Quiz and Quill 1963

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QUIZ AND QUILL

The Quiz and Published by The Quiz and Quill Club of Otterbein College o-

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The Staff Editor-in-Chief .........................................Mercedes Blum Associate Editors..............................................Janet Lacey David K. Sturges Business Manager .....................................Martha Deever Alumni Editor ......................................... Ethel Steinmetz Publication Staff........................................Ronald Collins Kathy Kanto Priscilla Secrist ■o

Spring, 1963

o

Founded 1919

THE QUIZ AND QUILL CLUB- 1962-63 President (First Semester) .....

(Second Semester) ....

Vice President (First Semester) Secretary-Treasurer....................

Program Chairman .................

Faculty Sponsor ........................

Alumni Relations .....................

Peter Allaman Mercedes Blum Ronald Collins Martha Deever

'64 ’63 ’64 ’64

Carol Shook Rufencr ........... Martha Deever .......... Martha Deever .......... Mercedes Blum .......... Martha Deever .............. Robert Price ..............Cleora Fuller Mary Thomas Ethel Steinmetz

Kathy Kanto ’64 Lloyd Kropp Janet Lacey ’63

’63 ’64 ’64 ’63 ’64 ’58 ’28 ’31

Carol Shook Rufener ’63 Priscilla Secrist ’64 Nancy Staats ’63 Davicl Sturges ’64

HONORARY MEMBERS Mrs. Hazel H. Price Dr. Robert Price

Dr. Harold Hancock Walter Jones LITERARY AWARDS Quiz and Quill Poetry Contest

First Prize ..............

Second Prize ..........

Tliird Prize ...........

Honorable Mention

Janet Lacey Rosemary J. Gorman .................Jane ’Vorpe Richard H. Orndorff Maggie Reck Melinda Rickelman

’63 ’65 ’66

■65 ’66 ’66

Quiz and Quill Prose Contest First Prize ..................

Second Prize ....... ......

Third Prize ................

Honorable Mention ....

David S. Caliban ’66 Elizabeth Glor ’64

.. .Tedy-Jane Hagerty ........... Karla Hambel ............ Janet Flenner Lawrence L. Prytogle Nathalie Bungard Thalia Nikides

’64 ’64 ’64 ’63 ’66

’65

Quiz and Quill Humorous Writing Contest First Prize ..

Second Prize

................................................................................Janet Lacey ................................................................Rosemary J. Gorman

’63 ’65

Roy A, Burkhart Poetry Contest First Prize ....

Second Prize Third Prize

.................Janet Lacey ............ Gordon Gregg Rosemary J. Gorman

’63 ’63 ’65

Walter Lowrie Barnes Short Story Contest — 1962 First Prize

Two

•John Soliday

’62

The Short-Timer LAWRENCE J. PRYFOGLE

’63

Honorable Mention, Quiz and Quill Prose The public address system went on in the barracks and the Charge of Quarters said, "All ri^t, men, it’s time to get up.”

Only one or two guys stirred and then only to make some intelli­ gent reply like, "Go jump in the Panama Canal,” or "Go blow your jungle-rotted brains out.”

The next voice heard over the loud speaker was not the lazy voice of the Charge of Quarters but sounded more like a bull horn on a sea­ going ship. "I am giving you people just five minutes to get outside or you will be running in and out of the barracks until retreat tonight, so start moving, every damn one of you.”

That bull horn sounding voice belonged to the First Sergeant Bernard Sellers of Headquarters and Headquarters Company, Second Battle Group, Tenth Infantry, Fort William D. Davis, Canal Zone.

The first time I came in direct contact with "Old” Sergeant Sellers was in the Headquarters Company’s orderly room. He was leaning back in his grey, padded swivel chair with his feet propped up on his steel desk. The first words out of his mouth were, "Son, you got a cigarette?”

Though in the next eighteen months, I was often to see the "Old” Sergeant sitting in this position, and hear him ask anyone and every­ one for cigarettes, my first meeting with him is still illuminated in my mind.

Bernard Sellers was a combat veteran of the Pacific Theater In World War II and the Korean police action. He stood five feet, ten inches tall, and weighed one hundred and eighty pounds. His crew-cut black hair, sprinkled with patches of grey, was beginning to recede .at the temples. His shoulders were broad but stooped. He had a slow gait that made him seem older than his forty years. He never spoke softly, but instead growled like a wounded beast. When he talked to you, his head was tilted to the right and his left eye was slightly squinted. He usually called all enlisted personnel, "Son,” even those older than him­ self, including sixty-five-year-old "Pop” Ruth, the oldest man in the Batrle Group.

On the occasions when I called Headquarters Company on official business everyone within twenty feet of my desk in the personnel office knew when "Bernie” Sellers answered the telephone. He would beller out, "H.Q. Company, First Sergeant Sellers speaking. Sir.” I would tell him who was calling and why and then say, "Sir, would you please------ ” That was as far as I got before he would yell back, "Son, don’t call me Sir. I’m no officer. I work for a living.”

"Well, Sergeant Sellers, let’s make a deal. You don’t call me 'Son and I won’t call you 'Sir’. All right?”

He replied, "All right. Son.” I said, "Tliank you, Sir.” "Bernie” Sellers started the normal work day at 5:30 A.M. His first official act as First Sergeant was to sample the coffee in the mess hall. When we fell out for reveille at 5:55, he would be standing in the doorway of the mess hall with a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other. To anyone who said good morning to him, he would reply, "Keep it cool, Son.” Three

Sergeant Sellers was scheduled for his annual physical examina­ tion and was required to fill out a medical history of himself. Two of the questions he answered without batting an eye; "Did you ever at­ tempt to commit suicide?” and "Do you have horrible nightmares?”

Both questions he answered in the affirmative. I was in charge of scheduling the physicals and making sure that each individual filled out the medical history forms correctly. When the company clerk re­ turned Sergeant Seller’s forms, I noticed the check marks in the un­ usual blocks in the Yes column. I went rushing to the orderly room to make sure there was no mistake. Sergeant Sellers, sitting in the swivel chair, but with his feet on the floor, was reading the latest tactical magazine put out — Playboy! When I confronted him with the medical forms he said that there were no mistakes. I asked him whv he tried to commit suicide. His reply was that he just did not want to live anymore. It was not a good answer, but Sergeant Sellers never gave a clear answer to any question put before him as long as I was to know him. He went back to the Playboy, and I left, mumbling to myself something like "This is a leader of men?”

Every man in the Battle Group, from the lowest private who carried a Browning Automatic Rifle, to the Battle Group Commander who guided all thirteen hundred men, knew about Sergeant Sellers’ habit of "bumming” cigarettes. Some anecdotes were told about this habit. The one that I remember the best centered in the promotion board held by the Battle Group for a Sergeant Major. Every Master Sergeant and First Sergeant went before the board to be interviewed.

Sergeant Sellers was the last man. The board quizzed him about his present administrative job and tactical and personal matters. The offic­ ers had completed their inquiry when one of the captains asked Sergeant Sellers if he had any questions. The Sergeant looked at each officer and then said slowly, "Yes. Do any of you gentlemen have a cigarette?”

This story may not be true, but I would not have put it past him to come up with such an important question.

When I was assigned to the Headquarters Company, Sergeant Sellers had about eighteen months left until he would complete twenty years of military service and be able to retire. I once asked him what he was going to do after he retired. His answer was a little startling, but it was a typical Sellers’ answer, "Son, when I retire, I am going to live on the ^wery in New York City.”

I asked, "Are you going to open a bar or restaurant?”

He replied, "The only thing I plan on opening is a bottle of wine.

You ever come to the place, look in one of the dark doorways and you may find me.”

I never knew whether he was kidding or telling the truth, but I do know that when Bernard Sellers put his mind to something he could do it.

When I met First Sergeant Sellers, he was what we called a "short timer.” This is a person who has little time left in the service, so his attitude was that of doing as little work as possible and just sitting back in his swivel chair "bumming” cigarettes.

Four

Drip RONALD HANFT ’66

Drip.

It’s rainin’ outside.

I’m glad.

Pa says, "No plowin’.”

I’m glad It’s rainin’ outside.

Drip.

★

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★

Pilgrimage to Summer DAVID BRUNTON

’64

Look.— A creature’s frosted prayer— Breathed in the grey cold dawn.

Snow-kissed, and trying to scream The belly-deep curses Of the drooping doc with flanks quivering.

Spring came too soon And roused the sullen sap.

Too soon for summer rains to heal Green ice-buds.

The wet rabbit litter lies Frozen as night comes.

Silent crickets hope for soon-sun.

And the prayer lies frosted on the grass.

The false spring is slayer with ice on his spear; IV'herc is the warmth?

The steeple-cross is warm; Inside, I see the red And yellow incense fires Throw haunted shadows dancing On the crucifix. A black cleric, red harlot, Green-people, orange-people, scarlet— .411 the tribes come.

Each finding his color-matched smear On the catechetical palate To paint a whitewashed reality.

Candlc-ethcrcd, they try to kill The pain of third-month spring.

My back to different-colored squares!

Where is the moist, the warm, the leaf season?

I hate sharp stained-glass words That shred a gossamer soul.

Even as hurled rocks leave dark gashes In the morning’s web sliimmering with sun-dew.

Destroying the yellow-black spider’s half-life of labor.

I cannot find the baby-swan’s ripples In Gothic arches or scrolled papyrus.

The ripples will come with eighth-month: They soft speak her music. Night-peeps and locusts Will sing of new summer.

The barren rains of first-spring Gone.

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★ Five

1 Second Sight MARCKLLA HF.NRY MII.I.I-R

’28

Dedicated to Josephine Albert Tate ’2") There was a time when the trees on tlie campus Were but mute and woody plants; Tall and benign, aloof and serene— Accepted without significance.

Today they speak loudly of my friend who came back— (When October was tedious and damp) She who was gaunt, but wide-eyed, still— From that sullen concentration camp.

"How lovely these trees are now,” she said, “In their jeweled tiaras and lace.

My heart just leaps with gratitude For litis bright and blazing intimate place."

And ever since then, I see, as she did.

That these trees on the college lawn Are the glorious heads of our Father’s joy That we are to fling our praise upon.

★

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Second Sight IIEI.FN STAA'IS

Six

Lost, One Student NATHALIE BUNGARD ’66

It was a crisp winter’s night as you desperately tried to find your way out of a labyrinth of wiggly, black paths which moved irregularly across a bone-colored surface. Fog covers the paths; you close your eyes; they ache and burn; tears begin to flow gently from atop the lower lid . . . The next moment you bang your book shut; throw your chair back; and, with a determined "damn it”, click off the light and go to bed.

Are you really lost in the labyrinth of college life? Is it as you expected it to be; Is it what you really want? Have you changed? For better or for worse? Why? College is so different from our accustomed way of life, that many a student finds himself in a labyrinth he cannot get out of. Yet, if he would only stop and analyze his problem, he might find his solu­ tion to be an easily deduced one.

He may discover, much to his parents’ horror, that college just is not for him. Perhaps he had the wrong impression of it, or perhaps it is not what he really wants. Why? Undoubtedly, he had been drilled in the advantages of a college education, and told what a wonderful ex­ perience college life is. If his parents happen to add. Why I can re­ member when I was in college . . .’, heaven help the poor kid especially if he has chosen his parents’ alma mater. He may arrive at "good ole’ Alpha”, which for him may become Omega. He finds him­ self comparing his parents’ description of college to reality. He becomes confused, insecure, unhappy, or as his "lovable” roommate puts it so simply, "Frustrated.” His frustration becomes so acute that he decides that college—or at least this one—is not what he really wants. He would be happier in a business school, art school, the service, or in another college. But try as he may, he cannot convince his parents of this, and, consequently, he must spend four long, frustrating years at Alpha.

He tells his parents, as gently as he can, that Alpha has changed and that he has unwillingly changed with it. He has retreated from ex­ cellence. His home had given him high standards and strict morals; so to him, drinking, swearing, disrespect for religion, and sex (used in its present connotation) were wrong. But at Alpha anything goes!!

He was a sport enthusiast, but the booing and the name-calling-—to say nothing of the lack of ethical sportsmanship—made him hate the sport, the school, the team, and it even made him resent his parents for sending him to "good 'ole’ Alpha.

The gang back home were different from the kids at Alpha. At home, the kids were mature, poised, interested in their future and what they hoped to achieve; all of them had strong morals; and all of them placed a specific value on everyday things. At Alpha however, the kids are silly, have a certain amount of cradeness, have a "that’s the way the ball bounces” attitude towards life; few of the kids have strong morals, the values they place on everyday things are in complete opposition to those of the kids at home.

He found himself, in his desire to be accepted, lowering his standards and loosening his morals. He tried to explain to the kids at Seven

Alpha why he believed in what he did, but no one "gave a damn.”

Consequently, he had to retreat from excellence. Even his grades were s ipping and were low for his mental ability. He wanted to transfer and go to a college near home where he would be better understood— although he realized that even there he would have to lower his ideals, but not to the state of retreating from them. However, he knew this was impossible since his average was not high enough to permit him to do this.

V(^hat will he do.^ If his parents have anything to say about it he will graduate from "good ole’ Alpha.” But, if he has his ^z.y, the Dean will write beside his name, "Lost, one student.”

This is a trageciy. A good mind is being lost because one person refuses to go along with the gang at college and to retreat from excellence as he defines it. It is hard to make the adjustment from home to college life, especially if the two are complete opposites.

However, keep trying, refuse to retreat, and above all, do not let a dean write beside your name, "Lost, one student.”

A Dream ’63 We were sitting in the classroom playing War when suddenly the windows turned to mirrors.

“This is perfectly logical,” explained the teacher, shuffling the deck as I was about to scream.

“The action of Boyle’s and Charles’ laws on the hypotenuse.” But I couldn’t play while looking out at myself from the narrow classroom, all blue paint and tube-lights. The game went on, the others laughing on every pane, and once, without thinking, I took out my pocket-mirror to see if my smile was on straight, and I saw nothing, nothing at all. Or empty .sky.

So I went back to cards. Nobody won, JANET LACEY

and I woke up staring at the patterned wall.

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★

Experiment Done ROGER CALDWELL ’58 We laid our pencils down and settle back to grin at the curving line of points that proves our guess. Hal If anyone has had a taller jaunt towards heaven, I think he’d have grabbed an angelrung and swung himself on up, that is, if there is such a place where chubby cherubs sing and the solemn saints tip their toasts of tinkling grace. But paradise is real when brain and soul embrace and child out a face to the immaterial.

It is sterile rigidness that cautions, science must let logic lie, or keep emotion bound.

The idea cannot be separate from its joy, nor feeling from the mind.

★

Eight

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The Bright Red Santa Claus PRISCILLA SF.CRIST

’64

Ethel Engle did not like the way her toy shop looked this night before Christmas. Spinning tops, a few tin soldiers, and magic slates were about all that remained. And even they seemed stale and handled.

All the fresh holiday spirit that Mrs. Engle had stored here at Thanks­ giving time had become sold, damaged, or dust-covered during the past few weeks. The large green rocking horse had been bought two Wednesdays ago. A little girl had broken the delicate china doll. And other pretty toys such as the two electric trains and the one split level doll house had been gone for a week now.

It was like this every year, Ethel was thinking as she waited for nine o’clock to come. Every year the people shopped and shopped, she continued. Every year they took and took. True, they left their dollar bills for Ethel. But on Christmas eve or even the day after Christmas, what could she buy but returned, damaged, or dust-covered goods with those wrinkled dollars? Ethel Engle never had anything she wanted on Christmas eve. There was never anything left.

But then she laughed. She had things so much better than Santa Claus! she said out loud as she stared out her shop door. After all, poor Santa didn’t ever get paid for his toys! And he even made his own!

Poor bright red Santa Claus! Ethel sighed as she looked at her watch.

The people just kept taking and taking and he never got anything, not even dollars, in return.

As she pulled down the front door blind, she could hear that Salvation Army woman still ringing that Christmas bell with the brassy sound. Ethel could remember seeing that woman every day as she came to work. And she could remember hearing her every night as she closed her shop—and all the in-between times too. It seemed as if that woman was always there during the Christmas season. She was always there with that same brassy bell.

That woman was as bad as Santa Claus! Ethel laughed. But at least Santa Claus was not real! she continued. At least Santa did not have to really give things without any return like that silly bell-ringing matron on that street corner did. Anyone would have to be a saint or a fool to bear that kind of treatment.

All that taking! Ethel exclaimed again as she heard someone coming up the steps to her shop. Ethel saw that it was another customer.

She locked the door and turned off the lights. Outside her door she heard a brassy bell ring.

Ethel did not notice. Who in the world could really stand to wait on people all through life? Ethel wondered. Who could really bear waiting on the people all over the world—^giving away all those gifts.

The poor bright red Santa Claus! Ethel sighed. It was a good thing that he was not real.

Nine

Insomnia ROSKMARY J. GORMAN

’65

1 hird Prize, Roy A. Burkhart Poetry Contest The night sounds grew and amplified.

Tlic door to dreams I vainly tried.

I he sliadows lived, and panic neared— I he bar was down and ghosts appeared To stifle me with taunts and jeers— Cruel words, of guilt and tears.

I sought a torch, a flame, a spark.

To burn away this haunted dark, but all was ashes, dust, and gloom; The walls crept in to crush the room.

•And lightning flared—the darkness slain— -An icy fire stabbed my brain.

How simplel Yet how clear, how deep!

The Key to All ... I fell asleep And lost it.

I wonder.

Does my phantom Friend Still wait for me at journey’s end? *

*

★

To There PRISCILLA SECRIST

’64

You are going from here — to — there.

(How beautiful of you!)

You have it And little girl planned, you'resobusy. designed, S ou know scheduled, Abu are diagramed.

INTKNT. (How beautiful of you!)

Is it .so big to you?

So Important?

Of course.

Of course.

This much to eat, This much to talk, but no borrible but and delicious never potatoes enough and to ice argue cream. no!

This much to study. riiis much to know.

Btit never any more than will take you from here too.

★ Ten

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★

The Paper Angel EDNA DELLINGER CARLSON ’22

Room 6 is only an average sized room, but when it is filled with Grade Three it seems to be bursting with excitement, emotions, major and minor crises second to no other place, with the possible exception of the National Security Council. In my dual role of Collector of Rev­ enue and teacher I attempt to avert catastrophies.

We have met and solved some problems, one in particular, that of how to dispose of objects made by the entire class. There were Amber, the papier-mache cat, the big bird called Mr. Turkey, and Sandy the Clown. Every child in the room had applied at least one well-soaked, paste-filled strip of paper, wiggly tiger stripe, an eye, or a whisker to Amber. Then whose cat was she? Ours. WTien Mr. Turkey was com­ pleted from a dim chalk line on shelf paper, he gained at the hands of the school community one crayoned head, two crayoned feet buried in real broom straw, crayoned paper wings and a magnificent feather tail, feathers which had once been the pride of a pheasant. Whose turkey was he? Ours. Sandy the Clown was the product of many hands. His was a bony framework of mailing tubes, and by the time he was complete with joints at neck, shoulder, elbow, wrist, knees, and ankles with dang­ ling phalanges, shoes and shoe strings, a papier-mache head, and a hat, he was so heavy he had to be hanged by the neck, and he too belonged to all of us.

The children could not agree as to who should have final posses­ sion. I did not want to jeopardize my precarious position by making such a decision. So after much democratic discussion by the class and several democratic procedures enforced by me, we arrived at a satis­ factory plan.

We took a box. You might call it "that old shoe box”, but to us it became the Green Box and inside that box we put slips of paper, one for each child. Each child had written on one of the slips in his own best hand writing, his own name, in full. Whenever any communal project had served its time I simply held aloft the Green Box, drew from it a slip of paper, read the name written on it, and dropped it on my desk. The honored person claimed his prize, and wrote the name of the prize on the back of his slip before putting it back into the box. This precluded the possibility of anyone winning more than one of the bonuses.

By early December we had without incident disposed of Amber the cat, Mr. Turkey, and Candy the Clown. Just before Christmas vacation there were three more things for which we would draw names: a paper Santa whose beard, cuffs and hat were made of lace paper doilies due to a cotton shortage in the third grade, a tinsel tree trim­ med with colored foil balls, and the Paper Angel.

The Paper Angel had to be seen to be believed, and even then believing would be difficult. I had sketched her figure lightly on a long narrow strip of green paper. The space where this paper was fastened was about 24 inches wide and six feet long. With my chalk I had indicated head, hair, wings, and hands, and then I must have got carried away because by the time I had drawn the flowing robe with little bare feet peeking out, the angel was about six feet tall.

