none be left behind. He didn't sign the note. He didn't have路 to. I couldn't think of anything to respond with. His letter wasn't a question; it was an answer, complete in itself.

That branch of the family never was particularly close, but eventually, word did reach my mother that Eddie had been institutionalized. That was after his folks found him in the backyard of their immaculate suburban house, bleeding from the stumps of his ankles, flapping his arms as if he were a bird just learning to fly.

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Juliet S. Kono

SULFUR

The benevolent Japanese immigrant women gathered like chrysanthemum bouquets and talked quietly among themselves.

I wandered among them.

A funeral was time for gossip as well. These mourners, in hushed voices, talked idly of who married whom, the new babies, the sicknesses, other deaths.

And I overheard them speculate that the fifty-pound bags of yellow-white sulfur granules delivered to your house and banked like logs against the outhouse, caused your cancer.

While this odorous element helped crystallize your dreams, the realization was faceted to the drudgery of bleaching the green pandanus leaves to whiteness in deep redwood vats for the weaving of hats, mats and purses for tourists in Waikiki.

Working the sulfurous fumes

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day in and day out, was suspect.

And I remember the day you died.

Grandmother, in her anger, dragged the left-over sulfur bags to the top of the hill and shook them furiously, to the windmuch as I imagine she must have done, in different fervor, lifting her skirts up for you.

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LynLifshin ANNIE'S LIST OF LAST THINGS

a yellow rose, the color her hair was dying in the hallway, nurses in white.

When Matthew was born they blurred like angels. The wings of maples like angel wings.

Annie you look like an angel, how many times I've heard that, a tall angel.

But I could move like an angel, my hair was thick, sun colored, my body was my friend

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Tony Quagliano POSTOP

a pin in the hip of the night nurse who brings me weak codeine her boyfriend she says as big as me stumbled and crushed her here, she touches herself, her white slacks taut on her hip the line of her thigh I'm only just now getting back to work she says, are you better now? the mild narcosis I'm routine here, a lower right quadrant abdominal an appy they say in the halls sleep spreading and the night nurse has blue mascara and wants to talk I knew I'd write something of this after the cheap exhaustion of a routine post-op sleep another nurse brings ice for my roommate his face his bleeding cancerous face does the tv bother you, he asks me I'm lost without it

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THE CONDO MARXIST

The drainage of the fens of England is deplorable she tells me don't you think so? she's here in Honolulu for lectures and a book on land and water and to clean her real fee simple condominium by herself to make it labor intensive deplorable, I tell her you would have liked all the former duck swamps we are standing on

â&#x20AC;˘

M.A. Farrell THE KITTENS

The granddaughter's screams seated hall echoes at the breakfast table, not waiting for the usual "ready" approval. " Mee-Maw, Mee-Maw, Mee-Maw," Tammy threw the cry.

"It was that Rabbit Merritt who stole your kittens from the feed shed. Rabbit. Look here."

The young girl had been hot rolling her hair and trying to read basketball scores.

Her mission began before the tray of eggs: "It says right here a R. M. Merritt and a Robert Adams were charged with animal abuse after they'd found their truck not far from the C-14 Canal with a lettuce box and a single white kitten in it."

The woman poured her freckled bacon drippings into the rusty-lipped Maxwell House coffee tin.

She looked over her table making sure the State Capitol hot plate cushioned the biscuit platter.

She had bought it on a trip up to her sister's last June before she moved to the small ranch.

She asked Tammy to sit and said grace.

41Mee-Maw, after a bite, looked arrogantly careless at the page.

R. M. Merritt ... charged Friday night by sheriff ... animal abuse ... located his 1975 Ford truck ... lettuce box in back .. . rest of litter found by canal ... one had a mackeral hook in back ... hearing set.

Mee-Maw held her biscuit adjusting the particular angles of her fingers.

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The rounded jellied circle made a table top to thumb and forefinger.

From breakfast, she walked through the beard grass on her way to the goat shed, a shed she had built with new neighbors, neighbors down the road, neighbors owning drifters.

The corner which allowed that squatter lettuce box had no streaks or banks of hay in a stream.

She reached for the plastic bucket as more milk was needed for chedda r cheese.

The dirt shifted in the sunlight flying to fill the floor cracks of darkness.

She walked on towards her field.

Melaleucas flashed their brown, barky cankers.

The goats, as always. came with ease.

The morning was lost in strong and steady plops of milk covering the old seams along the rims into a new full gallon.

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WHITEHA WK â&#x20AC;˘s MASTS AT TWILIGHT

True to March, Thomas Zetkov has Whitehawk hauled for his summer sail to Maine.

The Palm Beach social season is over and now, alongside the North Shore Retirement Home, the ketch is on a boatyard cradle, the dark spruce main and mizzen slowing traffic that otherwise would be staring at the state home's twilight strollers, who shout gospels at turnabout north winds and walk short determined blocks in robes.

For sailors Whitehawk is a reincarnation, the best of what can be now with modem revision, modern precision.

Gone are the loving planks on frame pinned and screwed by the master, Herreshoff.

The memory has been constructed by molds, sealed by epoxy of the new age.

As light pink clouds scrub away the day, the mastheads stand black-tall, the darkness serving fearful precision.

The eye cannot leave the masts' upward slope and it is hard to keep a car from the curve so hard, so firm, the stoplight looses its lightfullaw

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giving an old man the right to cross.

He knows unless he hurries the four blocks, Ule drugstore will close and his night will be fitful without cigarettes.

In movement, the air passing by gives him new life and he knows he is free, taking a quick gasp before surfacing in the routine of hearing others talk.

He passes Ule ship and never looks up.

In a month, Whitehawk will be gone.

Under sail, first, at a timid Intracoastal speed, Ule elaborate bulwark dolphins command the sun.

But once out on the ocean at a speed of no less than 14 knots Zetkov's paid crew, with no need of time, move quickly into the heeling tacks and joyously know they are drowning Ule dolphins.

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KRAMSKOY'S PORTRAIT OF SHISHKIN

The realist's lens mounts a landscape of gray hair drunk in seeding detail.

Shishkin's eyes squint as with a dream's refreshment caught in slow, waking speed.

His shoulders bow like the lone prize wishbone.

Below folds of dunes in heavy black cloth, his missed button peeks in at the laughter of blue, a bit of sky dominant over rain's boredom.

Shishkin's wrists appear powerful in their perch over trousers: two dry gullies longing for the sparkling of water reflected in his chain of leaping gold slumped against a hill of a belly.

A key-like ornament marks the heart.

Shishkin lived for his landscapes of Russian forests .

Here, Kramskoy's study is but the one dark tree casting no shadow against a background of tanning yellow.

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Mary Crow

NIGHT TRAIN

In the dark, we could hear the locomotive slowing, scuffle of men attending to night chores, and the creak of track and car, slow chuffing of our start-up as we began again, weaving south.

From my top bunk, I leaned over the aisle, saw flashes of light cross behind blinds, heard steps running along the sleeper.

Night stops I would never see.

Morning's conductor came smiling, subservient, when we asked for extra cups of coffee, cream.

And the train lurched on toward the interior while we rose, struggled with our clothes in that small square of space, and waited with a rising expectation or dread. Wonder divided itself between train, all shining brass and polished wood in the yellow light, and that world we knew was rising beyond the windows in the dark,

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that world of reeds and huts, of faces opening before us.

In the dark, we could feel old bonds loosen, the giddy relief of freedom or license available as a flag to be seized and borne forward by a blind allegiance.

The first red glow on the horizon rose like a long fire into sky, and we were waiting, believing that we could make, out of the new day, a salvation, a fresh start, or that impulse infatuation brings, what the whole being surrenders.

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Jo~pb

Powell

ODE TO SIMPLICITY

Some poems, you say, are too simple, the part of life they live on too small & uncomplicated to mirror an act of the mind teaching its little parable of beauty or terror.

But today almost anything waits to fall apart: steeples of logic, the simple truth.

So we hang on like lovers to a cherished uncertainty, a windsock of grief hoping one thing will be made clear.

Then a morning opens and something as simple as water seems a good reason for living: icy in deft places, underground everywhere, filling need like a bucket.

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STEVENS IN A STARK WOOD

When the green begins to inch out of the stark wood he is stirred by something unconscious as an affection.

