Spring 2021| Volume 19, Issue 2
The Oklahoma Review
Cameron University
The Oklahoma Review Volume 19: Issue 2, Spring 2021
Published by: Cameron University Department of Communication, English and Foreign Languages
Managing Editor GARY REDDIN
Faculty Editors
WILLIAM CARNEY & LEAH CHAFFINS
Layout and Design GARY REDDIN
Cover Art
SHARON PYBAS-CHEATWOOD
Mission Statement
The Oklahoma Review is an electronic literary magazine published through the Department of English at Cameron University in Lawton, Oklahoma. The goal of our publication is to provide a forum for exceptional fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction in a dynamic, appealing, and accessible environment. The magazine’s only agenda is to promote the pleasures and edification derived from high-quality literature.
The Staff
The views expressed in The Oklahoma Review do not necessarily correspond to those of Cameron University, and the university’s support of this magazine should not be seen as any endorsement of any philosophy other than faith in – and support of – free expression. The content of this publication may not be reproduced without the written consent of The Oklahoma Review or the authors.
Call for Submissions
The Oklahoma Review is a continuous, online publication. We publish two issues each year: Spring and Fall. The Oklahoma Review only accepts manuscripts during two open reading periods. 4
•Reading dates for the Fall issue will now be from August 1 to October 15 •Reading dates for the Spring issue will be January 1 to March 15. Work sent outside of these two periods will be returned unread.
Guidelines:
Submissions are welcome from any serious writer working in English. Email your submissions to okreview@cameron.edu. Writers may submit the following: •Prose fiction pieces of 30 pages or less. •As many as five (5) poems of any length. •Nonfiction prose pieces of 30 pages or less. •As many as five (5) pieces of visual art— photography, paintings, prints, etc. •All files should be sent as e-mail attachments in either .doc or .rtf format for text, and .jpeg for art submissions. We will neither consider nor return submissions sent in hard copy, even if return postage is included. •When sending multiple submissions (e.g. five poems), please include all the work in a single file rather than five separate files. •Authors should also provide a cover paragraph with a short biography in the body of their e-mail. •Simultaneous submissions are acceptable. Please indicate in your cover letter if your work is under consideration elsewhere. •Please direct all submissions and inquiries to oklareview@gmail.com
Table of Contents Poetry
They Watch You | 7 Et in Arcadia, Ego | 8 Most Wanted | 9 She Received a Mysterious Plant | 10 Unlikely Sway | 11 Shy | 12 Stinkbug | 13 Host and Guest | 14 Gravel | 15 Coastal Town - Highway 1 | 16
Fiction
The Dam | 19 See What Happens? | 30
Contributors
Sharon Pybas-Cheatwood M. A. Istvan Jr., Paul Juhasz Brian Lutz Abigale Mazzo Michael Milburn Sheila Robinson Jack Steinbrink
5
Poetry
6
They Watch You Polished contours mark white screens and we become but so many ghosts. Ghost tales give weight, sense, to what we feel. It is more of a comfort to say, “We can’t sleep because of banshees” than that we can’t sleep in this cold that newspaper layers fail to snuff out. Wiry hairs in each highway urinal, farmers huddle roadside each night, cell-less with gas-station cherry pies. We tug each horizon that will have us, each that will choose how to structure each tender contradiction and make no song—not one—square a wary note.
- M. A. Istvan Jr.
7
Et in Arcadia, Ego I sit on a red rock slabbed into the shore bank and watch as he casts into the vast pellucid before him, the reflection of sky shimmered by ripples of bobber and bait. I have to remind myself not to blink, a flick of eye that would erase the slow counter-clockwise turn of the reel tauting the line, a movement that, somehow, keeps him real, holds him in three dimensions. The Oklahoma sun gives me back the color of the outdoors as he casts again, as the ripples fade into expansion, as he waits, placid as the waters he plumbs, timeless and content in an idyll of his own creation. People often comment on the resemblance, say he’s a mini-me. But my echoes are not yet the whispers of rumor to him. Instead, I am a mini-him, reduced, faded, dwarfed by his possibility. He is fifteen, all of his mistakes, his regrets, his roads not taken, are but reflections of shadow still, shimmered and ethereal. So he casts into the vast pellucid before him, as I sit on a red rock slabbed into the shore bank and watch, hopeful he catches that for which I am no longer bold enough to try.
- Paul Juhasz
8
Most Wanted As I stand in a long line waiting to mail a package to my sons, I find myself wandering back in my mind, in time, to the drab periwinkle post offices of my youth, and to those faces on the wall. Not just “wanted,” but “most wanted.” The worst men, the worst crimes. Their black and white scowls a promise (“See you in your nightmares, kid”). The world now vast and fulsome with evil. I’m older now, and supposedly wiser. I do adult things like go to post offices. And I wonder. A lot. It helps with things like long lines, mundane errands, and regret. I wonder, for example, about our collective need to make lists. Football Top 25s, Top Movies You Need to See Before You Die, Top 5 Signs You May Have Heart Disease, or Be a Pirate. I wonder about a compulsive need to rank so great even the FBI had to get in on it, then share their list in post offices, of all places. Because sex traffickers and terrorists, I suppose, send Christmas cards, need money orders, buy stamps too. And I wonder about the man who just missed making the list, coming in at #11. What of him? Is he disappointed? Does the list chastise? Challenge? “Hey, brother,” does it say, “you better up your game. This ain’t CandyLand”? Is Number 11 angry or upset? Does he track down Number 10 and off him? Or does he perhaps find comfort in his anonymity? His ability to step out of his fugitive life for a few moments, mail jars of homemade chokecherry jam to his cousin in relative safety? Does he breathe in the air of temporary normalcy, and become wistful? Does he fill his idle time with wonder? The line shuffles forward, bringing me one step closer to the only worker, who will apologize for the wait. I remind myself not to blame her. I also remember I need to buy stamps.
