Sisyphus Winter 2014 by SLUH

Sisyphus Winter 2014 Cover photograph by Ben Banet Inside cover artwork by Nick Bentz Masthead photograph by Ben Banet Masthead design by David Greaves

3 Challenge Cup, poetry by Noah Weber 3 photograph by Sam Fentress 4 Unbalanced, fiction by Mark Robinson 5 photograph by Ben Banet 8 photograph by Ben Banet 9 Wooden Nickels, poetry by Sam Beckmann 10 Blessed is the Love of a Mother, poetry by Austin Strifler 10 Midwinter, poetry by Austin Strifler 11 You visited me last night, poetry by Austin Strifler 11 Resting Place, poetry by Austin Strifler 12 print by Paul J. Fister 13 Hang Up, fiction by Tom Fields 14 print by Gabe Miller 15 photograph by Matt Sciuto of a sculpture by Evan Penny 16 Blocked Game, poetry by Mark Robinson 18 solar print by Andrew Ney 19 The Paper, anonymous fiction 20 photograph by Adam Lux 21 Humid, poem by Giuseppe Vitellaro 22 Wii Pee, fiction by Leo Mitchell 23 photograph by Thomas Williams 26 photograph by Adam Lux 27 photograph by Sam Fentress 28 poetry by Adam Lux 29 Always, fiction by Alex Peraud 31 photograph by Austin Strifler 32 Crush, fiction by Tom Fields 32 photograph by Giuseppe Vitellaro 33 Youth, fiction by Justin Dussold 34 Death the Girl, poetry by Adam Lux 35 charcoal by Nick Bentz 36 print by Paul J. Fister 37 Standing in the Dark, fiction by Mark Robinson 38 print by Paul J. Fister

39 Dragon’s Teeth, microfiction by Sam Beckmann 40-41 photograph by Ben Banet 41 Lifetime of an Excited State, poetry by Jacob Hilmes 42 A Street Hockey Goalie’s Legacy, poetry by Adam Lux 43 photo of sculpture by Larry Hoerr 43 Oculum Pro Oculo, fiction by Justin Dussold 47 On Being a Father, poetry by Frank Corley 48 Hammered, fiction by Sam Beckmann 49 print by Jackson Mayfield 50 Weird, fiction by Tom Fields 51 drawing by Jack MacDonald 52 A Disillusioned Boy, poetry by Adam Lux 53 collagraph by Jackson Mayfield 54 print by Jacob Colvis 55 Sno-Cone, fiction by Alex Peraud 57 drawing by David Greaves 58 Mr. Best, poetry by Jacob Hilmes 58 photograph by Austin Strifler 59 A Child of Children, fiction by JJ Driscoll 60 drawing by Tom Fields 62 Out of Darkness, poetry by Tristan Finazzo 63 watercolor by David Greaves 64 Bureau’s Evidence, fiction by Mark Robinson 65 reduction print by Tom Fields 67 photograph by Leo Heinz 68 photograph by Ben Banet 70 photograph by Matt Sciuto 71 Ray, fiction by Joe Schneider 72 photograph by Adam Lux 73 photograph by Giuseppe Vitellaro 73 Walking the Yellow Brick Road, poetry by Guillaume Delabar 74 Fag., poetry by Giuseppe Vitellaro 74 photograph by Giuseppe Vitellaro 75 We Did a Lot of Stupid Things, prose by Joe Slama 79 solar print by Jacob Colvis 80 Meramec, poetry by Matt Smith

Challenge Cup Noah Weber

es, but what I cared about even more was a Monday on the Landing, March 4th 2013, eating bacon cheeseburgers and walking to the Arch at night—me and my friend the only people in the park, the only people in the world at twilight, looking at the city behind us. The buildings seem embarrassed as you look at them that way. They lose their stoicity. They spin in low fidelity rabbithole nightmares. They become yours. And then to take the Metro and to walk to Union Station. To sit there in that whispering arches room, to listen to the player piano and to just grow older. For the next one hundred years the work grant kids will wipe dust off that trophy, and all they’ll think about is the hockey team and how they must have been good and (maybe) how cool it would have been to see them win. Real life doesn’t gather dust.

photo by Sam Fentress

Unbalanced Mark Robinson

hat winter, everyone seemed to be wearing them. I couldn’t walk down the hallways without seeing the dancing colors radiating from the holograms encased in the colorful wristbands. Power Balance was the latest fad among athletes and wannabes alike. I needed one. I had walked four miles in the bitter cold from my house to the Sports Authority, ready to come out a different person. I felt a wall of warm, stagnant air as I passed under the threshold of the sliding doors from the frozen tundra of Oakville into an oasis of retail. This was ground zero. Hands in my hoodie pocket and trying to be casual, I walked with my gaze cast downward, hoping I would not run into anyone who might recognize me. I walked over to the baseball gloves as I always did, concealing myself between the towering walls of leather and the smell of hide ready to be broken in. I picked up a black catcher’s mitt and slid my winter-blanched hand into its warm embrace. My muscles were too frozen to manage even a half squeeze. I could still feel my hand trembling under the dense padding. I had made it to checkpoint one. The baseball gloves were this season’s centerpiece in the store, the vantage point from which I would scope out the merchandise and pinpoint the location of the new Power Balance inventory. I scanned the store, carefully shifting in a full three-sixty but in a way that would not draw attention. There it was, the sleek rectangular rack that held every avail-

able Power Balance in the entire zip code. How had I managed to pass it on the way in? It was a monument. I stared at it from a distance. To take my eyes off it would be to disrespect greatness. I didn’t even realize someone was behind me until I heard, “Can I help you with anything today?” This snapped me out of my trance with a flinch. I turned around to see a college-age worker in a red Sports Authority polo wearing a lanyard that read “Grant Clements.” He was amused at my spooked reaction. I must have looked like an idiot. “A buddy of mine has that same glove, and it’s like his baby. How’s it treatin’ ya?” I looked at him, mouth open. I barely realized that I still had the mitt on until he nodded down towards it. “Oh.” I shook my head to wake myself up. “It’s nice.” That was all I could manage. “Yes, it is,” he said, giving each word individuality, probably still trying make a sale out of this painful encounter. “I couldn’t help but notice you were eyeing those new Power Balances over there.” He shot a glance over towards the sleek display. “You know, some people say that those things actually work. They think it makes ’em stronger, or more flexible, or gives ’em better balance and stuff like that.” I couldn’t believe he had the audacity to think that there was a chance they didn’t actually work. “If you ask me, they’re more of a fashion statement than anything, and twenty-five

photo by Ben Banet

bucks is just grossly overpriced for a rubber band.” He looked down as I stared back at him blankly. Money was not going to be the problem for me. “All right, well, just holler if you need anything,” he said, walking away. Now came my moment. I had been tiptoeing around the objective since I arrived. The time for ogling was over. Now it was time to make my move. I slipped my hand out from the soft, bovine warmth of the catcher’s mitt and wiggled my fingers a few

times. They were good to go. Innocently, I emerged from between the displays of baseball gloves and moved down the speckled marble aisles. Slinking in and out of racks of fluorescent running shoes and bold-font Nike apparel, always looking up to make sure my Power Balance display was still unguarded. I stopped by the clearance bins of mini basketballs, flipping a black Miami Heat one back and forth between my dry hands, just to make sure I was not making too direct an ap-

proach. I continued on with easy footsteps, careful not to screech my sneakers, head downcast. Then, before I knew it, they were right there, those holographic eyes turning me to stone, sitting pretty against the pearly pieces of cardboard that held them. I could feel the aura working even at a distance. I needed one. I walked closer so I could sneak a feel, lightly pinching the colorful band between thumb and forefinger. It felt surprisingly plain, like any other inanimate object. “It must just take some getting used to,” I thought to myself. “You know, just like a brand new baseball mitt.” I ran my fingertips down the tiers of colors like a little child punching all the buttons on an elevator. Then, directly behind the display, I saw the blurry edge of another red shirt coming closer and closer. It was a store manager with an earpiece coiled around his ear and shoulder. I backed away until I felt my heel hit the chrome arm of a clothing rack. Instinctively, I turned around and flipped through the hangers only to find that it was a rack of sports bras. I peeked over my shoulder. The manager was giving me a baffled look. He shook his head and continued to mutter something into the earpiece microphone. I could feel the hot blood crashing in waves on my cheeks and neck. My throat felt dry and my hands light. I gave him a second to pass, then turned back to the unguarded showcase. I grabbed the cardboard holder of a yellow Power Balance. I don’t know why yellow, I don’t even like yellow, but that’s what appeared in my palm. I took one final glance, then quickly jammed it into the pocket of my sweatpants, not even checking to see if anyone was looking. I needed to get out. I started hustling away, leaving the monument behind me for good. I could feel a corner of the Power Balance card peering out from the dark depth of my pocket. I tried to push it farther down with my thumb a couple times, but it just kept popping back up.

Panic spilled through my veins like a quick poison. I looked around. The few customers around were already too preoccupied with their weekend buying. Slipping one hand back into my sweatpants, I began to fiddle with the fastening. My fingers clawed around like blind moles working their way in the dark until finally the band loosened itself in my pocket. I worked it around until it fit my wrist as I made my way to the door. Then I pulled the cardboard piece out, dropped it, and kicked it under the pedestal of a charcoal mannequin just before I passed through the sensors and out the automatic doors. No alarm. I made my way back out into the perpetual cold. All the cars out on the lot were grimed with the dirty residue of melted snow, looking forlorn under the sunless morning. The parking lot, too, was coated in a film of winter dirt, and cracks branched through the asphalt like a network of veins. The veins were icy and black like mine. For the first time, I stole a look down at my wrist. The yellow band shone like a summer sun against the abysmal February morning, but there was no warmth. I had been tricked. Everything about it felt fake. The rubbery band was nothing more than a bracelet, an accessory. That hologram had seduced me and then left me out to freeze all by myself in the Sports Authority parking lot. My throat felt dry once again. This time I was on the verge of dry heaving. I leaned over a trashcan and convulsed a couple times. A warm unpleasantness began rising within me. It was looking for the cold air. Doubled over, my body went rigid as I emptied my bitter contents into the plastic lining. I knew I needed to return what I had stolen. I turned around and looked back towards the storefront. I wiped my mouth with the sleeve of my jacket, took a deep breath of the sharp air, and made my way back in. Everything seemed forgiving. The doors still slid

open for me almost as if I had never wronged them in the first place. The fluorescent lights above seemed brighter as I walked over their reflections like stepping-stones on the marble floor. I had not yet figured out how I was actually going to return the Power Balance, considering that its cardboard holder was hiding under the protection of a muscular menswear model. As I approached the display one final time, I hung my head, humbled by my foolishness. I pulled the band off my wrist with a rubbery snap, making sure not to look into the mesmerizing hologram that had gotten me into trouble in the first place, and hung the bracelet from the long hook apologetically. I turned around and started back for the parking lot. The sun was starting to break through the clouds. Then, right as I was about to pass through the sensors clean of guilt, I felt a heavy hand come down on shoulder. “And just where the hell do you think you’re going,” I heard a voice grumble in my ear. My heart jumped into my throat like the puck in a carnival strongman game. “Don’t think I didn’t see you return that bracelet you walked outta here with. Did you really think you could get away with stealing from me?” He jerked me around by the shoulder, and his venomous eyes stared straight into me. It was the man with the earpiece I had seen just before I made my move. “But sir,” I blubbered, “I had just—” “Just what? Returned it? If I’m not mistaken that would still require you to have stolen it in the first place.” He kept his hand clamped to my shoulder, his meaty fingertips digging under my collarbone, making every inhalation another painful reminder of what I had done. He marched me over to a lonely red door off to the side of the dressing rooms and threw it open. “Stay here, you got it?” I looked around the office, bleary-eyed. It was just four bleak white walls and a desk littered with forms and papers. I sat down in

the corner and began to cry. I could feel the warm rivulets slide down my cheeks. Some of the salty tears made their way into my mouth, mingling with the aftertaste of vomit. I felt sick with sadness. I gripped my wrists around my knees and tried to stop shaking. The manager could be back any minute, and I did not want him or anyone else to see me like this. I dabbed my eyes with the backside of my hand, squeezing out the last drops of emotion. I felt lost in the white void of the dimensionless room, and I let myself be consumed by the solitary loneliness. I wanted someone to walk in and tell me everything was going to be all right, but I knew that would never happen. From outside the closed door, I could hear the gruff sound of voices slipping invisibly around the doorframe and into my ears. It was like radio static where I would hear a word, then nothing but a muffled clash of noises until all the quiet commotion was broken by the click of the doorknob. Two men walked in, one of them the manager with the earpiece who had detained me, the other a young looking, clean-cut police officer. Terror gripped me. I could not even pull myself up from where I sat on the floor. I just stared up hopelessly at the two eclipsing figures. The manager started. “Against my better judgment, I’m letting you off with just a warning.” His eyes were burning with revenge and every pardoning word came out of his mouth with reluctance. The police officer cut in. “Do you realize how serious an offense shoplifting is, son? Sports Authority could have you arrested and it would go on your record as a minor.” I nodded, every part of my face stiff with immobility. “Now I’m gonna have to drive you home, and you will be the one who fills your parents in on the details of your little burglary. Got it?” “Yes, sir,” I croaked.

“All right, then.” He gestured towards the exit. “I’m gonna take a quick smoke since I’m technically still off-duty, and then we’ll be on our way.” We sat outside in the frigid lot on a bench. He stared off stoically with the mammoth arms of his leather jacket crossed over his chest. His presence was just as chilling as the February air. He didn’t know what had gone down inside, nor did he care. He was just there, like a mannequin. He pulled out a pack of Marlboros and began tapping one into his hand. “Can I go to the bathroom?” I asked out of nowhere. He seemed taken aback by the question. “Make it quick,” he growled, not even bothering to look my way. He couldn’t have cared less if I headed back in and stole something else. I walked back into the store and over to the Power Balance display reverently. There was still something so magnetic about it. I found the lonely yellow band dangling piteously, the very one that had entranced me with its luster no more than twenty minutes ago. It was the only band without a holder. I lightly lifted it off the hook with my finger. With the same hand, Power Balance looped over my fingers, I

made for my wallet. I pulled out two wrinkly, grease-worn bills, a twenty and a five. I headed towards the checkout counter with the humility of repentance in my heart. I slapped the money and the band in one pitiful heap onto the counter and left it there, not even allowing myself to get rung up at the register. President Lincoln’s face on the five did not smile back at me with benevolence. He just maintained his stern papery softness. I walked outside and plopped myself down beside the police officer, nothing left in my pockets.