All winter from the rooms of his house the world had to be imagined because the snow was itself imagining shapes of the weights it bore: paw, hoof-blades, wing-flutter, the various cues of secrecy.

From his rooms what he saw was a frieze which built like snow, flake by flake, into a complete image of a time and place and situation which tries to be something beyond itself, yet part of what it sees.

So when the green begins to inch out of the dark wood he makes it happen the way love happens, casually, not quite noticed, a man with the clairvoyant beginnings of a new season on his mind:

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the most statuesque among statuary.

Standing up against mountains, teaching the forest to listen to the green birds that never left its green branches, he is a man and not a man, as things happen.

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FredBaysa CANE FIRE

I. Black Harvest Dreams Someone piles the cane stalks into a cone lights its continuous edge while children climb the chambered stalks unafraid of fire the grey smoke forcing air and ash into the slow darkening light.

The children slip away from the sky toward the center pressing against one another their clothes burning peeling as skin from white flesh and they sink toward the red fields, singing.

I stand swinging a bolo knife; "Can't reach that child... ."

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II. A Gift

I pass the cut stalks to my father, his ghost thin, swaying, like the dried skins now blackened with ash.

He walks up the hill to give my mother, kneeling childless, bundled cane, its essence gathered at the center.

My mother, far from me now, writhing beneath the black smoke.

The distance burning between us.

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III. Lowering the Casket I am a child across the white of her eye, the pupil sinking.

Mother singing.

I stand separated from the whiteness, my feet flooded by her tears.

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IV. The Awakening Roused by fears, confusion-colored dreams, I, the adult, afraid, cannot touch my face with cold water; the water, cold, slipping from my palms.

I have forgotten how to breathe.

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Joseph Stanton DOJOJI

Coiled round the bell's iron tongue, I await you, priest who should have been my lover.

Come to me now you who would sing ash and prayer on the wind.

The rung song of your holy hiding has become me.

Come and I will melt around you like the clean notes of the first star.

I am reptilian and strong, inescapable, and closer than you think.

Already my tongue's fork tastes the air of your robe's covert recess.

Come.

You must come in to me.

I am your only shadow.

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Glenn Masuchika NAGASAKI

In a flash his mother turned into a monster. His beautiful mother, dressed in her bright holiday kimono filigreed with gold and silver threads, blew through her ceremonial clothing, her loveliness tearing into black and smoldering tatters. Her tiny head distended, threw off its bright hair- the flowing river of hair he often lost himself in - in large clumps of ragweed-like brushes; her once ivory smooth skin now creaked with craggy fissures and cracks chucked away in plates of red lead, clanging like pig iron, on the rocks below. The clang brought his eyes to the floor; the beautiful flaxen floor of tightly woven straw was gone; their precious family heirloom, the blue willowware tea set with which his mother had been serving green tea to his ancient grandparents, was gone; his grandparents were gone. Now his beautiful mother was replaced by a horrible blackened monster, the color of a charred copper kettle salvaged from a house fire, sitting on the rocky ground bloated to the size of a dead walrus - eyeless, noseless, earless - hideously transformed by a storm into elements of stone and toad. The rocky ground was stained with two shadows, two elderly and weak shadows.

Where was his father? He was right here at his side, tickling his son with the peacock feather he had illegally acquired by climbing over the fence at the zoo and plucking out the rainbow-eyed, long plumed feather from the tail of the strutting bird with a crown. His father, a thin, jolly man with immense energy, ignored the new harsh laws of the military to get for ,his son this most precious prize of life and beauty, and when the father handed the tall, graceful stalk to him, the boy held it up, brandishing the trophy into the ringing sky. The sunlight turned the gossamer plumes into ethereal clouds, and the magenta eye of the feather blocked out the fiery, angry sun and became the sun for the wondering childa cooler, more temperate sun, a sun for lovers and dreamers, a sun for all children to dance around, to worship, and to dare to touch 93

with absolute impunity, and to feel love.

But the peacock feather was gone. And his father, whose pearly buckteeth rose like square moons, whose eyes like peaceful brown moons hid behind his translucent eyelids, his father, who tossed him up into the bright blue sunshine in the zoo, caught him in his broad arms, and tossed him up again giving him the sensation of flying crazily, akin to a cabbage moth, monarch, zebra swallowtail, seagull, or honey bee,_his father, while covering his son's flight with a rancorous, genuine fatherly joy, while covering the entire zoo and covering the entire ancient city in a dome of splendid laughter, was gone. Beside him on the ground - he was sitting on the ground without even knowing it! -was only a shadow pushed into a gray basalt slab with enough force to create a fat diamond. But nothing significant shined in the dark stain, only the teasing glints of multi-colored lights reflecting off tiny pieces of polished carbon imbedded in the stone; and they winked as if they came from the throats of volcanoes.

It was incredibly quiet: no dogs barking, no automobiles backfiring, no airplanes buzzing the city. He remembered how quiet it was in the countryside near the fishing canals where he had climbed the cherry trees, their pinkness high and wide above him, and he pretended to be a boy named Aladdin and climbed up the knotty tree trunks into a sky of sweet honey and cotton candy pink. His mother made a lunch of watermelons and his father flew a kite constructed out of slender bamboo shoots and old butcher paper. The kite string broke and the kite flew higher and higher in the country updrafts, shrinking into the enveloping blue; and he, from his pink perch high over the world, thought about how the kite looked like the tiny heart of a cherry blossom. He believed all cherry blossoms had tiny beating hearts; just as his skin becomes pink when his heart beats quickly, he reasoned their pinkness then must be due to a tiny heart frantically beating away in fear of the humans who plucked them out and killed them; so whenever he climbed a cherry tree, he always patted a few of them and told them not to worry: he would never cause them any harm, but once he cried and ran to his mother when he accidentally crushed a blossom and saw it slowly spin to the earth to become dust.

The dream of the country, of watermelons and kites, of tiny cherry blossom hearts ended with the grunt of the monster on the ground across from him. The ugly, purulent mass, bald as a riverstone, made grunting, snorting sounds, and it had eyes! White round things, like dull moons rising over a hill when the night is a spider in a cavern, shined upon him. The monster had stolen the 94

eyes of his mother! And it was using them to find him! And now a horizontal slit beneath his mother's eyes opened painfully like a wound tearing its own sutures and a fried, bobbed tongue rolled out, flapping in the hot air. ..Teruko," the slit mumbled. The sound reminded him of the voice which would come to him when he lost himself in his mother's river of bright, silky hair: safe, hidden, loved.

Teruko tried to move away from the monster who knew his name. If he could not, the monster would devour him in one bite.

His grandmother warned him of many monsters which dwelled in green bamboo groves, under canal bridges, in bottomless ponds, in the Inland Sea at midnight, but the most treacherous were the personal monsters - those who knew your name; they were like bullets with your name etched on them or sharks homed in to your private body's sounds, and Teruko struggled to get away.

But Teruko had no legs; they were gone. He tried to hobble away with his crutches of arms, but they were gone. Teruko looked at his body; his clothes had been ripped away by explosions in his skin; organs, as if in revolt, had voided themselves, had torn their way free from him, scattering his blackened flesh like fish scales shot from iron cannons. He was completely encrusted with black chips, a medieval armored suit of coal black slates, the hardened sludge of iron smelting pots. He, too, had been transformed into a monster and gazed at the monster before him and felt alone.

He was not alone. The monster which had taken the place of his mother wobbled and shivered and began flopping over the rocky floor, closer and closer to him. It left a smear trail on the ground.

Teruko made no attempt to flee. Now a monster himself, he felt at ease with the larger glob edging closer toward him and after all, it had his mother's eyes, and although it knew his name, isn't it natural that all monsters know each others' names?

The monster with his mother's eyes finally reached him and looked at the little monster with eyes deep and wonderous, with eyes carrying over fifty centuries of maternal love and affection.

Gently as a mother caresses a sleeping baby, it touched Teruko's hard body, and Teruko felt a sudden immense upwelling of joy, a joy surpassing a climb into a sky of pink or a crazy flight in a sky of blue; he was free of his monster body, and so was his mother she was beautiful again, dressed in her holiday kimono splashing with ripe oranges, sapphire blues, and cinnabar reds, and he was wiggling in her arms, his round head feeling her soft breasts through the silk, losing himself in her long, silky hair which flowed down on him. His father was back, smiling and giving his 95

restored son armfuls of majestic peacock feathers.