- Paul Juhasz
9
She Received a Mysterious Plant She received a mysterious plant. Everything about it was mysterious. The pot granular, sugary like Kool-Aid; a faded tuscon decored with pale blue cabalistic images, hieroglyphics reading “Anfractuous,” although she never knew this, not speaking plant. When she watered the plant—a full cup every week—as the dream directed her, the pot liquified, flowed away, exposing the rounded trapezoid of soil. And about that soil: flaked feldspar interspersed with what looked like the novelty gum nuggets sold in small burlap sacks in vintage candy shoppes, could very well be the novelty gum nuggets sold in small burlap sacks in vintage candy shoppes (for she never had the nerve to taste it). The plant itself a tattered assemblage of leftover parts. Some leaves, some succulent spines, a little evergreen. She thought spruce, maybe juniper, but she did not know much about such things. There were flowers, berries, cones, other arboreal accessories as yet unidentifiable. It was a mess, really. A collage of cast-off pieces. And did I mention the shimmering? The plant shimmered. Sometimes it looked to her like it was dancing. Other times it vanished completely, did an invisible lap around the room and reappeared almost— but not quite—in the exact spot from which it left. Such a mysterious plant. Everything about it was mysterious. Even who sent it to her. But sometimes, if she squinted just a bit, and caught the plant in just the right light, it looked like everything she always wanted.
- Paul Juhasz
10
Unlikely Sway If you don’t know about the bones, if you forget about how they can be flutes and rainspouts, how they are brittle flint and how they only matter when we try to understand the majesty, the wonder of it, if you can see only the size, only the shape, the unlikely sway, the darker gray against the cloud’s dark gray, the bird at the tip of the tree seems an impossible thing like a house on a ball, like a tidal wave in a teacup, and if you think for too long about the faded shape, large and watchful, the crow alone at the top of the thin branches— winter making naked even the tree’s eyelashes— the whole idea of how we live on this Earth starts to unknot. The whole idea that the world is right side up is vexed. Why should we be stuck down here with the blacktops and beer cans? Why go to work? Church? Why say sorry? Either the bird needs to explain itself, or we do.
- Brian Lutz
11
Shy Shy holds hidden expressive treasures, slow-to-surface charm, but if you’re not going to marry or get stuck on a train with that, who cares? Better to soak it in gin and let it impersonate the quipster, the raconteur, modest measures for monster returns, like a bald guy’s hairpiece or a woman’s new breasts, instantly improving our sense of something, just don’t call it self.
- Michael Milburn
12
Stinkbug Hard-shelled, with hinged legs and wings the shape of scabs, it landed on my book on Tuesday, my pillow on Wednesday, and on Friday log-rolled off the top of the bathroom shade, falling at my feet, its apparent propensity for flight-assisted jumps (or jump-assisted flights) a sign that it was dying to be near me, every body we miss a cure for loneliness.
- Michael Milburn
13
Host and Guest “Perhaps host and guest is really the happiest relation for father and son.” Evelyn Waugh Consider those couples in seagoing mail days when letters were read after a hundred things more recent had happened and emotions had changed, giving the words as much currency as a headline in a hurricane, and yet those explorer/home fires bonds thrived on the prospect of deliberate absence, planned for and even welcomed as a test of love. It’s my fantasy, born of having hardly been his on-site parent, that they’re a positive precedent for proving oneself steadfast by pursuing the relationship as a kind of thought experiment, like a room standing in for a mind standing in for a home.
- Michael Milburn
14
Gravel Chewed under shoes, winced over barefoot, spat sideways by tires, landing on lawn to be picked up by a mower and launched at an eye. Bounce a basketball and chase its caroms off the uneven stones. Squeeze a bike brake to spin into a shrapnel spraying skid. Fall off and dig it out of cuts like the dog her pads. But when car wheels left hushed highway for it was home, as in coming, or who could be arriving, its sudden crunching enough to startle her from dream to barks. Let the last step I take be on gravel, and sink into its scathing sound.
- Michael Milburn
15
Coastal Town - Highway 1 The earth smiles and casts her web At the man in the moon The son screams And you can feel the pain As clouds gather round And smother his visions of life. The innocent scamper from truth To be denied As they run from knowing In a false delight Run along with their games And jealousy eats at your soul. Ships nod and shake their head In the wind, while Captain Hook Does his little jig on the waves. Goonies walkin’, talkin’ Lookin’ for the rock Stumblin’ over jewels Somehow they lost sight. The foghorn blows its lonely tone As waves wash against the sand Old friends come to visit And you walk along the shore Pickin’ up seashells Remembering love that is no more Your memories roll out with the tide.