Wooden Nickels Sam Beckmann The car was encased in a thin layer of frost every morning. I would watch black lines burn clear strips into the rear window. The back had its charms: space to maneuver, ability to crawl into the crevice where feet go. But I grew from the back to the front. With my father, it was anything but silence. Books, history, politics, science, film. During rides, I learned. After a while, I taught too. After every conversation, the same words As I abandoned fleeting protection and heat: “Have fun. Learn something. Don’t take any wooden nickels.” For a while it was just the two of us. But practicality trumps sentimentality, and Dan joined us in the morning. He was silent. That was infuriating. Nothing changed, yet everything did. All intimacy was lost. Still, “Have fun. Learn something. Don’t take any wooden nickels.” Then we could drive. Just Dan and I, in silence. He played music, but I watched black lines burn clear strips into the rear window. Podcasts were my idea. The silence changed. Stories, thoughts, meaning. We clung to every word, united without words. It was a little thing. It always is. Red light of dawn barely woke us up. But the nickels were real. “Have fun, learn something, don’t take any wooden nickels.” I didn’t.

photo by Ben Banet

Resting Place

Four Poems Austin Strifler

Blessed is the Love of a Mother Says the heart-shaped box, But the box sits under layers of dust And the perfume within has started Turning bitter. I’m asking myself the questions That can’t be answered Like Why is there cancer? Why not me and her? Why can’t I freeze time in amber? Or stop the clock from pounding at my heart like a hammer? I can feel your remains Sifting Slipping Right through my hands Like the sands Of my vast, dry soul.

Midwinter You were in my dreams last night, Still young, still alive, made new, No longer flesh, no longer flayed, No longer ashes. But I know you Can’t stay for long. Your red scarf says Winter, But I’m screaming for Summer, Before any hint or Any sign or Any thing that could hinder Your life span. Your white cells were few In a sea of red, Like the Specks of Snow On Grandma’s Christmas sweater, Like sitting alone in a sea of pews, Calling to the land of the dead, Asking why you had to go Like the passing of warm weather.

You visited me last night You visited me last night And told me That you’re proud Of what I’ve become, though all I see is Darkness. You said you’re glad I’ve found People who love me like you Do Or Did I’m never sure which tense to use Because I know you’re not here for long But I’m afraid to tell you That this car ride soon Will end And they’ll send you away again, Burned, Stuffed into an urn. My stomach churns, But I force a smile, Like some unknown unbeliever in Church. I’m scared because I don’t know When you’ll visit next, or how to visit you, short of splitting myself in two, A red puddle reflecting the Heavens, Your home.

Someday, I will bury You in a Poem. The Paper will be the Earth, The Words Your Casket, The Punctuation a soft satin Lining. I will bury You Six stanzas deep, Safe from the weary rain, Safe from the weak shell Of an urn. I will write You On my Heart, And on the Heart of Every Person I meet, And I will write You On my Soul, So You will be immortal. Today, I have buried You in a Poem. The Paper is the Earth, The Words Your Casket, The Punctuation a soft satin Lining. I have buried You Six stanzas deep, Safe from the weary rain, Safe from the weak shell Of an urn. I have written You On my Heart, And on the Heart of Every Person I’ve met, And I have written You On my Soul. You are immortal.

Hang-Up Tom Fields

“‘

print by Paul J. Fister

ovin’ Out’? All right, turn it up. It’s about time we played some Billy Joel in here. See if they have—Crap. I’ll be back in a minute, guys.” I ran into the hallway to take the call. “HOME” flashed orange across the face of my cell. Home. I flipped open the phone. “Hello?” “You won’t answer my calls. You won’t return my messages. Get your ass back home. Now.” “Calls?” I checked my watch. 8:09. Whoops. “Dad. I never got any—I didn’t’t feel my phone ring.” I started to lightly knock my forehead on the wall. “Mom said I could stay till eight tonight. The magazine comes out next—When did you call?” I turned and looked down the dark hallway, barely making out the wall at the end of it. “Dad?” I checked the screen. “Call Ended.” 8:10. I ran back into the office, sweat dripping down the back of my shirt. “Guys, I gotta get home,” I shouted as I shoved my laptop into my school bag. “What?” Ross spun in his wheeled office chair from the story he was proofreading. “We’ve got to get the Spring issue out next week. You just got here like twenty minutes ago. You haven’t even flipped through all the art submissions yet.” “I know. I’ve got it. I’ll get it done.” I started walking towards the door. Five minutes to my car, twenty to get home, get to bed by nine— “You know,” Pete said, “I could always

look those submissions over if he can’t stay till eleven every night.” Peter Schnier. That prick had been trying to take the “Artistic Director” title from me since day one. “No, Pete.” I turned around and forced a grin. “I’ve got it. I just need to get home. They’ll be in by tomorrow afternoon, Ross.” “They better be. I’m not gonna be the first Editor in Chief to churn out a late issue.” Ross swiveled back to work.

jogged down to the school parking lot, backpack bouncing on my spine like a medicine ball. The truth was I had really lost track of time. Thursdays were my busiest days; Dad knew that. I went from tutoring sophomores in geometry to attending a yearbook layout meeting to planning an alumni reception to working at our school’s literary magazine, The Excelsior. The editors bought dinner at 6:30, which I had missed tonight. I had just started looking over the watercolors of some junior when Dad called. The point is I wasn’t chasing girls or smoking behind the dumpsters or something. Why didn’t he trust me? “I trust you to be a teenager,” he always said. “I trust that you’ll make bad decisions and get yourself into trouble, like I did.” “Well, I’m not you,” I muttered as I unlocked my car. The student parking lot was empty. I looked down at my watch. 8:21. I opened the door and threw my backpack onto the back seat of my 1999 Toyota. It had snowed earlier that day, so I brushed off my windshield with my sleeve. I stared up at the sky for a second, watching my breath fade into the parking lot lights overhead. “What if I didn’t go home?” I was startled. It took a moment for me to recognize my own voice. Did I say that out loud? It really didn’t sound like my voice. It sounded smaller, emptier. Helpless. Stupid, I thought to myself. I got in

print by Gabe Miller

the car, slammed the door and started the ignition. Get home before 9:00. Show him how stupid he is for making a big deal out of nothing. Idiot.

opened the windows and blasted the radio as I flew down the highway fifteen over the limit, my hair whipping around my face. I never listened to this station. I didn’t even like hip-hop, but it seemed fitting. Dad hated it. I punched the gas pedal and passed cars on the inside. Idiots. 8:34. I came up to my exit. CONSTRUCTION AHEAD, TAKE DETOUR FOR I-170 glowed on the freeway sign ahead of me. OK. I could do this. I could find my way home. I’ll show him. I gunned it to 90 in the construction zone. Bright orange and blinding white

shot past me like strobing camera flashes. I shouted curse words for the hell of it, trying to be louder than the blaring music vibrating through the car. Nobody could make me slow down. Nobody could make me change the station. Nobody could tell me where I had to be. This was freedom. This was escape. Then the lights were gone. The construction zone was gone. The fluorescent glow of streetlights was gone. I couldn’t even see the headlights or taillights of other cars. The highway was empty. I lifted my foot from the pedal and let the car slide to a cruise. Where was I? I looked at the digital clock on my radio. 8:46. I had driven fifteen minutes into the middle of nowhere. How was I going to get back to the apartment in ten minutes? I had to turn around. In frustration, I turned up the music. I took an exit with an unrecognizable name. That took me onto another strange road. I took another unknown exit, and another, and another, trying to backtrack, trying to get back to familiarity. I sped past little-league fields, gated communities, and abandoned shacks. I saw no one on the streets. I had to get out of here as quickly as possible. I was running out of time. I had to find my way back to the highway. I sped past stop signs. The forest flew past me on both sides. Two bright yellow orbs stared at me from the middle of the road. Deer. I hit the brakes and snapped the wheel. Tires squealed. Glass smashed. My body jolted forward like a piston, knocking my head on the steering wheel. saw my breath in the dim light of the car stereo. There was a commercial playing. I clicked the radio off with the back of my fingers. They were sore. My head was pounding.

I saw leaves and grass in the cracked windshield. I had driven into a ditch. My sweatshirt was soaked with sweat and sticking to my skin. I slid it off my body and got chills as the cool breeze touched my bare arms. “Idiot.” The car was positioned at a strange angle, but maybe I could back out of this. I shifted to “R” and touched the gas. I started to back up an inch, but immediately slid back down the slope of the ditch. I tried again. Nothing. I shut off the ignition. I opened the car door and immediately slumped onto the ground. I sat in the silence for a few minutes. I rested my head on the steering wheel. I thought about nothing. I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t want one. I thought about nothing. “Son?” Startled, I looked to my left. “Son, are you all right?” A lanky man with a scraggly beard stood above me. He had a greasy gray mechanic’s suit on. His eyebrows sharpened into a concerned frown. He squatted down and met my face. “Can you speak?” I nodded my head in reply. “All right,” the man said. “Just stay right where you are. Funny how I drove my towtruck home tonight. All a part of God’s plan, ri—Don’t move! Don’t move! I’ll hook you up. Just stay right where you are.” And he was gone, climbing back up the slope of the hill. I stayed right where I was. My phone rang in my pocket. 9:04. “Yeah, Dad?” “Where are you? Your sister has school tomorrow morning and it’s already nine.” I sat there for a second and stared at the smashed front end of the car. “I’m at the light on Forsyth, Dad. I’ll be home in a couple of minutes.” “Oh. Okay. Well, just hurry up.” “Fine.” I heard the tow truck hook latch onto the rear of the car. “Dad, I jus... I’m sorry, Dad. About everything. I’m sorry for staying out so late.

You’re right. It’s senior year. I have to be home more. Maybe I have been too busy lately.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “Maybe it is just an effort to avoid you. I’m sorry I didn’t see it before.” Silence. “Dad?” I looked at the screen of my phone. “Call Ended.” I watched as my car was pulled from the ditch inch by inch. The sound of hydraulic motors aching rang through the brisk air. I looked up. All the clouds had parted in the sky to reveal a crescent moon. Blue, hollow, and cold. I dialed “2” on my phone. “Calling HOME.”

photo by Matt Sciuto of sculpture by Evan Penny

Blocked Game Mark Robinson

November 2012

April 2013

Grandma’s wiry fingers scuttle around like jittering crab legs. The dominoes click clack, sliding past each other like tectonic plates As she shuffles them into a pearly, plastic Pangaea. Her fingers are snarled like claws from arthritis And the cracking of brittle bone adds to the clatter.

Grandma is at my kitchen table. She doesn’t ask any questions today. She has hardly acknowledged me since I set The chest of dominoes in front of her. She keeps talking to herself in nasally murmurs. She used to do it so she would remember things, But now it’s become senseless monologue. The doctors told Grandma to keep her mind active, But she just tumbles the dominoes in and out of each other. You’d think she was fascinated by the tiles But everything is vacant behind her green-grey marble eyes. The tiles are strewn about the table. Black dashes and colorful dimples migrate mindlessly. Every so often one will fall to the floor with an interrupting clatter, But she doesn’t acknowledge it.

She picks her pieces with pensive precision. I just slide the nearest tiles towards me. I stand my tiles up like pickets, One by one, side by side. The dotted numerals stare at me like paper strips of candy buttons. Grandma scoops hers up like a hand of stud, Her twiggy fingers wrap around like a nest full of eggs. “How’s school?” She sounds tired. “It’s going all right,” I insist. She plays her first domino finally. I look back down at my chromatic column, the black lines that divide the two different faces of the tile line up flawlessly. I hear her tapping from across the table. She sends me impatient Morse code messages with the edge of a domino Then flashes me a jack-o’-lantern grin when I look up, Her eyes glowing childishly behind crooked spectacles. “How’s school?” She insists. “It’s going all right.” I sound tired.

Maybe she can’t remember how to play, Maybe she just enjoys the solitude. She looks older without the wire-framed glasses atop her nose. She left them at home today. I can see the black notes smeared across the back of her hand. The inky bruises twist and writhe as her knotty knuckles rise and fall uncertainly. She seems vulnerable like a child, But Mom says we aren’t going to treat her any differently and insists that Grandma is still the same woman. It’s hard to find her now.

My memory of her fades as her memories of me fade. I look across the table and she is different. I look to the past and she is different. I recall my “Old” Grandma as this old grandma. We have both begun to forget.

The Paper Anonymous

I tap my finger impatiently on the table, But she never looks up. I sit back with a sour scowl. Grandma still says nothing. She pauses a moment and arches her fingers back, Then slowly curls them forward. She discovers the scribbles on her parchment skin But she can’t read them without her glasses. Her face doesn’t wrinkle with worry as it used to. Now when she forgets to remember, She remembers to forget it ever happened. I finally ask her if she’d like to play, But she just sits there, tumbling.

solar print by Andrew Ney

y feet ached from the cold as I pulled my sweater over my legs to keep out the wind. It was definitely not supposed to be this cold in April. I looked down at the blank lined page in my notebook. The assignment was a two-page story on a personal experience. “Just write what you know.” Mrs. Faris had told us. “Anything that’s personal and interesting will be great.” I looked around for inspiration. My thinking was interrupted by a yell from inside. It was the beginning of yet another fight. I scooted down a few of the stairs that led to my porch and put a little more distance between the house and me. I tried to think again, but my concentration was broken. The yelling wasn’t anything new, but even though I was accustomed to it, my heart still beat a little faster each time I heard my father cursing at my mother. I originally started coming out on the porch to do homework, but avoiding my parents’ fights was a bonus. “I’m getting out of here,” my father yelled. The door opened and my father slammed it behind him before tripping over a small planter containing flowers that my sister had planted the previous weekend. The green buds poured out of the planter in an avalanche of soil. “Goddamn flowers.” My father made his way down the stairs and past me without acknowledgement. He got into the blue Ford F-150 and disappeared around the corner, barely slowing down for the stop sign. I got up and examined the damaged flowers. I did my best to put them back, but my sister would easily notice the damage

when she went to water them next morning. I dusted my hands off on my pants and picked up my notebook. I decided I would write the story during break the following day. But, I knew if I waited until then, I would end up with yet another zero in the grade book, and another letter home that would never be looked at. I went inside, hoping to avoid my mother, who was already on the phone trying to call my father. “Will,” my mother told me, “don’t you dare let your father back in tonight. This time he’s sleeping on the street.” I continued to make my way up to my room, knowing I wouldn’t need to let him in because my mother would. I showered and tried to sleep, but my mind kept working, trying to come up with a personal story that would finally get me a good grade in English. For a while I worked on a fictional story about a boy who learns the true meaning of Christmas through giving. Even Mrs. Faris, who tried to be lenient in her grading, would see that this was just the plot to the Hallmark Movies Channel movies that premiered every Christmas. Nonetheless, I carefully tore out the two-page paper and once again tried to sleep. I was awoken twenty minutes later when, sure enough, my father got home and my mother let him in. He was still drunk and apparently my mother was still looking for a fight. The yelling started, and my heart started to pound. The curse words tore into me even as I buried myself deep underneath my covers. I forced myself to get up to check on my sister. She was sound asleep. I crept back into my room and grabbed my notebook before digging myself into my bed again. I knew going down to intervene would just make the fight even worse. Suddenly they would forget what they had previously been fighting about, and now it would be about who woke me up, and whose fault it was that I wasn’t asleep. I jumped as I heard a crash down-

