Sisyphus October 2021
Sisyphus
October ’21
1 stoneware, wire, and wood by Sarah Rebholz 3 painting by Keegan Dow 4 photograph by Noah Richman 5 Blue Trowel, poetry by Nathan Rich 6 charcoal by Patrick Young 6 Apsis, fiction by Alex Preusser 7 painting by Leo Smith 8 painting by Leo Smith 11 sketch by Alex Deiters 12 photograph by George Henken 13 When Where Who, nonfiction by Frank Corley 15 photograph by George Henken 16 We Found the Other Side, photography by Jack Janson 27 Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, poetry by Madhavan Anbukumar 28-29 photograph by Thomas Ziegler
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painting by Keegan Dow
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photograph by Noah Richman
Blue Trowel Nathan Rich Is there no dirt left in the pit first eyed by Neanderthals with rocks and sticks? Is there no room left to dig? Homer and Chaucer and Swift Hacked and hacked with shovels. Hemingway and Vonnegut blasted great rocks to rubble. And now Collins and Gorman excavate daily. Is there no dirt left for me And my small blue trowel? No emotion left to ponder? No tragedy to lament or Ode to sing? Or is the ever churning spirit faced with an infinite pit? Asking, pleading to be turned and worked, Slowly reaching nothing but new depths. Either way I, With my small blue trowel, Cautiously Begin To dig.
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Apsis
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he slid the little race car token five spaces, landing on a spot marked by a miniature green house. “That’ll be seventy dollars, please!” squealed the little girl, already reaching her pudgy hand across the table. Jenny was babysitting her two nieces. Her older sister had dropped them off earlier that evening. Of course, even after some takeout pizza and a mind-numbing kids’ movie, Andi had requested to play a game of Monopoly, and her sister Erica had agreed. So now Jenny sat at her tiny kitchen table, playing a never-ending game of Monopoly with two girls who had no clue how money worked, only that “more is better.” Jenny glanced over her shoulder, peering into the dark. She was used to her husband Jeff ’s having some late nights at work, but this was getting unusually late. She just wanted to see the headlights of his truck rumbling down their dirt driveway. She’d been on edge for weeks. Every-
one had—at least everyone who watched the news. Thrice the reporters had grimly discussed the mysterious deaths of young women, victims of an apparent serial killer. A serial killer fond of slitting throats. Jenny knew how irrational it was to be worried. But the victims were all around her age. She’d read disturbing books about killers like this, perverted men who delighted in the murder of innocent, helpless women. Disgusting. Jeff said there was nothing to worry about out here. They were nearly an hour from the city, where all of the victims lived and worked. And Jenny barely left the house anyway, preferring to stay in the confines of their little country home, secluded and private. “How did you meet Uncle Jeff ?” asked Erica, as if she had been tracking Jenny’s queue of anxieties. Yet another of Erica’s sporadic, annoying questions. They’d ranged from favorite foods, to her first kiss (which
charcoal by Patrick Young
Alex Preusser
Jenny quickly declined to answer) to her favorite Disney princess. But Jenny actually gave this question some thought, and she was plunged into memory, a respite from her worries.