- Sheila Robinson
16
17
Fiction
18
The Dam By Abigale Mazzo The best parties were always at the Sherman County Dam. It didn’t really matter who was throwing them, they were bound to be good once word got out. Everyone between seventeen and twenty-two went and most everyone contributed to the pile of contraband. The best of the best parties happened early in the summer when the kids that moved away for college came back and were still reeling from campus life, wanting to share their newfound bong and keg skills with younger friends. Johnny and Kyle liked the dam best when the weather was bitter cold. They could almost guarantee they would be the only ones out there. It was cold and every breath was a sharp pain in the center of their chests, but it was quiet and isolated in a way that made things feel open and easy. Friday afternoon Kyle followed Johnny down the front steps of the high school. He wanted to ask him to go to the dam that evening and hang out, but he was nervous. Even after they’d been hanging out for almost a year, Kyle still worried he was going to bother Johnny anytime he spoke to him. Johnny almost always said ‘sure, let’s do it’ but it still made Kyle’s palms sweat to ask. Kyle had a hard time making friends at school. In his sophomore year he had developed a severe case of acne, leading to everyone calling him “Crater” and avoiding him like the plague for fear he might be contagious. Johnny didn’t seem to mind the acne. He was semi-popular since he was so laid back, everyone couldn’t help but like him. Johnny was also funny, even his teachers let him get away with more jokes in class than anyone else, but he never made fun of Kyle. Kyle appreciated that about him and felt like it meant something. Like maybe Johnny felt some sort of affinity for Kyle. Johnny didn’t really care one way or another about Kyle hanging around. He didn’t condone how the other kids treated Kyle, but Johnny also didn’t really try to stop them from teasing Kyle. He felt generally indifferent about most things in life, so when Kyle started hanging out with him, following him around after school and on weekends, he just let it happen. Kyle was nice enough, and pretty easy to talk to. They didn’t have many shared interests, but it didn’t really matter since they could always fall back to talking about school or homework when an awkward silence threatened to set in. Johnny didn’t mind silence, but he could tell Kyle hated it. Kyle would say just about anything to fill the void and sometimes it made Johnny laugh, even when Kyle wasn’t trying to be funny. Johnny could tell this made Kyle feel good in a way. Johnny could see Kyle smile and look almost bashful whenever he laughed at something Kyle said. But still, Johnny never gave him a pity laugh, and he felt good about that. “Want to hang out tonight,” Kyle asked, “Unless you got plans or something.” “I don’t have any plans,” Johnny said. 19
“Oh, cool. Well whatever. I’m free if you want to go to the dam or something, if it’s not too cold,” Kyle said. “Sure, sounds alright. Want to go now or you gotta go home first?” Johnny asked. “Let me go home and tell ma that I’m going out. I can meet you around six probably.” Kyle said. Johnny wanted to laugh. Kyle always had to tell his ma where he was going and when. Johnny’s parents never asked, hadn’t even asked when he was little either, they just assumed he’d be out with someone and come back when he was hungry. Instead of laughing, he gave Kyle a nod and said he’d see him later before setting off to the McGuires’ house. He bought all his weed from the McGuire’s, and sometimes other stuff if he was feeling particularly bored. It wasn’t great quality, but it came in great quantity and they didn’t care when he was a little short on cash. # The McGuires lived a few blocks from the high school and Johnny wondered if that was a tactical move on their part. Students could easily drop by on the way home without losing much time or even missing the bus if they rode home. It was just as easy to pop over and say hi to Tony or Laura during the lunch break too. Johnny learned the hard way to always knock before entering. It wasn’t pleasant to catch some of the activities that took place in their house. He knocked with three quick raps and heard Laura’s muffled call for him to come in. The house was dark and cool, with just a small table lamp in the back corner of the living room illuminating the space. Laura was in the kitchen just off to the right making lots of noise with metal pans. “Come in here. I’m making dinner for Nickie,” she called. “How’s it going, I just stopped by to pick up a baggy.” “Oh, well in that case,” she put a pot full of rice back on the burner and moved to the small table set up in the dining room, “I’m gonna have to go get it. It’ll just take a sec.” She pulled a black purse out from under a pile of newspapers, magazines, and other mail and dug around for a small key inside. Then she disappeared down a dark hallway and Johnny heard the dampened sounds of a cabinet being open and a heavy door swinging on hinges. Then a few moments later Laura was back with a small brown bag in her left hand. She held out her right hand, palm up. Johnny reached into his backpack and pulled out a wad of crumpled bills. “I’m pretty sure this’ll cover it, but you can count just in case,” he said. 20
“Nah, sugar, I’m sure it’s plenty,” Laura said.
They exchanged their bundles and slipped them into their respective pockets as Laura guided him back to the front door. “Nickie and Tony will be back soon, so you go ahead and run along now.” Johnny stepped back out into the chill and pulled his collar closer around his neck. It didn’t look like snow, but the north wind was bitter. He thought he might stop by his house before heading to the dam and get another jacket. # Kyle’s mom was waiting for him when he got home. She always was. She sat at the front window in her chair and watched for him. Sometimes she would pretend to read a book or work on a needlepoint, but really she was sitting and watching. “Did you have a good day at school?” she asked as he came through the door. She never gave him a chance to get all the way through the threshold before she was asking questions. “Yeah, it was alright,” he said, “Me and Johnny are going to hang out tonight. Do some homework at his house.” “Are you sure you can’t do it here?” she asked this every time. “Yeah, ma, you know he’s got a computer so we have to do it there,” Kyle said. Johnny didn’t have a computer, but Kyle’s mom didn’t know that and she would never be able to get a hold of Johnny’s parents to check. “Do you need to eat before you go? I already have dinner in the oven. It should be ready here soon,” she said. Kyle looked at his watch, it was only 4:30 now. He could eat and still make it out to dam with plenty of time. He felt his mom watching him, hopeful. “Yeah, ma. I can eat before I go.” “Oh good,” she clapped her hands, “I made chicken and sweet potatoes. I hope that’s okay.” # “Sorry I’m late,” Kyle said. Johnny was bouncing on the balls of his feet, cheeks red and breath coming out in short gusts. He had decided to walk to the dam instead of riding his bike so that he could hitch a ride back into town with Kyle without 21
having to worry about fitting the bike in the backseat. But Kyle had come out on his bike instead of bringing his mom’s car. “Shit,” Kyle said when he saw Johnny eyeing his bike, “Ma said she needed the car to go to some book club or something.” “It’s alright,” Johnny said, “I should have brought mine.” “You can always ride on the back or something,” Kyle said. “Nah, it’s whatever. It’s not that cold.” Kyle left his bike near the rotten wood picnic table near the head of the creek and the two started walking along the bank towards the dam. The creek was covered in a layer of ice that seemed more solid than usual and as they walked they threw rocks and debris onto the ice. “You think this place will ever dry up?” Kyle asked.
“No,” Johnny said as he looked ahead to the lake created by the dam, “There’s some, like, massive
aquifer or some shit under ground that feeds all of this. It’s what makes that spring at the start of the creek.”