Eleven

I could scarcely visualize just how the children would finish her but right before my eyes she became the most astonishing angel, from her golden hair to her bare pink feet. Her hair was fashioned with cork­ screw bangs cut from gold paper, but the rest of her coiffure was huge and more faintly reminiscent of the hairstyling of a certain First Lady.

The angels wings were pieced somewhat, of necessity, because they were made from scraps of aluminum foil left over from the day we water­ proofed the flower pots. Snuggled in the gold hair and across the bodice of the robe were strips of red paper borrowed from next year’s valen­ tines. Face, hands, and feet were made of pink rissue paper, a sort of shocking pink. But it was the angel’s robe that was extraordinary. It was made entirely from bits of white tissue paper, small pieces torn into irregular shapes and pasted, overlapping each other in such a way that the robe seemed to have a moving, three-dimensional effect, a celestial sort of beauty. As a final gesture someone cut a star, non symmetrical, of course, and pasted it in the angel’s little hand. In the telling this does not seem to be an unusual angel— solid gold hair, aluminum wings, pieced, pink skin and a crooked star, but the angel’s robe was somethiiig right out of heaven so far as the children were concerned, and every child wanted that angel to take home.

Of course any one in the room who had not already won a "big” prize could hope to win. And they all hoped. Some hoped silently and others vocally, especially Gerardo Alvin Gonzales. Everyone looked at the angel, touched her, and asked, "When are we going to draw for the Paper Angel?"

But Gerardo stopped beside the Paper Angel a dozen times a day and, as he touched the white robe with his little brown fingers, whisper­ ed, "O, I hope I win the angel.”

It was the day before Christmas vacation. ’Though I knew only one child could win the angel I could delay the drawing no longer.

We agreed to draw for the three things in this order; first, the Santa, next, the tinsel tree, and last, the Paper Angel. This was true democracy at work.

I held the Green Box high, drew out a slip, read, "Stevie Allen ” and dropped the paper on my desk Stevie came forward, claimed his prize, wrote Santa on the back of his slip, and put it back in the Green Box. I lifted the box again, drew out a slip and read, "Israel Toledo and dropped the slip on my desk. Israel came, wrote "Tree ” on his name slip and put it back in the box.

Now is was time to draw for the Paper Angel, and if there were any sounds in the room at all it was the swish of the angel’s gown. For the third time I held the Green Box high. I looked at the room full of little people and then I saw that Gerardo Alvin Gonzales’ eyes were tightly closed and that his lips were moving silently. His two little brown hands were folded together in prayer, and yes, the first and second finger on his right hand were firmly crossed. I reached into the Green Box and drew out a slip of paper and read, loud and clear, "Gerardo Alvin Gonzales", and dropped the slip of paper back into the Green Box. Then as Gerardo Alvin Gonzales leaped forward to claim his prize I set the Green Box back in its place in the storage cupboard, put both of my hands behind my back and crossed two fingers of each Txuelve

hand.

Christmas has been gone this long time now. And what are the children making in Room 6? It is a giant valentine, of red paper and there is to be a silver arrow right through the center.

I must tell Gerardo to take his slip of paper out of the Green Box some time and write "Paper Angel” on the back of it.

If A Man Lose ROr.ER CALDtVELL

’58

What shall suffice when the bending starman sees the white suns winking on the dark side of the earth, when the sudden, honible warheads ignite the skies, when our flesh shall melt and the child dies before birth?

Not three feet of dirt, those three will get you six; not a plastic madonna, magneted to the dash; not a bird’s foot on a stick; not pantino slacks; not all the First National’s damned, dollared cash.

Perhaps the King of thorns, splintered on the wood, or the sun in my son’s eyes, or the earth’s new smell with rain, or her deep, sweet sex; perhaps the last dead Swede; perhaps the prairies’ sweep, shoulder deep with grain.

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If A Man Lose ROGER SHIPLEY

’64

Thirteen

In the Face of This Company CYNTHIA UONMT.L ’()3

Fourteen

In the Face of This Company DAVID K. STURGES ’0-1

My full name is Arthur Porter Ross—some people call me Art or Porter—but it makes no difference nor does it make me anybody special. Yesterday I was divested of Sheila, my only daughter. I don’t mean "divested” in its common sense but I was divested of her per­ sonally—I can’t really explain it. She was so young and I, in my old age of fifty-eight, lived for her. Now the house is empty, nothing mak­ ing any sound but the clocks ticking in the hall and my wife, my Gussie, making gentle noises as she goes about her morning chores. We gave the big wedding Gussie wanted for Sheila. Days usually don’t stick with me for most of them are the same: I go back and forth to the bank every week, maybe relax a little—fuss around the place—on weekends and that’s just about all. But, yesterday really made a dent in me and I’ll never forger it.

I got up early, at six-thirty, just as I always do. The early morning is so peaceful, especially in June. While the coffee was perking, I went outside, wandered around and stood in the driveway and watched the sun come up; its rays, sharp, warm, bathed my face with heat. The rising mist seemed to drift up through the trees as though some in­ visible hand were pushing it. All was quiet except a crow far off in the distance, who cawed—and cawed again. Everything was neat, in the way I had often dreamed; the house, the lawn, the garden, even the striped marquee, still and awaiting all those gabby guests; and I wish it had always been like that.

I had put a lot into the old house and people were surprised to see it looking so trim. As I stood there, I thought of all those years when I could do nothing but look at the damn place, the gutters drooping and the stucco cracking and falling off the sides in big flakes. What could I do.^ It was what Gussie wanted; she saw something beyond running rhrough the musty rooms to put down pans to catch the leaks when it rained, beyond picking the chips of plaster out of her hair the night one of those crazy sonic booms shook loose our bedroom ceiling. She worked so—she likes yard work—fixing up the gardens; all rhe pachysandra that she planted looked combed and uniform in the shadows, even in the spot where I accidentally dumped that bottle of weed killer last year.

I always got a kick out of Gussie, dressed in my old shirt and her spotted dungarees, on her knees in the garden, her fanny sticking out, in between the flowers.

It sure helped when her mother died; the old girl couldn’t have picked a better time to go than this year. She must have known how I struggled at the bank to keep apace with Gussie’s needs and how I ached to be able to do something about the house before it fell apart.

She made it possible for us at last, to have the roof fixed and the out­ side painted. And it was worth every penny I paid to Aloito and guinea painters to do the job.

I gazed at the house as the sun rose higher. I thought too—that Gussie or no Gussie, old girl or no old girl, I had come a long way myself. It would have been a surprise to my father who never could stand my flunking out of college, even though I couldn’t help it. I remember that cold afternoon when the two of us were on the train coming from Boston to New York, how he sat there telling me how Fifteen

worthless I was, then writing me out a check for two hundred dollars and saying "Here! You’re on your own.” I was so hurt I got up and walked quietly into the bar car; by the time the train got into New York, I was roaring drunk and I never saw my father again until just before he died a year later. I didn’t care at the time because I couldn’t go back home.

I went to Bermuda for a week on the money he gave me only to land back in New York at Gussie’s apartment with sixty-four cents in my pocket. I was lucky she was there. I had been seeing her quite a bit while I was in college, and I wrote to her when I was in Bermuda tell­ ing her what had happened. She didn’t care and I felt wonderful.

About all I could say for this golden trauma was that I was stood on my own two feet with a thud and that I wasn’t entirely alone; I had Gussie, I loved her and she thought the world of me. I no longer was dependent upon the world for a living; I knew what I wanted and I was ready to fight everybody for success, including the man at the bank who interviewed me for the teller’s job that I finally got. I soon was able to marry Gussie and to set off, mad and angry, to build a career.

Now, thirty years later, I had risen; I had fought my way free of the disgusting question mark of my youth. How nice the house looked! I had done all right by my job, which even though it paid me little, had given me a good reputation and this coupled with the boost Gussie’s mother had given us, made me happy.

Sheila. This was her day. I thought of Jamie Sommervell, the boy she was marrying, a boy I liked. He was now rhe possessor of all the girl that she was: young, vibrant, those responsive brown eyes, that singing smell of fresh air, perfume and wet grass, that kiss before going to work. Jamie was lucky; he had youth on his side. He would never have to worry the way I did; yet he had no confidence in himself—he never looked me straight in the eyes when he talked to me. It was probably because his mother had spoiled him rather than pushing him our, but he was aware of this and trying to fight her off to grow up on his own. Even Gussie, for that matter, had to fight her off; how she and Helen haggled over this wedding, both of them never giving an inch, this person, no that person, this flower, no that flower—the older women get the more finicky they become.

I would have given my eye teeth to know what Arthur was thinking about, standing alone in the driveway yesterday. It was an unusual way for him to begin such a big day. I was never so busy in my life trying to get the florists to decorate the marquee right and a thousand other things- They never did it right anyway; the center poles looked bare and awful but that’s the way it goes. I shouldn’t have let Helen handle the food. She ordered what I thought was twice the amount needed for the wedding and all day I kept telling the caterers only half. But as fast as I told them no she would tell them yes. She was right though; we did need more, but after all that arguing, I could never admit it to her.

I just couldn’t face it, my young Sheila leaving. She was only a child! Once she didn’t have me to keep after her, she would just wear sweatshirts and bluejeans all the time, the way she did at school. I never did see that she learned to cook but she never seemed interested.

Sixteen

In a way it was good she was getting married. She is so young and beau­ tiful and I’m so tired and old. I wondered if Arthur ever noticed my hair turning grey or the lines on my cheeks. But Sheila. It seemed as though it was only yesterday that I was combing her shiny black hair and pressing those cute little dresses. When she first started to go out, how pretty she looked coming down the stairs gently—her crinoline rushing as she stepped. She was proud of herself; it made me feel uncomfortable, particularly that leer in her smile that seemed to say "I have it, mother, and you don’t anymore.” That is why, I suppose, I got such satisfaction in lecturing her boy friends on getting her in before twelve.

When Jamie finally came along, I wondered just how he was going to work out for her. He had a lackadasical streak in him that always started him complaining about how much work he did—an inferiority complex that made him talk about who had this and who didn’t have that. Arthur didn’t care about this, neither did Sheila, and I gave up after a while.

Helen spoiled him; she never made him work during his summers home from school and he came up here and lolled around trying to exercise his devilish sense of humor on me. One night when I was hav­ ing a dinner party, he discovered that the glue was loose in the backs of all the chairs in the dining room. Just as I was calling my guests in to dinner, he pulled up all the backs of the chairs and piled them in a corner. He and Sheila hid in the kitchen laughing while I nearly died of embarrassment. If he did this kind of thing to me, I tried to imagine what he did at home.

Jamie, my son, was lucky to have such a nice day for a wedding only I wish Gussie wouldn’t be so stubborn about planning it out. They did need that extra food and I’m glad I told the caterer to use it. But still she was mad and I left; anyway, I had Jamie’s things to think about. It was his day and he was realizing his ambition to get out on his own, away from me. I hate losing control like this but I can’t deny his right. At least his brother, Tony, my last child, is still left.

I had my doubts about Sheila because she had a beauty that ir­ ritated me at times. She was so selfish, even to Jamie. 'When he was tired and wanted to take her home after eating with us, she would make him sit up late with her and watch all that truck on television that she loved. She seemed to pin everybody down with that smile of hers and she had her own sense of values that directed Jamie—^like mother, like daughter.

Oh well, I realized that I had forgotten how much fun it is to be young. There is so much to look forward ro—and dread at the same time. At least Jamie was through college, a job that was a struggle with his father ten years in the grave and I always having to work to see that he got every opportunity. I wondered if he ever appreciated it when he slipped out of the house to Sheila’s without telling me. If I asked him where he went and what he did, he would tell me that he did nothing. He never kept his room picked up or took care of the clothes he had. Sheila descended on him like a curtain leaving me nothing of that which was mine, of that I had created and shaped.

I never knew what his private thoughts were about me or Tony. He never discussed Sheila with me; that relationship grew without any direction and it was as if they and I lived in different worlds.

Seventeen

He had no sentiment; he never wrote to me while he was in college except to ask for money, and that he had no respect for either.

When I went up to his room to clean I would find loose change on the floor and checks that I had written out for him that he had forgotten about. He would stuff them in his bureau drawer meaning to cash them but, in the end, he would never have them when he needed them, causing him to wonder why he never had any money.

It is worth it though, because he was my son and I was able to live comfortably enough to let him and Tony grow up without having to worry. Jamie is spoiled and gone but Tony is still left.

I was so glad Jamie picked Ned Pierce to be an usher. There was a boy I admired—he couldn’t have been a better roommate for Jamie. I used to feel so sorry for him when he would have to work so hard to get through school. He knew the opportunity he had, the value of money, of everything of which Jamie had no sense at all. I enjoyed the way he used to lecture Jamie on wasting money and Jamie liked this because Ned could see right through him. Even yesterday he was telling him before the wedding to be sure and not forget his wallet.

Ned and the ushers rushed to get down to the church and I was only half ready. I didn’t have time to check them over to see if their suits fit properly. I could do nothing but hope they would be good es­ corts. I don’t know what Tony drove them in. It made a dreadful racket as though it had no muffler.

Was I ever in my stupid right mind when I said "yes” to Sommervell when he asked me before graduation to be an usher in his wed­ ding? All those strange people got on my nerves, the way they gave me the once-over on their way into church. Dammit, I couldn’t help it if that monkey suit-cutaway itched. It’s hot in summer and waiting out there for people to escort seemed like ten days in the desert—without any water.

I stood on one foot and then the other waiting and waiting, pon­ dering the whole mess in my mind. I came to the conclusion that I was almost, but not quite, eating a dish of crow. 'The past was past and Sheila was hooked and happy. I laughed at all those times when those dark, whammy brown eyes and that long, black hair, that looked like something out of a shampoo ad, nearly drove me out of my mind.

'Then I thought of the other side of her and that hit me like icewater spilling on a hot stove.

I was bothered again by the fall of our sophomore year when I had gotten to know Sheila just casually. She and Sommervell came from the same place. Why they never knew each other before was beyond me.

She seemed all right, but I never could tell how she really felt or whether she was entirely on the level with me. I had a hunch each time that she was using me to get to know someone better. It was as if I was pressing my nose against a wall of glass. I blamed myself for suspecting her because many kids told me I was a cynic.

Soon I found out that Sommervell had been taking her out; she had told me she hadn’t been dating, the little bitch. Oh God, I thought, not my own roommate. I had an urge to push his face in as Eighteen

well as hers but I couldn’t see fighting over it—maybe I was just a nice guy Or a martyr. Anyway, I thought that he would just add her to his collection and the whole thing would shrivel up in the end with me being able to pick up where I left off. Then I was beginning to see how I was being faked out. She started coming after me again, oh, so friendly! Well, it was all right; she still drove me nuts—gold was where you found it and all that. Sommervell was making time with his other women and this began to tee her off. She dated me again and batted those bedroom eyes at me to get me to tell her all about Sommervell’s other life, assuming that I was dumb enough not to know what she was up to. I probably was dense at the time; it’s funny how sex can put horse blinders on you.

She begged me to tell her about what he was really like, if he had been taking somebody else out, telling me how good I was to her and so on. I felt guilty at the time for thinking of saying "How much will ya’ pay me?’’ Everybody knew that he had been giving a lot of at­ tention to Lynn Davis, a girl who sat next to him in his Spanish class.

It was too fantastic to me that Sheila didn’t know about her because she lived in the same dorm with her. But, Sheila kept right on begging, getting me to tell her about Sommervell and eventually I gave in; I couldn’t resist the brown eyes and black hair she used as bait. If only I had followed my intuition and had stood her up, telling her to stop lying, to stop thinking I was so dumb because she knew damn well what Sommervell was doing and she was only using me to get at him.

Sommervell could always see right through her schemes when I couldn’t and that was probably why they made such a good couple.

She liked him because he was flighty and soon he settled down to only her. I wouldn’t have been nearly so mad if she had just told me the truth but that was too much to expect of somebody selfish like her, out to get everything at everybody’s expense. It surprised me too because most of the girls I knew were just as nice as they could be and if there is anything that tees me off more, its Sheila and people who don’t tell the truth when they’re backed into a corner.

It was just lie, lie, lie. I remembered the grand slam she gave me later when I asked her out and she said no; she had too much work to do and left it at that. When I saw her and Sommervell at the movie I had planned to take her to, that was the last straw. I took a seat in back of them and put my coat down quietly on the seat next to me.

Then I leaned forward and tickled her on tlie left ear with my fingerShe spun around in time to hear me ask: "Workin’ hard kid?” I could see that dirty look even in the dark. Sommervell, who could hardly keep from laughing, got up and took her out; I was glad because then I could see the screen better. She had learned just how dumb Ned Pierce was and we never bothered each other again. To prove I wasn’t a poor sport, I let myself be conned into being in his wedding. It was part of Sommervell’s sense of humor.

Well, here I was; the wedding did come sooner than I had ex­ pected. Tlie church filled up rapidly. Tony, Sommervell’s younger brother, and I went forward to draw back the white carpet. The whole place was beautiful. Bunches of flowers were strewn all over the altar like a woods in the Spring. Everything white glared out in the sunlight streaming in through the light-colored stained glass windows: the carpet and the candles and the ribbons and hats and gloves of the Nineteen

people in the pews. I stood with the others just below the slt^r, in position and watched the procession coining down. Old Sotnmervell stood above me cool as ever but a little tense. His fingers twitched and he wiggled his nose as if it tickled. I turned around quickly and winked at him to wish him good luck. He saw me.

Down came Sheila looking like a million bucks. She smiled at everybody like an actress taking curtain calls. Her father was out of step with her but he was grinning from ear to ear and didn t know it.

The thing on the back of her big dress brushed agaiiwt the carpet. My cutaway itched. As the service went on in times of silence and prayer, I felt sweat pouring down my face. The vows came in mumbly tones that made me sleepy.

Sommervell was impatient all the way through; I could tell.

Religion never meant much to him anyway because often he’d made it the butt of some of his sick jokes. He used to rub them in on me be­ cause he knew I was a Catholic. Everybody seemed to run out because it was so hot. The organ kept playing that thing you always hear in the movies. After we got the family out, Tony signalled to me it was time to go.

Tony was such a funny kid. He had gotten hold of this old 1925 fire engine and he drove us all to church in it. It made one hell of a racket because it had no muffler; when the minister saw us pulling up in front with it, his jaw dropped as though he’d seen somebody dead. After the wedding was over, we had to push it to get it started.

He was a quiet kid, smart as a whip, though you never knew it from the way he talked. Speaking to him was like a game of 20 Questions but he liked to show off in a nice, quiet way. I liked him because he seemed more sincere than his brother.

I thought Ned would never come; we were going to be late. It was worth all the trouble to get that old bucket to drive to church.

Come to think of it; it was a real cool idea! I could just see Jamie saying to Ned; "My lousy little brother has to screw up everything, including my wedding! ’’ I was scared the radiator was gonna boil over and as far as gears—^forget it! Zero to twenty-five in a roaring three minutes. We went screaming through the village; I nearly ran over some dumb old lady and scared the be-jesus out of everybody with the siren. 'They didn’t know what was coming off what with firemen in zootsuits hanging on in back. It was cool.

We just about made it to the reception; things were getting tense with that radiator. We pulled up in front of the tent yelling and screaming and ringing the bell and siren. Just as I cut the switch it let out a huge backfire. Some old lady outside screamed and her drink went flying—everybody was laughing. Old lady Ross was really throw­ ing a blast—three hundred people and all the food and booze you could lay your hands on. Jamie had done all right—that Sheila was really tough.

I really had looked forward to that blast because half the people that were there didn’t know I existed or else they were used to me as some little brat in a crib. I never saw so many people in that tent— like Grand Central at rush hour. The guy leading the band bounced up and down like somebody had poured itching powder down his pants.

Twenty

Sheila and Jamie were in the middle shaking hands with people. It’s a good thing all of ’em didn’t know that the wedding was a hurry-up job. Sheila couldn’t have waited much longer. Mum was still the word; Jamie was scared I would tell somebody. It was a perfect way to black­ mail him for money.