Humid Giuseppe Vitellaro

photo by Adam Lux

stairs. I listened for my mother’s voice to make sure she was okay and heard it seconds later screaming at my father, who laughed maliciously. I hated it when he laughed like that. I felt my nails dig deep into my flesh as my hands formed fists. My muscles tensed and tears of anger began to form around my eyes. I wanted to go down there. I wanted to scream at them and tell them what they were doing to my sister and me. I wanted to, but I knew I couldn’t. Tears of anger rolled down my face as I cried silently deep underneath my blankets. But I knew what to write. I opened to a blank page and I began to write. I wrote about the yelling, the breaking of things, the laughter, and worst of all the knowledge that every time a fight ended, it would happen again in a few nights. I wrote and wrote, tears streaming down my face. The story was beautiful and truthful. It was the story that

I lived almost every night, and I finally realized what Mrs. Faris meant by, “Write what you know.” I sure as hell knew what I was writing. I was writing the pure, complete truth. I finally finished and looked down at the paper. I read it over and over until I knew every single line. It felt good writing all of it down, and it felt even better knowing that I would get an A on the paper. It felt good until I realized that nobody could ever see this. There was no way I could turn it in. I knew I could not expose this part of my life to people who would surely have to do something about it. I read the paper again and then read my Hallmark Christmas story. It was cliché and anything but personal, but it would have to do. I put it back in the homework section of my accordion folder. As for my real story, I folded it up and buried it in a drawer full of shirts.

the air has gone and left but thick heat it wraps itself ’round your cheeks and pulls snug it presses ’gainst the chest and swaddles it breathes hot and heavy and drips wet you slurp the moisture from the air and sweat

Wii Pee Leo Mitchell

immy had the kind of mom that would go to Target at three in the morning to reserve a spot in line for the new Wii. If I hadn’t heard him talking about it at basketball practice, he might’ve just stayed as the new kid to me. But when I was in the middle of a layup, he bragged that he had actually played Wii Bowling, and that it actually was as cool as we had just been imagining. The ball tipped over the rim, whisking through the net and into my open palm. I turned back to him. “Is it just like real bowling? And what about the baseball?” “It’s pwetty fun, but tennis is the best.” Jimmy always switched his R’s for W’s. Since it was subtle, I always wondered why he didn’t get it fixed with speech therapy as my brother did. “Cool. Do you still use it much since you have to…ya know, get moving every time you play?” This was the lame excuse my mom had used for not letting me get one or even put it on my Christmas list. According to her, we would never play something that required more than button-pressing. She hated TV but seemed intent to make sure that our time spent using it was as unhealthy as possible. Jimmy noticed he had everyone’s attention. “Fuh shuh.” He blushed a little bit but barely hesitated before rushing on. “You don’t even have to stand up. All you do is flick yuh wist and it wuks!” He demonstrated the movement for us, and it made us glow. I had to see this for myself to prepare a new pitch to my mom. If I could convince her that we could be lazy while playing the Wii, but also get moving from time to time, then she would have no escape route.

I changed the topic, though. The status of his weekend homework was irrelevant to me, but it was also irrelevant to everyone else. Soon enough they turned their attention to the open hoops. Mrs. K looked ready to wobble over, whistle screaming, to indicate the end of this Sunday’s practice. I started talking faster, hoping to connect with Jimmy before our moms repacked their purses and our dads helped them into their coats to leave. None of the dads liked to linger after practice, and if they could get their wives ready to leave before the whistle, they had a better chance of avoiding small talk before heading home. Jimmy’s weekend homework was as untouched as mine. I rested a basketball on my hip, perching my arm over it so it would hang freely. His pain was my pain, I told him, and the best solution was probably for me to come over next Saturday so that we could finish it early. But really I was inviting myself over to use his Wii. Our blue and gold dragon mascot was on the wall over his right shoulder, and I avoided his eyes by focusing on where the paint had cracked. I flicked my eyes back to his for a response after I finished talking–they were aglow, and nearly in line with the tips of the grin splayed across his face. My brow relaxed when he bobbed his head in agreement. He liked the idea a lot, apparently. Saturday approached slowly. At school my best friend was Ron, who lived two blocks away. We were a kind of duo until recently, when the competition between Richard and I began. Richard was the shy kid in the class until that year. He played state tag with us at recess but ate his lunch with deliberation, chewing slowly so that his mouth was always busy and he never had to talk. That was his personality. Silent participation. I liked Richard through fourth grade, but over the summer his personality exploded. With the head of height and booming voice he now

had over all of us, he was a different person mentally and physically. Richard angled his way into my friendship when Ron selected him as an up-and-coming popular kid. At first I thought we would all three be friends, which would’ve been fun. Ron had been lavishing attention on Richard since the school year started, but he always included me. That started changing, too, as I realized when we went on a trip to the Japanese Festival in our neighborhood. With foreign candy stands, lantern-lit paths, and demonstrations from massive sumo wrestlers, the night inspired excitement. This year, with Richard, we walked through the Japanese gardens, feeding koi fish from the bridge in the middle. Ron and Rich bubbled within their new friendship, which I noticed and tried not to resent. The best part of the Festival was the sumo wrestling show. They always pick one

lucky kid from the audience to “wrestle” at the end, but everyone knows the kid just gets pinched by his shirt and lifted to face height by a seven-hundred-pound monster. As hard as we jumped and waved our arms, we didn’t get picked. But it was OK. While we sat on the grass watching, we figured out that we could use our new plastic cups as coin holders. They came from the lemonade we bought at the top of the grass hill, and they had sturdy plastic lids whose straw hole could almost swallow a quarter. There was a picture on the front of a sumo man crouched into his starting position. Ron’s mom picked us up in their old minivan when we left the show. She pulled into the street but headed the wrong direction. “Mrs. Wickman, don’t you have to go the other direction?” Maybe she wasn’t used to taking Rich home with us. “No, honey, I don’t think so.”

photo by Thomas Williams

“But Rich lives back there, I thought.” I tossed my thumb in the direction of the back windshield. “Oh, you’re right about that! I talked to his mom earlier today. No worries, Rich. You’re good to spend the night.” She looked over her shoulder at me and smiled. “Sorry you couldn’t make it tonight, Patrick!” I looked over at Rich next to me and saw he had shifted his whole body to stare out the window. Apparently Ron planned for tonight to be his first sleepover without me since first grade. “Oh. Right.” Then I looked out my own window, listening to Mrs. Wickman’s country duet with the radio until we got to my house.

immy’s steps had a good half inch of icy snow over the regular stuff, and my shoes snapped through it easily. My favorite sound is crunching snow, which always forms when the melty top layer refreezes at twilight. Approaching their duplex, as my mom defined it when we pulled up, I didn’t know which door to knock on. Then Jimmy’s mom darted out of the left one, pinching the door shut quickly since it was so blustery outside. Her white sweater was too thin for the weather, so she drew her shoulders up to her neck and shoved her fist into the crook of her other arm to wave at my mom. When I reached the porch, she eased her face into a smile against the wind. “Hi, Patrick!” She turned back to the door, hunching over and making me appreciate my coat. “How’s it going, Mrs. Fullson?” The outer layer of my coat was coarse, but I had to smear the sleeve across my dripping nose. It was numb anyway. “I...am...great!” She threw her hands off of the handle and jammed them into her pockets, searching for her keys. “Damn, I keep forgetting we set this thing to lock automatically.” Then, in one fluid motion, she jiggled the key to just the right angle,

thumbed the door handle, and rammed the wood with her shoulder. Inside, our breath became invisible again, and we noticed the loss of feeling in our faces against the warm air. It smelled like smoke. “Whew!” I smiled back and noticed a door behind her, which must’ve led to a similarly cramped entryway for the other half of the duplex. “Do you guys know your neighbors pretty well?” Mrs. Fullson chuckled. “Well, I guess you could say that. Jimmy’s grandma lives through there.” She turned towards their upstairs and pointed at the door to her side. “Dad’s side, not mine. Maybe Jimmy will take you down later. She’s a hoot!” The worn stairs drowned our voices with each step and curved into a narrow hallway at the top. It stretched from the front of the house to the kitchen in the back, and a large part of the wall looked like it was made of warped glass cubes. Mrs. Fullson explained that they were actually piggy banks she made for her job at a bank, which explained her heels and pants. She pointed me to the right for Jimmy and his brother’s room. He was playing a game when I opened the door. “Hey, man, just playing a wacing game. Let’s finish this wound and we can get a snack.” He tossed a controller at the open chair on the floor. It was a gaming chair, like a legless rocker, so I almost fell backwards when I plopped down too hard. “Now quick, turn on the controlluh so we can start multiplayuh mode.” His brother walked in to see who the visitor was. “That’s Kip,” Jimmy explained. “Bet you haven’t touched my high score yet, punks.” He was standing in the door to the family room, hands on his hips, watching the screen. “Fifth graders don’t have shit on eighth graders!” We both giggled, which got him smiling. “You know it’s true!”

ip filtered in and out all afternoon, playing his music from the computer on his side of their room. During our snack I discovered the cabinet was full of all the junk my mom never bought, and Mrs. Fullson told me to help myself—she liked my enthusiasm. At one point Kip kicked us out of their room for a turn on the Xbox. Playing soccer was a frigid alternative, but the crisp air was energizing after the screen time. When the cold became unbearable we went back in through Grandma’s back door. Jimmy explained that the house was hers, but she rented their half to them. She was smoking at her kitchen table when we found her. Jimmy said he only liked her for her cookies, but we stayed longer to hear her “back in the day...” stories.

hen Mrs. Fullson called Grandma’s phone looking for us, we went up for dinner. Jimmy’s dad had brought home Elicia’s Pizza, and from everyone’s hasty hand washing I gathered it was a Fullson family favorite. Since they didn’t seem to have a dining room, we sat at their breakfast table in the kitchen. Mrs. Fullson noticed my plate was empty, and the three guys were appalled when I explained it was because I didn’t like pizza. “Well, I can’t say I understand that, but you certainly won’t be going hungry on my watch, Tim!” She jumped up from the table. “Will a PB&J do? Great. Now, boys, stop eating.” A chorus of grumbles followed, and she scowled in our direction. “We have a guest! You’re all like a pack of ravenous wolves. By the time I make a single sandwich, you’ll be finished and feeding your crust to Toto.” The dog’s ears perked up under the table at the mention of his name. “Aww, come on, Mom!” Jimmy spoke for everyone at the table. I felt bad. “You guys can eat. You don’t have to wait for me.” Jimmy, Kip, and their

dad looked at me gratefully before turning their attention back to the table. Mrs. Fullson heard the munching, though, and gave the sink a good thwap with her knife. “Boys!” This time they just rolled their eyes at me and stopped eating, like they were apologizing for the woman in charge. I got the feeling this was a loving routine just as familiar to them as the three steps to opening their front door. Mrs. Fullson’s smile as she cut my crust confirmed it. Kip stood to refill his water after we ate, stubbing his toe on the table leg. “Ow, shit!” As quiet as his exasperation was, it was clearly meant to test his parents. “Hey! I hear you talking like that again, you’ll be eating like Patrick for the rest of the week. A good ol’ PB&J every night!” His dad smiled at me after this threat, and Kip’s sheepishly mumbled apology had Jimmy and me hunched over the table to keep our laughing down. When Kip stepped back over, Jimmy turned to me and said, “Who’s bettuh than the fifth gwaduhs now, huh?” We gave up trying and let our laughter ring, prompting a dutiful but halfhearted shush from Mrs. Fullson. Kip realized that even his parents were smiling at his expense. “Whatever. We’ll see whose car wins the race tonight!” I learned that the entire Fullson family shared a love of NASCAR. Apparently there was a big race saved on the DVR to watch after dinner.

ip’s racer did come in first, winning him power over the recliner until the following Saturday. The couch I sat on wrapped around two of the open walls and was very welcoming, but the recliner had the third wall to itself, and its worn leather looked absolutely luxurious. We clapped for Kip at the end of race, adding cheers when Mr. Fullson gave up his throne and offered him a hearty high five. It all made me home-

sick, but they adopted me into the night, which helped. I started thinking about baseball season, my family’s NASCAR. Mrs. Fullson brought us a stack of covers for bed that teetered up near her eyes. After tossing one at Kip just in case he decided to sleep with us, she moved into her room with Jimmy’s dad. Kip had turned on Futurama and looked drowsy in the recliner’s folds, but he refused to let us think he cared about our sleepover. Jimmy and I promised each other we’d stay up for the PG-13 Will Ferrell movie at 2 a.m., but the TV’s glow couldn’t keep us awake in the darkness. Within fifteen minutes, both of our eyelids had drooped for the last time.

stale odor shocked me back into action. Luckily the rest of the house was far less creaky than the stairs. I tiptoed to the bathroom to prepare wet globs and dry clumps of toilet paper, which only diluted the mess. The wet spot became a very wet spot, but it still smelled of urine. With my shorts clinging to my skin, I snuck into the kitchen. The third cabinet that I slowly eased open had cleaning supplies, but I had no idea which one I needed. The last thing I wanted was to ruin their new couch with a color-leaching floor cleaner. I looked at the pictures on them and found one with a couch—it was leather instead of fabric, but hopefully close enough.

photo by Adam Lux

woke up at three to find Jimmy drooling, Kip snoring, and Toto at my feet. Even with all the blankets, I was somehow cold. I reached down to adjust the covers, felt something strange, and froze. “What is...oh nooooo,” I whispered to myself. “No. No, no.” Horror. Shock. Disbelief. “Lemonade,” I gasped, panicking. I had pissed the couch. Of course this happened the first night in a new house with an empowered eighth grader slumbering five feet away. Sitting up straight, I realized I could smell it. Distinctly. I started berating myself for not using the bathroom after Mrs. Fullson refilled my lemonade so many times—I hadn’t peed the bed since first grade. After a few moments, the

he spray made it smell better to me, but I was worried I might’ve gotten used to the scent. All I could do now was strip my shorts and change into my extra pair of sweatpants. Pinching the sopping mess at arm’s length, I carried the shorts to the bathroom sink to run them under water and tie them up in a plastic grocery bag. I was ready for sleep. The half hour of secret cleaning had left me exhausted, numb with panic. I placed Toto directly on the wet spot and blankets, moved down the couch, and held my fingers and legs crossed until I drifted off.

small, warm body pressed against my feet. With the events of five hours ago crashing into my consciousness, I willed my eyelids up slowly. “Is that...is that pee?” Kip had pushed Toto towards my feet and was now bent over the drying wet spot, glancing from the dog up to me. “Uh, Toto slept there last night. I guess it could be.” With any luck, my air of sleepiness helped me sound more clueless than I was. Jimmy had woken up before me too, and he shifted his attention from the Sunday cartoons to Kip.