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he sun’s shadow. That’s what Jenny always was, and she was fine with it. She was just the little sister, three years younger than the star athlete and genius Jessica. Everything revolved around Jess, and Jenny was Mercury, the planet closest in her orbit. And so Mercury persisted, in the shadows, looking up to the brightest star in her universe, the object of her aspirations from day one. This lasted for years, and it was Jess’s first day at college when Mercury started to wobble in her orbit. The family had made the trip to that quaint little college town, ready to usher Jess into this new stage in her life. Jenny was not ready. What was Mercury without the sun? For fear of breaking out into tears, Jenny stayed mostly quiet through the car ride, and even into Jess’s little dorm room. She murmured her name to Jess’s new roommate, Bridget, a girl with flaming red curls and a makeup collection that almost rivalled Jess’s. As the two arranged their belongings in the dorm, Jenny silently watched, taking in the scene. Bridget’s hair was a sharp contrast to Jess’s sleek black updo. She had a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks, whereas Jess’s face was as clear and blemishfree as ever. Despite their differences, they both had an effortless beauty to them. Jenny couldn’t help but think, somewhat bitterly, that they were a great pair—burning flames and shining star. At her mother’s suggestion, Jenny joined Jess and Bridget to walk around campus. As she often did, Jenny trailed behind, watching the backs of the college girls. They soon
found themselves at the dining hall, the perfect place for Jess and Bridget to dive into the waters of college. And absolutely not the right place for Jenny. She was by far the youngest one in the entire hall, completely out of her element if not for the presence of Jess, who always eased her nerves a bit. At Jess’s request, Jenny sat down at a little table along a wall, watching as her sister and Bridget walked away. Jenny could tell that Jess would be as popular as she was in high school. Already her beaming smile was dazzling boys and girls alike as she made her way through the hall. Jess would be happy here, the sun with a whole new multitude of satellites in her solar system. But as Jenny watched, a hollow feeling grew in her stomach. This was really the end. No longer was she Mercury, as close as one could be to Jess. Instead, she knew she
painting by Leo Smith
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would forever be Pluto, small and insignificant, cold and dark. Billions of miles away from her source of light, of warmth. Her gaze was so fixed on her sister that she didn’t notice the man until she heard the scrape of the chair’s legs across the tile floor. Startled, she turned her head to him as he sat down on the other side of the table. “Well, you don’t look like a college student,” he said with a quirk of his lips, a weird attempt at a smile. Neither did he, really. He looked like he should already be out of college, doing something other than talking to teenage girls in college dining halls. He had a thin beard covering his face, the same rusty reddish brown as the hair pulled back into a ponytail down his back. His green eyes were framed by a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, and he wore a green flannel shirt with jeans. Even from across the table, Jenny could smell some type of earthy scent on him. Maybe it was a hint of pine or evergreen. Whatever it was, it seemed almost as out of place in this setting as she did. Since she didn’t answer right away, he filled the silence. “That your sister?” Again she just looked at him. She had no idea who he was. Why should she tell him anything about herself ? “I saw you looking at her, that’s all,” he added. As if that made it any more normal. Despite being a little weirded out, Jenny had to say there was something alluring about him. Almost in the same way as Jess, but in a wild, near-chaotic way. She was just drawn to him. And so she answered, “Yeah, that’s my sister.” “She speaks!” he laughed, an expression of mock excitement coming over his face. “She’s a freshman. First day.” Jenny didn’t quite know why she said that without his asking. Maybe she just wanted a little fun. After all, that’s what Jess was always
painting by Leo Smith
telling her to do. Go out and make friends. Other than me. Jess didn’t have to say it. They both knew what she meant. “Me too,” he told her, much to her surprise. Her eyes again wandered to his beard, the way the auburn hair naturally curved around the corner of his mouth, and then the loose hair from his head hanging by his glasses. Wanting to mask her dismay, she turned, searching the room for Jess and Bridget. They were easy to spot, with Bridget’s flaming curls and the group already surrounding Jess. “Let me guess,” he said, following Jenny’s gaze. “The whole world revolves around her. The queen bee.” Once again he was right. It was almost as if he could read her mind. “So what does that make you?” Jenny thought for a moment as she watched Jess. Her older sister was now look-
ing at her and the man, and Jess’s eyes widened. She immediately started making her way back over to Jenny’s table, Bridget and a couple others in tow. “What are you doing?” asked Jess, an edge to her tone. But she didn’t address Jenny. She was asking the man. “Just talking to your little sister,” he said, that same unusual little smile nestled in his beard. “Get away, you creep!” Jess told him, pulling Jenny up from her seat. Without waiting for him to obey, Jess took her by the wrist and led her away. “My name’s Jeff, by the way!” he called after her. Jenny glanced back. She didn’t want to forget that smile.