I never thought she and Jamie would hit it off; she was kinda stuffy and he was his usual old slob self. But they kept at it; they were always fooling around wrestling—you could hear them all over the house. One night last year—it was one of those queer hot summer nights—the wind was blowing and the moon was out. With that light coming in the window and the shades slappin’ up and down, I couldn’t sleep to save myself. The lamp was on downstairs and the porch door was open. I crept down and stood in the doorway to look out across the lawn. There, in the moonlight, I could see them. They were coming back toward the house arm in arm. I shot back up the stairs and hid behind the bannister because he’d kill me if he knew I was watching. They came in the door quiet—staring at each other. Sheila was all flushed and sweaty around her forehead and Jamie had the most God-awful grin on his face. After that, man I knew something funny was going on.

The party went on for hours. Ned caught the garter—poor guy, he deserved it. After they went upstairs, I went back to the tent. Every­ body was gabbing so you could hardly hear yourself think. This stink, like grass and cigarettes hung in the air. One couple came up ploughed out of their minds and leaned all over me breathing in rny face. They asked me when I was getting hitched. What a question to ask! How was I s’posed to know? This lady’s husband was even worse than she was. A waiter walked by with a tray full of empty glasses 'The old soak looked at him then jabbed me in the arm and said: "Tony, my boy, you know the sound a wet rag makes when k hits the barroom wall? Wop! That’s how it goes. Wop!” He laughed at the top of his voice, shaking up and down like a spastic. I wished that waiter had heard him and given him one in the face. I couldn’t see it so I went off.

When Jamie and Sheila left, I stood on the roof over the front door with a big soup pot full of rice. When I saw the tops of their heads coming, I let ’em have it. Everybody looked up laughing and spit­ ting out rice. Jamie gave me that look he always gave me before he killed me as he closed the car door and drove off.

I guess it was around nine when Mrs. Ross called the wedding party into dinner. All the people including me were high and not very hungry. My mother looked sort of frustrated; she glared at Mrs. Ross.

Ned was pretty well out of it: he slumped in his chair, his head down, his arms folded and his feet out straight. We were only half way through dinner when everybody got mad at each other.

Mrs. Ross was sounding off about how virtuous her Sheila was, how honest and frank she was and what a good wife she’d make for Jamie. She waved her champagne glass around but she couldn’t steady it for a toast. Ned got this funny look on his face and stood up, leaning on the table.

Twenty-one

"No kiddin? Excuse me, my august friends,” he said, turning to all of us, "I have a date with God. But hold on though; I’ll be right back.”

He shoved back his chair and shuffled out of the room. The caterer came in and whispered something in Mrs. Ross s ear. After he left she got red and stared over at my mother.

"Thank you. Oh, thank you! What did you think you were doing, Helen? Now we’ll have to pay for all that extra food. They used it up just so they could charge us. Didn’t I tell you I didn’t want it?

Didn’t I tell you I wanted it out of here so they wouldn’t use it? Oh! Honestly!” she moaned. Mother stood up with a start, threw her napkin on the floor and walked out.

Mr. Ross was sitting next to me.

"What was that all about?” I asked him.

He put his hand on my shoulder and told me to forget about it.

He told me that when I got older, I should build something and be happy with it, instead of trying for something better. He was kind of up in the clouds but I think I knew what he meant. He glanced at his watch and said that it was time to stop things. I told him that I had a good time with everybody and he smiled at me and said that was what really counted.

Medusa MAGGIE RECK ’66

Honorable Mention, Quiz and Qtiill Poetry Medusa’s snaky tresses writhe about her scalp and slither down her neck and shoulders. filling everyone with nauseated fascination. Stomachs Churn and rise to throats held closed by fear and dread at seeing all those reptiles, green and slimy, flashing bulgy, purple eyes and spitting yellow pus and breathing pungent fumes that smell like death and garbage mixed with blood and graveyard dirt and other things I dare not name. The would-be heroes turn to stone from stark repulsion; all men die who dare to look into those putrid eyes. And one thing more: a tiny tear, minutely damp, slips slowly, sadly, quite unnoticed, down that wretched cheek.

•k

Twenty-two

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Barabbas’ Laughter ’63

JANET LACEY

First Prize, Roy A. Burkhart Poetry Contest Barabbas sat inside his straw-filled cell.

And watched the glassless window small and high From which a tiny beam of sunlight fell Upon his head. This was his piece of sky.

Light from above, the killer thought, and roared With gusts of laughter violent and crude.

He laughed and rolled around till once more bored.

Then, far away, he heard the multitude.

"Let’s crucify him!” And Barabbas smiled To think they’d have to find a sturdy cross.

“We’ll kill him!” One voice high, as of a child.

Barabbas guffawed. Well, he’d be small loss.

“Free us Barabbasl” When he heard his name He lifted up his husky, dirt-caked frame.

A ragged tree-trunk of a man, he stood Prepared to laugh once more at his expense.

A joke, he thought, for actually, who would Set free a murderer with no defense?

“Good joke!” Then he heard footsteps drawing near.

He thought about the overthrow he’d planned.

Perhaps his time was now? But with no fear He saw the door swing wide. A strong, rough hand Reached inward, seizing him— You le freel And numb.

Half-blinded by the light, he staggered out To freedom he’d not hoped for. Standing dumb.

He saw the Man for whom they’d raised the shout.

He neither understood nor felt the half.

But thought of light. This time he did not laugh.

★

★

★

Christ Image DALE WESTON

’64

Christ bleeding in the dust.

Speak to us through the mud We’ve made of your gore and our earth You who chose to suffer and die, Shotv us your fountain of strength.

Your chosen path is not studded With brassy crosses on starry crowns.

No clear white concrete band is this road.

Which twists its tortured path Up a world of hills to Calvary.

Go away Christ of the Sunday School class.

Take with you all that saintly white Of flowers on fluorescent lighted altars.

Scrape off our crust of shiny ease That we may grasp between our hands A cross wrought not from brass or gold But from the splintered rough of timber.

★

★

★ Twenty-three

★

★

★

Camp Meeting, Fifteenth Summer SYLVIA PHILLIPS VANCE

'47

Before we saw the crowd we heard the singing; "Leaning on the everlasting arms” Accompanied us through pines into the clearing.

Sand and needles underfoot, and sunset Slanting through the trees to light a face Here and there at random on the benches.

We sang, too—I and my companion.

The almost-strangcr who had asked and brought me.

Elderly maiden lady with carroty hair Only a little graying. Her age . . . my youth . . .

Both of us concerned about salvation (And I not knowing how to refuse an invitation).

There was a preacher soon—short, spry old man.

Frock-coated, pacing in front of us.

He spoke of sinning and evil, evil and sinning.

Back and forth, ancl at each turning checked With a sideways glance how he was being heard.

Opening up the stops like playing an organ He crescendoed us, sinners all.

Washed in the blood of the Lamb into Salvation.

Repent. Amen. Amen.

"A fine performance, you old fraud,” I thought, "But when— \Vhen did you stop believing?”

It was that sideways glance of his—.

I thought him then a fraud. I think so now.

In between I’ve had some doubts on judging Any human being quite so fast.

But all the little frauds I’ve been and am Have taught me this about deceit: A man who’s selling anything he trusts Will look you in the eye. This man, I know.

Wouldn’t have been around the morning after.

Or on that sure day when being saved Had lost its lustre, turned to brass, what have you.

I find one wrestles with the angel many nights, -And must be saved anew most mornings.

That’s what he didn’t know or couldn’t face.

There’s no use getting worked up on salvation; Once isn’t going to be enough, not nearly.

A man who steers another man toward grace Has got to stick around and see it through, .And get down on his own knees when he must.

That’s why I’ll take a church and congregation For being saved in. They last longer.

★ Twenty-four

★

★

Credo KATHY KANTO

’64

The center aisle always seemed so long. Today it was an infinity.

The choir was singing the last chorus of the Ave Maria as Karen knelt in her place. The congregation was seated, and a few old women were still kneeling under the statue of the Blessed Virgin.

They began to go back to their pews as Father Riley followed the four little altar boys out of the sacristy onto the altar steps. They genuflected and began to chant the opening prayers of the Mass.

"In nomine Patris, et Filius . . .”

Karen’s hands trembled as she made the sign of the cross. She remembered how she’d first learned to bless herself in the second grade at Saint Michael’s School. She could remember how proud she’d been and how eager to show her mother.

Blond curls danced around bright blue eyes as Karen skipped up the front steps. She tossed her book and lunch pail on the rocker and danced into the kitchen. Her mother was peeling onions over the sink.

She was leaning slightly backwards and squinting.

"And what did you learn in school today?” Mrs. Fitzgerald asked, kissing Karen on her forehead.

"Oh, lots of things. Wanta see something. Mommy?” Karen bub­ bled with anticipation. "See Mommy, I can bless myself just like Michael does. Watch Mommy!”

Karen unfolded her hands and picked up a copy of the church calendar. It was the feast of St. Stephen, and the priest was wearing red vestments in honor of the first Christian martyr. As she looked at her copy of the church announcements, Karen remembered that it was only two weeks until her twenty-first birthday. After quickly scanning the page, she gazed around the familiar room and saw a few of her old friends sitting together. The church was unusually crowded for the eight o’clock Mass. 'The altars were filled with flowers from a wedding the day before, and rice was still in the cracks of the floor­ boards. In the corner on the right was a statue of Saint Joseph. He had always been Karen’s favorite saint. Gazing up at his familiar brown robe, she noticed that the color was fading and there were several small cracks in his graceful hands.

"Please help me. Saint Joseph,” she whispered to the statue, "I want to do the right thing. I’m not leaving you. It’s just that I have to change for Jim. You understand, don’t you? Don’t be angry with me.

It’s so hard to explain how I feel; just pray for me.”

The congregation responded to the "Credo.” Father Riley stepped up into the pulpit and began reading the church announcements.

"Dearly beloved in Christ, a hundredfold thanks to all who con­ tributed to our building fund drive, and especially to the committee that . . .” His voice began to fade into the noise of the traffic on the street as Karen’s mind drifted back to her kitchen a few months ago.

Twenty-five

The dripping of the kitchen faucet was the only sound in the room. Karen’s mother sat on a kitchen chair with her elbows on the table. Occasionally she sipped a cup of black coffee.

"Karen honey,” she suddenly blurted out, "think about it a little while before you and Jim get serious. Mixed marriages never work.

I’d hate to see my only daughter unhappy.”

What are you talking about. Mom?” Karen asked somewhat sur­ prised. "We’ve only been dating for a few months. Mom. For heaven’s sake, there’s nothing serious about it; we’re just like brother and sister.”

"Okay, but all I know is that you’ve been going out with him every week end since you met, and that sounds pretty serious to me!”

Mrs. Fitzgerald rinsed her cup and went back into the living room.

Karen walked to her room and reached in the dark for her vanity lights. As she switched on the lights she had to adjust her eyes to the sudden light. She sat in front of her dresser and looked in the mirror.

"Maybe Mom’s right;” she thought, "maybe I am getting in too deep.” She brushed her hair and began to pin it up. Each time she reached for her comb, she saw Jim’s picmre watching her from its frame on her night stand.

"He did ask me what I thought of his being a Protestant,” she remembered. "If things ever did get to the point of marriage, I know he’d never change. It would have to be me.”

A few months later Karen’s mother was sitting at the foot of Karen’s bed winding a handkerchief around her fist.

"How can you even think of giving up your religion when you don’t know anything about being a Protestant? What good did all those years at Catholic School do if you think you can just change after only knowing him a year? I knew first thing you started going out with that Jim that he’d try to pull you away from us, Karen. He may be a fine young man, but he’s not one of your people. Think about it a while—you can’t play around with God, young lady!”

"Et cum spiritu tuo!”

Karen found herself standing along among a kneeling congrega­ tion. She fell to her knees feeling rhe blood rush to her cheeks. As the ushers began leading the communicants to the communion rail, Karen started to follow, but she pulled herself back. She knew she had no right. The line of people in the aisle blurred. She blinked a few times to clear her vision. As she mouthed the Lord’s Prayer she noticed Mrs. Phillips, a friend of her mother’s, watching her from across the aisle.

Father Riley faced the congregation for benediction. Karen met his bright green eyes and smiled. His eyes dropped, and he turned back to the altar. Perhaps he hadn’t seen her.

"Karen, Karen, my sweet little Karen,” she could hear him say, "someday I’m gonna marry you to a fine young man right here at Saint Michael’s. We’ll have the biggest weddin’ an Irish lass and her Twenty-six

lad ever saw!”

The people filled the aisles and slowly moved toward the stained glass doors. Up in the choir loft the organist opened the pipes and played a resounding recessional hymn. Soon the church was empty.

Karen watched the sunlight play on the floor as it sparkled through the cut glass around the window frames. Everything was quiet except for the soft footsteps of the altar boys extinguishing the tall white candles on either side of the tabernacle. The sacristy candle flick­ ered as it hung from its gold chain over the communion rail.

"What’s that candle for, Mommy?”

"Shhh, Karen. It means that the consecrated host is in the taber­ nacle. When it’s lit, Jesus Himself is here in church.”

Karen watched the candle’s light dance on the red carpeting and reflect in the gold crucifix above the altar. She couldn’t remember ever seeing it out.

The people for the nine o’clock Mass were starting to come in.

Karen slowly left her pew and stood for a few seconds in the aisle.

It was only ten minutes until nine; there was still time to light a vigil candle before the next Mass. She reached into her purse for a dime and walked to the front of the church. As she dropped the dime into the plate she lit a wick from a burning candle. TTie light of the circle of flames lit her face as she searched for a candle. The sudden light blinded her for a moment. When her vision cleared she saw a full circle of small flames. All the candles were already lit.

Six and a Promise DAI.I.A.S TAYLOR

’61

I.ook at her now: liair inussed, face dirty, arms akimbo, sliouting like a slircw at a frightened little boy.

Look at her now: ■She’s scrubbed and combed and decked out in white, tlie essentially savage sixyear-old held in check by restraining Sunday.

★

★

★

A Season of Black Bananas PALE WESTON

’64

Brown glass bottles balance on the nightstand some purple midnight in the far blue land.

Trains and bongos pound in the night running to a world of pain and (light.

Music (lows through the cold, wet window across thin white lines of breaking snow.

*

★

★ Twenty-seven

Two Weeks With Fallen Angels KARLA HAMBEL

’64

Second Prize, Quiz and Quill Prose The grassy slopes looked like an endless stretch of green velvet carpet, topped with small log cabins. A wooden bridge nestled at the foot of the incline, spanning a tiny gurgling stream. At the other end of the bridge, a huge log structure served as combination dining and recreation hall. This picture postcard view greeted me as 1 entered the gate of Camp St. Rita, one year ago last August.

Dale Evans Rogers coined the phrase, "angel unaware.” I was to learn the significance of those words during the next two weeks. Along with two other girls, I was to become the second mother to ten girls in this camp for fifty handicapped boys and girls, age six to eighteen.

"No, I can’t push that wheelchair up that hill one more time. Jane, why didn’t you tell me you had to go to the john while we were up at the cabin instead of waiting until we got back down to the recreation hall.” 'These were some of my thoughts those first few days of aching back and screaming muscles.

Most of us never stop to count the number of times a day we move our arms and legs, until we become the arms and legs for some­ one else. By the time I had gone back to the cabin for something for­ gotten or pushed wheelchairs to and fro innumerable times within a day, the value of those four members of our bodies got through to me.

The grassy, green slopes of the first day didn’t look so pictiKepostcardish, after I had herded wheelchairs over them. On occasion, by the time for lights-out, I would have staked my life that those things were at least the size of a small mountain.

Aside from their twisted limbs, these children were just as nor­ mal as the kids next door or down the block. There were angels; there were devils. It took only a couple of hours to learn that most were a delightful, but disturbing, combination of both.

I fell head-over-heels in love with brown-haired, brown-eyed Curt, as did everyone in camp. Twelve-year-old Curt is a ward of the state school. His family is much too busy to be tied down with a child who must be fed, dressed, and cared for the rest of his life. Curt is a victim of cerebral palsy, which means he has great difficulty controlling the movements of his body. He loved to hide the silverware, and while I pretended to look for it he would put it back on the table. He w^ fascinated by the green birthstone ring I wore and begged to wear it.

I finally consented to let him put it on a chain and wear it around his neck. I thought this arrangement was just for the pmp period, but I couldn’t bear to take the ring when tears came into his eyes as I asked for it the night he left. I saw Curt this summer; he was still wearing the ring.

Linda is my best example of the devil-angel combination. I rushed my ten charges back to the cabin one night, fifteen minutes before lights-out, to find she had put rocks and sand in the beds of the other nine girls.

Linda was also subject to violent temper tantrums.

Twcnly-eight

One day, she

decided she was sick-and-tired of doing crafts so she proceeded to turn the table, at which she was sitting over, showering the floor and a few other campers with red and black paint, shells, yarn, construction paper, and liquid paste. However, she looked so cute and innocent the night of the camper talent show standing on the stage, in her frilly yellow dress, singing like a professional.

Frank, a rather thin, pimply-faced, fifteen-year-old, had been subject to a few epileptic fits, when younger. He still found them a convenient way of escaping unpleasant tasks, such as making his bed, picking up his clothes, etc. One night, he chose to have a "seizure” rather than go to bed. The counselors in his cabin, after determining the attack a false alarm, converged upon him with tongue depressor and some evil tasting "medicine” made especially for such an occasion.

Strangely (his mother just couldn’t understand it) Frank was com­ pletely seizure-free the rest of the camp period.

The artificial leg of our head director, Dick, became a legend around the camp. I have often wondered how many passing motorists glanced up at the stately flag pole, in the early morning hours, to have their eyes frozen to the horrifying sight of a leg dancing serenely in the breeze.

In the wee morning hours, a few boys would steal it and hang it there. Dick would come blaring over the public address system the next morning, pretending to be very angry.

The aching muscles, the temper tantrums, the rocks and sand in beds, the false seizures, were all worth every nightmarish second during the timeless moments I stood frozen in my tracks and watched Curt stand, under his own power, and walk the first three steps of his life. I could look back on all the trials and tribulations and laugh as I watched eight-year-old, freckled faced Russ grasp the fork, on his tray, and slowly raise it to his mouth. He had never eaten so much as a cracker before by himself because "mama” was afraid he might spill something on the floor.

I felt a lump come in my throat, the tears well in my eyes, as I waved good-by to my devil-angels.

Perhaps better than his own parents, I had come to know each child as an individual who wants and needs the love, the understanding, and the chance to make himself into a person apart from the masses.

I felt a glowing warmth inside that God had entrusted me with the care of some of His fallen angels — sent here to teach a lesson in patience, kindness, and love of fellow man. At that moment, I knew exactly what Dale Evans Rogers meant by "angel unaware.”

Incarnation Run I MUGRinr.F. ’51

Hearts ol a sudden strangely stirred Can never think to beat the same As in that lulling hour before the WORD Irrevocable, momentous—came, And for all time was heard.

★

★

★ Twenty-nine

Auction Antics DIANK \VrASTON

’65

A crowd of excited people was gathered around a man who was holding a box of dusty china in his hands. I could hear him clearly calling out, "I’m bid twenty-five; who’ll make it thirty?” An eyebrow was raised, and the man sang out in musical tones, "I’ve got thirty now; who’ll make it thirty-five?” The bids rose steadily.

Thus, the stage was set for one of America’s oldest and most dearly loved customs—the auction. Auctions may range from the sale of new or used cars and valuable pelts of mink, muskrat, and ermine to the sale of priceless antiques and Rembrandt paintings. Anything from soup to nuts can be sold at an auction. Even more interesting and more varied than the types of auctions are the interesting people who frequent or fervendy follow these sales.

Today’s auction was the sale of an estate of a very old man who had lived in our vicinity for many years. He said his country home was just too big for one person, so he wanted to sell out and go apartment hunting. People swarmed in droves to examine the items that he had for sale. Since no one wants to buy sight unseen, the items had been literally dumped on the front lawn for inspection.

Everything in the house was to be sold—even the kitchen sink could claim no exemption. Tables, chairs, lamps, appliances, trunks, piles of magazines and letters, and other innumerable articles covered the surrounding ground.

I could see the antique hounds poking and searching through piles of goods. Their criteria for judging an antique are dirt, cracks, grime, and dust—the more the better. "It must be worth a pretty penny,” I heard one of them cry out while examining a dusty dresser set. An auction can be likened to a Las Vegas gambling house for expensive items sell for little or practically nothing. Yet when a de­ crepit rocker or cracked china cup is placed on the auction block, the antique addicts go crazy.