“That’s why it never really freezes, right?”
“Something like that. But it looks pretty frozen to me right now.”
Johnny spotted a large stone on the side of the path and picked it up. He held it above his head for
a moment before flinging it onto the ice. It hit with a loud crash, but didn’t even make a mark on the ice. They laughed and continued on, throwing as many heavy stones as they could onto the creek. The sound of stone meeting ice echoed around them and for a while they didn’t say anything. The wind was blowing and they shivered in their coats and caps. Kyle didn’t wear gloves, he hated the way they made his fingers feel stiff and unusable, but now he wished he had some as the cold was making his fingers completely numb.
“Want one of my gloves?” Johnny asked.
“That’s okay,” Kyle said.
Johnny removed a glove anyway and passed it to Kyle, who took it without another word and
slipped it onto his left hand. He wanted to try and squeeze his right hand in too, but decided against it. They made it to the dam and climbed up the side where years of wear had created a rough set of stairs to the top. Kids had been climbing the dam for decades, even though the signs posted everywhere told them to stay away. 22
“You hear that Julia’s family might come back?” Kyle asked.
“Yeah, but it’s just some rumor. There’s nothing for them to come back for,” Johnny answered.
“Maybe. But I guess her mom liked it here and doesn’t want to keep moving around like they had
been so Julia and her mom might come back while her dad moves on his own.”
“Like, they’re getting divorced or something?” Johnny asked.
“I don’t think so, just like living apart for a while or something,” Kyle said.
They sat on the edge of the dam, their feet dangling over the edge. The wind pushed against their
backs and they huddled into themselves against its chill. They could see a long way into the distance from there but there wasn’t really much to see. Just fields that went on for miles and a spattering of trees here and there. The sun was just now slipping beneath the edge of the horizon. It took a long time to set out here, even in the winter, because the earth was so flat. There wasn’t a hill or a curve or even a ridge for the sun to set behind.
“I always thought she was kind of cute,” Kyle said in a slow voice.
They didn’t talk about girls very much, it felt strange for them to bring up the girls they liked to one another.
“Yeah. She’s cute,” Johnny said, “Nice too, I guess.”
“She never really said much to me. But she also never said anything mean to me.”
“That all it takes for you to like a girl?” Johnny laughed before he meant to.
“No,” Kyle scowled.
“I know, I’m just kidding.”
“I like her because she’s smart,” Kyle said.
Johnny pulled out his little brown bag from Laura McGuire. Kyle looked at it but didn’t say any-
thing. He envied Johnny’s ability to do whatever he wanted all the time. Johnny’s parents didn’t grill him about every detail of his day. They trusted him. Kyle knew his mom wouldn’t say it that way, but it was the truth. She didn’t trust him to make the right decisions and she didn’t trust him when he said he was doing fine. She always seemed afraid that Kyle was on the verge of having some sort of mental breakdown or major depressive episode. Kyle thought she was probably projecting. Johnny’s parents didn’t seem to have the same fears about their son.
“She is smart. I’ll give you that,” Johnny said it as he pulled his cannabis grinder from a coat pocket. 23
“Smarter than you, for sure,” Kyle gently shoved Johnny’s shoulder.
“Woah, man! We’re too high up here for that.”
Johnny was skilled with joints. He had one ready in less time than it took Kyle to recover from his
embarrassment at Johnny’s gentle reprimand. Johnny had been smoking since he was twelve after David Hollingsworth introduced him to the substance at a sleepover. Johnny offered the joint to Kyle.
“Want the first hit?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s so windy out here, your mom would never be able to smell it. And by the time you get home,
all you gotta say is that you’re tired from all that studying we did.”
Kyle looked at the joint extended between Johnny’s fingers. He felt something inside him twisting.
He had never smoked or drank. He’d never kissed a girl, or even held a girl’s hand for that matter. Kyle had never done anything interesting. Johnny was always doing interesting things. That’s why people liked him. He was laid back, but he was cool. Johnny had stories and he was good at telling them. Kyle needed to make more stories.
“You know what, yeah. Okay. Let me see it.” Kyle reached for the joint and Johnny gave a surprised laugh.
“Sweet. Remember to breathe it in deep and hold. It might make you cough.”
Kyle took a deep breath and tried to focus on making the smoke go all the way into his chest. He
could not cough. He wouldn’t. It would be too embarrassing.
“Okay, okay! You can let it out now. Don’t make yourself sick.” Johnny thumped Kyle on the back.
Kyle let the smoke out in a large plume. He could feel his eyes welling up and every part of his
lungs and throat wanted to cough, but he wouldn’t. Instead he swallowed a gulp of frozen air and shoved his hands into his coat pockets.
“I don’t feel anything,” Kyle said.
Johnny laughed again. He put the joint in his own mouth and took a deep pull. It seemed impossi-
ble, but it was getting colder and the wind was blowing harder.
24
“Why don’t we climb down out of the wind? It seems stupid to stay up here,” Kyle said.
“You scared you’ll get high and fall off?” Johnny asked.
“You’re the one who just said we are up too high for joking around.”
It was cold enough on top of the dam wall that they didn’t need further discussion to climb down
and find a place along the bank of the lake to sit and smoke out of the wind. Each of them took a few more pulls in silence. Kyle felt a little sick to his stomach. Johnny was relaxing into himself.
“It hasn’t been this cold for as long as I can remember,” Kyle said.
“That’s because you can only remember the moment you’re in,” Johnny said.