“Smell it. Jimmy, smell this.” Kip had us both take a turn, and the smell was less masked than I remembered from my desensitized nose during the night. Jimmy confirmed the odor’s source, and I admitted it might be. Kip started looking more suspicious, squinting at me for a quick moment. “Does Toto pee that often outside his crate?” This time I asked Jimmy, who stood next to Kip but offered none of his glare. Kip answered. “He’s been potty trained for six months. And look how much there is, I mean, Toto’s a ten-pound dog and...” He stopped abruptly. Jimmy had seen through me when I looked desperately to my lap for answers. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him carefully turning his foot to hover over Kip’s and then pressing down firmly. Kip fumbled. “and...or... I mean maybe it was Toto. Little dogs still hold lots of pee, right?” Jimmy nodded in agreement with me and angled himself towards the kitchen. “Mom! Toto peed on the couch, Mom. What do we do?” “What?!” Mrs. Fullson wheeled into the doorway. Jimmy turned to face her completely and repeated himself. I couldn’t see his face, but his mom seemed to understand exactly what Toto had done after hearing it the second time. “Oh...well, it’s not too much trouble. Honey, why don’t you put Toto on his pee pad in case he still has to go. I’ll get it cleaned up.” Toto began peeing immediately when Jimmy set him on his pad. While Mrs. Fullson was treating the couch, she made small talk with me and asked about school. Kip went to his room and Jimmy came back to watch cartoons, so I began to feel more at ease. While we waited for my mom to pick me up, Jimmy and I agreed that Jackie Chan was the best Sunday morning cartoon and laughed about the untouched homework we were supposed to have done. My mom knocked as breakfast was

ready for the table, so Mrs. Fullson packed me a to-go plate. Since they had never met her, the parents stood on the porch for a quick meet and greet. Jimmy and I kicked around the soccer ball, waiting. The air was still crisp, but the sun was at full strength and none of the previous day’s wind had carried over. Right before we left, Mrs. Fullson gave me one of the glass piggy banks. She liked giving them to kids to start saving, she said. “Did you boys play that Wii thing you were so excited about?” Back in the car my mom poked my knee playfully, and I realized that in all of my time there I forgot to do the one thing I came for. “No, actually, but it was a really good time! We had a lot of fun last night, and his family is super nice.” I had been worrying, wondering if Kip would tell people or Jimmy would think I was weird, but then I thought about Grandma’s house, dinner, and the NASCAR race. “I bet! Mrs. Fullson is an angel, and with a mother like that the family could only be so bad.” I nodded, realizing that Wii or no Wii, I liked Jimmy. I took the glass bank up to my room when we got home and placed it in the window, where the sun would shine through it. Fishing in my pockets produced three quarters to get it going. Then I noticed the sumo cup on my bedside table, pausing for a second. I picked it up, felt its heft, and noticed it was half full. After pouring it into my new bank, my saving process looked like it was really coming along.

photo by Sam Fentress

Winter Reading

Always

Adam Lux

Alex Peraud

28 Oh it’s so wonderful To dive in To flail around To section off your body with blankets That are to me like steel shields impenetrable Leaving room only for your nostrils To breathe in fresh air to which we are slaves Is it really that much fresher out there? Occasionally I invite a vent Soaking in its warm sighs My necessary connection to the outside Sometimes I think if I press my face into the black and white The tip of my nose in the seam I’ll get sucked into a kind of semi-fluid Suspended, contented Warm and sleepy Like the womb we are all searching for In hazy memories

henever I leave the house, Dad always says the same thing to me: “Hey. Always be nice to the girls.” I say okay without hesitation, but I really take it to heart. It’s hard not to live by that saying because I hear it just about everyday. A few years ago, my parents and I were having supper, whole grain spaghetti and some sort of hippie-vegan tomato sauce. Mom interrogated me on why I had gotten a C+ on my last Algebra test. “Mom, I’m in a double-advanced math class! There’s only like forty kids in the whole freshman class that take Algebra II. You should be proud of me for even being there!” “Yeah, I am proud of you, and that’s exactly why you should be doing better. I know you’re smarter than this. So what happened?” I snapped my fork onto my plate, and the clang surprised me a little. “Look, Mom. Sorry I’m not a genius like Joe! I’m not gonna be a National Merit Finalist and go to Loyola for free!” I was trying to curb my volume, and my fists were clenched under the table. “Hey,” Dad said coolly, “even your mom.” Mom looked at Dad, perplexed, but I knew exactly what he meant. “This isn’t about your brother,” she continued. “This is about you.” “I know.” I calmly pushed my plate a few inches away and walked into my room with my head down, slowly closing the door

behind me. I spilled myself over the top of my bed, face down. I didn’t want to see any light or hear any sounds. They hurt my head. A few minutes later there was a knock on my door, but I didn’t move. Dad let himself in, and I could feel him sit down at the corner of my bed. It was annoying enough when my parents came into my room, but I couldn’t stand it when they were on my bed. “Is everything okay?” he asked. I didn’t move. “Is school okay? No one’s bullying you?” I turned over onto my back, showing my face. “Dad, no. Of course not.” I laughed a little at the question. It was such a clichéd thing for a parent to ask. “All right. Let me know if you ever want to talk about it.” Dad stood up and finally walked out of my room, leaving the door open. I was so pissed at him. Why didn’t he understand that the reason I was like this was that he and Mom smother me? He acted like there was some traumatizing thing that I had experienced but was too afraid to tell him. I sprang out of bed and slammed the door shut.

he next morning I got out of bed twenty minutes after my alarm went off, just like always. I didn’t have time to shower, so I leaned over the tub and stuck my head under the shower head, a routine that had become the norm. I ate a bowl of Peanut Butter Chocolate Spheres because I guess we can’t afford Reese’s Puffs like normal people. I set my bowl and spoon in the sink. “Wash your bowl, please,” Mom said. “I’m running late. Can’t you just do it? Like everyone else’s mom does?” “Excuse me?” she raised her voice. “Hey!” my groggy-eyed dad walked into the kitchen in his old red robe. “I’ll wash the damn bowl. Get out so you can catch the bus.” I walked into my room and swept up my bookbag which was already packed because I hadn’t opened it yesterday.

“Always be nice to the girls.” sat at the same corner lunch table with “All right, try this one out for size,” he the usual crew: Molly, Sarah, Patricia, and Jack. Simultaneously, we all dumped said, giddy again. “What if your mom gives our sack lunches onto the round gray table, you a hundred ridiculous chores to do and says you can’t go out until they’re done?” I except for Patricia. “Hey, where’s your lunch?” Sarah asked chewed slowly, like a cow, my eyes glazed over, looking at a tiny ant crawl across the before crunching into an apple. “Didn’t make one this morning. Just for- table. “I guess. Ya always gotta be nice to the got,” Patricia said. “Here. Take mine,” I said without hesi- girls.” tation. “I’m not hungry anyway.” I slid my ey, honey, how was school?” Mom lunch over: an orange, potato chips, and my “ asked as soon as I shut the front door favorite, a peanut butter and brown sugar behind me. sandwich. “Good.” My bookbag slid off my back “Wow. Thank you, Albert.” She picked up the orange and I smiled at her with my onto the wooden floor with a thud. “You mind putting your bookbag in arms crossed over my stomach, trying to muffle its growling. Jack gave me a look like your bedroom?” she said while drying off her hands as if she had just been doing the he knew what was going on. dishes. “Sure.” I picked it back up and smiled fter school, Jack and I walked home sarcastically as I walked past Mom. and we stopped in at the deli. “Don’t give me the attitude, Albert,” she “Hey, so you like Patricia or something? I know you were starving at lunch.” A small said, turning and walking back to the kitchpiece of lettuce hung off his lip while he en. I laughed. “Sorry.” spoke. “Why don’t you finish up these dishes “Ha. Nah, nothing more than friends, ya know,” I said as I took a bite of my toasted for me?” she said with her hands on her hips. “Sure.” I plucked the towel that was sub with spicy mustard. “Oh yeah? Then how come you gave her hanging from her shoulder and headed to the sink. I heard the familiar sound of a key wrigyour entire lunch?” “Just how I was raised, I guess. My dad gling around our back door, and Dad walked always says, ‘Always be nice to the girls.’” I put in a moment later. “Hey, kid,” he said, a bit confused. my sub on my plate and looked at Jack, who “What are you doing?” stared blankly for a second before laughing. “The dishes,” I said plainly. Mom was “That’s crazy! Sometimes girls can be total bitches! What then?” Jack leaned toward peeling an orange, and she looked at Dad as she chewed a slice. me, excited to hear my response. “What did he do this time?” Dad said, “Always be nice to the girls.” “What if she’s some ugly fat chick that setting his briefcase on the table. Mom shoves you around in the hallway?” he said shrugged. quietly and seriously as if this had been happening to him lately. I laughed.

photo by Austin Strifler

Crush Tom Fields

was only nine years old and I had a crush on Kelsey Nelson. I didn’t let anyone know, of course. I would never hear the end of it if someone picked up that I had a crush on Kelsey. That would be committing social suicide in the second grade. Kelsey always seemed to have the newest stuff. One cold January morning, she brought a doll to school that she had just gotten for Christmas. As she showed it off to the rest of the girls that morning, I caught a glance of it. It was one of those slender-looking dolls with a head that lacked proper proportions with the rest of its body. Brown plastic hair. Huge blue eyes. Kelsey decided to even dress like her doll that day, matching its pink blouse and bright blue jeans. Tacky, yes, but we were nine and didn’t know the word for it. I hated recess as a kid. I was pretty pudgy as a second grader and never got picked for the kickball team. I had no athletic skill whatsoever, so I sat by myself, giving ball-chatter on the sidelines. “Come on, Charlie! Let’s get this guy at first. Two outs! Two outs!” I was a regular sports commentator. Kelsey, on the other hand, was a big hitter at these grade school kickball games. Her club soccer team just won the championship last year, and I heard she had a “wicked penalty shot,” whatever that meant. When it was her turn to bat, she carefully laid her new doll on the pile of cartooncovered lunch boxes and ran to home plate. As I sat there, eating my lunch, I looked over at the doll. Barbie smiled with her painted-on lips, sitting on top of her lunchbox throne. I took another bite out of my sandwich and chewed.

“

hat happened to Katey?!” Kelsey’s tears streamed down her face. She was out of control, choking on her tears, snot dripping from her nose. Her friends tried to comfort her. “I found her.” I walked up with the doll in my hand. “I found her buried under the slide.” The doll’s pink face was covered with mud. Its hair was full of woodchips and dirt. Its pink jacket was gone. Kelsey snatched her Katey from me. “Who would do such a thing?” She started to cry even harder. “What kind of messed up person would do that?” The teachers brought her inside to clean her up. The rest of the kids got back to kickball. I stood alone in the middle of the blacktop. A cold, light rain started to fall. I walked over to the dumpster on the far side of the playground and tossed the pink jacket into it. And I remember feeling like I wished I would cry, but I didn’t.

photo by Giuseppe Vitellaro

Youth Justin Dussold

e wasn’t supposed to be there. The adults looked down at him, their eyes narrowing to inspect him, their mouths still open and smiling in the wake of dying laughter but slowly twisting into guarded frowns as Jonas plagued them with his presence. A strongly-built man in an unbuttoned shirt and khakis sat in a chair closest to Jonas. A pretty girl wearing a tank top and jean shorts sat on the man’s lap, playing with his tie in her fingers. She looked at Jonas, but once Jonas met her large blue eyes, he threw his gaze to the floor again when he saw the same look of suppressed contempt. The man in the chair pitched his cigarette into an end table’s ashtray, and, while still staring at the coffee table laden with fashion magazines and half-empty glass bottles, asked, “Can someone get the little guy back to his room?” No one moved or spoke. The dozen or so people in the room were silent, except for the three in a corner near the television laughing and watching a movie in which someone was screaming in a way that made Jonas feel empty inside. Jonas looked down at the blanket he had wrapped himself in and kneaded it between his thumb and finger. The man in the chair said something to the girl on his lap, and then the girl got off the man, her long legs flashing at the edge of Jonas’s vision. “Hey, little guy,” she said in a voice that was high and harmonic but edged with a delicate scorn. “Come with me.” She put out her hand and wrapped her fingers around Jonas’s hand. She led him back to the apartment’s odd-smelling bedroom

and let his hand go. Jonas pinched at the handful of blanket in his fist and looked at the carpet, trying to get his tongue to work. “I just wanted to know if my mom was ready to go.” The girl showed her white teeth and ran a hand through her short black hair. “She’ll be ready soon enough. She’s just got some stuff to finish up.” Jonas looked back at the dresser next to the door. It was an ugly hunk of wood, its finish scarred in many places by knife cuts. He swallowed. “I don’t have anything to do.” Jonas looked up at the girl’s pale face as she stared open-mouthed at the mirror above the dresser for a moment. “I guess it would be boring in here.” The two stood there in the room. Jonas noticed how the girl rubbed her fingers together, as though she were waiting for somebody else to do something. Her fingernails were painted in a black and bright green checkerboard pattern, and the gloss glimmered as her fingers fidgeted. For some reason, it made his stomach ache almost as much as the screaming man on TV did. The girl continued to stand there without speaking until, finally: “I don’t know, sweetie. I can’t help you. Your mom will be ready soon.” She walked out of the room and closed the door without looking back at him. Jonas stood there in the bedroom and stared at the door. He listened to the murmurs as deep voices began to drum again and harsh laughter echoed into the closed room once more over the crackle of the television.

Death the Girl Adam Lux

Coal-blood veins Stretch across her fingers And push up her arm To hide under the sleeve Of her black dress Taut like skin I imagine it streams Over her entire body For black claws scratch At her neck But stop at her chin Face too innocent to scar She looks misunderstood Her image flashes like A television screen Between a beautiful young girl And a homely yet threatening Elderly woman Some say the Hospital forces death to act ladylike Controlling where and when and how She takes her men But I say it makes her a prostitute While we humans see her to be lovely Inviting We feel guilt upon taking her hand

drawing by Nick Bentz

Standing in the Dark Mark Robinson

peeked through the crack of the basement door, my little fingers barely able to grip the brass doorknob. There were still cookie crumbs stuck to the gold knob from when I had pulled the door shut on the way down. I could feel the rough carpet beneath my naked feet, but when I looked down I saw nothing but blackness. No more than five minutes earlier, when I was making my way up towards the kitchen, having used up my thirty minutes of after-school TV time, I had heard my mom on the phone, her voice pitched with worry. The voice on the other end, or at least the scratchy whispers that seeped through the narrow doorway, sounded like my dad’s. Something about a fire. As long as it was not here in the house, it did not concern me; I was too preoccupied with how I was going to break the news to my mother that I had gotten a sixty-five on my spelling test. I had lied to her the night before, told her that Mrs. Huntzee had moved the test to Monday. Right after she set the phone back in the cradle, I heard the garage door rumble open and the “thunk” of a car door. I knew it was just after four o’clock because that’s when Justice League ended. My dad walked into the house, his red tie undone and draped around his neck like a silky scarf. There was a crate in his hands that looked like a wooden box from the outside. It read “CONTENTS” along the side. A few things in it shifted around in a muffled clatter with each heavy step he took. He looked exhausted. I wanted to run up and help him with his box to see if

print by Paul J. Fister

it might contain something for me, but he hardly looked in the mood for gift giving. I figured I’d wait until after dinner. Dad dropped the box on the granite countertop dejectedly. He stood slouched over even though he no longer had the heavy crate in his hands. He drifted across the kitchen and slumped over in a chair at the dinner table. My chair. It wasn’t dinner time yet, so I was puzzled why he’d sat down already, in my chair of all places. Actually, I couldn’t remember the last time he had come home this early. Sometimes he came home early when he was sick, but he didn’t seem sick this afternoon, just tired. Maybe he had gotten off work because of a fire. I wanted to ask him if he had seen any firefighters at work today. For a moment the only thing I could picture was the fire station we had taken a field trip to last year for our kindergarten class field trip. I remembered all the shiny trucks sitting in the garage and how one of the firemen let some of us take turns sitting in the front seat while other kids hung onto the side railing. I thought of the lime green reflector strips on the firefighter uniforms and shiny black boots lined up neatly on the wall. They gave us little toy axes and flimsy red helmets with an elastic cord that smarted when you snapped it under your chin. My dad wasn’t a firefighter. He was an accountant. My mom walked from where she had stood at the phone over to where my dad sat. She wrapped her arms tenderly around his shoulders, but he didn’t react. He just continued to look down at the table lifelessly. She pulled up a chair next to him with a screech. It made me cringe a little. I must have jiggled the door knob when I did because by the time I looked back up, both my parents looked towards the doorway. “It’s all right, buddy, you can come out,” my dad said, speaking for the first time since he had gotten home.