Then came a sound; a rushing sound, a heavy rushing sound fell all around them, roaring all a~ound them but not touching them as if they were in the eye of a hurricane. The blue sky was being coated with layers upon layers of red and when the sky was completely filled with the color of blood and sun, winds with the hard strength of many warring gods lifted them up to the top of the sky where they beat like tiny hearts of cherry blossoms.

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Jack Driscoll

DRnnNGTOWARDSSLEEP

Not yet noon and the steering wheel nods in his hands.

Already he feels the radial tires strain against the silent impact of a dream.

Beneath him shocks suspend on the frozen shoulder where the highway dead vanish through the last light of their winter fur.

His eyes promise nothing in this sudden darkness though they snap open once as if to avert a collision, head on with himself speeding blind into pure sleep.

He knows brakes are no use, that seat belts understand only the holding back, the cautious dance to the windshield.

Real driving is more like neglect, the accelerator all the way to the cold floor.

Facing him, the dashboard clock ticks, an alarm that will never go off when waking is always so temporary.

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Michael Delp KILLINGS

I keep track.

So far, two birds on the windshield, one a bird of prey caught head-on in a 路snowstorm driving north.

Three or four rabbits, the near misses of a hundred deer and the worst: a small black dog rolling away in the rear view mirror.

The highway deaths are easiest: at sixty miles an hour you don't look back for long, but up ahead, how all of them run the edge of the road, follow the blaze of headlights, then begin their zig-zag frenzy.

Some a final leap into the brush, others, that fatal turn, the car moving through muscle and bone, a man carving his way into things, holding the wheel, trying to find his way home.

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BEST FRIEND, KILLED ON A RIG

Afterward, the stillness: roughnecks leaping off the rig to find y ou already half-gobbled by the earth, hopelessly '-ngled in cables, in probability like a spider's web. I think of all the signs we had, JOUr bad eyesight, the near-wrecks. Daydreaming I tell you as I did in life to watch out, be alert, and I predict as you disbelieve how you'll die young, leave the new family you fantasized about those night-trips home from high school games.

Once you helped turn the impossible triple-play to lift us from sure death.

Already then I embraced your blend: faith and luck, the superstitions we risk our lives for; and when college routed it all, jaded me with so many sides, you pressed on, believer. Yet, in our town's small funeral home JOU looked down at the pasteled face of a friend's father, untimely death.

I saw you shake your head, walk away, the only time you faced eternity.

Today, bending over your face, waxy and old, I see creeping across the left side a deep bruise the mortician couldn't cover, like an eclipse, a perplexity.

All day it hovers, clue to everything: the dark green boil, rustle of trees, the rush of passersby, the leave-taking.

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Frank Stewart HARD YELLOW

"I have faith in liquor and in you, and both are sweet like the mystery of church: fall through and you fall through," my uncle Bill Bell would say. For years I forgot him saying it until once in a hotel room in New York I woke startled on a mattress that was smoldering like a loaf of green bread, the sour smell circling in the air, and the odor like a bird testing its confinement in every corner. I could taste the alcoholic future and heard Bill saying, "Jesus, the yellow sticks hard."

It was the summer his thin, dapper body had begun swelling like dough, the smells steeping from him as his grey mass lay heavy on the floral sheets under the red-and-green Sears comforter.

The room darkened with death.

Day after day he refused to die, while his poison liver became the putrid substance of his body.

At first we'd roll him out of bed, support him, crying to the formica table for breakfast.

And each day he grew heavier as though he'd already begun to decay.

It was not easy. I had a new wife then, and he had an old one, May, who seemed to tend him well enough while we were there

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to watch, but cursed him, too. Cursed us all, including Arthur, Bill's black running mate who handled the filthiest part of the work and ate his lunch out back at May's insistence.

My father told me Bill was Green County's dandy in his day, drove a Cord and had connections to the stills, though he drank little then.

His pink skin was always scrubbed clean, like a baby pig. He bet the dog tracks in Florida and I remember as a child his stories of fleet greyhounds and victories and his lavender smell.

But during that last Georgia August, we all waited and longed for Bill to let his liver win.

When at last he died, May kicked our asses out, challenged his will so long in probate his kin gave up and turned over everything to her. " I have faith in liquor and in you," Bill would tell May in those early, fast days.

I heard him tell it, and then forgot it and smelled him as he died and coughed something about yellow sticking hard.

Then I forgot that too. Hard and without mercy, whatever it was he meant.

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THE BACKWATER POETS for us all

Some look out and see only fire trails disappearing, ragged forests, broken plains, a watery horizon.

Or flights of lonely mammals, the waterfowl headed south, arctic plover on the summer trades.

And this Book of Nature almost speaks aloud: "You're a long ways from New York, aren't you, cowboy?"

Certainly there are no cities to speak of. Forget opera.

The Met, a decent Braque, a single Turner, a Bonnard.

But there are letters. Poems stuffed inside only a dozen others will ever read, the description of an icy lake, perhaps, ecstatic winter rain, a sad-eyed waitress in Upper Michigan a poet could love, heartbreak and darkness that link us better than print.

Only watercolor: forget ambition. Some lines like deer holding for a moment in the headlights before she dives away, a needle in the memory miles later. And no commerce. No commerce. Just say an accord, and a certain severity worn lightly.

Names writ in water- and bourbon, and red wine.

And song, and air .

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Above June Lake

The seventh day we woke cold weather had closed down like a grey wing across the peaks, and only a pinfeather of blue shone through the gap east toward Mono.

Snow had crusted our gear overnight and I rose, light as a bird in the middelirious arms of pneumonia, awoke jubilant at the gold-grey lake, the thin Sierra air.

The alders and stiff pines, the cliffs and talus gleamed, it seemed to me, like silver candlesticks.

We'd never camped so high, Russ and me, two young boys had toted only spinning reels and light clothes. And with a ranger's hand-drawn map we'd found the lake, though a thousand feet higher than it should have been.

Down to nothing now but some canned fruit and the fish we caught at dawn and dusk.

For me, body had become mind. And the fevered mind was light and the clear cold things gold light made visible.

Russ grumbled, demanded we descend that afternoon, for soon I was like the snow itself, unmanageable, shimmering, ecstatic. We cast our spinners for a last good meal. In the sizzling pan of mountain trout, we spooned the last of the canned cherries, made coffee, then buried what we couldn't carry down. The trek

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was long and steep, but Russ insisted we press onworried I'd become intractable, though weak, hallucinating like some Spanish saint free from a lightless prison, seeing sunlight for the first time, recognizing nothing.

Over the narrow ledge going down, through what seemed like daylight stars, I began to fall, and felt the trees brush by like feathers. I spread my arms, and like a redwing swooped until the earth was small as a nest toward which I flew.

Overhead, a high flurry that could have been hawks, some other creature of perfection.

The light closed down fast and I thought how easy it is to have joy, how easy.

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Reuben Tam INTER-ISLAND FLIGHT

Your island is leaving you and the outer reefline rolls out its final white, and the mountains, so thick you thought they would survive the pull of distance, have just now joined the sliding past, and you are borne into this huge present, blue without edges of place, only these passive clouds, one great white polyp after another, taller, deeper than clouds should be, and your space now is vertical, through which you part your way past unmoving vapor, past time that folds into itself, past the hiatus of your landlessness, your borders of passage a haze, your horizontal glide invisible, until the botton opens, and you see through the immensity of oceanic space the dim shard of Kaena Point, land, land surfacing, veined as your hand is veined, brown as your skin, and shaped like all the stones you have ever held.

105

Jonathan London FRIENDS

Nestled in the dank earth of rotted leaves beneath the tangle of thimbleberries and stinging nettle beside the path, I opened my eyes and beheld, just a few inches above, a beautiful yellow spider.

I swear I could hear the spider walking on its web, the tiny sounds emerging from the silence. Then, seeing me, it instantly hunched into a striking, defensive crouch. "Don't worry, spider, I'll not harm you," I said, and slid over and sat up on a stump and looked out over the green rolling hills and valleys below, stretching on to the sea, a distant sparkle. It was powdery dusk and I could still pick cows out- patches of brown and white and black- against the darkening green below. A broken-back barn seemed to be 路 sinking, collapsing in upon itself, among the bones of the day.

