Tug-of-War (fiction) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Daniel Donaghy

TUG-OF-WAR

fter he hit our last halfie onto the roof of Perlstein ’ s Glass, Frankie Wnek stepped over the broomstick we used for a bat and shimmied up a drainpipe to get it. Frankie was my age, fourteen. Since I was pitching and gave up the home run, I was supposed to go, but when he said don ’t worry about it, I wasn ’t going to argue. Who knew when that pipe was going to snap away from the wall? Who knew that two older kids named Chickenhead and Toot were already up there, just for the hell of it, waiting to take turns punching whoever came up, then grab his ankles and swing him back and forth over the ledge?

Perlstein ’ s was a four-story building, so I had to look straight up to see what was going on, and I had to squint hard against the sun, which was just then breaking through a stretch of gray clouds. Frankie was screaming, of course, that goes without saying, and he kept trying to bend himself toward the roof like he was doing crunches, like I would have done, if I’d been the one up there. He could only get so far, though, before he dropped again and writhed like a snake, or like Houdini in those old black-and-white movies, hands clenched behind his knees. Frankie had long, straight black hair that hung a good foot below his head and his cheeks were watermelon red and puffy. Chickenhead and Toot laughed with their mouths wide open, looking at each other, then down at Frankie, then at the gathering crowd. They laughed even harder when Frankie pissed himself and the piss ran down his bare chest to his

face.

“Oh my God!” I could hear one of them yell. “Holy fucking shit!” Frankie turned his head to one side and shouted for someone to get his mom, who was a bartender at Felix ’ s, and after he did, about eight people took off to go get her. When something like that happens, you do the first thing that makes sense or you just stand there and do nothing. It’ s one

A

way or the other––I learned that a long time ago––and you don ’t know until you ’ re in the middle of something like that which way you ’ll go. You might yell for Chickenhead and Toot to pull Frankie up or run to get Frankie ’ s mom or go home and call the cops or just stand there watching the moment unfold like it’ s on TV, like I did.

F is For Fox by Kristen Solecki © 2008

One thing you don ’t do is look away. That’ s against human nature. You can try to turn from the stuff you don ’t want to see, but your mind will force you to look again, the same way you ’d have to turn and face the train you knew was about to run you down. It’ s not that I didn ’t want to do something. I did. Frankie was my friend since fifth grade and we hung out together just about every day. It’ s just that I was more scared watching Frankie hang there than any time my father went to town on my mother, which is saying a lot. I was afraid the guys swinging Frankie would swing me next. Put yourself in my shoes. You ’ re fourteen and don ’t know what you ’d do even if you could do something. Maybe you talk to someone beside you. Maybe you don ’t or can ’t. Maybe you look around for your mother, even though she won ’t be home for hours yet, and your father, who you just know is going to show up soon enough to put his two cents in. No matter what, you end up doing something with your hands. You clasp your fingers together behind your neck or across your forehead, or you squeeze them into fists and bury them into your crossed arms, which is what I did. Even that late in the year, I had a T-shirt on, and after we stopped playing I got cold.

I watched from our sidewalk across the street, leaning without thinking about it into the front fender of old man Dangler ’ s shiny blue Charger. It all happened so fast––two minutes, maybe three––but even now it’ s still happening. Frankie is hanging there four years before he enlists in the Army, launches rockets in Kuwait, then comes home with headaches that won ’t let up and crisped bodies in his dreams that want nothing to do with war. Chickenhead and Toot are laughing together two years before they disappear separately, Chickenhead from a baseball bat outside the Aramingo Diner, Toot from a heroin overdose in the back bedroom of his sister ’ s house. Frankie ’ s mom is limping up Jasper Street before she moved away without telling anyone, her voice a shrill string of exclamations, hands over her head as if she could pluck Frankie like a stray balloon. Then there was my father, who had followed her out of the bar, quiet as he always was, running a black pocket comb through his greasy blond hair as he walked. A month later, already thinning from the cancer that would kill him before spring, he ’d call me from my room one night to sit with him at the glass dinner table. He ’d have his tall can of Schaefer ’ s and tiny drinking glass, and he ’d ask me through a Pall Mall haze if I hated him.

It was the day of Halloween, and Perlstein ’ s Glass was at the intersection of Huntington and Jasper Streets in

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

We ’ ve had a crazy spring! People really got into our first online auction (think eBay, but all the money goes to a good cause), and the Spring Fling at the American Swedish Historical Museum in South Philadelphia was a blast (if you haven ’t yet discovered this very cool destination, you have to check it out). We didn ’t raise quite as much money as we do with the Silent Auction, but at one point we looked at each other and realized we were actually having fun!