I could feel my face flush a little. I had been caught. Embarrassed, I slowly eased the door open. The grimy brass hinges moaned as I edged myself out from the dark stairwell. I walked over to the table, head hung down but still looking up at my dad as my bare feet clapped across the cold tiles. I crawled up into his lap and squeezed him around the neck with my spindly little arms. I was getting a little too big now for my old customs. He returned the hug with a long, smothering embrace. I all but disappeared between the shoulders of his suit coat. He held me there for the better part of a minute but said nothing. I could feel his heartbeat in my one arm

that was pinned beneath him. I could feel my shoulders stretch with his chest at every successive deep breath he took. He lowered me back to the floor, keeping his hands almost entirely wrapped around my stomach, and looked me in the eye. “Daddy, was there a fire at your work today?” I asked timidly. He stared at me for a second, puzzled. Then I saw a sad smile grow at the corners of his mouth. “No, buddy. No fire. I got fired.” He stared pitifully into my eyes and the smile faded. “Oh,” I said, slipping away, clueless.

print by Paul J. Fister

Dragon’s Teeth Sam Beckmann

on’t go.” The rocks, jagged. The breeze, cool. He ignored her, taking a single step out. “It’s slippery!” She was right. The zephyr called him, though. If only he could feel the mist, gaze down at the savage waves. “Just one more step.” She moved closer in response, reaching out. He surged forward, towards the brink. Far below, water smashed sharp black rock, throwing its entire being, defying whatever held it back. Slowly, it was dragged back into the sea. He gripped contorted stone. Dragon’s Teeth, they were called. Lava, hardened into twisted and gnarled spires interspersed throughout. He looked one last time, then turned around.

“

Lifetime of an Excited State

“An electron generally does not remain in an excited state for long; it decays, or makes a downward transition. The lifetime is about 10-8 seconds.” —College Physics (Sixth Edition) We walked, your jacket a jade flicker in the cold October night. photograph by Ben Banet, poem by Jacob Hilmes

A Street Hockey Goalie’s Legacy

Adam Lux My father was a street hockey goalie From a poor family His father owned a tiny grocery That barely made Enough money for the five kids But street hockey goalies Wear out the toes on their shoes So my grandmother bought him P.F. Flyers Goalies don’t need to run or jump But the thick rubber toe Lasted a bit longer Even if they did cost more I don’t know what color his were But I imagine them as Red Because mine are And even though I don’t Play street hockey I’d like to think I bought them For the thick rubber toe

sculpture by Larry Hoerr

Oculum Pro Oculo Justin Dussold

remember the glance of my father’s eyes when he saw me trying to eat spaghetti at the dinner table. I was trying to hold my fork, but my hand felt like it was jammed up inside. He reached up and gripped my arm, and he studied my black and blue wrist. His face held no emotion. “Who did this to you?” I gulped and said his name. He asked more questions: where were we; what did he do before and after he messed up my wrist. As the words slipped out of my mouth, I kept trying to look at the spaghetti cooling fast on my plate, but whenever my father whispered his next question, I couldn’t help looking up

at him staring at me with his stone-cold face, his eyes not once looking away from me, never once seeming to blink. I broke from my reverie when my father let go of my arm, stood up, and walked into another room, not saying a single word more after asking his last question: Where does Roman Sluss live? Not long after, he walked back into the kitchen. He had changed out of his polo and khakis into faded jeans and a single white T-shirt. His old boots knocked on the hard floor. He looked at me and said, “Thomas. Come with me.” I stood up, clutching and rubbing my

purple wrist. His blue eyes shifted to it. “Stop touching it.” I didn’t walk to him fast enough, and his face snarled like an angry boar’s. “Come with me, Thomas,” he growled, and then just as quickly his face and voice returned to their usual placidness. “Let’s fix things.” The ride was short but long enough to take forever. My father never went above the speed limit and never failed to turn on his blinkers exactly three seconds before shifting lanes or turning corners. Mom used to call him the Insurance Company’s Darling. My arm hung limply in my lap while the houses drifted past us. It was quiet. My father never listened to music—certainly not while driving—and he tended not to speak unless spoken to, unless, of course, he found something as interesting as my broken wrist. My wrist hurt from the rattle of the moving pickup and my own shaking body. I didn’t want to ask my father what he was planning to do. I had an idea, though. I’d heard stories. I’d overhear my uncles whenever they came to my house to drink beer and watch football games. They’d never talk about it if they knew I was there, but whenever I slipped down to sneak a can of Pepsi or a beer, I could hear them talking about how my father was the Silent Bull, how he was the One Man Who Didn’t Take Shit from Anybody. I could always imagine my father looking down at his beer, nodding a silent acknowledgement while his brothers spoke about him. You wouldn’t have known my father was the One Man Who Didn’t Take Shit from Anybody just by looking at him. He was stooped over, thin-lipped, a nerd without the glasses. Gray hairs streaked through his carefully groomed crew cut. I have to admit I was kind of excited. For the first time I was going with him to see what he was going to do, what he was capable of doing. “That’s Roman’s place.” I pointed with

my good arm. After three seconds’ clicking, the truck slid into the driveway of Roman’s house. I didn’t pass by the Slusses’ often, mostly because all the shops and stores were back towards my end of town. It always looked like it did then: lived-in and wellused. There’d be music vibrating through the brick walls most Saturday nights, a lot of cars parked end to end down the street or hanging off onto other people’s lawns. My father opened the door and stood on the driveway, and I followed him. The late afternoon breeze whistled in my ear and flitted the ends of my father’s hair as he looked around. Only a couple of cigarette butts littered the patchy yellow grass today. One other car was in the driveway besides ours, a nice, yellow sports car. He started walking to the door, and I felt my heart accelerate. “Dad.” He didn’t stop. He kept walking, the setting sun flashing on his watch. The right hand at his side twisted a little, a sign for me to come along. I stayed behind. I watched as he went up to the door and, ignoring the doorbell, knocked five times on the old wood. He stood there, arms at his sides, waiting. His hand slowly rose and put a closed fist to the doorbell, holding it in long enough for me to wince. He stopped. His hand rose to press the doorbell again when a shadow appeared at the door’s window. The door opened. I could see Roman with a little girl at his side through the opened door. Roman and my father were both standing, simply looking at each other. The girl looked at Roman, at my father, and out behind my father into the street. Her brown eyes flitted to me then hurriedly looked away. “What do you want?” Roman asked. His black hair was slicked back like usual, his heavy eyebrows knitted together in annoyance. His arms were folded over his black T-shirt.

“May I speak to your father?” my father asked. “He’s not here right now. I don’t take messages.” “Then it is no matter. The message is ultimately for you.” My father turned away from the door and stared at me. Roman followed his gaze and finally noticed me. I wavered on my feet and then walked to them, trying to ignore the stares of Roman and my father. “I have a problem I was hoping you could solve,” my father continued. “What is your problem?” Roman asked. His face still showed his impatient anger, but his voice betrayed a growing fear. My father’s eyes didn’t leave Roman’s. “You are the problem.” His hand gripped my arm again and raised my purple wrist so Roman could see. The little girl saw it and shrank back into the house. Roman’s frown deepened. “Roman Sluss.” My father spoke Roman’s name like he was spitting out stale beer, an interjection in his soft speech. “I don’t ask much from people. I’m easily contented. But at the same time I expect people to respect certain boundaries. I expect people to…” Roman’s eyes narrowed. They focused their building rage on me. I went cold inside. Then he turned to my father. “I don’t get my dad to fight my battles for me!” My dad took a single step forward, but with his long legs it was as if he vaulted towards Roman like an incoming train. Roman’s hands, so used to beating me, raised up but didn’t quite ball into fists. He took a step back, his head arching up to meet my father’s gaze. “Shut up!” my father growled deep and low like a dog. “You worthless Euro trash!” The two of them stood there over the doorstep. I could hear Roman’s asthmatic wheezes. His muddy eyes shifted from my

father’s face to his fists again and again. “So fucking fight me,” Roman said, but there was a chink in his voice and he slurred on his F’s. “No, I think not.” My father straightened up and put his hands down but did not move away from Roman. “I don’t waste my time with worthless people. You’re just another gutter dog. You torture people who would never bother you with some kind of sick glee, but the fun runs out when you meet someone bigger. You’re a parasite. I can try to teach you all the lessons I can the best way I know how, but you’re still going to go crawling back to hit my son when my back is turned. Like the weak, worthless—” “I don’t have to listen to this shit!” Roman shouted in a voice so high in hysterics and cracking so much I would have been laughing if my throat wasn’t shut so tightly. “Your son’s the coward! He’s the pussy!” He threw his hands in my direction. “You’re just some crazy old fucker who’s got nothing better to do than pretend he’s still got it, that he’s still tough, right?” Roman’s voice lowered. “I know about you. Rob Chambers, the forty-year-old mute retard. Has OCD and all of that crazy shit: batshit insane, divorced and living alone because you’re such an anal prick! Everybody knows, but nobody tells. It would hurt the poor Rain Man’s feelings! What a baby!” My father’s fingers twitched. The girl behind Roman shrank back behind a corner of a hallway, only her head peeking out around to watch us. “So no, I’m not going to fight you. I don’t fight retards, except for your bitch-ass son. Get the fuck out of here, you freak!” Roman jumped back and his hand gripped the door handle and made to shut it in one violent motion, but before I could register anything, my father’s large hand gripped Roman’s arm. The girl watching from around the hallway shrieked and ran out of sight.

“The fuck off—” “That’s enough out of you, Sluss.” Roman’s arm started to twist in my father’s grip. Roman yelped and tried to step back into the house, but my father’s other arm shot out and gripped him at the top of his bicep, yanking Roman out the door and gaining more leverage on his arm. Roman was screaming as though he was being stabbed, but all that came out of my father was a small grunt as Roman’s arm cracked like the bursting fire of a machine gun. Roman howled, and my father opened his fist, letting Roman fall back a step and double over, his arm at his side, sporting a second elbow. Roman’s eyes were wide open now, looking at my father and me. He made a strange hissing sound, and he groaned in pain when he tried to use his bent arm to close the door. He simply stood there, shaking, impotent. My father made a noise that sounded like a humored grunt. His arm pressed on the open door, guiding it softly to close on Roman. Roman looked at us through the glass, his eyes wild, his lips mouthing, “Police.” My father’s other hand rose in serene valediction, and he turned and walked away. I didn’t want to stay a moment more watching Roman through the glass. I tried to walk but instead did a bizarre jog to our car, jumping into the car seat and slamming shut the car door. My closed fist knocked on my knee as I waited for my father to fasten his seatbelt and put the key in the ignition. He looked at me and a small smile broke on his face. “That was fun.” That night we got a phone call while my dad and I were watching baseball on the couch. My father bent forward and picked up the phone from its cradle on the coffee table. “Hello.”

The storm of Mr. Sluss’s insults and accusations crackled over the speaker while my father listened silently, his eyes never leaving the television. The man’s distorted voice yelled on through two outs of the inning, until my father interrupted the tirade while Roman’s dad was taking another wheezing breath. “Mr. Sluss,” he calmly intoned. I could hear the shuffling static resembling “What?” “Oculum Pro Oculo.” My father cut the call and put the phone back on the coffee table. I smiled at him. The Man Who Didn’t Take Shit from Anybody. My father. In the next two weeks, my arm healed nicely, eventually cracking out of its short cast smooth and pale but fully flexible. Roman’s cast ran from his shoulder to his wrist, forcing his arm into a constant bend inward towards his belly. It was funny the way he looked in the hallways, how he carried his heavy textbooks in his good arm but had to handle a single notepad or piece of paper in the short fingers of his cast arm, holding it in a dainty way close to his belly. He would pass me in the halls, and his eyes would look at mine and then throw off to the floor. I could never help but smirk. It made up for everything he used to do to me. It made up for all of it, and then some. He had finally learned to not mess with people, at least not certain people like me. But in the case of Roman Sluss, I think there’s always room for more improvement, to really drill the lessons through his thick skull. In retrospect, I think I knew what my father would do the moment Roman twisted and broke my wrist. That must have been why Roman asked why I was smiling so much.

On Being A Father Frank J. Corley I never feel more like my father than when I’m working with wood. Dad loved to work with his hands, making odd items for folks In the basement, as we watched, handing him tools, helping out. The smell of sawdust still reminds me of Lefholz Hardware Store. I do the same now when I have time. Little work stools or Bookshelves or something around the house. I’ll work on it For a while, set it aside, come back to it when I’m able to. But that’s not really what makes me feel like my father. Standing there, under the watch of one of my children, Trying to make something for her, help him out, provide shelter, Of course, inevitably, I screw up. I’ll bend a nail or measure wrong And they’ll see me as they watch. And they’ll know I’ve erred. It starts out that they’re watching me with admiration, confident That I will make it right and beautiful. But, as they watch, as My father before me and his before that, I will of course Make a mistake. I’ll try and fix it, try and work around it. I’ll try and hide it, make it all right. And they will see me stumble And fumble and try to recover. As they watch, I will go from Joseph the Carpenter to just another guy trying to get it right. Just another guy trying to get it right.

Hammered Sam Beckmann

Freshman Monday was Bosco day. I realized too late that my few friends were not in the cafeteria and I had no place to sit. But I had already committed, made the purchase. The corner table only had three students, all small and quiet enough to be freshmen. Excellent. I slid onto the bench and dug in. Looking up, I recognized two of them from English class. I didn’t know the third. No one spoke. Mr. Unknown got up first. “I have to finish reading The Odyssey, I’ll catch up with you two later.” The silence lasted a few seconds longer. I was ready to get up and finish elsewhere, but then it began. “Thank God he’s gone,” the kid in flannel said. “I know, I feel like I can’t talk about anything when he’s around. How’d you do after Lucy’s party?” “My parents didn’t find out. Slept until two, though. Dude, I was hammered.” “Same. You going to Mike’s Friday?” “Of course I am. Everyone’s gonna be there.” The bell rang as I stared down at the half-eaten breadstick. They made a joke about a math teacher I didn’t know, then picked up their plastic soda cups and left. I just sat at the picnic-style table in shock. Coming from a sheltered background, it took me entirely by surprise to discover that people my age breaking the law and drinking alcohol. They had seemed to completely ignore me, not worried in the slightest about quickly shattering my innocence. Slowly, another effect of the overheard conversation began to sink in. They were going to Adam’s house Friday. I didn’t know Lucy or care about her party, but I knew Adam. And I wasn’t invited.