Looking up, I saw that the now fiery clouds were still boiling: elephants passing out of their skins, camels bounding in slow motion, Zeus-heads grinning, Pan-gods breaking like flame into disappearing sparks.

The sound of something coming up the mountain. Ah, there they are, I thought, as I realized for the first time in a timeless time that I wasn't alone. Joy leaped in me when my tall companion appeared around a bend below. " Hi, King!" I wanted to call, but no sound came. I just perched there like a gnome on a slow rotting stump, and beamed down at my oncoming friend. King (his last name, but what everybody knew him by) leaned into the hill as he climbed, his long arms swinging by his long legs, his big hands almost down to his knees. He, too, was smiling and his smile seemed to be lifting him up the steep slope out of the gloom below. ''Hi, Shawn!" he said, in his slow manner, as h e laid his hand gently on my shoulder.

I could still say nothing, just beam, and finger one of my braids.

Our eyes mingled with gladness, then King swung slowly on, a little further, to the rounded top of the small mountain, or large

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and there, with a long sigh, he hugged the great Douglas fir, spirit-tree of this place.

I rose from my stump and climbed up and I too hugged the huge 1&........ £J,...,.., of the tree, and breathed deep the tree's smell, and felt its steady energy swelling within my embrace. I kissed the tree deep in its valley of bark. In this way our fingers ringing the tree as it rose into the darkening sky.

"Daddy! Daddy!" came the breathless cry of Little King as he up the slope and leaped into the clearing beneath the sweep of the tree. Little King ran, his tassle of brown hair and hugged his father's legs, the same way his father the tall fir. King, releasing his hold on the tree, turned and his son and sat down on one of the huge gnarled roots which from the trunk, like the bulging veins on the back of a s hands. Hugging his child now, gazing out into the uu.~•uu 5 splendor, the rich dark coming on, he began to cry. And hugging his child ever tighter, he drawled into his son's "Things are gonna change from now on, Little King. Things ·gonna change." t

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The trip the day before had been a good one, the most powerful either of us had ever experienced. But nothing had changed, except for the worse: on the morning of our return, after _ .....u-. among the redwoods beneath the mountain, King dropped King with the boy's young mother, as per agreement, and lit into him when she found out he'd eaten "clear light": are never to see Little King again, do you hear? Never! I've you time and again, you can't take him and take drugs too and me to sit back and applaud. I'll not have him be with a daddy a no-good drug addict!" · He told me all this some time later.! felt as though I were there.

"Drug addict! " he shouted. "Now I'm a drug addict! Not see my Listen to me you-'' and he leaped out of his idling pickup and after her and smashed against her front door just as she IIIIILDlEta it in his face, shooting the bolt and latching the chain. he tried to break the door down, throwing his big frame it, yelling, "Let me in, you slut, you whore! I want my boy! " He was flailing at his own frustration and he knew it, but it until she screamed, " I'm calling the cops, you madman!" he gave up and climbed back into his pickup and peeled out.

a. e

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My day, meanwhile, had been a good one- mellow, spaced out, coming down from a high. I avoided looking at the headlines when I went to Ozuna Market to buy Mexican pastries. I didn't want to come down too quick. One year after Nixon's invasion of Cambodia- after being a completely radicalized student activist- I now considered myself apolitical. Fuck it, I was burnt out on politics. Now that I was out of school I was going to get into nature, poetry, music, dance. Live out the life within. Create a better world within the small sphere of my friends.

But I was worried about King. Lina, my wife, said she was worried too. She would go over and see him if she could, but she had to work (she was a keypunch operator at Ma Bell). Shewas jealous of the time I spent with all my friends -considering them "weird" - but ever since Carolyn had left King for another guy, Lina had been showing much concern for King. This did not pass me unnoticed. And I appreciated it - Lina was feeling as much compassion for my best friend as I myself was feeling.

As the day grew, I had a growing fear that something was wrong. King was supposed to have called about working on my car. It was early evening. Apprehensive, I hopped on my ten-speed and sped over to see what was going on. After banging the door several times, and calling King's name, I could just barely make out the smell of gas through the screen door. Hollering "King!

King!" I burst through the door and rushed through the room to the kitchen and there he was. King's head was ~"'"llJ'I"C"-~ over in the black mouth of the oven.

"You're like a Christ to me, " King said, out of the blue, a days later â&#x20AC;˘.sitting on the big old porch of his Victorian house. then the two of us continued to rock in silence, staring off nowhere, feeling like old timers in our creaking chairs, King was 33 and I just 24.

The following night when the phone rang I knew before answered it who it was.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Shawn, it's me. King."

"You sound terrible- are you stoned?" " Yes. Ate some mescaline with- with .. . Tony and this afternoon."

Pause.

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"Do you want me to come over, man? Jeez, ya don't sound so good." " Please, would ya Shawn? I'm awfully s -sorry to be botherin' ya, but-" ''I'm on my way. Hang in there King, okay? " ''I'm coming with you." Lin a called after me as I rushed for the door. " It was King. wasn't it? Shit, I knew it!" She'd been fuming at me for leaving my clothes piled on the chair by the bed - an old complaint with her- but in a flash she was flying after me, a tense bundle of anticipation.

At King's we found him curled into a tight ball on the living room floor. his knees drawn up to his chest, his head at the foot of his easy chair. He was shivering uncontrollably.

"Lina, make some tea. King, we're here, man. It's us. You're gonna be okay. Should we call a doctor?" " I can't t-talk right now, Shawn. It's my s -stomach- it's all ... cramped up. Buncha snakes." " Is it the mescaline? Just shake your head."

"Naw, it's just . . . when I got home. Alone. It's -" " Don't talk," I said, and flicked off the overhead light. I struck a match in the semi-dark, and set it to the wick of the big red candle on the bookcase. It was a birthday gift from me to him. Made it myself. An ugly beast, really; nut and bolt shapes chunked the sides, by way of whimsical decoration. " It looks just like my mind," he'd said then. when he first laid eyes on it, and immediately struck a flame to it- the same flame I saw now. a tiny dancing girl of light. " Hurry up with that tea, Lina!" I hollered. No response; just the clatter of drawers slamming and cupboards being rifled. " How about 'Soul of the Koto, â&#x20AC;˘ King?" I slipped the record from its jacket and placed it on the turntable. Then pulled down a volume of Blythe's translations of haiku. King was into things Japanese. dating from his army days in Japan. I opened the book at random, read something about cherry blossoms falling, covering the ground like snow. I was about to read it aloud to King- I wanted simply to relax him, knowing it was just nerves balling him up when I noticed him jackknifing, then vibrating, like an arrow singing into a tree. " Stop clutching yourself, King! Just lie cur led, but let go your grip. Try to breathe deep, then let it flow out, like you're bending a flame without blowing it out," and I breathed, demonstrating. But instead of breathing, King was talking now, words shunting out of his lockjaw silence like boxcars filled with broken parts.

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" Pussies in my face, " he said, " til I'm almost dull with 'em, one after the other, three, four a week, ever since she left. Women are really attracted to me. Didya know that, Shawn? Really. Butl close my eyes and I see Carolyn, screwing this guy, and I-" " Stop, King, take it easy. Lina? What's taking you?" " Just a minute, dammit! " she called from the kitchen. "I couldn't find the goddamn tea strainer." " And Marylou tonight gang-banged all fucked up on downers and speed and mescaline and wine and I tried to go with it, Shawn, I mean she was actually I think digging it but-" " It's okay. Just calm down now. We all love you here." " Yes, King." It was Lina, with some mint and comfrey tea, by the smell of it. She knelt by King's coiled shivering body and placed the small steaming Japanese ceramic cup by his head. She looked almost Japanese herself, kneeling there in her long, tight, Oriental dress slit clear up the thigh, and with her long, straightfalling, blue-'black hair.

"Here, it's good for you, King, you should try to drink some."

"Mmmmmmm, the aroma makes me feel better already," he said, breathing in deeply, uncoiling like the steam rising from the cup. He sat up slowly, then rolled over and stretched belly-down on the worn carpet. Then Lin a did something, which twisted in my gut like a sudden knife. She very gently straddled his back, and began to massage him with long soothing strokes. This is the way she would massage me, almost nightly during our first couple of years together. But she hadn't done it in a very long time. There she was astride him, her dress pulled high and taut across her thighs, and a ribbon of darkness began circling up around my eyes, smoky red, like_blood blooming in water.