I spotted the novice auction follower who was eagerly grabbing at boxes and searching through bushel baskets, loudly exclaiming over each find. Not the old "pro”!!! He came walking close behind, wearing a look of disdain. His expressions seemed to say "Junk—all of it!”

Don’t let this bored expression fool you for it is just a cover-up for a genuine and insatiable curiosity. 'The "pros” know that a buyer must be casual in his searching and expressionless in his finding. For the minute they show a spark of interest, people will flock around to see just what is worthy of any attention. People at an auction seem to acquire a sixth sense and make constant use of it.

Over under a huge oak tree sat a colored woman whose girth was almost as big as the tree’s. She was jealously guarding a pile of chairs, tables, baskets full of pots and pans, lamps, and other items.

I heard the novice ask, "What will she do with all that junk?

'The pro patiently replied, "Second hand junk dealer.”

Many junk dealers follow auctions like a baseball enthusiast follows Thirty

the New York Yankees. They bid and buy carloads of every con­ ceivable item. The same material is later resold for a handsome profit to unsuspecting buyers who think that they are getting real bargains.

Many of the people who come to the auctions are there just for enjoyment and pure pleasure. They don’t care about antiques and don’t need any home furnishings, so they come to watch others bid and buy. Whether they remrn home with a car filled with the results of an afternoon’s spontaneous buying or return home empty-handed makes no difference to them.

Bargain-hunting parents often bring their children with them, not realizing the folly of theit act until it is too late. For children have an irrepressible urge to bid on items. 'The fact that they are penniless will never daunt the enthusiasm of a child who feels the urge of bidding.

But, at each and every auction, a would-be philanthtopist is present to watch for these children who want an item but find the bidding has overshot a limited budget. If a child’s supply of pennies is depleted, this is the man who buys the item and gallantly presents it to the grateful child and even more grateful parent.

It isn’t hard to find the novice when it comes time for the sale.

'This type usually buys on sheer impulse and never considers need. 'This is the person who spends hour upon hour woefully wondering why he ever raised his hand to bid.

Then there is always the shy retrovert who bit by the "bid finds himself the proud but surprised owner of an absolutely useless Today’s auction was no exception for I noticed a sheepish-looking usually staid and reserved, carting away an ancient buttet chutn. tions seem to instill an adventuting spitit in the shyest of people.

bug” item. man, Auc­

Perhaps by now, you have decided that it might be fun to become an auction addict. If you have, learn and abide by these few and easy rules.

The first rule is—be discreet. Never show an interest in any item. The minute that you show an interest, others will think that they, too, should become interested.

Be blase when bidding. Again keep the cardinal rule of bidding in mind—never show an interest in anything. Pretend that you are bidding for the sheer joy of spending money.

Next, learn to hide things under seemingly useless items. For instance, if an old McGuffey Reader intetests you, place it at the bottom of a box of old magazines. Victory and the item are yours unless someone else has tried the same trick with your hiding place.

If you must sneeze, cough, blink, or move in a similar manner, turn from the view of the auctioneer. His eagle eyes pick up every move­ ment and you might find yourself an innocent buyer if supreme care in movement is not exercised.

The last rule is probably the most important. Be a good loser.

Thirty-one

Just console yourself with the realization that you probably didn’t need it anyway.

After learning about the varied types of auction addicts, you may be wondering into which category I would fall. While writing, I am sitting amidst stacks and stacks of dusty records—remnants of the Roaring Twenties—purchased at today’s auction. They won’t play on the family record player, but my consoling thought is that they might make a nice wall decoration. My type? You be the judge.

August ’64 I'arcwcll my sore and silent friend.

You must heed the locust’s whine, And lie down below the dead grass shroud.

My eyes must now forever meet A mud-splashed stone with letters chisicd.

DAVID K. SIURGES

I hear a cry upon the wind, And a cry upon the wind again.

I cannot run.

Stay I must at the meadow’s edge To watch the tall grass toss and bend.

Never still to stand with me.

I can’t hate more your jeliy form.

With its chemical reek and limpid tongue Clenched by a frozen jaw of nothing.

I.et earth cover this form of jelly.

Suffocate the chemical reck, And rot away the hide of pine.

For it is all a hell to me.

Now I can run and plunge My hot face in the cathedral brook To shake in silence.

Until the wind that scatters leaves along the ground.

And the thunder’s roar behind the wavy trees.

Frees the sun to smile again.

★

★

★

Loneliness |ANE. VORI'IC ’66

Emptiness and a cricket’s song revolve in my mind.

Surely the dream and the face meant nothing.

But they have stirred my empty heart, and I’m lonesome for someone I’ve yet to meet.

★ Thiriy-txco

★

★

The Haymaking and the Hackamore JERRY GINN

’64

The heat of a dry July afternoon caused beads of sweat to drip off the apex of my nose. From the tractor and hay baler, pulling the wagon on which I was working, came dust, covering my bare, bronze back and coating the linings of my mouth and throat. I had loaded the first two tiers, four bales high, on the wagon without difficulty.

Working for three hours doing the same series of actions had caus^ me to react automatically to each bale as it ascended the chute onto the wagon. My mind began to wander as I was distracted by the rab­ bits running from windrow to windrow or an occasional snake gliding through the stubble. The faraway colt and mare caught my attention.

Little did I realize the role they would share with me in the passing of an hour.

"Whoa!” I yelled. The wagon stopped abruptly. The bales slipped forward. I pushed my hay hook against the top bale to keep it from falling. The grinding baler wore to a slow halt.

Homer leaped from the tractor inquiring, "What’s the trouble, Jer? Another untied bale? I hope this 'gal dern’ contraption don’t take another contrary streak.’’

"Me too,” I replied. I leaped upon the chute and guided the bales to the wagon. Then I sat down, grabbed a hold of the supporting chains, and pushed my feet hard against the bales. Simultaneously, Homer threw a square knot on the bale in the chamber.

"Keepin’ up all right?” demanded Homer.

"Yeah, nothin’ to it,” I responded.

I climbed upon the wagon from the baler’s chute, and whirled around to see Bruce bouncing toward us across the field in a gray tractor pulling an empty wagon. As Bruce drew nearer, I could see that he was holding a big jar of lemonade.

"Gettin’ here in the nick of time. I got nothin’ left to swallow ’cept dust and chaff,” I said to Homer.

"I know what ya’ mean,” came his reply. "Coin’ south on that west side over there, I git nothin’ but hay leaves. You’ll git used to that before we git all the hay put up. We hardly got a good start on all we got to do this summer.”

Bruce pulled along the side of my wagon and handed me the lemonade. I did not hesitate. I drank it from the mouth of the jar so fast that I scarcely allowed time for short gasps of breath.

"Man. Tbat sure hit the spot!” I exclaimed. "Take a chug, Homer.”

His thirst easily matched mine. He handed the half-empty jar to Bruce.

"Grandpa wants you to help unload them two loads up ’ere at the barn,” Bruce said to me. "Grandpa don’t wanna bale no more hay to­ day. He thinks it’s gettin’ too tough 'n it’ll spoil,” Bruce added to Homer.

Thirty-three

While Bruce’s grandfather, Jim Borton, and I were unloading the remaining bales, Bruce and Homer were putting the baler in the im­ plement shed. Finished, Jim and I descended from the mow. Just then, Bruce came over to Jim and me.

"Hey, do you wanna ride the pony bare back with a hackamore?"

Bruce asked.

Jim and I looked at each other stupified. "What’s a hackamore?’’

Jim asked.

Bruce reported, "It’s a rope you tie to the halter to guide him with, just like the Indians usta’.”

"Yeah,” I replied. "I’ll try anything once.”

Bruce’s grandfather, seeing us go towards the west pasture and Bruce carrying a rope said, "You boys be careful with Dolly, ’cause she just had that colt three weeks ago.”

"Okay, grandpa,” answered Bruce. Over the board gate we jumped.

Bmce raced after Dolly.

I said to Jim, "Boy am I gonna’ be glad to get home and jump on my bike and go to the creek to wash off. I think Mom’s gonna’ have roastin’ ears and tomatoes for supper tonight.”

Just then, Bruce came up leading Dolly with a rope. Bruce an­ nounced, "I’ll lead Dolly over here to the gate. You can git on ’er there. You can ride too, Jim.” "No thanks. I got better sense than to,” he said. "I’m not going to get me all bruised and banged up now. I need the money too bad.”

I climbed on and Dolly moved away from the gate. A slight nudge of my feet in her ribs started her to go as fast as I wanted. I noticed that her ungainly trot caused me to slip up around her neck. I thought this position to be rather precarious, but I knew that stopping her from galloping would be easy. I would just have to pull back hard on the hackamore. Having three-fourths of the length of the field, I de­ cided to try out the hackamore. Since it was resting on the left side of Dolly’s neck, I pulled to the right to make a complete about-face.

Suddenly, Dolly saw her colt with the boys at the far end of the field. We were off at a gallop. I pulled back on the hackamore to no avail. My legs pressed tightly against the withers, but all my efforts were in vain. Wobbling left to right, I pulled a final tug on the hacka­ more. It snapped and I toppled off the left side.

Abruptly the sunbaked pasture came up to meet me with a thud, causing my outstretched left arm to snap. Dazed, I got to my feet with the help of my right arm. A sharp pain came shooting into my left arm. Looking at it, my eyes focused to an obtuse angle whose apex was two inches above my wrist. In the hand of my broken arm I loosely clutched the hackamore, an inexpensive piece of rope, to re­ mind me of what turned out to be an eight-hundred-dollar horse ride.

Thirty-four

The Time Was Ripe JANET FLENNF.R ’64

Bill revved up the motor of his 1945 Chevrolet at the stop sign.

The car jolted forward; the boxes and clothes in the back shifted and settled. The loud voice of the car lowered as my brother, Bill, pushed his black shoe down on the clutch and shifted into second gear. His white, limp sock moved slowly around his ankle in folds as he again lowered the car’s voice until the whir of trucks’ wheels overpowered it. We were on our way.

Tliere was a never-changing picture cast before us. A grey lake, fenced by mossy green trees, faded into an airfield. Huge metal beasts then hovered near the water and were gone. Black dots and green toadstools changed to cows and trees but shrank as a red barn’s image was thrown before us. Huge oil drums peeked over the corn fields, grew, and then flew by. Little boys on hillsides and sailors with their thumbs extended came and went.

'The contented atmosphere, pleasant, was superficial. Underneath its veil was the awkwardness of a strained situation—like walking into a room expecting to see the familiar, being distraught upon finding the new. Like most brothers and sisters, we had disputes. Somehow ours were more bitter, enduring. One night not long before. Bill was in the kitchen dunking cookies when I came home. I said nothing, filled a glass and set on a stool out of his glare. (Bill and I were never friends.) He began questioning me. I remained mute. "Girls have no business staying out so late,” he growled.

'The clock struck one, and the tears streamed down my face as they inevitably do when my anger mounts. I called him names from Shakespeare’s plays and some picked up in high-school corridors. Was my life his?

Periodically, when the trees along the highway grew together and became indistinguishable, we attempted conversation.

"What courses are you taking this term?” He paused between every other word to clear his throat. I answered curtly. His head nodded approval, or at least reception of my retort.

My texts were scattered between us. On top a brown, wrinkled sack he had given me was full of dusty apples covered with brown splotches. I took one out and looked at it distastefully. When I rubbed it with my wool scarf it turned from dusty crimson to a deep and royalcolored scarlet. It shone brilliantly. I bit into the crispness of it; it was good.

I looked at Bill and thought about the past—we were never close, never friends. Were things too old, too late to change?

Bill needed to shave. The line from his chin to his throat was diagonal, not a modified right angle as in most persons. ”010 stripes in his coat jacket contrasted with those of his pants. His gold cuff links were old and worn. Yet, one of his professors had told my parents that Bill was the most honest person he had ever known. He always spent hours picking out my Christmas present; he cared about my sucThirty-five

cesses, my failures. He was good. My bitterness mellowed.

A thought struck Bill, and his words began to flow without the intermittent pauses and coughs which usually cluttered his conversation with me.

"Have you been where we used to live lately? It’s different. Re­ member the big trees; they were as big as that, weren’t they?” He pointed to an exaggerated example up the road. "They’re gone. They’re not there. Nothing’s there—nothing. It’s like the 'By the Waters of Babylon.’

Did you ever read that in high school? You go back and everything has changed. It seems like a hundred years since you’ve been there.

That swampy, wooded island that was in the middle of our river. It’s gone. There is a plat of brick houses, all alike, at our refuge down by the dam. Our house and those two others—gone. It’s all green and grassy over their graves and where the strawberry runners used to crawl. Those muddy banks you used to slip and stick in are even grassy now. Yes, a change like a hundred years.”

His words brought back my childhood. I could see the delicate white flowers on the hill that even we children dared not pick, images of pirates and cowboys we imagined ourselves to be, the thick vines on which we hung by our legs, and a hundred other things which are locked away from reality at a too early age, becoming but a dimming jewel in our memories.

Once when we first moved there some boys yelled curses at my brother, as all boys do at the newcomer. They looked at me and said, “Don’t hurt the little girl.”

"Billy’s my brother, and you leave him alone.” This cry of my childhood and forgotten friendship rang in my ears as we drove into town. It was as though I had been locked from that storeroom of my childhood memories until then.

We had changed as had the place of our growing up. That place was green and grassy now, not tangled and muddy, although such en­ tanglements are sweet to look back on. Its change was good. Ours was not. Our strifes had begun somewhere in our youth and were as tangled now as the old strawberry patch in its worst days.

Yet, we human beings are strange creatures, subject to continual change. Another change had begun for us. I felt it coming with the first bite of those ripe apples.

A Thought JANE VORPE ’66

Third Prize, Quiz and Quill Poetry You laugh at me because I’m awed by light that reaches through a million years.

Laugh1 And I watch a sprinkle of sparrows pepper the air.

★ Thirty-six

★

★

A Trip to Freedom ELIZABETH r.LOR

'64

Honorable Mention, Quiz and. Quill Prose I was faintly aware of a sudden pin jab in my wrist. My head fell, almost instantly, back on the operating table as the blurred whiteness of nurses’ caps and doctors’ gowns began to swirl before me.

A huge mirror, which hung above the table, reflected the beams of what seemed a multimde of lights. Their intense rays combined into one gigantic beam which focused on me like a searchlight that pursues one who attempts to escape from behind the massive, cold walls of a prison.

The sense of cleanness fused throughout the room as it radiated from the apparel of each of the persons who hovered over me as well as every fixture enclosed within the four walls which seemed to con­ tinually shift in about me, and then just before meeting one another would suddenly recede. An atmosphere of cheerfulness had surrounded me. Smiles closed about me, each one displaying a pair of flashing bright teeth-teeth-flashing-flashing. The spinning of visual objects whirled faster in the oncoming darkness.

A state of extreme pleasure crept within me (which I later credited to the pin prick.) I was laughing quite audibly as I began to "count” as 1 had been directed to do by the voices that belonged to the long arms and slender hands which were "fussing” with me at nearly every angle.

"One-Two —I cheerfully began. Suddenly my smile faded, and dry tears formed. There was nothing pleasant or amusing about the fact that I would be without the use of both of my limbs for the en­ tire summer.

I felt as if I were spiraling through a deep narrow tunnel as dis­ tant echoing voices caved in upon me, softly at first, but increasing to a pitch louder than I could bear. Then I became aware of the sharp pain that throbbed under the gauze strips that bound both of my feet.

I wondered if this physical pain which now radiated through both of my limbs could even begin to match my suffering in my new role of an INVALID. I started up from the place where I lay, only to fall back and stare helplessly at the bats that lined both sides of my bed — I knew then — I was a prisoner.

One afternoon while sitting in my wheelchair in my front yard, I heard the soft melody of a carillon riding the breeze from the small white church which sat on a little hill at the end of my street. The little building with the slender steeple had been constructed there sev­ eral years before—but, this was the first time I had ever heard the delicate melody which, I was later informed, had blessed every evening since the laying of the cornerstone of the little church.

Rows of books lined the shelves which had been built into the staircase of my home. Not a day had passed by that I had not glanced at the colorful outside covers, but time had not permitted me to glimpse any farther than the bindings. Now I found myself propped up in my wheelchair, under the shade of my favorite oak tree, being wheeled to many enchanting and far away lands that had been comThirty-seven

pressed between the cardboard covers of those volumes.

Although my feet could no longer transport me to new places, my eyes began to see new things in my old environment. I could see Nature in the deep red velvet of the roses that climbed the white trellis in the garden; I could see Her in the soft ball of vividly colored feathers that darted from its cozy nest which was nestled in the out­ spread branches of the strong, ancient oak that guarded our front yard.

And I could see love in our family—the love that shown down on me from my mother’s grey eyes. They had stood vigil through my childhood illnesses and once more were watching—the love that radiated from my father’s smile when he came home from work and asked, "How’s my girl today.’’’—The love that was displayed in my brother’s patience, after giving up an afternoon at the beach, just to carry me out into the bright sunshine for a few minutes each day.

Thus the rays of sunlight began to penetrate my prison bars, and a new realization faced me. In the past, time had been like a chain, holding me back from the deeper significance of life. The thick walls of my cell were dissolving, and now 1 realized that the convalescent’s chair in which I sat had wheeled me to Freedom.

CYNTHIA DONNfM. '63

Thirty-eight

Pilgrims to the Shrine DAVID K. STURGES

’64

Those people who have been there always call Obersalzburg a lovely spot and, at the same time, they pretend not to realize that its Bavarian scenery is not what really drew them there. It was a curios­ ity—a morbid curiosity—to seek out a ghost of Nazi Germany that sixteen years of haunted peace could not suffocate. That was how it was going to appeal to a group of tourists boarding a bus on a hot afternoon, in a parking lot just off the Mirabellgarten in Salzburg, Austria. On the street, traffic moved slowly by in short convoys like bugs crawling away from some imaginary nest. The cobbled sidewalks were choked with people whose faces were made glum by the steady oven-like heat, who, with coats thrown over their shoulders, walked enervatingly as though they were pushing their feet through the sand of a desert. The high heels of the women tocking on the cobbles and the torpid scuffle of other shoes mingled with the impatient horns of the cars and the chorus of churchbells that tolled two o’clock.

Near the open door of the bus the line of tourists stood waiting to climb aboard; some of them fingered their tickets and others flicked them back and forth across one hand with the other; all were awaiting their chance to surrender them to the driver standing on the bottom step. With each ticket he took, the squat driver bowed his head slightly and uttered "Danke” in a low, gutteral voice that made the passengers cast curious glances back at him before going on in.

Inside the bus, the hostess, a gay, brindle-haired girl, stood in the aisle ushering the people to their seats. They were an ordinary lot of sightseers—from all countries—but noticeable among them were two people, one of them American and the other British, who sat next to each other on the right side, in the center of the bus. The American, a tall, balding man of about twenty-five, sat in the seat next to the window with his legs aossed.

The jacket of his green suit was wrinkled, the area around the armpits stained with perspiration and the white shirt he wore under­ neath it showed grimy smudges about the cuffs and collar, around which was strung a bolo tie embossed with the letter "D”. He was chewing on a large wad of gum, moving his jaw in a cow-like, sidewise-circular motion.

Next to him sat the Britisher, a thin-built, unkempt man looking far older than his forty-two years. A shock of his long black hair hung down in his eyes until it bothered him enough to sweep it back into place with his hand. The grey trousers and blue sports coat that hung loosely about his rakish body were stained and threadbare in places.

He had a hatchet face and a short pointed nose giving him the coun­ tenance of a countinghouse clerk in a Dickens novel. The scars of an adolescent bout with acne marred his pale, sunken cheeks. He coughed deeply, intermittently, wiping his nose with a stiff, wrinkled handker­ chief and stuffing it back in his pants pocket. He nudged the American gently with his arm.

"Lovely day, isn’t it.^’’ Quickly, the American turned away from looking out the window, Thirty-nine

with a surprised look on his face and sighed.

"Sure could be a bit cooler rhough. But I suppose I can bear it long enough to get this tour over with—certainly paid enough for it!”

The Britisher raised his right arm to his mouth, arched his right forefinger and ran it back and forth across his lips wiping off dried spittle that was caked on the sides of his mouth. He looked around constantly and his fidgeting with an Ilford camera in his lap gave away a feeling of being ill at ease.

"Tis a bit unusual,” he said, "weather like this on the continent.

Hotter than blazes—” He shook his head in a low, raspy cough that made his cheeks redden. Then he straightened up again.