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pair of yellow lights came into view between the trees, making Jenny’s heart leap. Finally, he was home. She had stayed simple with her answer to the girls. “I met him at college.” Not technically a lie, but she didn’t feel like getting into the specifics with them. As Jeff ’s truck rolled toward the house, the TV started behind her. One of the girls must’ve gotten ahold of the remote. Both Andi and Erica were on the couch, curled up in fuzzy blankets. Andi was nudging Erica, telling her to change the channel. The nightly news was boring for little girls. Jenny glanced up at the screen. Her breath hitched. She was staring at a very familiar face, one that she had not thought about for years. More than a decade later, she looked the same. The same bright eyes, though now etched with the beginnings of crows’ feet, despite her youth. The same full, red lips. And, of course, the distinctive bright red curls. Bridget. “Hey, hey, hey, stop,” Jenny said, hurrying over to the couch to grab the remote
from Erica. She never let her eyes leave the screen. In large red letters next to Bridget’s name, Jenny read the word Missing. Bridget was missing. Was this the same man that had been featured on the news? They seemed to have the same thoughts as Jenny, because the reporter animatedly waving her arms on a city street was mimicking the flurry of worry in Jenny’s mind: serial killer. Without thinking, Jenny swung open the front door of their little one-bedroom house and ran out to Jeff ’s truck. After a couple knocks on the passenger side window, Jeff finally rolled it down. “What, Jenny?” he asked, visibly annoyed. “It’s Bridget, from college,” she said, a little out of breath. “You know, Jess’s roommate?” “Yeah, so?” “She’s missing. It’s all over the news.” “Just go inside, Jen. I’ve got something to take care of.” She knew better than to argue. She turned and went back inside, just as she was told. Erica and Andi were backwards on the couch, peeking over the back toward her. “Okay girls, time for bed.” The girls grumbled and whined a little bit, but Jenny could tell they were as tired as she was. She tried to put Bridget out of her mind for a moment as she gathered spare blankets and pillows and a couple sleeping bags from the cluttered closet in the hall. She knew that Jeff was probably out in his shed doing God knows what. He liked to stay private, and she was willing to allow that. People had their own secrets. It just annoyed her that he brushed her away so easily. Erica and Andi were finally getting nestled into their sleeping bags when Jenny heard something absolutely bone-chilling. A high-pitched, bloodcurdling scream penetrated the silence of the night. And it most
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certainly was not the scream of a full-grown man. There must be someone out in the forest. Jenny couldn’t help but think of Bridget and the serial killer. But why would a woman be out here, this far from anyone else? Jenny left the confused girls and grabbed a flashlight from their junk drawer. She wildly flung the door open, but just before crossing the threshold, she stopped. Fear paralyzed her, but anxiety made her mind a frenzy of panicked thoughts. This could be a major mistake. But what could happen if she didn’t help? Then she reminded herself that Jeff was out there. He could save the woman and fend off whoever or whatever made her scream. But there it was again. Another scream sounded through the trees, but this time it was cut short. She was really in trouble. Suddenly Jenny was moving, her legs pumping of their own accord, carrying her toward Jeff ’s shed. She could make out a narrow strip of faint light along the base of the door. He was there. Why wasn’t he helping the woman? Jenny just needed to get him, and then they’d help her. She was nearly there when her foot caught on something, and she stumbled and fell to the ground. The flashlight skittered out of her hand and flickered to darkness as it disappeared in the brush. Covered in dirt and the crumblings of dead autumn leaves, she looked back to see what she had tripped over, but found nothing. It was as if the darkness itself had reached out and knocked her from her feet. She half crawled, half ran to the shed, tugging open the door. But the scene that met her took her breath away. Most of it was what she had expected. She knew Jeff was big into hunting, taking trips every other weekend and returning with a surplus of
venison that neither of them would ever be able to finish. So the variety of guns and saws and knives that lined the shelved walls didn’t surprise her. Jeff was crouched on the floor, bent over a shape that was hard to identify in the dim light. But as he turned to confront her, the slumped figure came into full view, and she knew exactly who it was. All it would have taken was a single curl of that shade for her to know, but she saw before her a full head of flames and a limp body to accompany it. There was a sizable red line across her throat, a crimson in contrast to her ginger and his auburn. “Jenny, dear, it’s not what it looks like,” Jeff said. Already the corner of his mouth was beginning to twitch up, revealing the end of one of his incisors. He took a tentative step toward her, and for whatever reason, she stood still. It wasn’t until she was falling to the ground that she registered the object in his hand.
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enny’s eyes fluttered open. It took a moment for her to realize where she was. The bombardment of white was easy to identify. The hospital. She looked around, trying to gain her bearings. In the chair across the room was a man with an auburn beard and horn-rimmed glasses. Jeff. Just like that, everything from the previous night came rushing back to her, bringing with it a wave of nausea. In the corner of her eye, the heart monitor’s screen jumped, sending that line skyward. “Get away!” she said. “Get the hell away from me!” She must have been loud enough to hear in the hallway, because a nurse with flaming red curls entered the room. “What’s wrong, dear?” she asked. “He-he’s a murderer,” Jenny stuttered,
her voice catching. “He did this to m-me.” “Honey,” said Jeff, standing from his chair. “What are you talking about?” “I-I found you in your shed,” she said, gaining a little more clarity of voice. “And you hit me, knocked me out.” She looked to the nurse for reassurance. But something about her was off, slightly familiar.