We ’ re also learning a lot preparing for the release of our first title, Broad Street, from our new books division, PS Books (psbookspublishing.org). The book publishing world is a whole different animal than magazine publishing, and we ’ re lucky to have friends who know what they ’ re doing to offer their advice as we move along. PS Books aims to distinguish itself from other boutique publishers by offering an edgy blend of commercial and literary fiction and creative non-fiction by regional writers, and we will distribute nationally. All book sales proceeds will go directly toward supporting the magazine.

If you want to read more of the behind-the-scenes of putting out a lit mag and launching a new book press, or if you ’ re looking for great writing tips, or maybe just some juicy lit gossip, check out our new blog: http://philadelphiastories.wordpress.com/

We hope to see you at one of our upcoming events. Get all the details on our site: www.PhiladelphiaStories.org.

Thanks!

Carla Spataro and Christine Weiser Publishers

Beretta76 at Spring Fling; photo by Thomas Johnson

www.philadelphiastories.org

Kensington, a nothing neighborhood in North Philly once alive with mill work and railroad traffic, but now stifled by El track shadows and the hulking skeletons of burned-out factory buildings. The leaves on the few trees were gone for the year with all of the birds except for the pigeons that walked the roof’ s ledge on either side of Frankie, whose mom, despite her bad foot, got to the corner fast.

“Frankie!” she yelled. “What the hell are you two doing? Pull him up. Frankie!”

“Relax, ” Chickenhead hollered down. Bob Harv gave Chickenhead his nickname because of his skinny neck and early baldness. “We ’ re just messing around. Right, Frankie?”

But Frankie didn ’t say anything. He was crying hard and trying to keep his head even with the horizon. His head must have throbbing.

“Pull him up now or so help me God, I’ll kill you both, ” Frankie ’ s mom said. Then my dad chimed in.

“Let’ s go, assholes. Move it. Then get down here so I can beat some sense into you sons of bitches. ” He looked over his shoulder after he spoke and saw me standing across the street.

“Hey, Davey, ” he shouted. “Get over here. ” He kept staring at me until I started around the car toward him. I didn ’t like where all of this was headed, I’ll tell you that. Even before I reached my dad, I could smell the stale Schaefer ’ s on his breath and the Pall Mall smoke that stunk up his clothes. I could see him already, wringing his fists in Perlstein ’ s back alley, ready to be a tough guy like it’ s Friday night outside Felix ’ s and he just called someone into the street because he didn ’t like their look or their tone. I could picture the ring of neighbors, some cheering, some with crossed arms, in a side lot few cops came through. And I could see what I guess he couldn ’t: there were two of them, and they would either gang up against him or run right past, laughing at how drunk and slow and stupid he was. He was going to get killed some day, my mother always told him.

“Oh Jesus Christ, ” said Toot, who got his nickname from blowing trumpet sounds into his thumb while getting stoned with Mikey K., Vic Turner, and those guys outside Griffin ’ s Deli. “Fucking cry baby. ”

With that, Toot started to pull Frankie up without telling Chickenhead, holding Frankie ’ s ankle with one hand while grabbing first the back of Frankie ’ s knee, then his wrist, with the other. Frankie ’ s weight shifted fast, and his ankle slipped so easily from Chickenhead’ s hands it’ s amazing he hadn ’t already fallen. Frankie swung like a pendulum into the wall, face first, and now Toot had Frankie all by himself. Toot had him pinned against the building, underneath the stone ledge. You could see he wouldn ’t have him for long,

though, and you could hear it, too. Underneath Frankie screaming was Toot straining and grunting.

“Fuck, ” Toot pushed out every few breaths. “Fuck, stay still, man. ”

Some people on the street started rushing back toward the sidewalk. Many were crying, and with any quick move one way or the other, you could hear the whole crowd suck in a breath. Now Toot was a big dude––strong as hell, about 6’2” and 250 pounds––so Frankie ’ s lucky Toot had him and not Chickenhead, who was about as scrawny as Old Lady Lewis, who held her Yorkie against her shoulder as she looked up from her spot next to three other women her age, which would have been around my grandparents ’ age if any of them had lived that long. They all wore white Skippy tennis sneakers and shirts with pictures of their dogs.

“Where the fuck are the cops?” someone asked, which is what we were all wondering. And I was thinking about the bucket truck they ’d need to get Frankie down, along with Chickenhead and Toot, and about the ambulance you could already imagine on the sidewalk, with some EMT giving Frankie the onceover inside the small van awash in yellow light. Someone said something about getting mattresses, and then people were rushing again, including my father this time.