"Dreadfully sorry—Oh! My name’s Cofen, Benoni Cofen.”

Olad to know ya, I m Clint Donaldson," said the American leaning over, shaking Cofen’s hand.

'The two of them went on in a casual conversation, Donaldson telling him he was from Billings, Montana, how he had been in Swit­ zerland on business, that he was doing some traveling before going home to his wife, and Cofen telling him how this tour was part of the first vacation that he, a London used car salesman, had had in five years.

Their attention was taken by the driver starting up the bus and the hostess sitting on the edge of a jumper seat with a microphone clutched in her hands. She started her announcement in German and then translated it into broken but understandable English.

"Gut afiternun ledies und gentlemen! I’d lik’ to velcom you to our little tour to Obersalzburg und Southern Bavaria today. Plis be sure you haf your passports as vee soon be crossing the German border.”

She spoke softly into the microphone with effort; she couldn’t conceal her accent but she raised her high cheek bones in a broad effacing smile after each sentence. She sat on the edge of the seat with her knees bent and her calves drawn back close together toward her in a position resembling a partially-opened jackknife. Her blue uniform complemented her as well as her hair that was swept back in a twist. As she gestured in her talk two large silver bracelets jangled together on her wrist; she recited the same thing in almost the same movements in French, prompting the passengers to make astonished faces at each other in admiration. A plump German woman in a baggy skirt and a fntmpy hat, sitting in back, started to laugh and clap her hands together.

The bus passed rapidly out of the city, up from the Salzach valley, into the green mountains on a winding narrow road; the trees along the way were swept together in a mild blur when the bus swerved around its turns. Over the gargle of the diesel engine a few voices could be heard drowning in a sea of noisy vibration. Cofen knocked his foot back and forth between the bottom edge and the foot rail of the seat in front of him. Donaldson registered his annoyance at the Forty

noise with a wince but he did not say anything, prefering to conceal it by staring aimlessly in front of him. The lurches and turns of the bus shot pangs of queasiness through him.

Cofen stared pensively around the bus as he tried to think of some way he could get the conversation going again. A moment later the bus passed a steep hillside shored up by thick stone slabs; they seemed familiar to him. Donaldson looked at them too then returned to his daze. Cofen poked him again.

"Must have been a decent lot of slave labor to get those things into place.”

"Mmm. Those krauts were smart!” Donaldson replied. "When they wanted to get something done; they got it done come hell or high water.”

Cofen was miffed.

"Don’t know whether smart is the word for ’em!” he replied and looked away.

'They were again interrupted by the bus stopping at the border station. Two German frontier policemen entered the bus and started their way down the aisle, checking passports, nodding their heads in approval. The heels of their tall black boots made hollow sounds on the rubber mat on the floor and their peaked hats almost reaching the ceiling gave them a stern, official demeanor. One of them took up Cofen’s passport—the gold coat of arms on the front flashing as it passed into his hands—and studied each page, pursing his lips into a rueful face. He asked him where he was going, how far, for what time; he tapped the book gently on his finger while waiitng for Cofen’s reply. Cofen raised his head apprehensively: "I’m a British subject and I’m on the tour just the way everybody else is!”

The policeman grinned wryly.

"OK.” he said, and reached for Donaldson’s.

"Amerika?” he asked as Donaldson fumbled through his billfold.

"Ja!” said Donaldson.

"Danke shoen!” snapped the policeman raising his left hand, nod­ ding without taking the passport from him. Cofen watched him move further on, then turned around looking at Donaldson and shaking his head: "You Yanks sure have it easy. All the rest of us get driven straight around the bend for no reason at all! There’s an old saying, you know, 'You’ve either got a German under your foot or on your neck.’ Guess I’m the one,” he laughed, "who gets it in the neck. Pity! They can’t let bygones be bygones.”

Donaldson was puzzled.

Forty-one

"What do you mean?’

"Oh! Nothing really.” Cofen replied; he straightened himself up in his seat and the bus continued on.

The road snaked through the craggy mountains with abrupt turns, with curves banked in the opposite direction, with tenuous stretches that appeared as the bus drove on. In some places, it had been virtually blasted rock for rock out of the solid, steep hillside in a massive man­ ner that amazed the passengers. The hostess told them that if they looked carefully, they could faintly see Hitler’s retreat, the "Eagle’s Nest”, high on the summit of the tallest mountain. For a few minutes before a bend in the road hid it from view again, it was clearly seen like the Parthenon on the Acropolis, tall, straight and solitary. The passengers looked in silence then made casual remarks.

"They say that’s where Hitler lived it up with his women,” Don­ aldson said, looking toward Cofen.

"Yes, same old story, like Nero fiddling while everyone else in the ranks was doing the dirty work,” Cofen said.

Donaldson was puzzled by the bitterness of his reply and did not attempt to say anything more, thinking that soon the ride would be over and that then he could mingle with the other passengers. He craned his neck to see the "Eagle’s Nest” when it came into view—he was occupied until they arrived in Obersalzburg a few minutes later.

To the passengers, the air seemed much cooler when they stepped out into the parking lot. The hostess allowed them an hour and a half to look around. Donaldson walked across the lot toward a footpath that disappeared over a small knoll to the sites of the houses. Cofen was well behind him, alone, amidst the rest of the group. The view of Obersalzburg from the top of the knoll was disappointing, just a halfdestroyed village of houses situated here and there like civilization afterthoughts, but dug firmly into the mountain side that faced the valley behind the craggy hills below. In the other direction it stretched up above the houses in little plateaus and merged softly into the majestic bluff on top of which stood the "Eagle’s Nest.” All was clear, sunny and swept by a cool, moaning breeze drowning out the voices of people walking along the path save one woman urging her child to walk faster with her.

"Fritze! Fritze!” she yelled in heavy German, "Come along!”

She reached behind her to grab the child’s hand.

Donaldson, still ahead of the others, continued down along the path; it led across a small gulch and up again on a field promontory that commanded a full, hazy view of the valley. This had been the location of Goering’s retreat that the guidebook showed to be a long, rambling, white chalet, but now, before Donaldson and the othets coming up behind him, all that could be seen of it were two giant ditches made by allied bombs, ditches festering with weeds and scum­ surfaced water. Between them, sticking jaggedly above the grass were two slabs of concrete; people were walking around them, peering down between them.

Forty-two

Donaldson walked up and peered down in between them too. Be­ fore his eyes was a cave-like hollow shaded by the two slabs. Faintly visible on one side was a polished brick wall half buried by a pile of rubble out of which stuck the rusty leg of a chair. He tossed in a stone listening to it fall against the pile with muffled clatter.

"Couldn’t you just see the fat pig sitting here drunk and laughing?”

Donaldson mrned suddenly. The voice was Cofen’s. He stood on the path a few feet away, his hair hanging down in his eyes and his bony arms akimbo. The other people going by were looking at him.

"Yeah.” Donaldson replied, "It sure must have been living.”

Both of them walked in silence back up the path past a long mound in the hillside that had once been an S.S. barracks and over to a concrete road that led down to a huge white, half-timbered chalet.

A few cars were parked outside near a door in front of which was a small line of people waiting to get in. ’They walked up to the rear of it.

"I think this is the entrance to the bunker.” Cofen said.

He was rubbing his nose with his dirty handkerchief and beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. Donaldson didn’t answer him; he craned his neck over the shoulder of the person in front of him trying to get a glimpse of what was inside. They entered a circular brick rotunda where a stooped guard stood handing out brochures, occasion­ ally wetting his thumb so the individual leaves of paper would stick better to his offering hand.

In the babble of curious voices, Donaldson and Cofen followed the line over to one side and down a spiral stairway. As they scuffed and scuffed their way down below the main floor into the lighted gloom of the stairway, they were enveloped by a damp, pungent air that somehow brought relief from the heat above. The rasping foot­ steps on the concrete stairs echoed off the walls with a faint clink.

The bricks, clammy, gleaming with droplets of water seemed to close in upon them and in the chinks, little streaks of lime coated old crumb­ ling mortar. 'The stairway gave way to a long arched tunnel, about ten feet high, even damper, whitewashed and illuminated by a series of single light bulbs that ran on and down in an endless train. The echoed comments of the people—the cries of children and individual conversation blended into a gentle reverberating roar.

Donaldson glanced at his brochure, pointed his hand in front of him and said to Cofen: "Number 3F. 'The compartments must be at the end of this tunnel.”

They continued through the dank, tubercular air to the doorway at the end. On both sides of it, the walls were pocked and scarred by bulletholes that bared ruddy-colored bricks underneath the whitewash.

The wood of the doorframe, streaked with lime, rusty from corroded nailheads, was slowly rotting in a thin veil of mold.

There were nine compartments: four designed for Hitler’s living quarters, the other five for officers and guards. 'The walls around HitForty-three

ler’s compound were of double thickness and machine gun ports peeped from appropriate corners. The years had had their effect: tourists traips­ ing through day after day had scribbled names and obscenities in all languages on the corridor walls as high as arms could reach: flakes of whitewash lay scattered on the floors and all the chambers were empty, devoid of all furnishings except the visitors’ lavatories which left an odor of stale urine wafting through the whole bunker. Beyond the compartments lay supply tunnels, wired off, unlighted caverns stretching on in the gloom. All this Donaldson gaped at with unbe­ lieving eyes. Cofen was behind him wheezing in the dampness.

"So this was the set-up,” Donaldson said, "if they bombed the place. Boy they sure had guts and brains all right.”

"Nonsense!” said Cofen sternly, "Fear is what built this place, fear and killing other people so their work wouldn’t come crashing down about their ears. Think about the people that died to build this thing, all the money. Where did it get ’em? Where?”

Donaldson looked at him puzzled. He wondered what had made him so angry.

Cofen knew that Donaldson was bewildered and quickly composed himself again.

"Oh well, I think I’ll go back up; we’ve seen all there is.” Don­ aldson didn’t really care but he still wondered why Cofen had become angry whenever they talked about the Nazis. There was something haunting the man, something about him that his ungainly appearance concealed, something else to him but his revolting coughs, handker­ chiefs and sloppy clothes. All this had driven him away from Cofen before; now he wanted to see what he was hiding.

"Yes.” he said to Cofen, "We oughta’ go back up.”

'The heat of the warming afternoon struck them like a hot blanket in the face as they emerged from the bunker. 'Their bodies, still used to the dampness, prickled in the heat of their clothes and made them feel more uncomfortable. Cofen flexed his shoulders in a vain effort to stop an itch in his back—Donaldson ran his hand around his neck and wiped it off on his pants with the sweeping motion of a chef. They walked lazily up the road to the path to the bus in the parking lot.

The wind blew hard enough to turn up the pale underside of the leaves on the trees along the way. A plane droned its way across the sky far off down the valley.

Cofen watched the people ambling by him in the other direction on their way down to the bunker. A troop of English boy scouts passed him yelling and shoving each other despite their leader’s pleas to march correctly. He winced and turned to Donaldson who was plodding wear­ ily beside him: "Look at ’em! Pilgrims to the shrine on their way to worship!

'They’ll never know that it is really hell they’re going to instead!”

"So it’s just like anything else that somebody famous built. In anForty-four

other twenty years I bet this place’ll be a museum.” Donaldson retorted.

"Not if I can help it. They should have done a better job of bombing the place and covered it up with dirt!”

"You know something Mr.------ , what did you say your name was, Mr.------ ?” Donaldson asked.

"Cofen.” Cofen said.

"Well, Mr. Cofen, can I ask you why you came up here if you hate this place. I know about Hitler and all, but it’s a beautiful spot and I can’t really blame them for building here!”

"No, you can’t—blame them at all.” Cofen snapped. "Nobody can who never knew them. But I can because I’ve lived with ’em!”

Convulsively, he tore off his jacket and draped it over his right arm. He rolled up the left sleeve of his shirt and stuck his bare arm in front of Donaldson’s face.

"Do you see that?” he said. "Look! That’s what those dogs did to me because I’m a Jew!” On the upper side of his wrist were tatooed in a pale blue color the numbers "701497.”

"I used to come up here as a boy before they took it over. The house over the bunker used to be ours—^yes, took, that’s they did, took, our house, our belongings, my mother and my father!”

"Yet,” he slowed down to a calmer voice, "they still don’t know; they’re nothing but pilgrims, ignorant pilgrims. I’ve no use for dic­ tators!”

He sighed and walked quietly on ahead of Donaldson to the bus.

The hostess stood smiling at the door asking everybody if they had enjoyed their sightseeing.

The return trip was uneventful but that evening back in Salzburg, as the traffic died down and the sun set in pale gold behind the dark "festung” on the hill, Donaldson and Cofen shook hands and sat down quietly to eat together in an open-air cafe near Donaldson’s hotel. Ac almost the same moment, deep within the empty bunker at Obersalzburg, a large chunk of bricks and whitewash hurtled to the floor with a splattering crush, the sound echoing off into nothing and the dust drifting up in the darkness.

Forty-five

Age RONALD COLLINS

'64

The snow had fallen late and covered all the walks. It crunched and crackled under my feet as I walked along in the bitter cold. My neck was red and felt raw; so I moved my scarf up a little higher.

I had been at a dance at our Youth Center and was now walking home. When I crossed the street near the library, I slipped and almost fell. Suddenly a car turned the corner and zoomed at me. I narrowly escaped. It was lucky the car had to slow down for a red traffic light.

But the car was a beauty. It was a black convertible with noisy dual exhaust pipes, fender skirts, and a continental kit. The whole body had been dechromed, the door handles having been replaced with solenoids. The headlights and tail lights had been frenched in, and, of course, the car had been lowered nearly three inches. Although I could not tell for sure in the dim night, I suspected that pin striping also comprised part of its decoration.

I could see most of the details of its customizing because it had to stop for the traffic light. I was too young for a car of my own, but when I got one, I wanted it to be like this dream. I could not have drawn a better car in study hall.

Since a light was on inside the car, I could see all the passengers.

They were young boys. There were five of them, every one smoking a cigarette. Most of them wore blue jeans and T-shirts with light jackets, and each had either a ducktail haircut or a flattop. Somehow I respected them. Or was it fear?

Something on the sidewalk interested them. One of them pointed.

I saw what it was. An old man, bent over a cane, shuffled into the intersection against the light. The light had changed, but he stub­ bornly and persistently limped ahead. The boy driving the black car raced his motor. He was impatient.

When the old man finally completed his promenade, and the car started to speed away, one of the boys opened a window and yelled, "Hey old man!”

The ancient pedestrian mustered all the speed he commanded but the car was out of sight before he could finish his defiant reply.'

It took time for him to draw himself to his full length and dignity.

Then he raised his cane menacingly.

"I’ll old man ye!” he cried back.

He continued on his way, limping, with his crushed hat and with his cane. His gait reminded me of a bear walking slowly and labor­ iously.

I did not feel the cold. My hands and feet were nearly numb, but that did not get through to my mind. I was thinking. I had witnessed a struggle, a common one, to be sure, but nevertheless a struggle. Who had been the victor? I remembered how I had admired the boys. I laughed and then realized that I felt warm, especially inside.

An icy wind rushed at me. It was cold. It was late. I walked home.

Forty-six

Full Circle ROSI-MARY [. GORMAN ’65

Second Prize, Quiz and Quill Poetry 1 here, by the charred and blistered ruins, Still as the tomb where he should be lying, There weeps the last imperfect human: Broken, bctrayed-yet a long time dying.

There by his feet laps a tiny sea.

Swollen by tears.

It’s the earth’s last water.

There, sluggishly, stirs a single cell— Mindless, unique and immune to slaughter There, in transparent power glowing.

Splitting by instinct, then fusing again; 'There, thriving on the lethal light-rays.

Spawns the weird seed of a new breed of tr

★

★

★

August Shower CYNTHIA DONNELL

Forty-eight

'63

August Shower JANET LACEY

’63

It was raining in the city. A small boy sat on the curb and floated popsicle sticks down the streaming gutter. On the sidewalks, people jostled each other in their haste to find shelter under the awnings.

Groups of interrupted shoppers, mostly women, were huddled in front of every store. It was not a fashionable district.

"Hey, boy! Your momma’s goin’ to give you a lickin’!” called a plump middle-aged woman in a grimy pink sleeveless dress. The boy didn’t look at her. "You better get out of this rain ’fore you get soaked!” she shouted.

This time he looked up. He was soaked, thoroughly and deliciously.

The cool rainwater had completely dispersed the sticky heavy citysummer feeling. He looked back at the foaming brown water in the gutter. Recklessly he put one foot, shoe and all, into the stream. After all, his shoes were already wet, weren’t they? The other foot followed.

For a little while he merely sat like that, not playing, staring at the water and the debris that floated by. He wished he had some twigs to sail. Twigs make better boats than popsicle sticks, he thought, and remembered sending twigs proudly sailing down the rushing brook back home.

'The crowd under the awning was getting restless. "Look at that boy settin’ there in the water!” The woman in pink tried to interest her fellow prisoners in the boy’s disobedience. "I told him to come out of there.” Nobody answered her. One woman was occupied in balancing three bundles. The others seemed to be staring straight out into the rain.

"Sure was sudden, wasn’t it?” ’The extrovert changed her tactics and addressed the bundle-balancer. "Nice bright day and then—whoosh!

Rain cornin’ down in buckets.” ’The woman with the bundles murmured something. The speaker, rebuffed, walked the two steps to the very edge of the awning, presenting the others with her broad back. She devoted all her attention to the boy.

He was still sitting with his feet in the gutter. He felt the rain beat down on his head and shoulders, and he watched the drops dancing in the puddles. And he thought about the brook.

The brook was way back when his father was there. He still didn’t understand it very well; it seemed there was a green place with brooks and a grey place with gutters, and somehow he had gotten him­ self exiled from the one and condemned to the other. He remembered the way it was back home. Sometimes the details got confused and hazy, but he always remembered the greenness. He remembered his father, too: a tall, solemn man who had awed and frightened others, but never his son. Because they two had had a secert. The boy shook his head. Funny—he knew he and his father had had a secret, but he couldn’t remember what it was now.

'Then he thought about his mother. He didn’t think about his mother and father together. In fact, he made a conscious effort not to, because if he did he always relived those terrible scenes. Sometimes he couldn’t help it. ’The other night, for instance, he had been permitted Forty-nine

to go to the movies with the boy next door. (That was the one thing about this new place! He was allowed to do almost everything he wanted. And he didn’t have to do anything he didn’t want. He knew that back home there were plenty of chores for a boy of seven.) He hadn’t understood the movie—it was nothing but a lot of people chas­ ing each other around—^but there was one place in which a beautiful blonde girl shook a broken whiskey bottle at a shaggy-looking older man and shouted, "You cheat! You liar!” and other things. And then, of course, he remembered. But he couldn’t say or do anything; he just sat there in the dark with his eyes squeezed shut until the movie was over.

Now, he wondered what his mother would say if she saw him with his feet in the water. Back home, she used to scold him when he came home from play all messy and rumpled, but he didn’t mind because he always thought there was a smile hidden somewhere in her eyes.

Then, the only time he really had to be neat was when he went to church. He always felt clean and starched and a little uncomfortable as he sat in the tiny Sunday School room in the back of the old stone building with its stained-glass windows, listening to the teacher talk about God. "When good people die,” she had said one day, "they go to Heaven. Heaven is a beautiful place where everyone loves each other and God. All the angels are there too, and everyone is happy.”

She explained all this because his best friend’s grandfather had died.

Someone in the class asked about the bad people, and she said that the bad people went to Hell, where there was fire and the Devil. But she thought that Billy Joe’s grandfather was in Heaven, because he had been a nice man and had whittled toys out of wood not only for Billv Joe but for all the bovs in the neighborhood. It seemed strange, but here in the city they didn’t talk much in Sunday School. They colored in workbooks and cut out pictures instead. And the church didn’t even have any stained-glass windows.

"Hey, you want to get hit by lightnin’?” The dingy woman had edged back to the others and was nervously playing with the catch of her handbag. "This is turnin’ into a thunderstorm!” The huddled groups had diminished, because many people had decided to make a run for it. The sky had become even darker.

The boy did not look up, but he imagined what it would be like to be struck by lightning. A flash of white fire—maybe something like Hell. He looked at the grey sky and grey pavement, and thought of the fresh-smelling place where the rain swelled the brook so that his twigs nearly flew down it when he went out right after the storm had stopped. Why had he been shut out? He thought about church and Hell and Billy Joe’s grandfather. Maybe his parents had done some­ thing terrible. The people in the movie had and so had his parents, but he couldn’t quite figure out what. Or perhaps he had been respon­ sible. Could it be all his fault that his father wasn’t there any longer, and he and his mother had to live in the city?