Sophomore “You should come Friday.” I glanced up from chemistry. “I wasn’t invited.” “She won’t care, or notice. Everyone’s coming; you’ll blend right in.” I didn’t respond, trying to focus on chem, but I just ended up hitting a few random buttons on my calculator. “You don’t have to drink if you don’t want to. No one cares.” I kept hitting buttons. “What else would you do Friday night?” “Play Xbox.” I didn’t look up. His laugh was harsh. “Wow, your life is boring.” He downed the last of his chocolate milk and stood up. “If you change your mind, I’ll be there.” The bell would ring in a few minutes. I flicked a pen through my fingers at a slow, rhythmic pace, playing with the idea of going to the party. It just didn’t feel right to go. Besides, I had more important things to worry about: Chemistry wasn’t making any sense.

Junior There were only five of them, which made it worse. Everyone would notice. I should have turned down the invitation. It was offered in a red Solo cup. How clichéd. I took it. Coughing and gagging. Bitter. How was I supposed to know it would be bitter? They laughed, but not harshly. I wasn’t proud; I wasn’t ashamed, just sick. Senior “I don’t drink,” I told her. She respected me for that, then left because of it. I went home hammered. reduction print by Jackson Mayfield

Weird

Tom Fields

“

hen are you gonna get that damn air conditioner fixed?” I said as I slammed the door to Derek’s car. The temperature had been in the high nineties all week. “My mom says I’ve gotta pay for it myself, so once you all pay up from last Friday’s game, then we can start talking about fixing the AC.” “You can’t get an air conditioner fixed with blackjack money, idiot.” Rob smacked Derek in the back of the head as he passed him. I hated that humid July. It was the kind of humidity where opening the windows as you drove just made the car hotter. It didn’t help that Liberty Diner was twenty minutes away. But Derek had to have his meatball marinara sandwich every Wednesday during the summer, so we drove through the fires of hell every week in his duct-taped-interior Toyota. The bottoms of my rubber flip-flops began to stick to the blacktop as we made our way across the parking lot. Rob hit the door first. “Hey, Emmett! Your emo girlfriend’s here today.” I didn’t answer. Acknowledging his comment only made it worse. One of the diner employees was a girl with hair dyed as dark as crude oil. A piercing stuck to her lip. I was the only guy in the group who still hadn’t dated anyone, so Rob thought it’d be funny to make up a girlfriend. Pretty soon, piercing girl was “Emmett’s vampire girlfriend.” Hopefully she wasn’t taking orders today.

e always sat on the barstools next to the window. “You wanna know something weird?” Derek held his sandwich as we stared out onto the blacktop. “I haven’t looked at porn in, like, a month.” I

stopped chewing and looked over at Rob. “Really?” Rob sipped the last of his Sprite. “You mean you don’t have the time for it or something?” “Yeah, I guess that’s part of the reason.” Derek said. “But it’s more like I don’t need to, lately. Y’know?” “But you’re still hooking up regularly, right?” “Oh, of course. I said I stopped watching porn. I’m not going into the seminary.” Derek laughed at his own joke then started on the second half of his sandwich. Derek and Rob were a year ahead of me in school, and I liked them a lot. I didn’t have any siblings, so I learned a lot from them. But it was times like this when I didn’t know how I should react. Should I have said something? Did they notice that I hadn’t said something? “I gotta take a leak.” Rob got up and walked to the bathroom. “I’ll alert the media,” Derek said before taking another bite. I never understood Derek’s table manners, the way he chewed with his mouth open, smackingly and sloppily, crumbs tumbling onto the floor. “Hey, Emmett.” Derek turned to me, spittle falling on his knee. “You haven’t talked with your waitress girlfriend in a while. Isn’t it about time to seal the deal?” I was starting to have enough of this. “She’s not my girlfriend, Derek. Cut this shit out. I could care less about her.” “Hey, I understand.” Derek wiped his face with the back of his sleeve. “Waiting for someone better to come along. Someone who isn’t sucking blood from the living in her free time.” “Cut it out,” I said. I was surprised by my own tone. What started out as playful banter had turned defensive pretty quickly.

Derek raised his eyebrows in response. His whole body settled back on his stool as a goofy smile grew across his face. “You’re hot for the emo waitress,” Derek said, as if he was formulating the situation. “No, I’m not.” “Ohhh, yes, yes, yes you are, loverboy. All this time...” “I’m not. I told you I don’t care about her.” “Then what are you getting your panties up in a knot for?” “I’m... I...” Derek cut me off. “You really don’t care about her?” “No.” “Really?” In one motion, Derek spun on his barstool, sticking out his legs and tripping the waitress with the pitch-black hair. I watched as she fell to the ground, glasses of ice-water and soda smashing all at once. Derek kept grinning as he waited for my next move. The girl looked up at me from the puddle of liquid and glass. Her heavy mascara dripped down her cheeks like black tears. Her white powdered face uncovered splashes of skin. And there she was, small, sad, and, for the first time, real. I came down from my stool. For the first time, I didn’t care what Rob or Derek or any of the other guys felt. I didn’t need to defend myself. All that mattered at this moment was this girl. “Are you all right?” I helped her to her feet.

“Yes,” the girl said as she adjusted her balance. “I think so.” I’d heard her take our orders before, but now the timbre of her voice surprised me. It sounded a lot softer, a lot more fragile than before. Then Rob came out of the bathroom. He looked at the girl, then at me, then at the puddle, then at Derek, then at me. “Got your hands full, Emmett?” Rob asked. “I think he needs some private time with his woman,” Derek chimed in. I turned and saw him drop a few bills and wipe his face. Before he left, he looked at me as if he had just proven something to me, as if he were saying “I drawing by Jack MacDonald can’t be wrong.” Rob was still staring at the girl. A bruise started to show purple on her elbow. He looked at me and shook his head. “You can leave,” I said. “Y’sure?” “Yes. Go. I can figure it out. Just leave.” I watched Rob pay the rest of the bill, grab his baseball cap, and exit through the glass doors. Another waitress started to clean up the mess. “What’s your name?” I asked as I helped the girl around back to the kitchen. “Lauren,” she smiled. I smiled. “That’s a nice name.”

A Disillusioned Boy

Adam Lux What is left of our myth about happy times? Of Anything Goes The dirty dancing ragtime Caramel jazz topping On a mom and pop ice cream sundae Who had the last great adventure? And where are their stories Of nightmare monsters Dear JesusMaryJoseph storms And old hags in log cabins Serving chicken pot pie. When was the last Blank night Of making love To stars with eyes Hearing nothing but crickets And the cold groan of the mountain And maybe Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Now mute voice.

collagraph by Jackson Mayfield

Sno-Cone Alex Peraud “

reduction print by Jacob Colvis

i, Alex. I’m Cathy. It’s nice to meet you.” Cathy stepped down out of the stand toward me, and I extended my hand. “Hi, Cathy. Nice to meet you.” The sno-cone stand looked as it had all my life: painted orange with an orange awning, and tattered and worn down in the corner of a lawn mower repair shop parking lot. It was Cathy that was different. Throughout my childhood, a sweet blonde teenager always worked the stand, saying things like “Have a good day!” while she leaned out the stand window with my pink champagne–flavored sno-cone. Cathy was past fifty years old and very short and round. She was wearing a black spaghetti-strapped cami and ripped jean short shorts, but what stood out most were her tattoos. Mickey Mouse danced on her left shoulder and the cat from Alice in Wonderland crawled on her right. There were others, but I tried not to stare. “So let’s get right to it!” she said with her hands on her hips. “We keep the keys to the shack in this here lock-box on the door handle. The code is 1-2-3-4.” “Easy enough to remember!” I joked. “That’s why I picked it!” A few different thoughts went through my head, all along the lines of what an idiot. Cathy opened the door and waddled up the single cinder block step into the shack. Her flip-flops flipped and flopped. She taught me how to work the cash register and showed me where all of the cups were. “Small is two dollars, large is three, jumbo is four. Extra shot of juice costs a quarter. Now I’ll show you how to make a sno-cone.” Cathy pulled a styrofoam cup off the stack and placed it under the rusty

ice shaver. “You gotta flip the switch on and then pull down on this lever. Don’t go too fast ’cause it’ll be too icy and wet. You gotta pull it nice and slow so it’s fluffy. Like this. It’s an art form.” She turned to the line of syrup flavors. “Small gets three pumps, large four, jumbo six.” Her hand moved the cup in a small circle under the cherry pump as she pushed so that the syrup dispensed evenly. “It’s not as easy as it looks, but you’ll get the hang of it soon enough.” I worked the rest of the shift with Cathy watching over me, breathing hard in the corner. The shack was so small that I thought her heavy breathing was going to use up all the air.

y ass was numb as I sat on the wooden stool, hunched over reading The Great Gatsby. I had been working at the sno-cone stand for a few days now. The noon to five shift was pretty slow, but I didn’t mind at all. It gave me time to read. I heard an old car roar up into the parking lot, and I glanced up to see an impossibly obese woman slide out of her mustard yellow classic convertible. I slid open the glass window, put my book down so that it was still in view of the customer’s sight, and moved the tip jar just a little to the left. “Good afternoon,” I said. “Uh, yeah, hi. Listen—” She put a giant plastic on-the-go mug onto the counter that separated us. “Put my sno-cone in here. Where’s the little lady that’s usually working up here?” “Just me today.” “Well, okay, whatever. She always charges two jumbos for this thing. Gimme a straw-

berry, watermelon, and uh, jus’ a little bit of lemon.” “Of course.” I grabbed her huge mug and placed it under the ice machine. “That’ll be eight dollars.” “Well, hold on. I’ll pay you when I get my sno-cone. That’s how that other little lady always does it. “Of course.” “And gimme lots of juice. Four extra shots.” “Sure. That’ll be an extra dollar for four shots.” “You don’t think I know that?” she said. I began grinding the ice, pulling the lever nice and slow. “What’s taking so long?” she yapped. I didn’t respond, just pulled harder so the ice was wet and chunky. The cup was bigger than two jumbos. I put in five shots of strawberry, shuffled a foot to the right and pumped in five shots of watermelon. In the sticky back corner I pumped in two shots of lemon. No one ever got lemon. I walked a step back to the window and stuck a plastic spoon in, “Nine dollars.” “Well, look, it’s not even full! Put more ice in there.” She was right. The ice had melted down from all the syrup because I pulled the lever too hard. I put in more ice, then more strawberry, then more watermelon, then more lemon. She took a taste, “No, no. There’s not enough flavor. Put in more syrup.” So I pumped in even more syrup. This went on for a few minutes. Eventually there was so much syrup that it rose above the ice. Her sno-cone had turned into a mug of syrup with ice in it. “Here,” I said, setting it back on the counter for the last time after minutes of perfecting it. I tried not to show that I was getting angry, but it slipped through my grit-

ted teeth when I spoke. “Ten dollars.” It should’ve cost more. “Perfect,” she said. Her eyes widened and she grappled with her triple jumbo concoction after setting a ten dollar bill on the counter. No tip. I heard her slurping as she waddled back to the car. I gently closed the window of the shack and picked up my book. She snuck up on me a few minutes later. Not the fat lady, but a young girl about my age. She tapped her fingernails on the window and I suddenly stood up, hitting my head on the low ceiling and dropping my book. I could hear her muffled giggles as I bent down to pick it up off the dirty floor. “You all right?” she said after I slid open the window. She had blonde, wavy hair that rested on her smooth shoulders. Her pink sundress flapped in the breeze ever so slightly, and her light brown eyes were singing. “Yeah, thanks. You surprised me!” “I’m sorry!” “No, don’t apologize. It’s fine. What can I get for you?” “I will have a small pink champagne, and don’t give me a lot of syrup.” “Of course.” We both smiled at each other and she laughed again. I made sure her ice was nice and fluffy, and I put in the perfect amount of syrup. “Two dollars,” I said as I leaned out the window with her pink champagne sno-cone. “Have a good day.” She set two dollars on the counter and I popped open the cash register with a ding. I looked up, but she was gone just as quickly as she showed up. I plopped back down onto my stool and laughed a hearty, long, full laugh, perhaps a little too loudly, for reasons I’m not really sure of. I guess because I had been sneaking pink champagne sno-cones all day and those things had a lot of sugar.

drawing by David Greaves

Mr. Best

A Child of Children

Jacob Hilmes

JJ Driscoll

A dead man stands. A man dies standing. Amanda dines divinely as a cadaver. Amanda does dine nightly, but cadavers oncestanding lie in outstanding coffins as Amanda crafts damn fine boxes. A man dies and Amanda does dine on dying dead presidents given deliberately as a deed done for the dead. A man digs ditches for the deceased, Amanda designs drawers for depositing the dead, but Walter Best is dead alive.

photograph by Austin Strifler

y shirt itched and my tie was too tight. I flipped through the worn Power Rangers coloring book that had been carelessly scribbled through as my legs dangled in the chair too tall for my feet to touch the floor. I spent a lot of time in that waiting room hearing what I knew were muffled screams. I thought it sounded like my friend Cary and I talking to each other under water at the pool. When I finally found a page that was mostly untouched and a green crayon that was pointy enough to work, the man with the glasses came in. “Daniel, we’re ready for you.” “My name is Daniel but I go by Danny. That’s what my friends call me.” The glasses man just gestured, not acknowledging that I had said something. I walked out of one room and into another, one with even more chairs. I sat on one near the judge. “Daniel, how are you today?” “My name is Daniel but I go by Danny. That’s what my friends call me.” I could see my mom and dad sitting at separate tables. My mom had black makeup streaking down her face and was wearing that black dress she always wore when her and dad would leave me and my brothers with the babysitter. My dad was sitting at the other table hunched over and visibly annoyed as he was at dinner sometimes. I always wondered how he could stand wearing his tie so tight. “So Danny, we’re here today because we want to find out who you’re going to live with.” He talked to me like I was a four-yearold when I was actually eight and a half but as tall as a nine-year-old. I also knew that I was supposed to live in two houses now or

maybe one with one parent. I actually didn’t know anymore. So that’s what I said as I leaned into the small and skinny microphone in front of me. I started to think more about that answer after I said it. I started to think about the time Dad got really mad in the bedroom when I was studying my Spanish words but couldn’t remember them because I wanted to watch Rugrats before bed. Then I started to think about the time he got mad when we went to Chicago without him. “Well, Danny, we have to find out soon, okay?” I scanned the room again and saw more black makeup on my mom’s face and my dad looking away and loosening his red and blue striped tie, which I knew was his favorite. I thought about the time he shook Brian for talking back. I thought about how mad he would be if I said that I wanted to live with Mom more; I thought about how sad Mom would be if I said I wanted to live with Dad. “Can I live with both?” My mom looked down at the table and Dad said something, but I couldn’t hear it. It was hot and my shirt itched. “Of course you can, but we have to find out how to split the time up.” “Where are my brothers going? I should go with my brothers.” The judged pinched his forehead with his fingers then replied, “You will go wherever your brothers go.” He rubbed his face with his big hands like he was trying to keep himself awake during all of this. “All right. I’m just going to ask you some questions and you’re going to answer them honestly.” He seemed tired and annoyed with being in this room as long as he had. “How

do you like spending time with your mom?” “I like it a lot. She takes me and my brothers to the park when Dad is at work and sometimes to Dairy Queen after. She also lets me eat the cereals I want.” “And your dad?” All of a sudden the room got hot and the tie got tighter around my neck. I tugged really hard on my tie as if pulling some horrible snake off around my neck. “I like him too.”

drawing by Tom Fields

The tie felt so tight on my neck I thought it was going to make my head pop. “Actually, I just don’t know.” There was a long uncomfortable silence, the discomfort in the room thick and palpable. “All right. I’ll hand down the final decision. Based on what I’ve seen throughout the case the children will spend every other weekend with their father, including certain holidays I will later specify.” That was it. It was decided for me. The rest of my childhood was decided by one man’s opinion. He cast us away like we were the toaster, T.V. or any other thing my mom and dad had childishly bickered over, just another thing my mom wanted and my dad didn’t want her to have. It felt like my mom rationing the Play Station time between my brothers and me. The judge rationed my mom and dad’s playtime with us. That’s all it really was.