"That feels wonderful, Lina, but I don't think you should do it any longer," King said, and began to roll over on his side, Lina almost losing balance, then clamping his ribs - a slowly heaving bronco. But a look of confusion swept her face, or embarrassment perhaps, and she climbed off him and settled by his side, pulling her dress down over her knees.

The blood started to clear from my eyes.

"Thank you, Lina, and thank you Shawn for com in' and makin' things right," he said, in his old soft, slow, mild Midwestern drawl.

He slowly drew himself up and leaned back against the easy chair, crossing his outstretched legs and rubbing one stockinged foot slowly against the other. He was okay now, I knew. I rose to go, smiling down at my friend.

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"Don't forget to drink your tea,'' Lina sang, suddenly bursting with cheer. She stood bolt upright, clutching her elbows to her sides, a rocket about to blast off.

The three of us snuggled as close together as three people can.

Beneath us, on the soft pine needles, spread Lina's wide open sleeping bag, and on top of us spread mine, like the wings of a butterfly. Lina was on her side, spooned in between us. King was trembling wildly, and his left leg kept jerking out of its bent position. He could control neither the trembling nor the jerking of his leg. Lina's slender arm rested reassuringly alongside King's arm, and my arm stretched beneath Lina's neck and my hand gently stroked King's shoulder. The more King trembled the closer we pressed.

We'd traveled here, halfway cross the country. tovisitone of my old buddies high in the Rockies of Colorado. Ben lived in a lean-to

by Rainbow Lake, eleven miles out of Breckingridge. He was a robust man with a high-domed forehead and hair like Einstein, and was making three dollars an.hour, under the table, framing houses.

Rogue- a wild man in those days with a long golden ponytail sticking out beneath a red bandana which he wore like a beretand me and Lina had driven out in Rogue's old battered Peugeot station wagon, and King had followed, hair flying, on his big Honda 750 chopped down like an Angel's bike (he'd been a biker before his army days - a fact which always amazed me, because King could be so gentle with things, like the doves and the turtles he kept in his backyard aviary, and somehow " biker" conjured up other pictures in my mind).

"Thank you," King said raggedly, as we snuggled ever closer.

"You really don't have to sleep with me-" "We want to sleep with you, King," Lina said.

"Yeah, that's what friends are for," I agreed.

A big sense of sharing was inflating me, so that I felt like I was fioating just above the ground. I was sharing Lina, and I felt good about myself for that, and I felt good about Lina. She's flowing right with it, I said to myself, with a warm glow of pleasure, of liberation as I saw it.

We'd only skimmed through Open Marriage when it came out, but I'd been impressed, and I thought: this must be what it's all about. The long hot tongue of jealousy, which had jabbed and licked me the other night when she climbed on King's back, was

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but the splinter of an emotion out of our parents' generation. This is the new age. We share.

My eyes were on the back of Lina's dark head, and her familiar smell, of crushed roses slightly soured by old sweat, was tender to me. And there beyond her, in my hand's grasp, was King's trembling. The thought of the three of us making love flashed in me, as a kind of therapy for King's hurt- all of our hurts. But I couldn't quite picture just how this could be initiated, and consummated.

I was the first to go to sleep. I was very young then; it was a generation ago.

We were in the sweat lodge we'd made out of an old miner's tool shed we'd found alongside a snowmelt pool. We'd gathered plenty of dry wood, chopped it, made a fire outside, heated big stones in amongst the coals, then transferred the stones, using forked sticks, to a big old black iron cook pot in the shack. We sprinkled water over the hot stones periodically, and soon the tiny shack was filled with hot steam. Me and King and Lina and Ben and the Rogue got naked and danced around in the high mountain air and squeezed into the dark shack to roast. Me and Ben and the Rogue had eaten horse capsules of ground peyote I'd brought along for the occasion.

King and Lina had abstained- Lina said that she'd awakened that morning with a nightmare, and she didn't want it to come alive in the shack.

The sweat soon began to spring from our wide-opened pores.

One by one we evacuated the sweat lodge and leaped, or slid, into the snowmelt pool. A slow explosion of bubbles rippled along the pure sensation of flesh. "Dynamite!" shouted Ben, flipping ice water off the tips of his wide, Greek fisherman's moustache. " Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!" yipped the Rogue, who leapt into the pool like a Viking into battle. Lina fluttered and splashed like a bird in a birdbath, and was first to flee, while I, feeling sleek as an otter, flashed and tumbled in the icy cavern of liquid light, then floated luxuriously on my back. Only King was still, and he lay there with a far off look, then clambered slowly out after Lina, who'd returned to the sweat lodge.

We were 11,000 feet up; patches of snow glared white amidst the lush emerald green of the creek-side moss and the meadow, which was sprinkled here and there with Rocky Mountain columbine.

One by one the rest of us climbed out of the ice cold pool and reentered the sweat lodge, to begin the cycle of hot and cold again.

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Slowly, the peyote begun to bloom in our minds and bodies, shimmering outwards in waves.

I'd been reading Black Elk Speaks, and the words of the great Oglala Sioux medicine man were beginning to possess me. I was in a peyote ceremony, and my spine grew strong and erect like an oak. The air was smoke and magic, a living darkness - air breathing me. Lines of energy radiated from the cracks of darkness, and within their bands of light, sweating masks of wild animal spirits smoldered and glistened.

Then, as from a great distance, I heard a voice.

"I'm sorry, Shawn, but I must be going." It was King. "I can't stay here any longer."

A moment stretched before me: a crazy abyss.

"Oh. You're going back to camp?" I heard my own voice from far down a box canyon.

"No, I'm going home," he said. " I've got to get back. I've got to get Little King back. I've got to straighten things out with Carolyn.

I'm goin', Shawn."

"Ya haveta leave now? " "I'm afraid so. I can't stand it any longer. I'm heading back now, right now." And he got up and stooped out through the door into the unbearable brightness out there.

"I'm going with him, Shawn," Lina said.

Words seemed like dumb stones in my mouth. I could say nothing.

"We talked about it," Lina said. " He was reluctant at first, but then he came around. I don't think he should be going alone, not in the state he's in. He might do something crazy. Don't you think it's a good idea- I mean. that I should go with him?" Her hands were clutching her knees, and she was already leaning forward to go.

"I guess." I was stung, confused, my brain a swarm of bees. Why hadn't they told me before? I rose and followed Lina out into the harsh blaze. The light pierced my eyes, arrows out of the blue. The three of us stood naked under the sky. " Lin a told me," I said to King. My mind could register that she was going, but my body felt sick, skewered. Everything loomed so large around me, the sky, King, some unmentionable panic like a shadow behind me, whichever way I turned. " Is it all right with you, Shawn? I think I could make it alone, but if she wants to r. ome, well, I sure would appreciate her company."

"Yeah, sure. I think it's best." The muscles in my stomach writhed and coiled like snakes. I turned toward Lina. She was 113

twisted, gnarled, a vine wrapped around an enigma, with huge luminous black eyes shining out of a foliage of wild black snakes -the same ones which seethed in the pit of me. "You sure it's okay with you? " I asked her, my voice that of a cackling old woman. " You won't be afraid riding on the back of his big black bike?" " No, I think it'll be fun . We'll be back home in two days, and you'll be back home two days later. It's only a few days. You could have more fun alone w i th your friends anyway. " Sometimes I think I just get in the way," she added, a little edge of bitterness sharpening her voice. "Hold you back." She averted those luminous eyes for a moment, her small mouth drawing tight like a drawstring change purse; then she laid her big wet seal eyes on me again, and said, " Really, I'll be fine with King."

They reached for their clothes, clumps of colorful rags hanging from nails in the silvered wood of the shed.

Standing naked in my boots now, next to King and Lina, who were fully dressed, and hugging King goodbye, being engulfed by him, by my friend's big body, a head taller than my own, I never felt so vulnerable in my life.

"Take care," Lina said, hugging me briefly, socking my arm playfully, but she was already gone from me. On the back of King's big bike, a roaring black stallion. They waved and I waved back.

Goodbye.

But my hand was a dead thing. I was no longer a warrior on a vision quest, but some broken thing, some pierced animal.