“Jenny, the girls said you heard something outside and ran out,” said Jeff. “I found you on the ground outside. You must’ve tripped over something and hit your head.” But all she could think of was that slumped figure with hair of flames, and a more familiar image—that of a crooked, unnerving smile.
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sketch by Alex Deiters
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photograph by George Henken
When Where Who Frank Corley
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he first time I ever went to New York City I was forty-three years old. Maybe that doesn’t seem that late in life to you, but when I was in college a lot of people were from the east coast, and my closest friends were from New Jersey, so I felt like everyone had been to New York but me. It was a Sunday afternoon; we drove in through the Lincoln Tunnel because the Holland Tunnel was closed. There were six of us in the car, college friends. Most of us had not seen each other for about twenty years. One of my friends had chartered a jet that flew four of us out from the Midwest. I can still remember the drive into the tunnel. The highway slows to a crawl through the little town of Weehawken, NJ. Just before the toll booths at the entrance to the tunnel under the Hudson River is a great 360° arc, dropping down and around. Tucked inside that cloverleaf was a small baseball field, apparently the home field of the Weehawken High School Indians. On the right field wall was painted an American flag, which of course on that day held special meaning. It looked like a set from the music video for “Glory Days” off Born in the USA. The field actually sat directly above the toll booths as the road slipped under the river. I had never seen anything like it, and I stared out the window at this scene from another culture. We entered the tunnel and crept into New York City. I did not know what to expect from this huge, strange place, so often the victor, but now a victim. It was late September, 2001, and we were coming to New York for the funeral of a college friend who’d been killed in the World Trade Center collapse after the attacks a few weeks before. Joe McDonald was the older
brother of my best friend Paul. Joe was a senior when we were sophomores in college, and he was the oldest member of a family which that year actually had someone in every class of the small college we attended. Joe was a senior; his cousin Bob—the guy who chartered the jet—a junior; Paul, my best friend, a sophomore, and his younger sister Nancy was in her first year. We were all good friends, ran in the same social circles. Paul and Nan were close enough to my wife and me that they were both in our wedding. Joe was very much the older brother to all of us: he treated us respectfully, like peers, but also taught us the ways of the world. He recruited Paul and me and several others to play on the rugby team. He had a great smile, an easy laugh that covered what a thoughtful, sensitive, intelligent man he was. Joe had been a bond trader for Cantor Fitzgerald, a brokerage firm which occupied many floors of the World Trade Center and which lost many, many people on September 11th. Joe worked there with another cousin, Jimmy, who had actually invited Joe to go golfing that morning. Joe had declined. I say we were there for Joe’s funeral, but it was really only a memorial service. There were no remains recovered yet, so there wouldn’t be a funeral for another five years. Joe was the oldest of seven children, a good Irish Catholic family: his father was a cardiologist, all the kids went to excellent colleges and are now very successful. Joe was a wonderful husband, the father of two girls who were just little kids at that time. We drove into the city the day after the memorial service, to see the city, have lunch, and get as close to Ground Zero as we could. It was a damp, misty day, and the smell and feel
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of concrete dust was still in the air all over lower Manhattan from the buildings having fallen. If you’ve ever laid concrete, you know the sandy, caustic sensation in your nostrils and the back of your throat which stuck with us throughout our time there. On this day, after a weekend charged with emotion and love and brotherhood, what I remember most is this: the walls of buildings, the fences along the streets of the city, posts and poles, everything was covered with missing persons signs. When the buildings had collapsed, only about an hour or so after they’d been hit, no one really knew who had lived and who had died, who had escaped or what had happened to them. So they made these posters, the kind you see tacked on telephone poles when someone in your neighborhood loses a puppy or a cat. There were thousands of them, all over the place, everywhere. And of all those missing persons, almost none of them were ever heard from again. Virtually everyone who’d been in either tower when they fell, and most of the adjacent buildings, had been killed and their bodies lost. My friends and I were looking at them, surrounded by candles and crosses, like those memorials on the side of the highway where a fatal crash has occurred. We were walking around lower Manhattan, silent, stunned. We would read the signs, light candles that had gone out, just shaking our heads in amazement. I don’t really know where we went. It was all unfamiliar territory to me. It started raining, and every little corner store put out a bucket of umbrellas for sale. People would buy one for a few bucks then cast it aside when it stopped raining, as if the umbrellas were disposable. I remember wondering that people must walk around pulling them out of trash cans, to resell the next time it rained, sort of like the luggage carts at the airport. I tell you this to say that the afternoon was a foreign, off-balance, almost surreal experience for me.