He was still staring into the water, and suddenly a glint of some­ thing caught his eye out toward the middle of the street where the water was less than an inch deep. A dime! He forgot about his parents.

He very seldom had money all his own to spend. But as he leaped up to get it, he tripped and fell into the gutter. Dirty water ran all over him, but he still reached out to where he had seen the glitter. It wasn’t Fifty

a dime; it was nothing but a bit of tinfoil from a candy wrapper. He crumbled it in his hand and lay for a few moments unmoving in the gutter. A car went by a foot from him. Then something pulled him out; it was the woman in pink.

"What were you doin’ in there?” She pulled him by the arm to the awning. He didn’t resist, but he made no attempt to follow her. The remaining shoppers stared. "He was just lyin’ there in the gutter. Why, if I hadn’t pulled him out he might’ve been hit by a car.” A strange look crossed her face and she edged away from him. "Hey—I think maybe there’s somethin’ wrong with this kid. Boy, just what were you doin’ out there?”

He smiled, "I slipped,” he said. "I was playing at floating boats down the river, and I slipped.”

"Oh.” She sounded relieved. "But why didn’t you get right back up? Are you hurt?”

"No, I’m okay.”

A weary-looking woman with a soft voice spoke up. "Do you live nearby?”

"Yes, just a block away.”

"You really ought to go home. You might catch cold.”

"No, ma’am. I’ll be okay.” He smiled again.

"I’m just waiting here for my dad to come home. He said he’d come early today, so we could go to a movie.”

"Well, he won’t be anxious to take you anywhere looking like that.”

He was already on his way back to the curb. He still had a few popsicle sticks left, and he broke them into pieces which he dropped slowly into the gutter. The women looked at him. "Well, boys will be boys.” said the woman in pink, satisfied at last.

He did not put his feet into the swirling brown foam this time; he sat with his legs tucked under him. He daydreamed about his father coming back and running up the stairs two at a time. He saw his father sitting with him on the tiny bridge that spanned the brook back home, floating sticks and telling stories. He saw himself walking be­ tween his parents down the road toward the old stone church, and he forgot about the popsicle sticks and the women under the awning.

"Jimmy!” He jumped up when he saw his mother approaching him. She looked more tired than the girl in the movie, but just as young. She held her umbrella at the wrong angle; it didn’t keep out the rain. "Jimmy, where have you been? I thought you’d be next door playing with Carl. I came to get you as soon as I got home from work, and—” she looked at him closely. "What on earth have you been doing? You’ve got dirt all over you! It’s even in your hair. And you’re going to catch an awful cold.” She sounded as though she were Fifty-one

about to cry. "Why do you worry me so? You never used to be like this . .

She was talking loudly, and Jimmy glanced nervously toward the stores. To his astonishment he saw that there was no one there.

Not even the woman in pink. The street was deserted.

"Mother, why do we have to live here?” he asked. ". . . you were always so well-behaved. I can’t understand it,” she went on. "Now you insist on playing in the rain and absolutely wreck­ ing your clothes. 1 just can’t understand it.” She began walking rapid­ ly down the street, and he followed. "I’ve got so much to do, and you know it’s not easy—” "Mother,” he persisted. "I want to know something. I want to know why we have to live here.”

She started to reply, but then turned to look at him with the dirt in his hair and on his face. She stopped walking and said nothing.

"I mean just us,” he tried to explain. "Alone like this.”

"Why, Jimmy,” she said. "I didn’t know—^Jimmy, do you miss the country so very much? It’s been almost a year now, and I’d hoped—” She was silent for a moment, then began talking rapidly. "You’ve got so many nice new friends! You told me just the other day how much fun Carl was.”

"He is.” Jimmy looked down. He wasn’t sure if it was the home in the country that he really wanted. "Why can’t we live where it’s nice and green?”

His mother let the umbrella fall and stood there with raindrops hitting her in the face. "Jimmy,” she said, and squeezed his hand. It felt strange instead of comforting; she hadn’t touched him much lately.

'We’ll live in the country again. I promise.”

"When?”

"Oh . . . someday.” Jimmy looked down at the pavement. "Some­ day” was for things to dream about, not for things that happened.

Someday he was going to be a fireman. "And now, Jimmy let’s go home and get changed. Then you can go next door and watch televi­ sion with Carl. You’ll miss 'Ozzie and Harriet’ if you don’t hurry up!” She began walking again, more slowly this time.

"I want to see Billy Joe,” said Jimmy.

"Oh,” breathed his mother. "You want to see Billy Joe!” She smiled at him. It was a happy smile, with something of relief in it.

"That I can do. This very week end. Saturday morning we will go visit Billy Joe!” And Jimmy smiled back. Billy Joe and the brook were still there, at least. He followed his mother home, lagging a little and saying nothing. Next Saturday glinted before him like a dime in the gutter.

Fifty-two

The Simplicity of Faith NATHALIIi BUNCARD ’G6

Honorable Mention, Quiz and Quill Prose A small child has a very impressionable nature. It is during these childhood years that our parents help us form our moral code, encour­ age us to be religious, and help us to adapt to society. Teachers and other adults, even those we do not know by name, also help to leave a very significant impression on us. It was one of the "unknown” adults who left an everlasting impression on me.

I was in the fifth grade and our class was going to make an ex­ cursion to New York City. We, as a class, had made out a typical tourist schedule; the Empire State Building, the U.N., the Statue of Liberty, the Rockefeller Plaza, and the famed St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

The eventful day finally arrived! There was a hush of excitement as the train pulled out of the local station. However, when we pulled into Grand Central Station, there was a hubbub of confusion as every­ one stampeded to their previously assigned groups. Our first stop was the Empire State Building, then the U.N., the Statue of Liberty, the Rockefeller Plaza, and the Cathedral, respectively.

After having seen the Plaza, we walked several blocks until a large stone building loomed before us. As for the facade, I cannot re­ member; it apparently left no impression on me. We reverently mounted the stairs and entered the cathedral. While our eyes were becoming accustomed to the dim candlelight, I am sure that each of us felt some sense of awe. This mood was set by the organ’s soft playing of hymns.

As I looked around at the large, sturdy beams criss-crossing one another on the ceiling, the many rows of candles throughout the church gave it a warm red glow, and the large, graceful statues reverently placed around the altar, I got the feeling of the power and strength of religion. Then, as I started down the aisle, I saw a small hunched figure kneeling in prayer. She was dressed entirely in black, thus re­ minding me of pictures of immigrants as they landed on our shores.

Her olive skin was a complexity of wrinkles from both age and toil.

Her gnarled fingers, gently but firmly, ran over her rosary beads. I stopped and quickly retreated to the back of the church.

It was not until I was on the train that I realized the tremendous impression this scene had made on me. There was her small body, hunched over in deep and sincere humility, lost in the vastness of the cathedral. She was, undoubtedly, a poor, aged, toil-worn woman who was in need of help and forgiveness. Through her simplicity and de­ votion to her faith, she would be relieved of her burden. 'This simplic­ ity was something that a person has to see and feel in order to under­ stand; therefore, no words could possibly and properly express the emotion behind this scene.

When I look back on this excursion, this is the first thing that I recall with any vividness and sentiment. Even when I am sitting in church, I think of this woman, and wish that I, too, could have her simplicity of faith.

Fifty-three

Of Government Work ROCFR SIlll’I.KY '64

"an embryo’s universe” RICHARD II. ORNDORFF '65

Honorable Mention, Quiz and Quill Poetry the steady endless beat oscillating, again and again, the bond, in the darkness; the steady endless heat pulsating, over and over, the plctlgc of assurance, in nothingness; the steady endless beat fluctuating, side to side, the security, in an eternity of black; the steady endless beat alternating, to and fro, the peace, in the void; the steady endless beat throbbing, back and forth, the hope, in the deep abyss; the steady endless beat an eternal beautiful music.

★

Fifty-four

★

★

Bring Him Down A. B. WALTON ’64

He’s not up there you know.

The old man in the church, without the organ, is wrong.

The old Jew is wrong.

No three fold universe this— Bring Him down to men, where He is.

No God sits high in heaven upon the throne.

Heaven, up there?

Satellites, orbits, misfires are up there.

And possibly the crazy Frogs.

Heaven up there?

Don’t be absurdi Bring Him down to Men, where He is.

★

★

★

Somewhere in the Singing RUTH MUCRIDGE ’51

Somewhere in the singing of the day There sounds a note—first, gossamer and faint— That .spins into my lilting song Elusive plaint.

And I am held, bemused and still; (Like one caught fast by flultering, frail hands That pity cannot brush away.)

Nor strength nor will Assists me as I sway.

The urging, poignant note, once tremulous, commands: Make me your songl And I obey.

★

★

★

Of Government Work JANET FLENNER ’64

Third Prize, Quiz and Quill Prose The Government Worker is an entity in himself—his jargon, his surroundings, at times his very thoughts are unique. For three succes­ sive summers, I was a clerk-stenographer at the Defense Electronics Supply Center (DESC), an inter-service depot. Seeing the government at work was a new and fruitful experience for me.

At first when I was still intensely green concerning the workings of our government, "processing-in” was a frightful and tedious ordeal.

I reported on 12 June I960 at 0745 hours as instructed. After waiting approximately two hours in the outer office, I entered the personnel office which was completely devoid of aesthetic appeal and quite unlike the plush office I anticipated. The floor was covered wtih drab grey tile, the uniform metal desks were arranged symmetrically (all were disarrayed with strewn papers), pipes ran across the ceiling, around the room plaques hung denoting outstanding attendance awards and superior performance ratings. A picture of President Eisenhower hung above the head of Miss Harris who brusquely told me to report to Building #45 where I was to receive an initial security briefing. When I first received my temporary pass in the personnel office and boarded the military bus bound for Building #45, I realized I was entering a new realm of ideas.

Fifty-five

Soon I learned that in government writing one never uses the first person, one seldom uses a period except at the end of a sentence, one uses symbols and abbreviations throughout letters, and to an ex­ tent one uses simplified spelling.

For example, a salutation in a personalized letter is Dear Mr Jones not Dear Mr. Jones. The abbreviation for September is Sep not Sept., etc. Essentially every word can be abbreviated, and the abbreviated forms are pronounced as a sound. The accepted pronunciation for DESC is Desy. Specs are specifications. Symbols are used to a great extent.

They designate the directorate, division, branch, section, and unit level of each particular Command .Hence DESC-PAI-1 may represent the Procurement Directorate, Analysis Division, Items Branch #1 of the DESC Command.

In order to economize, the government has accepted simplified spelling for words like through and though, thru and tho.

Ironically, even though the government uses the above mentioned methods to maintain brevity it is continually derided because of its confused, inverted, long, wordy sentences. Generally, even subjects of letters consist of two lines. However, this derision is easily proven fallacious when one notes that the unusual style comes in part from our government’s ingenuity in inventing new words, modifying current words, and using antiquated words. Some such words are: finalize, pre-implement, operational date, target date, debrief, dry-run, sub-task, etc. One dares not question the meaning of pre-implementation; it is explicit.

At DESC, there is no such thing as a business letter. There are, however: interoffice correspondence; oflf-the-depot correspondence; let­ ters for the Commander’s signature; personalized letters; memo-routing slips; twixes; and first, second, and third indorsements. All these and others are non-classified, confidential, secret, or top secret. Also, there are different priorities for each piece of correspondence.

If the government is one thing, it is, above all, organized. In fact its organization is so complete that it requires two reorganizations a year. 'The government worker’s duties are laid out before him in a detailed job description, and beyond this he is assigned from one to three monitorships—monitor of forms, monitor of the safe, monitor of the bulletin board, etc. There is a detailed format for the duties of the monitor of the bulletin board in an APR (and Air Force reg).

This regulation informs the monitor on which side to post information of a permanent quality and on which side to post information of a non-permanent quality. Nothing is neglected; everything is prescribed.

The government seems at times chaotic in its organization. Never­ theless, after working under this regimentation for three summers, one becomes part of the mechanized system. One learns the correct way to spell materiel, that items are not repairable but reparable, and numerous invaluable treasures. One learns the minutia which must be adhered to.

I am proud to say that now when a piece of correspondence comes before me which reads, "Your division has been delegated to the main­ tenance of in-coming and out-going personnel as to their briefing and debriefing concerning the non-reparable items management analysis data coming from Data Processing Branch I know to whom it is to be referred for pre-implementation.

Fifty-six

The Summer of the Lark TEDY-JANE HAGERTY

’64

First Prize, Quiz and Quill Prose

The thermometer read 98° in the shade, but I was sure there must be icicles hanging from each of my fingers. I was scared silly. A week ago, in school, the idea of a summer working in a real theatre, with real live stars had been very exciting indeed. But right now, standing in the vast empty lobby of the theatre, little Miss Talk-of-the-Neighborhood wanted nothing more than to go home!

My eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness of being inside and far to the other side of the vastness I saw the box office. Several deep breaths and thirty miles later, I heard myself asking if I might speak with Mr. Vispi. The lady behind the counter said, "You mean Joe?" I guessed I did, and a moment later I was standing before a tall, thin man dressed in a loud paisley-print shirt, white cravat, black slacks and sandals, who was saying something about, "How are you, dah-ling.^ I wondered when you’d get here. Well, come along, dah-ling.

I’ll show you the theat-ah."

Numbly, I followed, silent for the first time in my life, vaguely hearing words that did nothing but increase my fright. "Well, daliling, how does it feel to be an apprentice?” I didn’t even know what an apprentice was, much less how it felt to be one. Luckily, for me, that man, "Joe,” wasn’t waiting for any answers. It seemed that the more he talked, the less I knew what he was talking about!

"The hattans are hung but the instruments and the legs aren’t up yet,” he was saying, "There’s a lot for you apprenti to do. First, we’ll get your priority straightened out. Have you ever covered flatsP Well, no matter,” he continued without pausing for me to tell him that I’d never heard of a flat, much less "covered” one.

We were standing in the middle of the bare stage as he went on, "Here are the boards.”

Where, I wondered, silently.

"Got to be mopped before we go up. Well, come along, dah-ling, we’ll take the freight to the studio. Oh! ’The showers are on the mezz!’

Showers! I was overjoyed; I knew that word ... I thought.

"Be sure you check with the hands before you touch any of the tagging.” He’d started again, and again I was semantically swamped. "'They’re good fellas, (Who are they?) but there is the charter, you know.” I didn’t know, but was afraid to say so. Evenmally, we arrived in the "studio,” via elevator. Was the "freight” the elevator, maybe?

It was big and could be a "freight elevator!” My self-confidence began to return and even if Joe did lose me in conversation, he was being awfully nice about it.

"Come along, dah-ling, I’ll introduce you to your priorities.” There he went, again, with the big words!

Fifty-seven

I decided that perhaps he had forgotten my name, so at the next "dah-ling,” I ventured that my name was Jane. Joe stopped shock-still and seemingly whirled on me. "Oh!,” he gasped, "that will never do!

We already have three Janes and a Jean; we’ll just have to change yours. Let’s see, 'Bobby.^’ ’Tommy?’ 'Kerry?’ 'Terry?’ Ah! 'Teddy’-yes, that’s it: 'Teddy Jane.’ That’s your new name, dah-ling, 'Teddy Jane’.”

I was given no choice. I was Teddy Jane, for ever and for always.

No time to argue, Joe was already five steps ahead saying, "Do come along, dah-ling, there’s Johnny, your number one priority.” The introductions were soon over and Joe, leaving me with Johnny, parted with the words, "If you need me. I’ll be ttp front. Be good, dah-ling, and work hard.”

I glanced at Johnny and he began to talk to me, in words I un­ derstood. After a few minutes I knew I had a friend who would answer my questions. Johnny had been an apprentice (plural: apprenti) with a theatre group for two years, learning all facets of theatre activ­ ity (which is what apprenti are for) and was now a full-fledged technician with the Dayton 'Theatre Festival. I was his first apprentice and it wasn’t long before my on-the-job education was well under way. I even learned what Joe’s words meant and when to use them!

Battans were metal pipes that hung across the stage to which lighting instruments and drapery legs were attached or hung. A priority list meant I had three bosses in three different departments: Johnny was the boss-man in props - stage properties. Peg was priority in the trunk or wardrobe room, and Bill was the final word in the studio - the scenic shop. Bill was also a hand which merely meant that he belonged to the stagehands’ union. The union had certain rules — the charter by which everyone had to abide. Bill taught me that a flat is part of the wall of a set, and it is covered with canvas; but when I was sent to the store for canvas, I had to be sure to remember to ask for muslin, or I would be sent back for the right stuff. And Joe was always up front, in the box office, to see that I did things the right way.

The restrooms were called the showers, even if they didn’t have a shower and they were on the mezzanine. The stage floor was not the stage floor, it was the boards. The rigging was any of the equipment that had to do with producing the show. And going-up referred to the curtain before the performance, not to someone’s temper; that was blasting.

I learned other terms, too; I learned that at night I no longer went home, home was called bed and suddenly that architectural mon­ strosity of a theatre was home.

Day by day the summer of my lark passed slowly, but taken as a whole it was just one long day which was over too soon. A d was drop­ ped from my new Teddy name and a Dr., as in doctor from my future plans. Moss Hart, the playwright, once said that those who enter the world of the theatre " are spoiled for anything else and are tainted with its insidious lure for the rest of their lives.” Well, / was spoiled and tainted, just as he had said, and I loved every minute of it, "dahling!”

Fifty-eight

La Garde-Freiaet JANET LACEY

’63

First Prize, Quiz and Quill Poetry In Fiance, there’s a town in a valley.

On all four sides rise the mountains.

(There are many valley-towns in France, But this is the one I know;) It’s a poor little town in a valley.

And there are no marble fountains, And no movie-house, and no hall to dance, And there no tourists go.

But it rains only gentle showers.

And the old sit on doorsteps, dreaming.

And the children run in the village street And go home when they tire of play: And the old church clock tells tire hours, .\nd in sunset’s golden gleaming Comes the tired tread of the fanners’ feet Walking home at the end of day.

And the cool mistral blows forever Past the ancient houses crumbling.

And the modern world goes its busy way While here the ages creep.

And the tired chime ceases never With a tuneless, rusty rumbling.

To revive the faith of another day For a gentle town, asleep.

★

★

★

Approach to the Meaning of Life On reading “The Life We Prize” by Elton Trueblood FREDA KIRTS SHOWER

’27

My father planted trees: he did not eat Their fruit nor sit in coolness of their shade.

The trees have grown and contribution made To human kind he would have loved to greet.

We laurels bring to teachers known to meet Their students in classroom or verdant glade; Unselfishly their life and wisdom paid To those they hoped would prove not tares, but wheat.

So many are the souls who toil unknown.

The little fellowship of folks at prayer Lends hope and health to many men who wait.

These want no honor for the seed that’s sown.

Finding a joy in offerings they may share.

They have the key to open heaven’s gate.

★

★

★ Fifty-nine

Night Trip JANET LACEY

’63

I think of you all confusedly together, friends of the wee small uncomfortable Greyhound hours of many a whizzing year. Your voices are one, confiding: the intimacy of midnight strangers sitting together in the uneasy darkness, watching the lights of silent towns slip by.

Strange towns, those— moonlit and neutral, offering nothing. Dusty, vacant Main Streets, the eternal neon of uninhabited stores.

No wonder wc spoke to each other, and as friends!

For we were alone, sharing a seat to somewhere, with darkness without and within, and never a soul.

All we saw out there were the empty streets and other vehicles as complete as ours, as dark, as cut off, bound for somewhere else.

We talked because we dared not think too much alone in a machine, in the company of other machines; we talked in a tiny cigarette-glow. . .

Oh, I remember you, you with your great education or lack of it, you with your wonderful plans— going North to teach, or build, or just to go North— and now that I sleep at night, and stay in one place, I miss the miraculous freedom we had, friend-stranger, going somewhere, with only us and the night.

★

★

★

1961 April JEAN UNGER CHASE

’43

In April when the sun is slow And rain drips constant background To gray days, A homesick heart dips back in memory To capture spring it knew.

Cry back the past—the love that Never was; Youth and heartbreak bittersweet.

Conjure new-moon wishes and a Quiet river walk.

There is no safe return, and then Cannot be now.