“I bet the lake is frozen. It was already sort of shallow this summer since it was so hot, perfect con-
ditions for it to actually be solid this year.” Kyle started looking for a large rock. He found one that he couldn’t lift on his own. “Help me throw this out there.” Johnny looked at Kyle and lazily stood up. To Kyle, Johnny looked like he was moving underwater. They lifted the rock, grunting against its weight. It was heavier than Kyle anticipated. Johnny cursed under his breath as they waddled to the edge of the lake. “On the count of three,” Kyle grumbled, “One, two … three!” They launched the rock as hard as they could. It slammed into the ice with a loud crack but the ice didn’t break. The boys dissolved into a fit of giggles. They looked around the bank for more large rocks to heave. Each time a rock struck the ice and the sound reverberated around them, they laughed uncontrollably. “I dare you to walk on the water,” Johnny said through tears streaming down his face. “Like Jesus?” Kyle said. “Like Jesus,” Johnny burst into laughter again. Kyle didn’t hesitate as he normally might. He ran out onto the frozen lake with gusto, laughing hysterically as he ran. The air hurt his lungs as he took deep breaths between laughs. He’d never been more cold in his life, but he’d also never felt more free. Kyle sprinted in circles out on the ice, sliding on his turns. Johnny cheered him on from the bank and they both laughed harder and harder until it felt like ice was filling their lungs. It stung deep in their chests, but that didn’t stop them. It was as if their insides were bursting open and laughter was pouring out. “Stop, stop it. You’re killing me!” Kyle yelled back to Johnny. “You stop! I’m not doing anything,” Johnny said.
25
Kyle stopped abruptly with his hands on his knees. He was panting hard, blowing large gusts of steam from between his lips. Drops of sweat formed on his forehead and upper lip and almost immediately froze in place. “Holy shit,” Kyle shouted to Johnny on the shore, “It’s never been this cold in all my life.” “You want to head back?” “I don’t know, maybe.” Kyle straightened up and took in a few deep gulps before turning to walk back to the bank. “This air is vicious, man,” Johnny said. Kyle laughed and started to do a stuttered skip across the ice. His hands were deep in his pockets and he flapped his elbows like wings. “Cock-a-doodle-doooo!” he hollered as he strutted across the ice.
“I’ve never seen an uglier cock in all my life,” Johnny called.
“You’ve seen lots of cocks, huh?” Kyle yelled back before dissolving into laughter all over again.
Johnny started to yell a response, but a loud crack echoed through the air and took them by sur-
prise. It sounded like a gunshot and they looked around the lake for the shooter. The noise came again, but this time it set off a crescendo and crackles that seemed to go on forever. Kyle froze. Johnny froze.
“Oh no…” Johnny mouthed.
Kyle dropped to his knees before sliding onto his stomach and flatting his body into the shape of a
starfish. The ice was jagged on his cheek. He clenched his jaw and through gritted teeth began to pray.
“Kyle, oh shit … Kyle don’t move,” Johnny felt himself jumping up and down but couldn’t seem to
make it stop, “I’m gonna get help. Just don’t move, man.”
Johnny started to run towards the mouth of the creek but quickly remembered they didn’t have a
car, just Kyle’s bike. He turned around and ran back to the bank. He could see Kyle no more than 150 feet away, his dark silhouette frozen on the ice.
“We don’t have a car, Kyle. There’s no car. It’ll take too long for me to go in and come back.” Johnny
felt something rising from his stomach. Something nasty. Kyle remained silent and stiff. 26
“Kyle, I don’t know what to do!” Johnny screamed. Nothing came in response.
“Can you crawl? Can you scoot yourself on the ice towards the bank?” Johnny asked.
Kyle didn’t respond but Johnny could see that his form was slowly moving. Kyle’s arms came up
as he tried to inch himself forward with miniscule movements. Johnny’s breath was coming in ragged gasps. His whole body was alive and full of energy, but he felt completely helpless. If he could ride the bike back to town, maybe he could get someone to drive out to the dam with a rope and some supplies to pull Kyle back to shore. It was late, but he could find someone with a truck. It wouldn’t be hard to do. But what if Kyle fell through the ice while he was gone, what if he could do something now to help and instead he left when Kyle needed him most.
“Should I go get someone? What do I do?” Johnny yelled again, but there was still only silence
from Kyle as he inched himself forward in centimeters. Every few minutes, another crack rang through the air and Johnny held his breath as he waited to see if it was the crack that would suck Kyle under. “Stay flat,” Johnny yelled, “Don’t stand up, just stay flat and go slow.” Kyle clearly knew that. But Johnny didn’t know what else to say. He kept shouting encouragement and advice while jumping up and down uncontrollably. “Please shut up, Johnny. Please.” Kyle’s voice was strained. “I’m sorry, what should I do?” “Just shut up.”
The ice was shifting beneath Kyle’s weight, like a water bed. There was no water on the surface
around him, so the cracks were likely not close to him yet. If he could get within twenty feet of the bank, the water would be shallow enough that he could likely make it to shore even if he broke through the ice. If he fell through now, he would need a rescue team to get him out. He wanted to tell Johnny to go and get help, but he also didn’t want to be alone. Kyle focused on his breathing and the slow motion of bringing his arms up and slowly pushing them back on the ice. He moved deliberately, always checking the ice in front of him for water or cracks. His arms came up, hands met ice, and slowly pushed them back again as his chest slid forward slightly. Kyle completed this motion continuously though he couldn’t tell if he was making any real progress in the dark. Johnny remained quiet on the shore.
Kyle pushed his hands above his head and when he drew them back, he felt water seeping into
Johnny’s borrowed glove on his left hand. He stopped moving. 27
“Johnny, there’s water.”
“Water?”
“In front of me,” Kyle said, “There’s water.”
“Shit.”
Kyle continued to inch forward, slower than before. There was more water and the ice was undu-
lating beneath him. He wanted to go faster, to get away from the water and make it closer to the shore. Vomit was rising in his throat and he knew he was on the verge of panic. Everything in him wanted to get up and run. To escape the ice as quickly as possible and get back to the shore. If he got a little wet, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Johnny could get him back to town and it would be something to laugh at in the morning. His mom would be pissed, but she would forgive him.
“I’m gonna run,” Kyle said.