Back in the sweat lodge, I hunched down, then my back stiffened as something shifted gears deep in my consciousness: "GGGnnn mmmhhhnnn," I growled. " What're you doing?" Rogue asked. tender and concerned a s a mother. But my hands were squeezing the handle-grips, leaning into the wind, " Mmmmrrrouhhhmmmm, mmrohm," shifting through the gears, speeding faster and faster, straight down the center line toward the range of mountains huge before me. " MMMrrrrhh uuung ghnnnnnnn " and I was engine screaming, smack toward the sheer wall of rock rising ahead, and rearing back, I rose into the sky and flew straight the eye of the great flaming Sun - white light! Flash/ And I out; an ash swinging slowly falling in the air. Blackness.

"I still think it was good of her to go back with you, King, and sleep with you," I said on King's old porch, on his dairy farm Kansas. We were chewing over old times. Through the screen we could hear Bob Dyla n singing, crying, "S-a-r-a-h, oh-h 114

" on his Desire album. In the backyard two ducks were madly in a washtub - the drake pinning its mate fiercely down.

"I don't know, Shawn. She came because she wanted to come."

King had regained custody of Little King, when Carolyn had inexplicably decided to become a Wac. He'd married a young woman from Kansas, and moved out here to start life over.

I'd eventually remarried as well, but I still valued Lina's friendship.

"Yes, she wanted to," I said, "butshe'dneversleptwith another man, and, well, I still think she did it more out of compassion, for your hurt male ego. She knew you were wounded, and knew what to do about it."

"No, she wanted to become the second 'Mrs. King.' That's what ehe wanted."

"I can't believe that, King," I said, and I didn't know if the bitterness I was choking down was from an old wound or a new one.

"Aw, Shawn. You're my best friend in the whole goddamn world. You oughtn't& be getting all bothered about this now. It's like skinning a doe five years dead."

"She did it out of compassion, King."

"I don't think so, Shawn."

"I think she did." " No.'' u.u.a.aâ&#x20AC;˘.u.lJuJ!!.

Later that evening I was seated at the kitchen table, my elbows sticking to the flowered plastic table cloth. It was hot and humid.

We were waiting for Mary Lee to dish up the "vittles," as King called it. The smell of baking bread weighed on the heat, but lifted my spirits. My fingers drummed the tabletop. "Don't lean back in your chair, pumpkin," King said to his restless shooting sprout of a son. I looked over King's shoulder, and there on the window sill above the sink, stood that big red chunky candle I'd made him as a birthday gift back in my "hippy days.''

"How'sa'bout candle light with dinner?" I said, as I rose and made for the candle.

"Lord, that old beast? Sure, why not? It's become a sort of mascot. I just haven't been able to chuck it out." He chuckled.

It took two hands to unstick it from the sill. On my way back to the table I grabbed a box of matches from the stove. I plunked the candle down in the center of the field of flowers- it stood there like 115

a ruined castle of wax. I was about to strike a match when I saw that the wick was buried, like a black vein, in the flesh of the candle. I fished out my Swiss Army knife from my front pocket, opened the biggest blade, stuck the sharp point next to the buried vein, and started to dig. I had to be careful not to cut it, or I'd just have to keep on digging. I wanted to be sure that when I struck the match the flame would find a home.

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MAN WHO DRANK A THOUSAND BEERS

Steve Heller Chariton Review Press, 1984.

A Hawaiian Winesburg, Ohio is how some readers may want to see this collection because of the links among the nine stories: all are set in Hawaii; some have characters in common; and several concern people trying either to preserve or to fend off illusions.

In "The Rainbow Syndrome," which opens the collection, old Burton Bettelheim is proud of his ability to remain free of illusions and belittles self-deceivers like the "crazy three-hundred pound Hawaiian" Joseph Kamahele, who bets a wealthy businessman he can drink a thousand beers in ten days. Burton has his philosophy all worked out: "Why kid yourself? ... It's like the roaches. You find your own crack, by god. You don't have to be a goddamn dreamer to pt along." But dreaming has its powerful appeal, and every once in a while Burton finds himself slipping into a fantasy, as he does at the end of the story when he momentarily considers sharing a few beers - and a dream - with the big Hawaiian.

Also about a self-proclaimed realist is "The Rainbow Man." Concerning a one-eyed puka shell salesman who virtually worships Joseph Kamahele, the protagonist says, "He is one of those men beyond logic and explanation - a grown-up believer in heroes . ... Such men are easily deceived." However, like Burton Bettelheim, this protagonist, too, will find himself drawn to the appeal of heroes and dreams, an attraction heightened by the letting: "Mother was right - these are islands of false hope and should be carefully avoided."

The story's title refers to a street artist who also appears in "The Rainbow Syndrome" and " Postcard from Lahaina." To his potential customers, the Rainbow Man says, "Now here's the temptation .. . . On my canvas you can be whomever you wish. Close your eyes.

Who sees a picture they would like me to paint?"

In the book's title story, the central character is the legendary hero himself, Joseph Kamahele. The strongest man in Waikiki and perhaps the proudest, he wagers his pride in his bet with the richest man in Waikiki. But Joseph cannot keep up a pace of a hundred beers a day and discovers his oldest son, Danny helping 117

him win the bet by pouring out cans of beer.

Regardless of any connections among the stories, the collection is not without variety. "The Player and the Giant" is a fantasy about a man who cannot change. The ocean disappears; the mountains crumble; a kahuna proclaims that the old world is gone and that a new one must be built. ButMitsumo Takara continues to play golf.

"Auteur" is about a coffee shop, its patrons, and a waitress and her lovers - all as seen through the eyes of The Film Phantom, who narrates the story as if he were directing a film.

In "The Red Dust of Lanai," Shigeo Masuda, who works a boomspray in the pineapple fields, must decide whether to leave Lanai and move to Honolulu with his girlfriend, a decision not easy to make because of his attachment to the island symbolized by the red dust which settles on his body and "completely clothed . .. h un.

Pierce, the protagonist of "A Matter of Style," is scared: boredom threatens to wreck his life and has already taken from him his "style." In " Postcard from Lahaina," Michael Tanner, an insurance agent and a recently divorced father of two teenage girls, tries to come to grips with reality - with what his life has been, is, and will be.

Thus, there are motifs linking stories, yet there is variety. But what is really important is that all nine stories are good storieswith prose that is beautifully controlled, carefully chosen details that create a strong sense of place, and characters about whom the reader can care.

The best story is " The Summer Game," which was selected for Prize Stories 1979: The 0. Henry Awards. Warren, a laborer on Ewa Plantation, is rather shy and reserved in relationships with the other workers. He does not like "to be in center" of things, considering it a luxury "to stay on the edge things where you can relax and see the whole picture." ur'ur'"""'" on the last day of his summer job, he is forced into " the center" by challenge from a mysterious laborer named Santos.

A young writer, Heller practices the art and craft of the short story with the skill of a mature professional. Indeed, this collection (Heller's first) suggests he has the potential to join the ranks of such contemporary short story masters as Peter Taylor, Gordon Weaver, and Raymond Carver.

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ISLANDS Gary Kissick University of Hawaii Press, 1984.

"Wild, unexpected poems": This is William Stafford's evaluation ofOa.ry Kissick's Outer Islands, winner of the 1983 Pacific Poetry Series competitit:>n (Stafford was last year's judge for this new Hries). The poems in this first book range widely in subject matter and voice - meditative poems in commemoration of place and narratives, often pitting Man against the elements, give way to personae poems such as "what I like about a. blindma.n." Surprise Ia the unifying element in this collection.

Kissick, who taught at the University of Hawaii and is a. former editor of Hawaii Review, celebrates the beauty and mystery of the Hawaiian landscape in the book's first section, "If Stone Were Rain." The section opens with "a. pact with spirits," a. poem which Hrves as a. poetic precept: It is a. pact I have made with spirits.

They will not reveal themselves.

When I turn to examine an echo, I'll see no old Chinaman forlorn in an overcoat worn thin by moonlight.

When I sleep in the woods, I'll hear no ancient songs, no women crying where there are none. The desolate babies in the gra.veyard will be cats. The clack of bamboo only that. Coat hangers will not rattle in the closet, the lock will not come undone, nor will the rocking chair rock of its own accord.

I, in return, will believe in them.