That song must die half-sung.

The spring a heart knows is Only for the young.

★ Sixty

★

★

The Young at Heart THALIA NIKIDES

’65

Honorable Mention, Quiz and Quill Prose Our family, gathered together regardless of time or place, had always impelled feelings of warmth and closeness. Though as children we often exhibited a joy of freedom which conflicted with our dom­ inating parent’s implacable sternness, there still seemed to exist a wholesome atmosphere where child and adult inadvertently arrived at a communion of understanding.

Yet as we children grew older, matured, and went our separate ways — Sterg to the army and later marriage, Lea and I to college, and Joanne left at home — the family functions became fewer, having been lost in the individual activities of each member. Togetherness became a stale and unused word which lacked meaning in our household, for the family had disintegrated to only three members. The house once brimming with voices both young and old, stagnated to cold and empty echoing rooms. This was perhaps the greatest adjustment for my parents — to realize that each of us had to leave that house of wonderful memories to find homes of our own in the vast domain of life.

Yet Mom and Dad were always compensated somewhat by our return home for special occasions. On one such occasion, my father’s and eldest nephew’s birthday, I came from college to witness again the traditional heartwarming reunion which pleasantly occurred with the "return of the natives.” Cheery sounds of welcome, joy, and end­ less chatter vibrated through the house as each brother and sister ar­ rived to attend the dinner of the honored father and grandson.

With the addition of three grandchildren, a brother-in-law, and a sister-in-law, there were now eleven people seated together around the family table. We were definitely cramped as each elbow fed into the plate of the person on either side, but who could really complain about the horrid conditions. We were together again as a family, sus­ tained in the complete awareness that a moment in our past child­ hood would be relived.

Father, as usual, sat at the head of the table beaming with happi­ ness and gladness that he once again could visit each of his children’s faces with a knowledge that his role as father was complete. 'The kitchen had always been Mother’s most satisfying room and she wasted no time in letting it be known. Tlie heavenly aromas of freshly baked bread and desserts, the delectable odor of fine meats, and the specially prepared Greek dishes of richly procured spices lent to each of us the pangs of starvation and anticipation for a meal which seemed too unbelievable for eating; the arresting odors would have been justly sufficient to satisfy our needs. Still Mother scurried about the kitchen fetching delicacies from all corners of the room — the refrigerator, pantry, oven, cupboards — every area of her domain seemed to hold some other hidden treasure. She relished the opportunity of prepar­ ing a big meal which catered to each of our chosen tastes and this meal was no exception. Finally, after mentally checking that everything Sixty-one

was in its proper place, she sat down opposite to Father at the table.

In front of each plate a traditional party hat and festive horn was placed. To an ordinary onlooker we all probably looked exceedingly ridiculous in our colorful hats as we blew triumphantly on our small horns, but that really didn’t matter. All that mattered was the pure enjoyment and fun we irrevocably experienced.

Chaos could be the only word to describe the gathering. Shouts of "watch the baby,” "where’s that blasted camera,” or "serve the lamb ’ chimed almost incessantly. There was laughter and smiles, chatter and screams bellowing to all corners of the house although we were seated in only the breakfast room. Everyone tried to talk simultaneously, and some being frustrated at their efforts merely leaned back waiting for Father to begin grace.

Eleven heads bowed quietly as Father gave thanks. "Our Father, we entreat thee to forgive our past misdeeds. We thank thee especially this evening for bringing us together that we may become as one in thankfulness of thy wondrous gifts. Let this evening be complete with the sharing of both love and joy which thy merciful Son proclaimed to us years ago. And let this family remain always bound together in spirit, love, and thankfulness. Amen.”

Following the prayer, I glanced about the table peering into each face aware that they too recognized the sacredness of that moment. A birthday cake placed in the center had this inscription: "To the Young at Heart.” The value of that hour in the midst of my family could never be forgotten by any means. We had experienced the greatest of all human gifts — the gift of unselfish, unending love shared commonly regardless of time, place, or event. We were still the young at heart with hopes of the future together and an understanding of the past departures from each other.

Outpost CYNTHIA DONNITL

Sixty-two

'63

Extended Sublimity DA\'ID S. CALIHAN '66

Honorable Mention, Qtdz and Quill Prose Many people think of themselves as being shallow vessels filled to over-flowing because of some fabulous and over-powering religious experience, because of an exhilarating feeling of closeness to Nature during a particular instance, because of the acquisition of a long sought-after and worthy goal, or because of the mystical feeling of peace and satisfaction achieved upon truly helping some unfortunate in dire human need. I, too, have felt this emotion, this sense of un­ deserved reward, of complete, all-encompassing, and magnificently splendorous contentment.

My ecstasy didn’t appear as the result of an unusual incident nor was it the result of any of the aforementioned conditions, although the first three were of some direct, but only partial connection. Rather, it was effected by the second-oldest motivation known to man—1 fell in love.

I didn’t realize my lot at first, and even when 1 did begin to sus­ pect the best of all possible situations, 1 was reluctant, almost afraid, to confirm my true status even to myself; I had been too deeply dis­ appointed in other things before, and 1 was fearful of committing my­ self to another opportunity for personal defeat. But the retarding ef­ fect this initial aversion had on the overall condition of my seemingly boundless joy appears, in retrospect, to have been extremely negligible.

Instead, I felt positive that I had never been visited by a more glowing happiness or any sense of greater well-being. For the first time, it seemed, I was more or less at peace with the world as I knew it, even friendly with most of it, and, perhaps more important, I felt that the world was friendly towards me. I went my ways with a perpetual smile on my face for weeks at a time, something that was considered completely out of character for me. Almost no adversity could hold my attention for long, and I began to ignore those consternations which had previously caused concern or irritation.

I took renewed interest in things which had begun to bore me, and I found myself instilled with a new and higher enthusiasm for them.

Athletically, I surpassed even my own expectations several times. In three different major track meets, I somehow managed to dredge up extra reserves of energy and thereby "save the day” to a certain ex­ tent against heavy odds, simply because I had that wonderful feeling of running "for her,” for that angel sitting with wings aflutter in the stands.

Personally, I made new friends of old acquaintances when I be­ gan to look for the good qualities in them—if she liked this person or that, why shouldn’t I? Emotionally, I took long strides toward maturation. I learned what it was to care for and to be concerned for the welfare of some­ one other than self. When one had problems, they were shared. When one was happy, the sensation was transmitted to the other. Each as­ sumed many of the habits, views, and idiosyncrasies of the other.

Sixty-three

Philosophically, I became something of an optimist. If the hot sun seemed to be sizzling as never before, I noticed only that the sky was a deeper blue than yesterday. When there was rain, I saw a somber beauty in the overcast and mist and knew a gentle comfort in the rattle on the roof. When my car ran out of gasoline, I enjoyed the long, cool, morning walk. When I scored poorly on an examination, I was satisfied to have merely passed. When we had a minor disagree­ ment, I quickly discovered the quiet pleasure of making up.

I learned what it was like to live and I heard the ticking of the universe. I could do anything and everything, anytime and all the time.

My wagon was hitched to the proverbial star and nothing could ever slow me down for long. ....................... And now, she is gone.

Our Free Land JF.AN MATTOX '62

There are rumors the wind is in the wheat, It breathes upon the silken stalks, They bow to a setting sun.

The field mouse cautiously wanders.

He stops, nose to ground he sniffs.

With eagerness he chews a morsel of food.

His world is vast.

He sees no end.

So slowly the grazing cow attends her job.

The world has not seen fit to push her.

Freedom is always criticized.

A cycling boy drinks the freshness in the air.

His heart is happily singing.

A modern vehicle rushes by.

Impatiently a horn is sounded.

The boy is in the way.

Tlie car wants no delay.

At least a fieldmouse can go at its own pace.

*

*

*

Ode to Elastic KATHY KANTO ’64

O thou God of great extemsibilityStretch down thy ever resilient finger And gather all things of buoyancy that linger: Conceal the convexity of my languishing youth That stems from my curse of an over-sweetened tooth.

Squeeze my entrails; my hips also fetch.

Holding them fast in a strong two-way stretch.

Bind in my waistline with a thick rubber thread From its present forty-seven to size twenty instead.

I’ll reform my bad habits, nevermore to indulge If you’ll remove the penance of eternal midriff-bulge.

★ Sixty-jour

★

★

A House Divided JOHN SOLIDAY

’62

First Prize, Walter Lowrie Barnes Short Story Contest, ’61 The cabin door swung open and Tim bounded across the dirt floor to the place where his mother stood by the table. "Here’s your flour,” he said, dropping a large sack onto the bench and brushing the powderwhite dust from his hair.

"Don’t set it there,” his mother said as she placed a peeled apple into the earthen­ ware bowl on the table. "It belongs in the barrel.”

Tim picked up an apple and began munching on it.

"Don’t eat up the apples either,” his mother commanded. "We got so few early ones this year as it is.”

Tim hoisted the sack of flour back onto his shoulder and carried it to the back of the room. "Pa’s been drinkin’ again, Ma,” he said, looking back at the well-rounded figure of his mother. Her smiling face grew wrinkled. "I had a hard time gettin’ the bag.’

"Again?”

"Doc said he’s gotta stop or it’ll kill him.”

"I try to tell him, Tim,” his mother said, adjusting the sleeves of her ragged black sweater.

Tim looked down at her, "He got out of hand in town. I had to git him out before he started a fight.”

"Sometimes,” his mother paused, "sometimes, I think it’d do him good to git hit over the head.”

"They brought in Fred Hiller with a broken leg while I was at Doc’s house.” Tim tried to change the subject. "He fell out of his wagon. I helped Doc fix it up.”

"He never used to drink so when he went to town, Tim,” she per­ sisted. "I used to be proud to go with him. He never asks me to go with him anymore.”

"He’s got lots of work to do.”

"What, sit in the stable an’ booze it up while they saw his logs at the mill?” She paused for a moment, wiping her hands on the sides of her ragged, homespun dress. "Oh Tim, I hope you an’ your brother never take to drinkin’ .... Your Pa never even touches me anymore ... but what he’s rough.”

Tim loosened the string around the top of the flour sack. "It was a big day in town, Ma,” he said. "Just like a fair.”

"A fair? It’s been years an’ years since I seen a fair. What was it for?”

"They had bands playin’ an’ people speakin’ —.” Tim dumped the contents of his sack into the barrel. A large white cloud of powder filtered through the room. "Ugh,” he coughed. "I can’t breathe!”

"Well, hurry an’ put the lid back on!” his mother ordered, pulling the apron up to her face.

Sixty-five

Tim grabbed the lid and slammed it down on the barrel.

"Look at you,” laughed his mother. "Your trousers are more white than they are blue.”

Tim glanced down at the front of his clothes. "Look cleaner than they did before I put ’em on,” he laughed. "About as white as your hair.”

"Thanks,” his mother grinned. "That’s from worry, not from flour.” She adjusted the small, unkempt knot of hair at the back of her neck, and brushed the front of her dress. Grabbing a long metal fork from a peg in the wall, she walked to the fireplace and began poking in the large iron kettle.

"Doc’s thinkin’ of joinin’ up North ... if he does. I’m goin’ with him.”

"What? I can’t hear ye, the fire’s poppin’.”

"I said Doc’s maybe goin’ North.”

"Oh? What for?”

"To help out in the camps.”

"What camps?”

Before she could get a reply, Gus roared into the house. Tim turned to his father. The man was built like an ox. Ragged pieces of clothing hung in disorder from his broad shoulders and long lanky limbs. His face was half covered with a grizzly matted beard from which he shot an occasional stream of tobacco juice.

"Tim! You in here?” he bellowed, tossing his battered felt hat onto the dark quilted bed in the corner.

"Yes, Pa,” Tim replied.

"Why ain’t ya out helpin’ Jim do the chores?”

"I brung in the flour for Ma,” Tim said without moving.

Nettie looked up at her husband’s red face. "Supper’s ready, Gus. Let’s eat first. Corn ain’t good after it’s cooked too long.”

"Supper kin wait, Nettie. Tim should’a had ’em done by now.”

"We just got back. Pa.” "That don’t make no difference. Ye’s been in here with your Ma long enough to have done ’em long ago.”

"He was tellin’ me about town,” Nettie defended.

Gus turned. "What about town?” he asked sharply.

"It don’t matter,” Nettie mumbled.

"I asked ye what he said!”

"He was just tellin’ me what Doc’s doin’ an’ how ye got the logs sawed—.”

"Gossip!” Gus took off his coat and slammed across the table.

"It ain’t gossip!” Nettie bit back.

"All you women folk ever do is gossip!”

"It ain’t gossipin’ to ask what’s goin’ on in town. I gotta find out some way.”

Gus turned back to Tim. "Git out there boy! Ye want me to beat ya?”

"I’m goin’,” Tim said as he walked out the door and pulled it shut behind him.

Gus stumbled to the fireplace. "Damn kids! Can’t do nothin’ without bein’ told.”

"Don’t take your drinkin’ out on the boys,” Nettie said picking up another apple.

"Who told ya I been drinkin’? Tim tell ya?”

Sixty-six

"He didn’t have to! All I gotta do is look.” Nettie began to clear the table. "What was Tim speakin’ about goin’ on in town today?” she asked.

"About what?” Gus questioned quickly.

"A fair, with bands, an’—.”

"Weren’t nothin’!”

"What was it?”

Gus looked away. "Don’t make no difference.”

"I wanta know!” Nettie demanded. "I’ve a right to know!”

Gus sat down on the stool by the fire and took off his mud caked boots. "They’re gettin’ men to sign up.”

Nettie jerked up dropping a stack of plates onto the table. "For what?”

"The rebellion,” Gus replied calmly.

"You mean the war?”

Gus nodded his head.

Nettie sank slowly into a chair. "The bands, an’ speakin’, an’ . . .

Gus? Tim’s thinkin’ of joinin’ up.”

Gus spit in the fire. "He’s just talkin’.”

"No, Gus. I think this time ... I think he means it.”

Gus leaned back, his feet sprawled on the dirt floor in front of him. "When I was a kid I told my old man I’d run off, so he said, 'go ahead,’ but I never did.” He paused, thinking back a second.

"Most boys act like this one time or another.”

Nettie looked up, her eyes were misty. "I hope so,” she said.

"Oh Gus, I hope so.”

"Damn kid better never run off,” Gus muttered into the fire.

"I’d come near killin’ him.”

•

*

*

*

Outside, Jim had just finished his feeding and was walking over to the pig pen where Tim stood, leaning against the fence.

"Pretty night ain’t it?” Jim said looking up into the sky. "Sep­ tember’s always a pretty month.” Through the pines on the hill he could see the first star begin to fade in and out of the pale blue vastness. Darkness had come fast into the valley before it had touched the sky. Off in the distance, lights glowed from the windows of Simpson’s cabin. Occasionally Jim would stare at them as if they had some magnetic pull upon his mind.

Tim looked up at his brother, who was a few inches taller. "It sure is a pretty night,” he said after a long pause. "Looks like it’s gonna’ git colder though. Maybe we’d best take in some extra logs.”

He paused a while then continued, "Mrs. Anderson thought I was you again today. She kept sayin’, 'My goodness, my goodness, I never thought of Tim bein’ so big.’ ” Jim laughed.

"Why do people think we look alike?” Tim asked.

"I reckon it’s our blond hair and blue eyes,” his brother replied.

"You’re gettin’ ’bout as tall as me too.”

Tim smiled. "Ma said she can’t let out my pants anymore so if I don’t stop growin’ I ain’t gonna have any to wear.”

Jim laughed as he took his foot off the fence. He laid a board on top of the slop barrel and turned the dirty bucket upside down over it.

"Ye ain’t told me yet what ya think,” Tim said, after a long pause.

Sixty-seven

"About what, the war?” Jim asked.

"Uh huh.”

Jim thought for a while. "It’s up to you Tim,” he said. "If you feel that way, leave an’ go North.”

"You think it’s right, Jim?” ^ If that’s the way you feel, I suppose it is.”

"I mean, is the way I feel right?”

Jim pondered, brushing the hair back from his eyes. "I don’t know, Tim.” "Do you think so, maybe?”

"It ain’t right for me, Tim, but maybe it is for you.”

"If Pa goes South, you goin’ with him?” Tim asked.

"If he makes me,” Jim replied.

"He wouldn’t make me unless I wanted to,” Tim said firmly.

"I ain’t like that with Pa, Tim. You can stand up to him, I can’t.

Maybe he was never a Pa to you like he was to me.” Jim turned and rested his arms on the fence. "Ever since you got old enough to enjoy a Pa, he’s been drinkin’ an’ angry. Pa’s to me like Doc is to you. I feel like I gotta watch out for him.”

Together they walked, without talking, to the wood pile. As Jim bent over to pick up a log, Tim grabbed for his hand.

"Jim,” he stuttered. "Doc’s cornin’ out to git me tonight.”

"What?”

"We’re leavin’ tonight . . . we’re join’ up with the Fourth Union Regiment . . . An’, just in case I don’t git to say goodby then. . .

They remained silent, each feeling the grip of the other’s hand, each sensing the look of the other’s eyes through the darkness.

"Ya been a good kid,” Jim whispered without moving. "Ya take care of yourself, don’t do anything stupid. This fightin’s for real now . . . not like when we used to play . . . Maybe after the war . . .

Jim stopped.

Tim didn’t answer him, there was no need. Each of them picked up an armload of logs and walked to the cabin. #

*

*

*

"I’m warnin’ you boys that after this ya’ best git started earlier on the feedin’,” Gus said as they sat down for supper.

"There they is, an’ theah’s plenty more in the pot,” Nettie said as she placed the golden ears of corn on the table.

"Sure looks good, Ma,” Tim smiled as she returned to the fireplace.

Gus reached for an ear and rolled it across the mound of butter.

"Big day in town, Jim. Should’ve been with us,” he said.

Jim munched across his ear of corn, then looked up. "That’s what Tim was tellin’ me.”

Nettie carried the coffee pot from the fireplace and began filling the dark pottery mugs with the steaming black liquid. "How was workin’ for the Hillards today, Jim?” She cut in, trying to change the subject.

"We got the north field cut an’ into the barn.”

"Ya got hayseed in your hair, too,” Nettie smiled, smoothing her hands across his head.

"They was gettin’ guys to sign up fer the Kentucky Regiments,” Gus continued.

Sixty-eight

Jim reached for a second ear. "Tim said a lot of the men was signin’ up.”

"Yep,” Gus continued, "Sid Hawkins, Henty Mathews, Pike Wells an’ his boys .... Damn Lincoln anyway. Settin’ the whole country on fire.

"Mr. Lincoln’s a good man,” Tim said calmly.

Gus jerked up suddenly. "Good is he? Takin’ away men’s rights?”

"He’s givin’ men their rights.”

"Who, slaves? You call them men?”

Tim looked down at the table. "They’s people. They got as much a right to live as us.”

Gus roared with laughter. "People? Them’s people? Have you ever seen a slave, Tim? Black as coal they is, an’ dumb! Dumb!”

He looked at Tim squarely. "They’s animals, they ain’t people!”

Tim stared back at his father. "You’re no better!”

"Hush, Tim,” Nettie whispered. "You know your father’s not feelin’ right!”

Gus swung to his feet, upsetting the chair behind him. With a swing of his arms he slapped Tim across the face. What ya doin, sidin’ up with the North?”

Tim remained silent.

"Answer me! Who’s Doc for? Is he for the North?”

"Gus, calm down!” Nettie cried, running around the table to him.

"Answer me!” Gus roared, jerking Tim up by the shoulders. "Is that who you was thinkin’ of joinin’ up with? Is that why ya’ wouldn’t tell me?”

"I’d have told ya’ if ye’d ask me!” Tim bit back.

"I’m askin’ya now!”

Tim swallowed hard. "Yes, Pa. Doc is for the Union . . . an’ . . .

I’m for the Union.”

Gus shoved Tim back into his seat. "My own son. My own son!

They laughed at Fields ’cause his son turned traitor ... an’ I laughed with ’em . . . we all laughed. I never . . . ! I never thought my own son would .. turn traitor! ” Nettie grabbed Gus’s shoulders, jerking him around.

He s just a boy, Gus,” she argued. "You said so yourself. You said when you was a boy—.”