“No!” Johnny yelled, “No, don’t!”
Kyle was already pulling his knees underneath him and pushing himself onto his hands. From this
position he began to crawl forward and covered more ground in a moment than he had so far. He felt hope. The bank was getting closer and closer, he could see Johnny erratically bouncing up and down with his arms over his head. There was water, sloshing around his hands and knees, soaking his jeans but the ice seemed to be holding under his weight. He placed a foot down on the ice, his silhouette looking like a sprinter at the blocks.
“Kyle, don’t!” Johnny screamed.
Kyle pushed off and began to sprint. The ice was holding. He was going to make it to the shore.
“Stop! It’s going to break!”
Kyle started to slip, he felt the ice dropping out from beneath him. It was like a stupid cartoon, his
legs sprinting but his body sinking instead of moving forward.
“Kyle!” Johnny was screaming his name.
Water filled his shoes and his jeans were soaking up to the waist. Kyle flung his arms out to catch
the ice, but instead he broke through and the freezing water rose to his neck. He flailed around him and tried to scream for help but water rushed into his mouth. The water was black and cold. Kyle’s clothes swelled with it making them heavy and stiff. He fought to keep his head above the water line, but kept slipping deeper after ever 28
resurfacing. Johnny stood on the bank screaming for Kyle. He watched as Kyle slipped and fell through the ice with disbelief. He wanted to race into the water and pull Kyle to safety, but he knew that would only kill them both. He wanted to run into town and get someone to help, but there was no time. Kyle was already in the water. Johnny screamed until he lost his voice. Then he sank to the ground and cried. #
Johnny wasn’t sure how long he stayed there, but when he tried to stand both his legs were asleep and
he felt completely numb. The fingers on his left hand, the hand without a glove, were white and burning. He stumbled to Kyle’s bike but didn’t touch it. Riding it home would be faster, he could ride to the fire station and alert them to the accident. They would ask him lots of questions. They would wonder why he didn’t do more to help. People in town would ask him even more questions and they would never let him forget. And Kyle’s mother. Her grief would haunt him. She would follow him through life, always begging for the answer to why he hadn’t done more. Johnny looked away from Kyle’s bike and towards the lake. It was too dark to see anything, the expanse of water and ice was inseparable from the black sky. It was like looking out into a deep void.
It took forty-five minutes to walk home. Sometimes he jogged, but he didn’t want to break a sweat and
freeze. The house was dark and quiet when he arrived. His parents usually went to bed early during the week but left the back door unlocked for him. It was easy to slip in and climb the stairs to his room without making a noise. Years of practice taught him how to secure the latch slowly without a click, and how to walk directly in the center of the steps to avoid a squeak. In the morning, he would tell his parents that he arrived home around eleven p.m. rather than two a.m. He would say he had been at the basketball game. When Kyle’s mother called, as he knew she would, Johnny would tell her the same thing. He hadn’t seen Kyle, wasn’t sure where he’d been. He would tell her that, yes, they normally studied together after school but that they hadn’t that night. Johnny wanted to go to the game instead. Johnny knew they would find Kyle’s bike at the lake eventually. They would put it together. They might even drag his body from the lake and give his mother closure. It would be sad. People would cry and lament the loss, but they wouldn’t blame Johnny. It would be a terrible, possibly suicidal, accident. But it wouldn’t be Johnny’s fault. Johnny stripped off his stiff clothes and threw them in a pile next to the bed. The bed was freshly made, his mom sometimes did that when she felt like they hadn’t seen each other in a while. He slipped beneath the heavy comforter and pulled it up to his neck. His hand was still burning, but the color was returning. There were neon stars on the ceiling above his bed. A remnant of his childhood in this room. They glowed in the dark and Johnny counted them over and over again until he fell asleep.
29
See What Happens? By Jack Steinbrink
This might be hard to believe, but baseball fields can be lonely places at night.
I had just finished announcing the high school baseball game, and after shutting everything down
and locking up, I rolled down the ramp they built for me, from the announcer’s booth to the parking lot, in time to see some of the players from my former high school jump into pickups with friends and head out into the early evening. I sat there for nearly an hour, watching everyone leave: Players from both teams, all the umpires (including the home plate umpire who has a big, black beard and is a real character), parents and little kids (siblings of the players who have been dragged to the game), and finally even the concession people. It usually takes my mom a while to show up in the van, and it’s not like I can roll home in my wheelchair. By the time she got there, there was a chill in the air, and I could actually hear crickets. We won the game and the kids from my old high school were whooping it up, probably heading off to a big keg party. I couldn’t blame them since I had done the same thing when I was their age, and it was Saturday.
Some of them waived to me as they left, and I waived back. One time after a game a girl flashed
her boobs at me. That was nice, like the girls do in New Orleans, from what I hear. I’ve never been there, but I bet it would be fun to sit above that Bourbon Street and watch all the partying. Having too much fun is the reason I’m in this chair, or that’s what my mom likes to say, though I kind of wish she would stop saying it.
It was the spring of my senior year, and we had just won the baseball district title (which is a big
deal in our town, and I got two hits in the game: a single and a double), and I hopped into the back of a pickup with all my gear and my teammates and a few friends and some girls (including my girlfriend) who always came to my games, and we sped off in the direction of a party. Someone handed me a Coors Light tall boy, and I stood up and chugged it, right there in the back of the truck. After I finished chugging, I smiled at everyone, and right then we hit a pothole and the bounce pitched me over the side. I remember getting launched over the side of the truck, the world seeming to roll over, and I remember it almost in slow motion like something in a movie, but I don’t remember much else. I woke up in the hospital and couldn’t feel anything below my waist, and that’s the way it’s been ever since. 30
The park was completely dark when my mom rolled up in her van; even the lights for the field had
been turned off (a guy named Todd Ingraham does that, and he always waves goodbye to me on his way out), so the only light came from the street and passing cars. Before she got there, I just sat and listened to the sound of cars on the highway. We drove straight to the Tasty Shack, after she loaded me into the back, that is. My parents paid for the specialized van with my college money after my accident, and after I got out of the hospital the county gave me a job announcing all the high school games (football, baseball, basketball and even wrestling) in our town. It doesn’t pay much, but the health insurance is really good. I guess you could call it a charity type job, but I can’t complain. I’m happy to do it, and my folks were happy that I didn’t leave home, even though that’s what I planned to do before my accident. My mom left me in the van while she went in to get our food. She always got the same thing, and it didn’t take that long: five cheeseburgers, five orders of fries, five cokes, and five chocolate milkshakes. The Tasty Shack makes amazing milk shakes. I have two little sisters, and sometimes they’ll trade me their fries for my milk shake because I’m not always in the mood for a milk shake.