“Come on, Davey, ” he said, pushing me toward the house. It was like I’d been stung by something, though. My legs wouldn ’t move. They had no strength in them, no feeling whatsoever. I remember looking up at my father and saying “I can ’t” before he ran into our house without me.

“Hang on, baby, ” Frankie ’ s mother called up. “Help ’ s coming. ” She was holding her hands up near her mouth and squeezing the fingers of her right hand inside the fist of the left.

Chickenhead reached across Toot to grab Frankie ’ s other arm and foot, but they hung too far down the wall, so he grabbed the arm that Toot already had and pulled. I don ’t know how Frankie ’ s arm didn ’t snap off or come out of its socket, but Chickenhead and Toot were able to lift that arm enough to make the other arm swing around, and when it did, on the third or fourth try, Frankie grabbed onto the ledge and propped his legs stiff against the wall. The three of them were working together now, with Frankie ’ s feet flush against the bricks like he was about to run up it and Toot tilted back at a forty-five degree angle, like he was anchoring a tug-of-war, until Chickenhead pulled so hard he almost threw himself past Frankie and off the

Reading Her Skull

By Natalie Ford

because it’ s close now under her thrust pale skin, catching every stranger ’ s eye before they refocus and rush to greet us passing in the street

even when daylight drops and she pulls on a knit cap, you can tell it’ s close still, pressing up hard under the thin textured yarn

and bone shapes her eyes now they ’ re shorn –even the dark brows that made her grave over books, easy to spot in pictures,

gone

she laughs nearing the house, saying she believes now in phrenology, in that old science of self: Here, character Here, temperament

while, walking still closer by her side, I read it differently, silently: Here, destiny

Natalie Ford is originally from Doylestown, Pennsylvania. She has recently returned to Bucks County after completing a PhD in Victorian literature and psychology at the University of York, England. Ford’ s poetry has appeared in national and international journals.

roof. He lurched forward far enough for me to see his whole top hanging over the edge before something rocked him just as hard backward, and when it did, Frankie ’ s feet found enough traction to let him scale the few feet to the roof’ s stone lip, when he slid his knee over and Chickenhead and Toot pulled him up.

It was like the Phillies won the Series or something, let me tell you. Everyone clapping and jumping up and down. Frankie ’ s mom hugging everybody and saying, “Thank you, Jesus ” to the sky, as if God had been the one to pull Frankie up. Right or wrong, that’ s the version that spread around the neighborhood. Father Flatley said so at Mass the next Sunday and, for the next few months, people greeted Frankie on the street as Chosen One or, more often, Jesus. People who didn ’t like Frankie from before cut him some slack, even if they teased him while they did it. “Stay off those roofs, Jesus, ” Chickie Pell, who ran Griffin ’ s, said one afternoon. “You ain ’t a bouncing ball. ” My dad missed the whole thing fighting with a mattress in our doorway. He didn ’t see Frankie go up, didn ’t see all three of them sitting up there so close they could have been friends. He brought the mattress out anyway, just in case, and hollered up a few times for Chickenhead and Toot to jump before some dads tried to calm him down, holding their hands up to their shoulders, palms out, almost begging him, which he liked, I think, more than Frankie being safe.

By the time the cops came, Chickenhead and Toot were gone. Frankie yelled long after the fact that they had run to the back of the roof, but he didn ’t turn to look, which means they either shot down that drainpipe pretty damn fast or they jumped across the fivefoot alley to a line of row houses and disappeared inside an abandoned one. It took half an hour for a fire truck with a bucket to show and get Frankie back to the street. It took the rest of that week and into the next one for my father to stop talking about what he would have done to Chickenhead and Toot, those bastards, if he had gotten his hands on them. Anything could have set him off, so my mother and I watched what we said and how we looked at him more than usual. We made sure the front door was unlocked when he came home from work and that there was a cold can of Schaefer ’ s just opened on the table. And in my room I rehearsed into my mirror what I’d do the next time his voice boomed at my mother. I bent into the football crouch he taught me and practiced throwing my shoulder like a punch. I pictured his hands sliding from my mother ’ s face or neck to try in vain to grab me as I charged. Every time I went over it in my head, my mother got away clean, my shoulder drove through, not into, him, just like he ’d taught me, and took his sorry ass to the ground.