The judge smashed his gavel and it was over. I sat there still with that tie tight around my neck, wondering what to do now. What do I do? Who do I go with now? Both Mom and Dad motioned me over to speak with them. Not knowing what to do, I walked down the middle of the two tables to see who would come. My mom rushed to my aid as she always had, kneeling down and embracing me, black makeup still staining her face. “Oh, honey, I’m so glad it’s over. I’m so glad we can be happy again. I’m so glad we can finally be together.” For the first time that day I let it all go. I didn’t cry because I was sad or because I was relieved it was over and I could start a “new life” mostly with my mom. I cried because I was mad. I cried because I had been fought over like a steak tossed between two hungry dogs. I cried because a man cast me away like a washer and dryer. I was mad because I had been told everything would be better now, that the fighting would end, but I knew better than that. I was mad because at seven years old I was more alone than I would be lying in bed hearing the muffled screams of my parents too absorbed in themselves to notice the black eye I got on the playground. I was mad because at eight years old I would have to be the dad to two young boys all the time except for every other weekend and certain holidays. My dad made his away over, hands in his pockets staring at the floor, cueing my mom to leave. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Son…. I know it’s not fair.” That was all he said before trudging out in the same fashion. He had never really spoke to me like that before. I think he did because he knew I was no longer a boy. There I stood, not a man, not a boy, an enigma to myself, a piece of meat to the world. After that day, my parents both said that

my brothers and I would come first. What I think they really meant was that we came first after their personal happiness and new romances. To my surprise, not all that much changed. I lived in the house with Mom and at Grandpa’s house when I was with Dad. The fighting still happened, but it was over the phone and emails now. I got spoiled for a while, and I often exaggerated my feelings to get toys and ice cream. For the most part, everything seemed all right with mom. It was like dad was on another long business trip and wasn’t coming back. When we were with Dad, it was different. He lived in the basement of Grandpa’s house. He had a wrinkled, unmade blanket on the couch with the T.V. always on and his Camel cigarette cartons all over the floor. He smoked a lot more than he used to; I didn’t like it. My ninth birthday came around and nobody knew how it was going to go. There was a dinner at Mom’s house before my party. Dad was there, too. He shaved and wore what was probably his last shirt that didn’t smell like tobacco. My mom wore her new dress. I knew she did it on purpose to look better than Dad, but I didn’t care. I wanted them both to go. They were quiet until we started on the cake. “Hey, Danny, a guy at work gave me Rams tickets for Sunday, tenth row. Wanna go?” my dad finally said. “Jack, you know damn well that that’s my time with him,” my mom said before he could even finish what he was saying. “Relax, Laura. I just got these tickets yesterday, and I figured since it’s his birthday he’d want to go.” “Mom, can I? They’re playing the Seahawks.” “No! Nobody is going to the game. It’s my weekend. Who the hell do you think you are trying to take Danny on my time?” “Laura, really. I’m just trying to be a good father to my son on his birthday.”

“Bullshit! You just want to make me look bad in front of the boys and take them away from me.” I could tell the noise was getting to Brian. I tried to stop it but they couldn›t hear me. “It’s always about you, Jack. It always has been. You always want to hurt us!” Dad hunched in his seat, looking at Mom as if she were speaking Swahili. Her make-up started melting under her eyes again. “How about you ask your son what he wants to do?” Their stares snapped to me. I should have known this would come. Putting me on the spot to settle their argument again. I didn’t know what to say. What could I say? There was no way I could be the good guy anymore. All the confusion of what to say, how to act, who to side with, and why I wasn’t eating cake and opening my presents worked its way to my eyes and turned into tears. “There you go, Jack. You see what you did? Get out of here. Just go. We can’t stand you.” “Dammit, Laura, what the hell is the matter with you?! This is still my house! I paid for it with my goddamn money while you sat on your ass all day watching soap operas or Dr. Phil or some shit!” “Get out. Now.” He left. I heard him still yelling outside the house and his tires screeching as he fishtailed out of the driveway. I thought to myself that I was only half a man now, and if this was what being a half a man felt like, then I never wanted to be a man. I didn’t want to be my dad and interact with women like my mom. I didn’t want to be a kid anymore. I felt like a kid getting pushed around by older kids. So there I sat, party hat and all, crying my eyes out.

Out of Darkness Tristan Finazzo Am I alive?

I see crystal from the sky above fall atop glass shoulders. Knocking on gateways to forbidden visions of the coming memories.

Weathered shoes buckling in awe of rain. Graying clouds perspiring with gentle thoughts of quenching cratered pores, Only revealing willowed lilies and chipping paint, Only petrichor and traces of burning wood, Only the bite of the cold and the ecstasy in fleeting warmth. I am waking to see the beginning. I am waking to spy the advancing tunnelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s end. I am here with the shadows, the binding companions that bear fortune on those who throw aside smudged stones. And the stones fly on and on. They navigate the clouds, slowing wind, halting breeze and melting mist. I open my eyes and gaze up into the light of dawn, The fading stars are my convoys to the rising sun, And daybreak makes radiant the steppes of the earth. I close my eyes to see what is real. My Muse takes to the sky, lights the divine fuse, and lilies assemble like sentries, and dry paint is bedewed. I am alive.

watercolor by David Greaves

Bureau’s Evidence Mark Robinson

stood there leaning uneasily against the door frame, making sure to keep both my feet on the wooden floor outside. Something about setting foot in the bedroom of a dead man made me queasy, and despite my dad’s urging I couldn’t muster the strength to enter. The room was empty, abandoned, like a town filled with life one night, then vacant come morning. The walls, the nightstand, and the bedframe all lined up perfectly parallel with unmistakable symmetry. The neat obsessiveness, the flawless geometric perfection sat untouched like an exhibit. The sun glinted through the blinds revealing a thin coating of dust settled politely on the windowsill and the top of a massive bureau. It was a great mahogany dresser with brass knobs scattered aimlessly about its face like glimmering eyes watching every inch of the place. Some of the bureau drawers were long and narrow, others box-shaped. Others didn’t even seem big enough to fit a wallet in, but they all cogged together like a game of Tetris or a wooden jigsaw puzzle. My dad began browsing through the bureau, carefully, deliberately, as if a poison dart might shoot out of a trick drawer. The room smelled as if it had been fumigated with wood stain. I fixed the collar of my T-shirt over my nose to filter the nauseating vapors while my dad knelt in front of the dresser, surveying the woodwork with a perusing hand. At a closer glance, I saw that each leg of the bureau stood on a little baby foot precisely detailed with knobby toes and chiseled slivers of toenails. The top platform of the dresser was carved like a Corinthian column with reddish brown leaves bursting forth in all directions with ancient majesty. Remarkable craft from an unlikely

craftsman. Perhaps the creativity burned out with old age. Perhaps it became shackled within an increasingly impotent body. I thought back to the first time I had met my Uncle Ralph, no more than eight months before. As I stood now in the doorway of his bedroom, he seemed an even greater mystery than at the time we first met.

gatherings on the other side of the family. I needed something, anything, to ease the discomfort. I got up to refill my cup, careful not to disturb the table or any of its contents. I walked over to the sink behind the bar and filled my glass half full with lukewarm water. I drew a long gulp over the basin then dumped the rest of it back into the sink. It tasted like aluminum can and hose water. I sat my glass on the ledge, but before

sat at the little kids’ table with my three cousins. I balanced gingerly in my chair, careful not to strain its joints beyond the bend I put on them already. I could feel the flimsy plastic sway with even my tiniest movements. My legs peaked well above the colorful Little Tikes table as I steadied my paper dinner plate on top of my knee. The warmth of the pizza seeped through the grease-stained bottom and down into my leg. I ate placidly, awkwardly, never acknowledging the curious stares of my little cousins. I’d seen them only a couple times since they were born, usually only once every other Christmas season, and this was my first time around them since they were toddlers. Now all they could think about was calling dibs on me for the basketball game I promised them after supper. All three of them were enthralled with the notion that I could reach up and dump the ball into the net of their hoop without even jumping. My dad and my aunt Kim were gathered around the granite countertop of the bar showing each other pictures and catching up on whatever it was grown brothers and sisters talk about. They were both waiting for their sister Sandra to come before they ate. I found myself wishing for my aunt to walk over and rattle off a barrage of questions, the very thing I hated about family

reduction print by Tom Fields

I could get away, I heard my dad ask from behind his phone screen, “You know your Uncle Ralph, don’t you?” It caught me off guard for a second. “Umm...I know of him. Why?” “Well, he’s gonna be joining us for dinner tonight.” He looked up. “I promise you don’t have to do anything more than say ‘hi’ to him. Shake his hand, tell him your name, and we’ll keep him occupied the rest of the night.” “All right,” I said, unsure of how to respond. I made my way back to the table and finished off the last of my pizza. I sat alone staring at the garish “Merry Christmas” plate on the table in front of me. I stared out the apartment window and down onto the streets twenty stories below, wishing I could’ve been anywhere in the godforsaken city besides my aunt’s. I listened to the city traffic and the rumbling tracks of the “L” as it rattled in the distance. Lights glowed like sleepless eyes throughout downtown. Beacons flashed atop the dark buildings that towered against the black February night. I imagined myself on the balcony far above the pavement, the chilly wind rushing up the outer walls of the building and through the grate beneath my feet, threatening to blow me away, far away. My mind’s wandering was broken by a knock at the door. I got up and walked over towards the adults. I watched my Aunt Sandra pass through the dim lighting just inside the doorway accompanied by a muffled clunking noise. Behind her was a silhouette of a round little man inching along with a wooden cane. Aunt Sandra made her way over to the bar to greet my dad and my aunt, but the man, whom I could now see clearly under brighter lighting, veered off towards a recliner on the back wall and slumped over. He let his cane fall to the floor with a clatter. “Ahhh, damn it,” the old man grumbled. My dad looked over his shoulder at me.

“That’s your Uncle Ralph,” he said with a weak laugh. Uncle Ralph. He was a wrinkly, putty-faced man with a grimace that could make a child cry. He wore a knitted red sweater chewed with holes and a wrinkly pair of khakis. Thin wires of gray hair lay flat against the side of his head, covering some of the blotches that speckled his scalp, and protruding conspicuously from the top of his head was a thumb-like lump. It was unnatural, like in a cartoon when some poor fella gets bashed on the head with a frying pan and the resultant knot grows like a mountain. His arms were furled over his chest and he stared solemnly at the opposite wall. “Don’t worry,” my dad said. “This is the highlight of his week.” “Yeah. He looks like he’s loving every second of it.” “No, really. That man’s been pent up in an old people’s home for the past four months. He tried to run away three times the first month he was there.” I looked back over at Uncle Ralph, just wasting away all alone. “Here, I’ll take you over to him.” We walked over towards the recliner. I made sure to stay a step behind my dad the whole time. When we got close enough, I stooped down to pick up the cane that had fallen to the floor earlier. Without breaking concentration from the wall, Uncle Ralph swiped for the cane and yanked it from my grip. “You don’t need that now, do you?” he said gruffly. “Uncle Ralph, this is my son,” my dad said. Uncle Ralph grunted. “Don’t look nothing like you, Rich.” He looked over. “You better return him before his parents know he’s missing.” He jabbed out to shake my dad’s hand and then mine. I looked at his thick, callused hands as I attempted to get a firmer grip. “You gotta look people in the eye when

you’re shaking hands, kid. Can’t let ’em know you’re scared now, can ya? You scared of me?” he grumbled. I gave a weak laugh. I could feel everyone in the room watching me. “I don’t know. Should I be?” “Good boy.” For the first time, he actually grinned. “Pull up a chair and see if this old man is as scary as you think.” I pulled up my little plastic chair from the little kids’ table and carried it legs first over towards the recliner. I set it down silently and eased my way into the seat. “So how old are ya now?” “Seventeen.” “Hmmm. Your Aunt Sandra told me you’re up here visiting colleges. Is that right?” “Yes, sir,” I nodded “Aggh,” he grumbled disgustedly, “you don’t need college.” He paused a second. “You got a girlfriend?” “Nope.” “Good. Don’t need that either.” I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or just sardonic. He still kept a sour face, though I could tell he was enjoying the control he had over our conversation. “Hey!” he broke from our talk. “Is anyone over there gonna offer me some food, or do I have to go get it myself?” “I can get you some for you if you’d….” “No, no, no. Let one of your aunts get it for me. They’re the reason I haven’t had a good slice of stuffed pizza in months. I swear to God almighty I haven’t had a damn piece of meat all week. I kid you not, this morning for breakfast they served cornflakes, toast, and leftover dinner rolls. No butter, though. No freaking butter. Can you believe that? No freaking butter. Christ, some days I think I’d be willing to trade my life for a nice steak.” I didn’t know if I was supposed to laugh or cry after hearing that. His grouchiness was almost comical, but there were feelings behind what he was saying. He kept his arms

crossed and nodded his head with a puckered scowl. “Have they told you that they forced me to quit smoking?” He leaned in secretively. I caught a faint waft of smoky nicotine coming from his sweater. “No, they didn’t.” “Good, ’cause they’d be wrong.” He flashed an impish smirk. “You see, my nurse gives me these patches that are supposed to make me quit.” He pulled back the knitted sweater sleeve and displayed a squarish, band-aid looking thing. “When she’s around me I wear those, sometimes two of them on a bad day. Then once that dumb broad finally leaves me alone in my room, I got my cigarette stash. You see, I got a couple packs sitting in my icebox in a brown paper bag, which is also what I keep my medicine in.” He snickered proudly. “Only one of them actually gets rid of the headaches, though, if ya know what I’m sayin’.” He prodded me twice with a firm elbow. I smiled at his conceitedness. “I crack the window, pull up a rocking chair, and look out at the city from a distance. Just me and my cigarettes.” “Is the nursing home downtown?” I asked. He snorted. “Nah. I still got an apartment down in the city, though. It’s more a glorified storage unit than anything nowadays. Most expensive one in the damn city. It’s where I keep all the things I’ve collected and couldn’t bring myself to get rid of.” “What do you keep there?” He cleared his throat with a scratchy cough. “All kinds of stuff. Letters, photographs, paintings, jewelry, you name it. You can do things like that when you ain’t got a wife and kids around. Plenty of room. I started making myself a sort of filing cabinet with fitted drawers for each thing. Little ones to hold my tie clips and cuff links and wide ones to hold my pictures frames. Took a hell of a lot of time sanding and nailing and staining. Aghh, it hurts just thinking about it.”