The worst part about sitting there waiting for my mom to get our food is seeing people as they
walk inside. The windows have a light tint, but a lot of them stare at their shoes and try not to look at me sitting there in the back of the van, and once in a while they waive, but usually it’s a sheepish, almost ashamed kind of waive, like they’re waiving at the living reminder of what happens when you do something dumb in the back of a pickup involving girls and alcohol. I’m tired of seeing that look, if I’m being honest.
I’m also tired of sitting in my chair having to watch life unfold around me because that’s all I can
do, but I guess I’ll have to make my peace with that. Sometimes I even see mothers point at me and tell their kids, “See what happens when you drink and act like an idiot?” I’m not that fond of being a living reminder. The worst part is when my mom does it. About once a week, she points to me and asks my sisters if they want to end up like me if she catches them doing something, or even planning to do something, she thinks they shouldn’t. It’s humiliating, but I get it.
One of the best things about my job is that I get caught up in the game I’m announcing, and I can
forget about being a living reminder and stuck in the chair for a while. Baseball games are my favorite, especially since I have a booth mostly to myself, and they even bring me nachos sometimes. Some of the players and the parents have told me I do a good job, and I appreciate that. One time, after my old school won a game on a single in the bottom of the ninth, the parents of the guy who got the hit came up to the booth to thank me and shake my hand. They told me it was one of the best nights in their son’s life, and that I did a good job adding
31
emotion to the moment, and all. That was nice. It made me feel like I have a purpose again.
Shirley, one of the employees at the Tasty Shack, had to help my mom with our order, with getting
all the bags into the van and all, and that’s not the first time she’s had to do that. Once we have the food it’s only a ten-minute drive home. We don’t live out in the country, but our house is at the end of the street and there’s a big, open field west of our house and no houses behind us because we sit at the back end of the neighborhood, so it kind of feels like we’re out in the country, even though the rest of the town is right there. That field is kind of amazing. I used to play baseball and football out there with kids from the neighborhood all the time. Kids from all over town would come to play there because it’s just this big, open space. I have great memories of playing out there for hours, especially in the summer when you can lose track of time in the evening.
My sisters Kayla and Kendra are crazy. They’re pretty girls and good kids (much better than I was
at their age; I was constantly drinking beer and sneaking out at night), but when we got home, they were arguing about some boy Kayla likes (she’s two years older than Kendra), and Kendra screaming that this boy already has a girlfriend. My poor dad tried to referee, but they kept on yelling at each other. While my mom put the food on the table, Kayla chased Kendra around the table until my dad grabbed Kendra—and you’d think this would calm things down, but really it only made them worse because Kendra started yelling that my dad was on Kayla’s side, even though he was just trying to get them to stop screaming and fighting at dinner time.
“The food is on the table if y’all will stop this,” my mom said, nodding in the direction of our
dinner, and mercifully that worked (kind of), and I rolled up to the table to eat, and my dad handed me a cheeseburger and fries, and I fished a coke out of the plastic holder Shirley gave us, and a straw, too. All of a sudden, everyone was eating, and the girls (they’re both blonde like my mom and will probably grow up to be stunners) mercifully ate in silence.
After dinner we moved to the living room and everyone sat around the TV. We watched
SportsCenter, and then ‘The Bachelor’ because that’s what my mom and sisters wanted to see. It’s funny to watch their reactions, and my dad just sat there and shook his head but wouldn’t really say anything. After some channel flipping, we watched part of ‘The Shawshank Redemption,’ a movie we all like and have seen before, and after an hour or so of that, it was time for everyone to take showers (if they’re doing that) and get ready for bed. I take a bath by myself, which is something I can do on my own now, at least in part thanks to some of the handles and stuff my dad installed. For quite a while after the accident, I needed my dad to pick me up and put me in the bath, which was humiliating. Thinking you’re a grown man, but your dad has to pick you up like a baby and 32
put you in the bath, is not good for one’s confidence or self-esteem, and I’m really glad we don’t have to do that anymore.
Probably the worst thing about the aftermath of my accident, and the biggest surprise for me, was
when my girlfriend (the one who was in the truck with me) got engaged to another guy. To be honest, I thought about killing myself for about a month after that, but then I got my announcer job, and slowly things got better, and I thought about it less and less. It’s still not something I like to think about. She’s married and has a twoyear-old son now. I hope she’s happy but hearing about all that was like getting kicked in the nuts about a million times in a single day—although I wouldn’t be able to feel that now. Sometimes I think about the way she was smiling that night of my accident, her long, dark hair kind of floating around her face. It’s like it all happened to someone else, until I look down at my legs and the wheelchair.
After I took my bath I put on a t-shirt and some shorts, and I got back into my chair and went out
to the couch. I sleep on the couch at night because it’s easier to get back into my chair and go to the bathroom (another thing that took a long while for me to do by myself) if I need to at night or in the morning. I usually keep the TV on and mute the sound, and I just leave it like that with all the lights out in the house. That’s how I like to fall asleep, and sometimes I sit there and channel surf a bit, depending on how tired I am. On this night I was tired after announcing that game, so after I said good night to my dad and my sisters and my mom, I was out there on the couch with a thick blanket and a pillow and I drifted off to sleep relatively quickly. All I could hear was the occasional sound of a car on the road, or the train off in the distance.