Daniel Donaghy ' s next collection of poems, Start with the Trouble, will be published by the University of Arkansas Press in fall 2009. His first collection, Streetfighting, was published by BkMk Press in 2005 and named a Finalist for the 2006 Paterson Prize. His poems and stories have appeared in The Southern Review, Quarterly West, Prairie Schooner, Southern Humanities Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, New Letters, Image, and many other journals and have been featured on Poetry Daily and on the Writer ' s Almanac with Garrison Keillor. He grew up in the Kensington section of Philadelphia and attended the High School for Engineering and Science before earning degrees from Kutztown University, Cornell University, and the University of Rochester. He now lives in Connecticut.

L O C A L A U T H O R P R O F I L E

By Aimee LaBrie

Adam Rex understands children. As both a writer and illustrator of children’s books, his work captures the imaginative world children love to inhabit. His characters are heroic kids in cowboy boots who face the world fearlessly, taking on aliens and rambunctious zoo animals. His characters also include a lumbering, strangely human Frankenstein and assorted other monsters who somehow don’t seem so scary in the pages of his books. Kirkus heartily praises one of his books, saying, “As if more proof were needed that Adam Rex has a strange and goofy mind, here’s a visit to a meta-fictional zoo with some uncommonly crafty residents…Rex gives the whole episode a surreal, expect-anything feel…[A] gleefully postmodern romp” and Publisher’s Weekly classifies his illustrations as “oil paintings [that] hearken to 19th Century Barnum ads—or 1960’s counterculture poster art—in Rex’s offbeat tale. ” Most recently, his novel, The True Meaning of Smekday was nominated alongside Harry Potter for the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Despite his success in the highly competitive market of children’s book, Rex’s feet remain firmly planted on planet Earth.

Are you more invested in writing or drawing? They’re both just different aspects of storytelling to me, so they’re somewhat intertwined. Of course, I illustrate books that I haven’t written from time to time, and I like the idea of writing something that I don’t go on to illustrate.

How did you get connected with Cricket Magazine, Spider Magazine, and Amazing Stories? I really just did illustration work for these magazines. I never submitted any writing to them, apart from one poem that was published in Cricket. That was the first of a number of monster poems I’ve written, and I didn’t submit any more after deciding that I was more interested in seeing them collected in a book. That book became Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich.

What were your favorite books as a kid and did they influence your approach to writing and illustrating? One of my favorites was certainly The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, and I think its influence is pretty obvious in my own The True Meaning of Smekday. I’m beginning to think one of the greatest influences on the illustration work I do now is actually Chuck Jones. When I began to concentrate more on humorous illustration, I found that, in my mind, humor and illustration intersected squarely in the center of animated shorts like The Rabbit of Seville and What’s Opera, Doc?

What advice do you have in terms of the creative process for those of us struggling to get something on the page or canvas? I think I’m always trying to trick myself into thinking I’ve started already, so that I feel more comfortable making marks. In both illustrating and writing, that seems to be a matter of making a lot of careless messes at first, and giving myself permission to do badly, or to create something that may never develop or see the light of day.

Do you draw and paint on a regular basis or just when you’re inspired (or have a deadline)? I suppose I only draw and paint when I’m inspired or have a deadline, but that covers pretty much every hour of every day. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t have a serious deadline. I do miss drawing and painting for the sheer pleasure of it–just sitting in cafes, sketching people, exploring ideas–I haven’t been able to do that in years.

What are the differences between children’s illustration and fantasy art? I’m tempted to say there aren’t any, though I’m not sure anybody would believe me. Mostly it’s just a matter of content–most fantasy art is aimed at an early teen to adult audience.

Fantasy lends itself to complex compositions, while art for younger audiences tends to work better when the images are a little more straightforward. Fantasy art also tends toward hyper-detailed minutiae and, ironically, fairly traditional realism–anything to help sell the authenticity of the imagined world.

It’s the difference between an anatomically plausible dragon designed from the study of bats and snakes and lizards with hundreds of finely rendered, battle-scarred scales on the one side, and, on the other, Puff the Magic Dragon.

What are you currently working on? I’m finishing the illustrations for a book in which a boy is given a pet blue whale as a punishment. I didn’t write that one, so I can honestly say it’s hilarious. And I’m supposedly writing my second novel.

You mention on your website that you have two huge, gigantic cats. What are their names and occupations? The youngest is Dr. Simon Dicker. He’s not a medical doctor, obviously–he’s an astrophysicist at the University of Pennsylvania. Little Nemo is our oldest. She’s a stay-at-home-cat.

To view Rex’s work, visit adamrex.com.

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