The statement the poem makes is of course paradoxical: The poet's pact is with the unseen, the unknowable - a. covenant therefore only of his own. What I like about this poem is the poet's strong 119

dramatic affirmation of the unseen, his belief in ultimate This credo also becomes a starting point, allowing the poet begin; the spirits " will not reveal themselves," so the poet takes the task of revelation (various ghos ts and spirits pass in and out the poems in this section). The poet, with spiritus, begins.

The skillful arrangement of phonetic intensives in the poem typical of Kissick's work. In lines 3-6, the interplay of the sounds (reminiscent of Poe) suggests a kind of spooky this tone shifts to a grating modulation of long and short sounds in lines 10-12; and the poem resolves the sound pattern a consonance of "n" and " m " sounds, a pleasant humming, works in counterpoint to the earlier vowel sounds. It's to discover a poet who pays attention to the sound a poem uu:.A,,.

Hawaii, for the narrator of this section, is a lush exotic dream. dizzying experience of sight and smell and sound - ou,.uv-. expanses of ocean and sky; " the wind . . . through the lemon through the thimbleberries"; " Hala, ohia, kamole, wind The landscape, however, is not always hospitable. In " beneath Holei Pali," a place where "shadows barely survive," narrator has run out of water: When I awaken, my throat is a broken jar in the desert.

The sun persists.

Wind blows over my fingers, unearthing bones as if relics.

My own voice chills and dispossesses me.

In the poem the psychic state of the narrator is prevailing images of sun and fire, blurring into other elements: Once this had all been molten, lava flowing to the sea, trapped trees bursting into white, incandescent flames. Now it is whorls, ripples, sparks of light -fire enchanted into stone .. .

Mauna Ulu tosses like troubled sleep, a distant cauldron, a lake of fire ....

The landscape in "Kapaa, Hawaii" is seemingly congenial, the narrator's sleep is troubled by a presence that can't be loose by logic: All night at Kapaa, my dreams fanned like long hair around my sleeping bag, ghosts awaken me.

I see the stars, but the moon mostly. The coast is stone, and I hear it.

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No breaking branch, no disembodied laughter, no dog, no warrior, nothing to fear.

I know this.

I am glad to be alone at Kapaa.

But I am not. here arises in the conflict between emotion and reason; the -~路..路--of logical negation, the assonance (especially the modu-

of "o" sounds in stanza two), and the subject matter make a companion poem to "a pact with spirits."

The second section of Outer Islands, "A Little Wine," is Kissick his best. The poet doesn't move us entirely away from Hawaii; is a mixture here of Hawaiian and oriental flavors . The fluctuate from descriptive to narrative modes, and are with lively original language. Nature's simple disinterest the human condition is played out in the mind of a man "afloat Hanakapiai" in the poem " I was swimming":

t

. . . This beast dashes me under, knots my screams, churns me with sand and shell, bruises and buries me nose, mouth, salt, a lifetime of unworthiness . ...

And the lights are going out in my body, a small town in South Dakota, first the gossamer extremities -desires, fingers, toes then my feet, my palms, no mail will ever be delivered to my door, no oxygen to my arms, my legs, and the sound of a door closing in my heart breaks it, and my brain is an old cleaning woman abutting venetian blinds in a hurry, and in that dark room I see: a little boy on a pony (the pony is self-assured; the boy is not); a tea stem floating in a cup; the pale Midori, beauty of Kyoto, erobing my pubic hairs, discovering gray, and saying, 'These here, GarJ-san, they must worry a lot, yeah?" ... the movement of this poem, the ebb and flow of the line the whimsical shifts of focus, and the playful stream of 121

near-unconsciousness of someone about to drift into his own personal apocalypse.

In Kissick's playfulness, his love of the outdoors, his sharp imagistic impressions, and his encounters with oriental culture, the reader is reminded of the poet whom Kissick most resembles - Gary Snyder. In its subject matter and tone, Kissick's "in a bamboo grove" is reminiscent of Snyder's serene lyrical voice: Alone in a grove of bamboo, and it's snowing.

Perfect symmetrical flakes melt in my hair, and on my cheeks, in my open hands, and on thin, pointed leaves shaking like something asleep ' that would not be wakened.

Suddenly, a dark creature darts across snow- shadow to shadow.

And here, now in an unexpected sweep of sunlight over the white prints of its paws, bold crystalline stars fill the smallest measure of its passage.

When I lost my youth,.I thought I would weep forever.

Is this a winter breeze or only my hair turning gray?

Alone . .. and it's snowing, falling quietly cold, no stalks clacking, and even the animal only the steps of a dance for which I imagine the quietest musicwhite, on white, on white.

There are, however, significant differences between the writers. Where Snyder celebrates the religious aspects of ity, Kissick focuses on its impenetrability. Snyder is more social critic and philosopher, taking stances based on his personal experiences and meditation; unlike Kissick, he veers occasional didacticism.

Kissick, in the book's third section- " Love and Molestation" projects experiences very different from his own. In ""A."u'"'" passion in its various guises, the poet sometimes speaks nefarious masks, as in "the child molester":

122

1

c a n

s:

. . . But then I must touch the silken spot that so distresses a little girl, be just one finger naughty, cover her face with kisses, taste her tears that have come such a long way through the woods, feel again her whole convulsive bodybreath beneath me, muffle her sobs with my chest, and say, and whisper .. . everything's going to be all right, all right, all right. . . .

One of the most original and impressive poems in the collection is "what I like about a blindman": What I like about a blindman is you can stare him right in the eye, the only extinguished light by which we see.

And if you freeze, breathing quietly through the nose, you can smell the dust of that eraser perpetually voiding his face. It's what gives him his pallor. Then you can trip him. Trip him and run away.

And if a blindman also suffers that disease that deadens nerves, you can creep to his bed at midnight, touch those eyes so disturbing by daylight, those cellar doors left open, unfinished tomes of blank verse, heartless poems.

And if that succeeds, if that goes so well your fingers come away reeking of darknes s , perhaps you can pass your hand before your face and not be born at all.

Taking a subject which a lesser poet might sentimentalize, Kissick creates a narrator who turns pathos inside out. The unexpected and incomplete subject-verb construction in line one builds immediate tension, enticing the reader into the poem; because the syntactical tension is relaxed in line two, the shift to second person is scarcely noticed. The reader, then, is given a. "program" of sorts, a series of actions which promise to be rewarding (" ... And if you freeze ... you can . . . And if that succeeds, if that goes so well ... perhaps you can .. .") if followed. The final action, however, consists of a paradoxical self-extinction and links the condition of

123

the reader to that of the blind man: an existence in perpetual darkness. " So Perfectly Forgotten," the final section of Outer Islands, is antipodal to the book's opening sequence.Earlier images of fluency -rain and light and flame- give way to stone and fossil, to cold stasis: .. . And here, like progressive ivory miniatures, pickled dogs, opossums, rats, and an exquisitely embryonic - paws formed, eyes unawakened - litter of cats under glass.

I turn to find Yukiko dangerously transfixed by a wall of our own unborn dead, each appearing to float, yet actually affixed to a plaque by a screw to the head . .. [" in the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History (formaldehyde)"] Though this first book isn't a flawless performance- several of the shorter descriptive poems fail to move the reader beyond simple presentation of place - Outer Islands is worthy of close attention. There is a surety of language and voice throughout the collection; Kissick's poems defeat expectation, and always in a way that illuminates experience.

-Jeff Worley Pennsylvania State University

124

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Priscilla Atkins teaches at Hanahouoli School. For the past five years, Hawaii has been her home.

Angela Ball's work has recently appeared in GRAND STREET, POET AND CRITIC, INDIANA REVIEW, and MUNDUS ARTIUM; and is forthcoming is CROSSCURRENTS, MONTANA REVIEW, MEMPHIS STATE REVIEW, as well as 2 PLUS 2: A COLLECTION OF INTERNATIONAL WRITING. She teaches at the University of Southern Mississippi's Center for Writers and is an associate editor of the MISSISSIPPI REVIEW. Fred Baysa, a University of Hawaii graduate, writes and edits by day and teaches by night. He sleeps on occasion and commutes from Waialua the rest of the time.