Wandering lower Manhattan, I found myself standing in Union Square, a park a couple of miles from the World Trade Center. A statue stands in the center of the park, and a lot of the posters were taped to the pedestal and on the stone structures around it. And then we saw one which blew me away. It said: “If you are wondering where your loved ones are, where all the people you’re looking for are, they are everywhere, surrounding you. They were incinerated, and crushed, and they were scattered all over the city. They are in the very air you breathe, and that makes every space in this entire city sacred. You should act accordingly.” An anonymous poster had created a powerful moment which I have never forgotten. In the midst of the destruction, someone had called us all to see the holy. The whole day, all weekend, I had felt God’s presence. But at that moment I heard the message of that sign. I felt the sanctity of the city of New York. It was not just a big, cold, mean concrete city. It was a cathedral, as sacred at that moment as any place I have ever been. I stood there, stunned into thought. I think of talking to my friend Paul the day it happened, then to his secretary when she told me he’d gone home for the day, and knowing that Paul was at that point working through an awareness of what must have happened. I thought, as so many of us still do every year on that date, of where we were, the people we were with and how we worked through the comprehension of those events. I think of Paul and of his father, strong and eloquent from the podium the morning of Joe’s memorial service. I think of the crazy way that Joe’s death became an opportunity to reconnect with dear friends I had not seen in decades. I believe that, for many of us in the midwest, September 11, 2001, was like a newsreel or a television show or a disaster movie. Two giant concrete skyscrapers crumbling to
the ground, killing thousands: it must have been computer-generated or made for TV. It could not have been reality. And yet, as I watched the television and saw it happen over and over again, I knew that inside that tower was my friend Joe McDonald. That is what I go back to. Among the millions of dollars of loss, the thousands of victims killed, the wars that resulted, the flags flown, it doesn’t seem fair to me that Joe’s loss has to be shared with the world. The death of a brother or a son or a husband or a father or a cousin is an immensely personal event. It should happen in the quiet of a bedroom, peacefully. I think of losing my own brother, how I cried in torment at his funeral and prayed for him every
day for a year, of how losing him took away a part of my personal history which I shared with no one else but him. No amount of heroics or notoriety of the event can add enough to make up for that loss, so any attempt is just in vain. What was taken away, as I see it, was not just Joe McDonald, but Joe McDonald’s death. They didn’t get to lose their brother as their brother. They had to lose their brother to the world, along with the world on a stage to a monumental event. That’s just the way I see it; I just wish they could grieve their brother quietly. Joe is theirs. Theirs to love, theirs to miss. He was a gift to all of us, but now he should be theirs.
photograph by George Henken
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Film from Stone Harbor, New Jersey, 2021 Jack Janson
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Swing Low, Sweet Chariot An Ekphrastic Poem Madhavan Anbukumar
Swing low, sweet chariot, Bring home Grandmother Harriet, The dogs are barking, The donkeys braying, Swing low, sweet chariot. Swing low, sweet chariot, An army of angels come to bring Grandmother home, The devil himself comes to take her for him alone, Swing low, sweet chariot. Swing low, sweet chariot, Thank God almighty for Grandmother’s pure soul, Or else Satan would take her down to his dank hole. Swing low, sweet chariot. Swing low, sweet chariot, The doctor is here, In a car he arrived Grandmother is gone says he, May she watch over this family, Swing low, sweet chariot, May you bring her home
Link to John McCrady’s painting: Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
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Literary Editors Taggart Arens Gavin Lawhorn Alex Wentz Cody Cox
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Luke Duffy Alex Preusser Jude Reed
Christopher St. John Austin Wald Miles Rittenhouse
Art Editors Nathan Rich Owen Rittenhouse Alex Deiters
Layout Editors Jack Figge George Henken Nathan Rich
Luke Duffy Alex Preusser
Moderators Frank Kovarik Rich Moran
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photograph by Thomas Ziegler