"I never turned against my Pa!” Everything was quiet. Gus turned back toward Tim. "Lincoln not only tears a country apart, he tears families apart, too. That’s what pretty talkin’ does, Tim—teare people away from each other—makes boys turn their backs on their own pas. . . . When you heard Lincoln campaignin’ in Jackson, you didn’t know what he’d turn out to be. None of us knew. He used big words, he shook folk’s hands, an’ made like he was a good man. You was too young son . . . You’re still too young to understand.”

Tim looked at his father, almost afraid to speak. "It ain’t Lincoln’s fault,” he mumbled.

"What?”

"I said it ain’t Lincoln’s fault. It’s the people’s.”

"What people?”

Tim looked at his hands. "People like you,” he said in a near whisper. "People who want to fight. I heard ya’ mumblin’ all the way back from town about how you an’ Jim was gonna join up an’ sixty-nine

I could stay home to care for Ma.” "No, Gus, you didn’t?” Nettie begged frantically. "He was drunk, Tim. He didn’t know what he was sayin’.”

"He knowd what he was saying’!”

Gus looked at Tim, his eyes red with anger. "Hush up! Hush up boy!”

Jim lunged to his feet. "Pa! Sit down, control yourself!” he yelled.

Gus pushed Jim’s arms away. "It’s them books an’ papers at Doc’s that makes ya’ think this way. I knew this readin’ weren’t no good fer ya. Ya’ learn too many things ya’ shouldn’t know. ’Cause they speak pretty words too—like Lincoln an’ Doc.” "You leave Doc out of this, Pa!” Tim shouted.

"Why? He’s at fault too ain’t he? Ain’t he? He put it into your mind. He’s the traitor!”

"Shut up, Pa,” Tim mumbled slowly.

"He’s a damn traitor!”

"I said shut up. Pa!” Gus roared on, "A spy right here in our own town! Our doctor .

Tim swung to his feet, drawing back his clenched fists in rage.

"Control yourself, Tim,” Jim cautioned, grabbing his younger brother by the shoulders.

Gus jerked back in rage, "Strike me will ye. . .? Git out of this house!”

"Gus!” Nettie sobbed.

"Git out of this house!”

"Pa, you know what you’re doin’!” Jim screamed.

Tim jerked from Jim’s grip and ran up the ladder to the loft.

Gus sank back into his chair. "Git your things an’ don t ever come back!”

"Gus, he’s our son,” Nettie cried, running to the ladder.

Jim turned away from the table, and picking up his coat, walked to the door.

"Where ya’ goin’, Jim?” his father called to him.

"To Judy’s house,” Jim replied without turning.

"Again? Every night you go to her house!”

Jim put on his jacket. "It’s better than stayin here.”

"I know what your doin’, don’t think I ain’t smart enough to see,” Gus grinned.

"You’d best go to bed. Pa,” Jim warned.

"An’ you’d best be watchin’ yourself, too. If Simpson catches ya, he’ll make ya’ marry her.”

Jim stared at his father blankly. "Pa. . .! I never done nothin’ like... like that!”

"Then what do you do?” Gus asked, a smirk spreading across his face.

"We talk.”

"Talk? Talk!” Gus roared with laughter.

"Yes, we talk,” Jim bit out, pulling the door open, slamming it shut behind him.

Gus staggered to the shelf where he picked up an old jug and began drinking from it in long, slow gulps.

Seventy

"Tim, what ya’ doin’?” Nettie sobbed, climbing into the loft.

"I’m gettin’ my things,” he said weakly.

"He didn’t mean it, Tim.” "I can’t stand it no longer, Ma. He was makin’ fun of me in town today for readin’. In front of everyone, he laughs at me an’ says 'Only sissies read!”’

"He was drunk, Tim.” "No one ever gits that drunk.”

"Tim, wait till tomorrow. I’ll put him to bed, he won’t know you’re still here.”

"I can’t take any more of it. Ma, did you hear the way he just talked to Jim?” "Please, son. Per me. Stay fer me.”

"Ma, it’ll just make it worse fer me to wait till tomorrow.”

"It’s dark out, Tim. He’ll go right to sleep. He’s probably asleep already. Please, son, git some sleep. You’re at home now.

Things ain’t as easy when ya’ git away from home.”

"I’m sixteen now, Ma. I kin take care of myself.”

"Of course, Tim. But fightin’s not for you, nor for Jim either.

Ye should stay here an’ take care of the farm.”

"An’ have people laugh at me because I’m scared to fight?”

"Don’t let what folks think of ya’ make no difference, Tim. You’re still young. You’ve got a lot o’ lamin’ to do yet.”

"Sometimes ya’ gotta give up one thing for another, Ma.” "I don’t want ya’ goin’, Tim. If your Pa goes, I know he won’t come back. He’ll git like he is tonight, an’ . . . Oh Tim, don’t go!”

"Ya’ may just as well quit talkin’, Ma. I done made up my mind to go, an’ I’m goin’.” Tim walked to the edge of the loft. "It’s too late to change now.” Carefully he nirned and began climbing down the ladder. His mother remained silent as she followed him. 'When he reached the bottom, he helped his mother down, then turned to go.

"Good bye. Pa,” he said looking at his father who was in the process of cleaning his rifle.

"Where ya’ goin’?” the older man grunted.

"I told ya’ where I was goin’.”

"I asked where ya’ was goin’,” he barked, his face flushing with anger. "Don’t talk back to me like that.”

"I’m goin’ North, Pa.” "Have ye thought it over?”

"Yes, Pa.” "An’ ye’ve made up your mind?”

"Yes, Pa.” Gus looked away, picked up his rag, and began polishing the gun in long, slow strokes.

Tim turned to face his mother. "Bye, Ma.” "Oh, Tim,” she sobbed throwing her arms around his shoulders.

"Be careful!”

Everything was silent. The two clung to each other, neither one speaking.

Gus looked up from across the room. He slowly chewed at a wad of tobacco in the left side of his mouth.

"Let him go, Nettie,” he drawled slowly. "He ain’t goin’ no place.”

Seventy-one

Tim looked up. His father sat staring at him. "Go to bed, son!” he ordered.

Tim stood motionless.

"I said go to bed!”

"I heard ye the first time, Pa.” Tim grasped his mother’s hand, then dropped it and stepped away.

"I told ya’ he didn’t care,” Nettie smiled. "I told ye he wouldn’t mind your stayin’ on.”

"It won’t work, Ma,” Tim said, walking toward the door.

"Stand still!” Gus commanded behind him.

Tim stopped and turned slowly around. Gus had climbed to his feet and was pointing the rifle at his son. "Don’t you dare step another inch toward that door!”

"Gus!” Nettie gasped.

"Bye, Pa,” Tim said, turning back to the door and opening it.

"I said stop!”

"If you’re gonna shoot me. Pa, you’ll have to shoot me now!”

"Why you damn little smart. . .!” Gus swung the gun to his shoulder. "I’ll kill you fer that.”

"Gus,” Nettie cried, grabbing an old Bible from the shelf. With a sudden burst of speed, she swung the book down across his head.

At the same instant, the gun went off and a fine mist of smoke filtered between Nettie and the door. Gus staggered a second, then fell.

"Tim! Tim!” Nettie raced toward her son. The young boy’s body was spread out across the ground in front of the door. "Tim!’ she gasped, falling over him.

"It’s fine, Ma,” Tim smiled rolling over. "I jumped before he shot.”

"Oh Tim!” Nettie slowly rose to her feet. "Tim, there’s some­ one coming.”

A black carriage pulled by a gray mare swung through the trees and pulled to a stop in front of the house.

"You ready to go, Tim?” a clear deep voice called out.

Nettie looked up at the tall, dark-haired young man sitting on the black leather seat. "Why, Doc—! What you doing here?”

"Doc an’ I’s goin’ tonight, Ma.” Tim explained, brushing the dust off his clothes.

"Did I hear a shot?” the young doctor questioned, jumping lightly from the buggy.

"It’s Gus,” Nettle said calmly. "But you needn’t worry about him, I whacked him one over the head.”

"Maybe I’d better take a look at him,” the doctor said striding into the cabin. He and Tim carried Gus to the bed.

Nettie followed them. "He’s been drinkin’ so it’ll do him good to sleep some,” she said.

"He sure is out,” Doc said rubbing his sensitive fingers across the man’s head. "What’d ya’ use?”

"The Bible!” Nettie smiled.

Doc laughed as he pulled a blanket over Gus. "Well, he won’t forget it fer a while.”

"Ya’ sure ya’ wouldn’t like somethin’ to eat before ya’ go?”

Nettie tried to stall. "I got a whole pot of corn on the fire, no one else will eat it. It ain’t as good when it’s cooked so long but—.”

Seventy-two

"No thanks, Mrs. Morgan.”

"Well, I’d send some along but cold corn ain’t no good.”

"We’ll be fine, Ma,” Tim said softly.

"Ye should git some rest an’ leave in the mornin’.”

"We’ve got no time to waste, Ma’m.”

"Who’s gonna’ take care of your patients. Doc?” "Dr. Allaman. I figured one of us oughta’ go and since he’s older, I said I’d go.”

"Is it worth it. Doc?” "I don’t know, Ma’m. One never knows about anything ’till he’s tried. ’Things are pretty bad. There’s a lot of sick and wounded with no one to take care of ’em. When I became a doctor I made a vow that I’d help out wherever I was needed most, and I reckon I’m needed at the War now. That’s why I’m takin’ Tim. He knows some things I taught him an’ I’m gonna need lots of help.”

"Why ya’ goin’ North?” '"There’s a great battle goin’ on,” the doctor said, looking toward the fire. "It’ll make the country or break her an’ Tm for keepin’ her together. Other’n that I reckon Td be needed on one side as much as the other. stars.

Nettie followed them outside to the buggy. The sky was full of Over the hill at Simpson’s a dog barked then grew quiet.

"I think Lincoln knows what he’s doin’, Ma’m. he kin keep the States together.”

I pray to God

"Gus is talkin’ of takin’ Jim tomorrow. . . . They’re goin’ South . . . Doc ... if you ever come on ’em . . , an’ they need help, don’t ... don’t let ’em down.”

"We won’t, Ma. the carriage.

You know that,” Tim said as he climbed into

"If Gus an’ Jim do go, don’t you stay out here by yourself,” Doc said, picking up the reins. "You go in an’ stay with Nan.” "Oh, I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.” tried to smile. "Got plenty here ... keep me busy enough.”

Nettie

"Bye, Ma.” Nettie reached for Tim’s hand as the carriage began moving toward the road. "You’re sure, son?” she yelled, running along side of them.

"Yes, Ma, I made up my own mind.” '"Then take care of yourself ... an’ give my best to your Uncle Sid if ya’ see him. He joined up last week ya’ know. Stick close to Doc here. . . .” As they reached the road, Tim let go of her hand and waved. Nettie stopped by the gate. A blanket of dust and fallen leaves blew up into the night air between them. "Write, Tim,” she called. "Drop me a—.” But they were around the curve and out of sight. ". . . line,” she mumbled to herself. "A house ... a country divided. . .” Her lips continued to move but there was no sound. Picking up the gate, she swung it back into place and, dropping the latch into its slot, headed toward the cabin.

Seventy-three

Conquest of Life CORDON GREGG

’63

Second Prize, Roy A. Burkhart Poetry Contest Pare a hollow tube of elder Pop the pith from End to other.

No, not better than the bird.

Strike hard the flake of flint Catch the glow In fragile lint.

No, not better than the sun.

Weave a mat of straw and tow Pull it round To fend the blow.

No, not better than the tree.

Mold your brick of dung and loam Cover o’er To make a home.

No, not better than a cave.

Build an altar on firm ground; Pray the thoughts that mind has found.

Look you forth to claim as thine All of yours and all of mine.

Fight and reap: return to sod. . .

All you have belongs to God.

★

★

★

To My Children SYLVIA VANCE

’47

Three things I wish for you.

May your ^iefs be rivers You will cross but will not follow Drifting.

May love Become through you An ocean’s endless tide Whose ebb and flow is constant on Your shore.

And last— May each new spring Hold all the wonder of The rushing brook upon whose banks You dreamrf.

★

Seventy-four

★

★

Marienlied (A Song for Marie) FRtEDRICH VON HARDENBERG

Ich sehe dich in lausend liildern, Maria, lieblich, ausgedruckt, Dock keins von alien kann dich schildern, H'ic ineine Seele dich erblickt.

Ich weiss nur, dass der Welt Getummel Seitdem mir wie ein Traum verweht, Und ein unnennbar susser Himmel Mir ewig im Gemute steht.

Translated by

philip o. deever

’34

I see thee in a thousand lights, Marie, so lovely is thy name; Vet none of these can put to rights The way thou dost my soul inflame, I only know the world’s unrest Since then fades dream-like at the dawn; And heaven comes at thy behest To fix my mind forever on.

★

★

★

Concern PRISCILLA SECRIST

’63

Miriam was angry again.

I had told her that Nol she could not shave her dachshund with the pinking shears.

And she told me that I was fired.

And I told her to go to her room.

And she told me that not only was I fired.

But that I was no longer her favorite babysitter.

Feeling self-righteous as any god or guardian, I returned to the kitchen.

Where the black, fur-covered dog Munched some doggy bisquits.

I gave his shiny, unshorn head a gentle pat.

Two minutes later He had finished his afternoon snack.

He ran to the door of Miriam’s room.

He scratched on the wood there.

Miriam heard him.

Because she opened the door Just wide enough To let him in.

★

★

★

Seventy-five

Home on the Moon ROSEMARY J. GORMAN

’65

Second Prize, Quiz and Quill Humorous Writing Contest Oh give me a home, where the astronauts roam, Where the comets and meteors play.

Where there is no harm from the hydrogen bomb.

And never a missile all day.

Home, home on the moon Where the gases and vapors do croon, Where war is no more.

And the rockets can soar.

Through space, where lovers do spoon.

★

★

★

Later Apostrophe to Athens or Byron Must Have Hitch-Hiked JANET LACEY

'63

First Prize, Quiz and Quill Humorous Writing Contest Athens, Athens, ere we part Though you never got my heart (With your ancient ruins sunny) Give, oh give me back my money!

Or. since that has left my pocket.

Take my watchl I’ll have to hock it!

Hear my curse before I go; Shishkabob, mugabo.

At the souvenir stands gay Sly-eyed vendors gyp all day.

Meals and bad hotels run high.

Dinners all the same. I sigh; Maids with lashes far from jetty Serve us greasy cold spaghetti.

Once more I repeat in woe: Chugalug, sigalo. .411 the vendors here are nice.

Charging tourists triple-price.

Just like home, there’s dust and smog.

Byron must have slipped a cog To speak of this in tender Greek.

Once again I wildly shriek— Sadly in the towel I throwl Zumpflumpf ow. Awk ghack schmol

★

Seventy-six

★

★

For These PATRICIA SPEER SOBRINO

'59

For these I pray: Who in the last hour Face the great gaping black hole of death And have not known the completion of love.

She, upon whose empty bosom my child has slept.

Her slender fingers losing, grasping.

The tender hopelessness of her love.

And he.

Who at our last farewell Embraced me in the ardent yearning of his eyes . . . .

Ah, Him! I would have given at least the pittance of my kiss Were it not for the fear That I should know too late The fatal error of my heart’s desire.

★

★

★

First Beginning EDWARD SIF.HKE ’66

It all began a trillion years ago With an explosion and a blinding flash.

Which radiated from an embryo.

Then came a sound of singing with a crash So loud that it could shatter anything Now living here on earth this very day.

This tiny embryo awaited the king Who came from heaven in a bright array That concentrated on this tiny fleck.

Until the whole thing glowed immaculate.

Then angels came and acted on this speck Because the Lord of Hosts would detonate This world-to-be. Then all grew dark, forlorn.

God spoke: the angels sang: the earth was born.

★

★

★

two sides of a penny JANET LACEY

’63

one spring after another flowering singing and being born again this much at least is forever nothing are we ever sure of nothing (being) the product of so many numbers and one zero

★

★

★ Seventy-seven

Summer Camp, 1944 — Germany Suggested by a Lithograph of Koethe Kollwitz MARTHA DEEVER '64 He was only a little boy— not slicked and smooth, with the sparkling eyes and enchanting manner of your brother or mine; nor happy in his heaven-on-earth of laniards, and canoe trips; nature hikes and toasted marshmallows over an open fire.

But dazed and silent he walked— never running, for fear they’d think he was escaping, and beat him; and too tired to run, anyhow.

His eyes, dulled by the hunger of years, were haunted by the sight of his mother lying dead in her own blood. .And his body, coated with the dirt and stench of the ground on which he slept, shivered from a chill.

Should he ever be released from his hell-on-earth, he must leave the past and assume once more the carefree spirit of a dizzy society.

He died— a little boy age eight and one half with the eyes of an old man.

★

Seventy-eight

★

★

My Hands RONALD MARTIN

'64

My Hands, once strong and straight.

Raised log upon log, brick upon brick.

These now awkward, treinhling hands Anchored cable under bridge, over mountain.

Laid rail, wire that circles the land.

My Hands welded, molded.

Sawed, trimmed, and cut.

Seeded and plowed.

Picked apple and corn.

My Hands tore from the earth Clay, sand, shale, and coal.

Faster, faster, My Hands were driven.

They were good hands.

Wanted at the market of hands.

Fine hands, calloused hands.

Greasy hands, black hands.

All powerful hands.

Where I sold my two hands.

Now my college multilated dishpan hands are refused.

No market for My Hands! 11 ROGER SHIPLEY

’64

TABLE OF CONTENTS The Short-Timer. Lawrence J. Pryfogle....................................

Ronald Hanft ..................... ..

Pilgrimage to Summer, David Brunton........................................

Second Sight, Marcella Henry Miller..........................................

J-ost, One Student, Nathalie Bungard........ !...............................

A Dream, Janet Lacey ...................................................................

Experiment Done, Roger Caldwell................................................

The Bright Red Santa Claus, Priscilla Secrist ..........................

Insomnia, Rosemary Gorman The Paper Angel, Edna Dellinger Carlson ................................

If a Man Lose, Roger Caldwell ........................................... .....

In the Race o£ This Company, David K. Sturges ....................

Medusa, Maggie Reck ..........

Barabhas’ Laughter, Janet Lacey .......................................

Christ Image, Dale Weston .................................................

Camp Meeting, Fifteenth Summer, Sylvia Phillips Vance Credo, Kathy Kanto ...............................................................

Six and a Promise, Dallas Taylor ....................................

A Season of Black Bananas, Dale Weston......................

Two Weeks with Fallen Angels, Karla Hambel ..........

Incarnation, Ruth Mugridge .....................................

Auction Antics, Diane Weaston .......................................

August, David K. Sturges .................................................

Loneliness. Jane Vorpe .......................................................

The Haymaking and the Hackamore, Jerry Ginn ........

The Time Was Ripe, Janet Flenncr ...............................

A Thought, Jane Vorpe .....................................................

A Trip to Freedom, Elisabeth Glor.................................

Pilgrims to the Shrine, David K. Sturges ......................

Age, Ronald Collins............................................................

Full Circle, Rosemary Gorman ....................................

August Shower, Janet Lacey ..................................... ..

Bring Him Down, A. B. Walton.......................................

Somewhere in the Singing, Ruth Mugridge....................

Of Government Work, Janet Flenner............................. “an embryo’s universe”, Richard H. Orndorff .......... .

The Simplicity of Faith, Nathalie Bungard ..................

The Summer of the Lark, Tedy-Jane Hagerty..............

La Garde-Freinet, Janet Lacey .........................................

Approach to the Meaning of Life, Freda Kirts Shower Night Trip, Janet Lacey ................................................... .

1961 April, Jean Unger Chase......................................... .

The Young at Heart, Thalia Nikides ............................

Extended Sublimity, David S, Caliban .........................

Our Free Land, Jean Mattox.............................................

Ode to Elastic, Kathy Kanto .............................................

A House Divided, John Soliday .......................................

Conquest of Life, Gordon Gregg.......................................

To My Children, Sylvia Vance.......................................

Marienlied, Friedrich Von Hardenberg .........................

A Song for Marie, Translated by Philip O, Deever ...

Concern, Priscilla Secrist .................................................

Home on the Moon, Rosemary J. Gorman ...................

Later Apostrophe to Athens, Janet Lacey ....................

For These, Patricia Speer Sobrino ................................

First Beginning, Edward Siebke ..................................... two sides of a penny, Janet Lacey .................................

Summer Camp, 1944—Germany, Martha Deever ........

My Hands, Ronald Martin.................................................

Cover Design By Roger Shipley ’64 Eighty

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