Rosemary Bensko's poems have been published in several magazines, such as the CAROLINA QUARTERLY AND THE LOUISVILLE REVIEW. She was awarded the Academy of American Poet's Prize at Florida State University. She is presently living in Memphis, Tennessee, finishing Master's thesis on Richard Hugo for FSU. Eric Chock is a local poet, editor of BAMBOO RIDGE, THE HAWAU WRITER'S QUARTERLY, and Poets-in-the-Schools Coordinator.

Mary Crow, winner of anN .E.A. Poetry Fellowship in 1984, recently the anthology, WOMAN WHO HAS SPROUTED WINGS: POEMS CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN WOMEN POETS. Michael Delp is currently the Director of Creative Writing at the In lochen Arts Academy in Michigan. His poems have appeared in thologies and little magazines, including THE THIRD COAST, GREENFIELD REVIEW, INLET, PASSAGES NORTH, THISTLE, THE SOUTH DAKOTA REVIEW. His fiction and non-fiction appearedinPLAYBOY, THE FLYFISHERMAGAZINE,DETROIT AZINE, and WONDERLAND MAGAZINE. He is a recipient of the 1 Creative Artist Grant from the Michigan Council for the Arts.

Lynn Domina, currently editor of THE BLACK WARRIOR REVIEW, poems in recent or forthcoming issues of NIMROD, THE Cunn~ru REVIEW, THE SEA TILE REVIEW, and others.

Jack Driscoll's most recent book of poems is FISHING THE BACKW now in its second printing from Ithaca House. The recipient of the and MCA creative writing fellowships, he teaches at the Interlochen Academy in northern Michigan.

Charles Edward Eaton's work in poetry and prose has appeared in ATLANTIC MONTHLY, HARPER'S MAGAZINE, KENYON RE SEWANEE REVIEW, GEORGIA REVIEW, YALE REVIEW, THE TION, NEW REPUBLIC, and other magazines. His ninth collection

poetry, THE WORK OF THE WRENCH, has just been published by Cornwall Books.

M.A. Farrell, a North Carolina native and journalist, is now a graduate student at Florida State University. She received the FSU-Academy of American Poets Graduate Award for a collection of poems on Haitians living in Belle Glade, Florida.

Roger Jones, winner of the 1984 Oklahoma State University Academy of American Poets Contest, teaches at Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas and has one chapbook to credit: Remembering New London (TEXAS REVIEW, 1981).

Judith Kleck's poems have appeared in SOUTHERN POETRY REVIEW, SEATTLE REVIEW, POETRY NORTHWEST and others. She is currently an instructor in English at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington.

Juliet S. Kono lives and works in Honolulu.

Lyn Llfllhin's recent collection of poems, KISS THE SKIN OFF, has won the Jack Kerouac A ward.

Jonathan London's short stories have appeared recently in THE GREENFIELD REVIEW, AIM MAGAZINE, BIRTH STORIES: THE EXPERIENCE REMEMBERED (The Crossing Press, 1984), and elsewhere. He and Maureen Weisenberger live with their son, Aaron, on the Russian River in Northern California, where London is a Poet in the Schools. He is currently working on a novel, FOR DEAR LIFE .

John J . McCann, an associate professor of French at Philadelphia' s La Salle University, has poetry and fiction in quarterlies and reviews, including FOUR QUARTERS, KARAMU, MISSISSIPPI VALLEY REVIEW,NORTHDAKOTAQUARTERLY, THE ROUND TABLE , SONORA REVIEW, and WISCONSIN REVIEW. He is also the author of The Theater of Arthur Adamov (University of North Carolina Press at Chapel Hill), and is currently at work on a novel.

Glenn Masuchika is presently working on a Master's in Theological Studies at Harvard University.

Michael McPherson went south.

Louis Phillip's most recent collection of poems- THE TIME, THE HOUR, THE SOLITARINESS OF THE PLACE - was published in September by Swallow's Tale Press. His full-length plays include THE LAST OF THE MARX BROTHERS' WRITERS and THE BALLROOM IN ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL; his story, " The Man Who Was Struck By Lightning," received the PEN Fiction Syndication Award. He currently teaches creative writing at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Joseph Powell's first book of poems, COUNTING THE CHANGE, will soon be published in THE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE 'S Contemporary Poetry Series.

Tony Quagliano, a Honolulu poet and writer, has new poems in ROLLING STONE. NEW LETTERS and the jazz magazine BEBOP AND BEYOND. His latest prose includes " Wintry Emptiness: A Note of Jack Kerouac's VISION OF GERARD," in NOTES ON AMERICAN LITERATURE. and an article, " Signs and Symbols," for the ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PSYCHOLOGY. He is the literary editor of HONOLULU JOURNAL. Diana Rivera's poems have a ppeared in THE SEATTLE REVIEW, CHELSEA, VOICES INTERNATIONAL JOHN O 'HARA JOURNAL, SUNRUST, a nd others.

William Pitt Root's fiction has appeared in TRIQUARTERLY, SHORT STORY INTERNATIONAL, MONTANA REVIEW, WRITERS' FORUM, NEW LETTERS, and has received honorable mention in PUSHCART, which has reprinted his poems three times. The latest PUSHCART poem, "The Unbroken Diamond: Nigh tletter toM ujahideen," has just come out in a Swedish edition a nd is forthcoming in Ge rman.

Mark Spencer teaches at Southwest Missouri State University. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in FICTION '84, THE FLORIDA REVIEW,

THE CHARITON REVIEW, CRITIQUE: STUDIES IN MODERN FICTION. and elsewhere.

Joseph Stanton's latest book is BRITISH AND EUROPEAN LITERATURES, a textbook for high school seniors. His poems have appeared in CONCERNING POETRY. BLUE UNICORN, PULPSMITH, and other journals. " Dojoji" belongs to a sequence of " Noh Variations" that he has been working on for several years.

Frank Stewart's second book, FLYING THE RED EYE, will be published in 1986.

Reuben Tam, Kauai-bom poet and painter, studied at the University of Hawaii, Columbia University, and the New School for Social Research. He has taught at Queens College CUNY, Oregon State University, and Brooklyn Museum Art School. He lives in Kapaa, Kauai.

JeH Worley has published poems and reviews in over 60 magazines, including THE LITERARY REVIEW, INTRO. THE THREEPENNY REVIEW, and POETRY NORTHWEST. Poems are forthcoming in COLLEGE ENGLISH. CUTBANK, CONFRONTATION, TENDRIL. POET LORE, and THE MID-AMERICAN REVIEW. He teaches at Pennsylvania State University.

Cedric Yamanaka is a student at the University of Hawaii.

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WINTER EEL Norman Hindley " . .. Hindley manages that rare combination: intensity of emotion complemented by formal mastery. He is a . .~llir: very fine poet, and Winter Eel is a striking achievement for a first volume of poetry. " -Craig Howe, Hawaii Committee for the Humanities review. The Sunday ........

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. ,. ..

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ISSN: 0093-9625

Fiction by: Jona than London John J . McCann Glenn Masuchika William Pitt Root Cedric Yamanaka Poetry by: ~

.._.

Priscilla Atkins ~ :-. "' ,... • , _. Angela Ball ~4;:.~.:?~~ ..~: ·..,~, '::., .:- ·· ::~qsemary Bensko :.. .· ' .. ,': .:-: · . ·..-:~ ~ · ·~·Eric Chock. · ·n{:.--:. ...t>'~·::. · Mary Crow • -· · · :'* . : Michael Delp .. . ~. :~ .,: _ ..:~· .;· .. · .. Lynn Domina ."'· · .... ~ . ~ ·.rJ . ,: .•.. • r';. J aCJ Driscoll •· ;_...,. .-:.

- ~ •· :::::rtlo.. . 1 Ed ..:~~;,.;t...::, .. ·~: :· :) ..~ ·.-.! · .·,_: V'1.a:ilor es wardE aton .. • · ~.~'> .. ..: •• _::~ .. · · , : ;. ..,.:_. -· ··M:.A.Farrell •.. · \ f' . · :· ~- > · .··:·: . _- .; .R oger Jones ._ =-· • · ·' -:: .: · ' ---. 'Judith Kleck Juliet S. Kono Lyn Lffshin Michael McPherson Louis Phillips Joseph ~owen Tony Quagliano Diana Rivera Joseph Stanton .:..

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Fr~nk- Stewart

Reuben Tam

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Reviews by: Mark Spencer Jeff Worley