At some point in the night, I heard a creaking sound, the sound someone makes when they walk
across the living room, and when I opened my eyes and sat up, there was some guy wearing jeans, a gray hoodie and a baseball hat standing there in front of the couch. He had a goatee, and he was drinking a glass of milk that I assumed to be from our refrigerator, and his eyes were like bloodshot marbles. For a moment we just looked at each other, and he looked over at my wheelchair.
“You shouldn’t leave windows open,” he said finally, in a quiet voice that made it sound like he
smoked a lot and walked into the kitchen. My heart was pounding, and I was so scared I couldn’t even say anything or call out, like my voice had been frozen or someone was holding their hand over my mouth, and then I heard the back door open. After a minute or two I hoisted myself into my chair and rolled into the kitchen. He was gone and the lights were out, but the back door was wide open. I shut the door and locked it, and I looked around to try and see how he got in, but I couldn’t really see much in the dark, so eventually I went back to the couch and tried to go back to sleep. It took a while for my
33
heartbeat to slow down, and even when I did eventually drift off, I had some crazy dreams about being chased. The only good part about that is that I can still walk and run in my dreams, so I have these dreams where I’m playing baseball or basketball, but I always get to the middle of the game (but the end of the dream) and all of a sudden, my legs won’t work, and that’s when I usually wake up.
In the morning I nearly fell off the couch when I heard my dad leave for work (he works for the
railroad), and I wasn’t sure if I had dreamed the whole thing the night before. My mom and my sisters were in the kitchen moving around and getting some breakfast ready, my sisters still chirping at each other about that boy from the night before, and I went to the bathroom and came back to the kitchen thinking I really had just imagined it all, or it had been a really intense dream, like the kind that seems real even after waking up, and nothing had happened because why would someone break in for no reason? I sat in my wheelchair at the kitchen table, and my mom turned and asked, “Hey, why did you leave a glass of milk out last night?”
34
35
Contributors
36
Photography for Sharon Pybas-Cheatwood is a means of storytelling and documenting moments. She has worked in various mediums and genres but always returns to her camera. Her work has been included in print and online for Oklahoma Today, Lawton Constitution, City of Lawton and Industrial Engineering Magazine. Sharon’s work has also been used in films and for film production location scouting. “In Repose” captures a moment when Celine settled into her new surroundings after her former owner passed away. The chair is now hers. M. A. Istvan Jr., whose artworks have recently resulted in his due-process-less and unappealable termination from Austin Community College, does not write academic articles or poetry or satirical textbooks or comic routines or so on in ignorance of the burgeoning threat to artistic freedom. Dr. Istvan is aware that, worldwide (and especially in the US), artists are censored and intimidated—and more and more under the feel-good banners of “protecting the youth from corruption” and “nurturing diverse spaces.” In fact, one of the larger motivations behind his iconoclastic and provocative art is to keep the circumference of what can be expressed wide enough that we do not need to fear losing our livelihoods for exhibiting our humanity. Far from corrupting the youth or shutting down diversity, Dr. Istvan works, in effect, to ensure that the youth grow in a world of voices that are not just diverse on surface-levels or in the “right way.” Living what could be charitably called a nomadic life, Paul Juhasz was born in western New Jersey, grew up just outside New Haven, Connecticut, and has spent appreciable chunks of his life in the plains of central Illinois, in the upper hill country of Texas, and in the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania. Most recently seduced by the spirit of the red earth, he now lives in Oklahoma City. He has worked at an Amazon fulfillment center, manned a junk truck, and driven for Uber, material he’s drawn on for his poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. He has read at dozens of conferences and festivals across the country, including Scissortail and the Woody Guthrie Festival. His work has appeared in bioStories, Red River Review, Red Earth Review and elsewhere. Brian Lutz teaches at Delaware Valley University. In 2003 he was named Poetry Laurate of Bucks County, PA. His poetry has been published in numerous journals including Slate, Potomac Review, Louisville Review, Poet Lore, The Black Fork Review, The Meadow, West Trade Review, Visitant, Lost Pilots Literary Journal, Little Patuxent Review, and Cimarron Review. Brian lives in Pennsylvania with his wife, two kids and three cats. As an Oklahoma native, Abigale Mazzo finds herself staring into many beautiful sunsets accompanied by her dogs and her husband. She enjoys hiking, reading, and trying new foods. Abigale graduated in 2020 with a Master’s of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing and she will begin pursuing her PhD in English Literature at the University of Tulsa this fall. Her work has appeared in the Gold Mine, the Jelly Bucket, and 580 Monthly. Michael Milburn teaches English in New Haven, CT. His poetry has appeared recently in Slant, Descant, Grey Sparrow, and in a previous issue of Oklahoma Review. Sheila Robinson received numerous awards for work during more than a decade in journalism. Her articles and photos have appeared online and in newspapers from Alaska to South America. She received commendations from Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating as well as Governor Brad Henry for publicizing stories about employment and living programs geared to assist individuals with disabilities. Born in Oklahoma and raised in New Mexico, she’s lived from California to Florida and a handful of states in between. Sheila is happily retired now. Jack Steinbrink grew up in Texas and Oklahoma. He earned his undergrad degree at Baylor University, a MA in English-Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University, and a PhD in English-Creative Writing (Fiction) at Florida State University. After teaching writing classes in the Tampa Bay area for more than a decade at schools that included the University of South Florida, Hillsborough Community College and the University of Tampa, Steinbrink moved back to Stillwater in 2019 after the death of his mother. He currently works as an editor for Energy Abstracts in Tulsa but lives in Stillwater. 37
38
39
Cameron University 2021