Somewhere along the line he had stopped looking at me and started looking out the back, down on the city. I could see the shimmer of lights streak across his eyes. He wasn’t talking to me any more, not exactly. “I used to have a picture on the top of my dresser of me with my cousin Eddie standing in front of his brand new Packard. The Sox gave it to him for leading the team in home runs and RBIs. It killed me to store that one away. I still remember drivin’ around the city real slow that day, getting chased down by little kids hanging out on the street corners, looking back at every person that looked our way and knowing how great it feels to be seen. I also got a personal letter from John Kennedy laying around somewhere. He was a real good guy. They don’t make ’em like that no more. I don’t remember what I wrote to him in the first place, but he sent a real nice letter back signed and everything. Ah hell,” he broke off, “I can’t even remember where I put that one now. Damn.”

photograph by Leo Heinz

He started looking more and more distant as he rambled on, answering questions that no one had asked. Any thread of story he caught he strung out, going on about how much he loved President Reagan but how Reagan was an ass for never writing him back. He worked his way into childhood stories about how he and his gang of friends used to go down to Wrigley and collect the bottles that were scattered around and how some afternoons they’d sneak into the stadium after the game to find even more

to cash in. He talked about how boxing was the only real sport left and that it’s a shame no one gives a damn about the heavyweights anymore. He imitated Jersey Joe Walcott and Rocky Marciano, making little hindered jabs and hooks as he went on and on praising the greatest fights of the twentieth century. At some point he became determined to list the best five heavyweight fights he’d ever seen, but could never make his mind up. Ali v. Frazier, Holmes v. Norton, Baer v. Braddock, Dempsey v. Firpo and so on. He’d switch

photograph by Ben Banet

the order and the names and the venues, but once he was content with a decision for twenty seconds he’d shake his head furiously and say, “Ahhh, what the hell am I talking about? That’s no good,” scrapping the old list then and revising his picks once more. The talking exhausted him. At some points he’d stop to catch his breath and dab at his sweatglazed brow with the arm of his sweater. At other points his words were slurred beyond recognition like he was uttering an incantation. Little fits of anger would turn him red mid-story until he found himself again. On occasion he would stare around the room like he was seeing the place for the first time, but even in small moments of senility he still had a little demon in him. He was sharp but unaware, conscious with no bearings. It took me awhile to realize that he hadn’t even touched the pizza my aunt had brought him somewhere in the midst of his manic rambling. By the time my Aunt Sandra came over to him, letting him know it was time to leave, he was spent. He twitched when her hand touched his shoulder as if he had been rudely awakened. “We gotta get you back by twelve, Uncle Ralph,” she said gently. “Wahh, do I look like Cinderella to you or somethin’?” Then he resigned, putting up no more of a fight than that. He started shifting in his recliner, struggling to pull himself from the deep cushions. After considerable exertion, he waddled himself upright until his feet reached the floor. I could hear him mumbling curses under his breath. I offered him a hand up, but he waved it away brusquely. He grabbed blindly for his cane, nearly knocking it back to the floor. He planted the rubber cap on the bottom firmly on the floor and helped himself up, pushing off the armrest with his one free hand. Uncle Ralph stood in front of me, puffing his chest out and arching his back slightly like a soldier at attention. He still fell a good two inches

short of eye level, maybe one inch if you included the lump on his head. He reached a porky arm around me and gripped the muscle between my neck and shoulder. He pulled me in so that I was leaned over awkwardly. I could hear the heavy rasp of his deep breathing. It sounded like the last remnants of a milkshake being sucked up through a straw. “I gotta tell ya, kid.” He stared somberly at the ground. “It’s a shame that we’ll never get to know each other. Not in this life at least. You take care of yourself, and I’ll see if I can stick around long enough to see you next Christmas or something.” It seemed like he was apologizing to me. He shrugged me off and let his arm fall back down to his side then stuffed his hand into his pocket. That was Uncle Ralph. He faded away through the shallow pool of light outside the doorway and under the shadowy threshold, never looking back. I heard the soft foot thumps and heavy cane strokes fade as he passed farther and farther down the hallway. The low grumbles subsided after the ping of the elevator doors.

stared more intently at the bureau. This dresser was the last thing my Great-Uncle Ralph had done before my dad and aunts decided to put him in the nursing home. As far as I could tell, that was probably the very last thing he had to live for in his life. His hand for art, his touch, his craft, they had all disappeared long before I ever shook his strange, rough hands. As his final months crawled nearer and nearer, he had become a vestige. He was nothing more than a retired carpet salesman, an old man stuck in a place that could never suit him. I hated to think that he had spent his last hours in the home. I secretly wished that he had slipped away easily in his rocking chair that night, staring reminiscently over his city with a cigarette smoldering in the ash tray. I never asked, though.

My dad kept on scouring the drawers, uncovering evidence of a different Uncle Ralph, the side of him that had been buried underneath years of life and left only a fossil. He slid open a long drawer that ran across the bottom and rifled through crinkling papers. He slipped out a manila envelope. Sitting back on his heels, my dad looked like a monk at the foot of a small altar, peering curiously into the envelope. He poured the papers out into his hand and shuffled through them one by one like a deck of cards. Some of the papers were handwritten, others were inked in the thin, blurry font of a typewriter. “Come here,” my dad called. I waved him off with the free hand that wasn’t holding my shirt over my nose. “C’mon. You gotta see this.” I looked back into the hallway, checking for God only knows what, then walked in with a reverence, feeling almost as if I should genuflect before approaching the mahogany

dresser. My dad pointed to bottom right margin of a sheet of stationery. There was a neat, illegible scrawling of a signature. Underneath the signature was printed “John F. Kennedy.” Paper-clipped to the back side was a picture of the President side by side with a small, thick man with an immaculate comb-over and a pinstriped suit. He was downtown somewhere, and he was smiling. He stood with the same old stance, back arched and chest out, making himself look just a little bit taller. The black and white coloring seemed to fit him better for some reason. That was the generation he knew; that was his time, his culture, his people. He knew the old days and was misunderstood by the new ones that succeeded them. He didn’t belong in an old people’s home. He belonged in the past. I kept on looking at the picture, gazing at the simple, smiling face of a man I couldn’t be sure I had ever met.

photograph by Matt Sciuto

Ray Joe Schneider

he first time I met Ray was the first time I walked into my dad’s hardware store. His braided beard, which reached to his chest, matched the long braided ponytail that spiraled down his back. To this day I have not seen Ray in anything other than faded blue overalls set over a tattered shirt with a Harley-Davidson logo plastered to his sleeve. “You uh…Joseph, right?” he asked me. “Your dad’s told me all ’bout you. Gonna run the uh…family business one day, huh?” That was the first thing Ray ever said to me. He actually said a little more, but I couldn’t understand the rest. Ray spoke in bursts. He would begin a sentence by rapidly mumbling a couple words before taking a short pause and then bursting again into rapid—and often incoherent—speech. In my confusion, I simply laughed off Ray’s question, hoping this was an adequate answer to his question. “See this uh…light bulb here? Pretty big, eh?” he asked me, pointing to the enormous light bulb. The light bulb sat proudly on top of the main sales counter. It looked like the only thing in the store that was older than Ray. “Turn it on every now and then…once I got sunburn.” I laughed again; this time I had actually understood part of what he said. Over the next few years, I got to know Ray fairly well. On Saturdays, Ray never failed to greet me, eager to discuss the vast collection of motorcycles he still stored in his basement. Sometimes he spoke of his supposed ex-wife, whose existence nobody could verify. For the most part, he was fun to talk to, even if he wasn’t particularly funny.

The dozens of pens permanently stashed in the breast pocket of his overalls and the colorful tattoos of cartoon characters on his arms never failed to amuse me. Our conversations were always brief, but each time, assuming I could understand him, I was able to put together another part of Ray’s life. When I asked my Dad about Ray, he could only provide me with general facts. Ray lived next door to the hardware store but nobody had ever been inside his house or seen him much after work hours, other than during his frequent trips to the thrift store. I remember my dad saying, “Yeah, we try not to ask Ray about himself too often, but nobody knows the store better than him.” It was the summer going into my junior year that I really began to understand who Ray was. “We’ve gotta get a fridge out of Ray’s house tomorrow. If you wanna drop by, it’d probably be pretty interesting. I think Randy’s coming along too,” my dad said. It was just getting to the point of summer when I actually started to miss going to school a little and when I would do anything to get out of the house, especially if it involved making a little money. I agreed to help. My dad opened the gate to Ray’s backyard. It required a certain technique because the gate’s supporting poles sagged deep into the dirt, which had turned to mud after last night’s rain. We walked up to Ray’s porch, making our way through the various washers and driers that littered the lawn. Rust clung to every corner of the overused and undercleaned appliances. “Joseph,” my dad said, chuckling. “You’re a lucky guy. You’re among the

first to see the inside of Ray’s house.” He turned the key, jarring the door open. We stepped through the doorway into Ray’s kitchen, or the closest thing Ray had to a kitchen. The tiny room held more kitchen utensils than Williams-Sonoma. Old, unused pots and pans were stacked on top of the stove, rendering it useless. The sink held three boom boxes, stacked vertically. A smaller radio crackled with static as it quietly played aged country music hits. We squeezed through the narrow passageway, careful not to knock down the stacks and stacks of miscellaneous objects before reaching the fridge. “Let’s have a look around before we get straight to this fridge business,” my dad said, smugly. We continued our expedition out of the kitchen and further into the small house. The rest of the rooms told similar stories, although the objects were slightly nicer. Ray had dedicated certain sections to a specific theme. Small sections of medieval or Japanese artifacts populated the house. Even the bathtub was completely full of cheap Native American artifacts. “So does Ray ever smell bad or anything?” I asked, half jokingly. “I mean, I’ve never noticed anything, but really, where does he bathe?” my dad said, just as confused as I. Randy had stumbled upon the medieval section and called my dad over. I continued through into the bedroom. I couldn’t help but feel we were invading a very personal part of Ray’s life. I knew Ray wouldn’t want us looking around as thoroughly as we were. I turned around, deciding it was best

not to look through his bedroom. As I went for the door, I noticed a small electric candle flickering artificially in the corner. I stopped for a moment. Set next to the candle was a small faded picture of Ray and a woman in front of him. I was surprised. I never imagined Ray with a woman, but my memory flipped back to the numerous little conversations where Ray had mentioned his ex-wife. I had discounted this as just Ray making a lame joke, but here she was. I had felt bad looking through some of Ray’s less personal stuff, but this seemed far more private. I looked around. Randy and my dad were still fascinated with a particularly well-organized section of beanie babies. “Uh, not too much to see in the bedroom,” I said. “Maybe we should get that fridge now.” We carefully made our way back through Ray’s house to the kitchen, where the old, dirty fridge stood against the back wall. I pulled on a pair of work gloves and we made quick work of the fridge, shifting it onto a dolly and loading it onto the back of my Dad’s truck.

photograph by Adam Lux

photograph by Giuseppe Vitellaro

Walking the Yellow Brick Road Guillaume Delabar Dazzled red slippers and ruby capped hair, Tornado of talent, palette of youth, Dreaming of rainbows and colors so fair, But pained by a cowardly lion’s tooth. Poise like straw and suit of tin, Poppies’ puppet and Witch’s dream, Drugged and lonely, no Kansas or kin, Hourglass of memories for Oz’s great gleam. Aged by broomsticks and ashen tears, A crystal ball of dreams had slowed, Yet munchkins will sing for many years, Of how you walked the Yellow Brick Road.

We Did a Lot of Stupid Things Fag. 74

Joe Slama

Giuseppe Vitellaro The word hawked-up and spit out singes the skin stains mouths and dissolves on the wind leaving behind its stench and hearts crumbled

photograph by Giuseppe Vitellaro

“

’mon, Bumpy. It’s almost eleven o’ clock!” hollered Bill, charging ahead of Lewis (“Bumpy” to his friends). The two of them ran across the flattened, sun-scorched grass of the vacant lot behind the towering metalworking plant, the soles of their shoes thudding against the hard, baked dirt beneath the parched vegetation. When he reached the far end of the lot near the factory wall, Bill collapsed next to a pile of scrap metal gleaming in the sunlight, smiling, panting, and dripping with sweat as Bumpy caught up and plopped down beside him, equally soaked. They paused for a moment, lying beside the mound of old metal and bits of wood, their eyes closed against the sizzling morning sun. Before them, their neighborhood lot stretched out, vacant except for the dry grass growing in patches. Behind them, the metalworking plant’s scrap heaps towered above them, twice their height in many places, the piles rolling up and down like mountains dipping into valleys. Behind these piles there was a thin strip of barren ground that ended abruptly in the factory wall topped by two smokestacks billowing into the wind high above. Suddenly, Bumpy sat up and tightly crossed his legs, hands gripping his shins. Glistening sweat rolled down his smudged face and legs, and stains had darkened under his armpits. His hair flopped as he jerked his head to his left and stood up, brushing off the back of his shorts. Bill sat up, alarmed. “What’s with you, lug?” Bill asked. Bumpy did not spare Bill an answer or so much as a glance, but instead darted into a nearby metal box, nimbly dodging through a

round hole gouged in the side of the structure. “Bumpy, where you going?” Bill cried, getting up off the ground. Befuddled, he scurried after his friend, tripping as he stubbed his foot against a piece of metal bent away from the ground. He caught himself against the side of the box and hunched over as he crawled carefully through the hole after Bumpy, scratching his palm on the jagged edges. Emerging inside, he stood up with a good two feet above his head. His shoes rested awkwardly on a lumpy, cold metal floor. Bumpy, light pouring onto his face in streaks, was perched in a dent in the wall that was almost in the shape of a shelf. He held his arms stiff with his hands pressed against the bottom of the shallow cavity to keep from slipping off the slick metal. Bumpy barely suppressed his excited grin as he tilted his chin up and fixed Bill with what was supposed to be a regal gaze as he said, “Greetings, peasant. What brings you to this here castle of the world-famous King Bumpy?” Bill turned his head away, clasping his mouth firmly in his left hand and stifling a laugh. Bumpy collapsed in convulsive laughter, sliding off the seat and landing on the ground, rolling back and forth. Bill seized the opportunity and jumped onto the outcropping, seating himself within it. Bumpy, however, jumped up from the ground out of his hysteria and, still snickering, shoved Bill from the slick metal ledge and leaped back onto it himself. He turned, standing on the metal, and braced himself in that position by pressing his hands against the metal ceiling. “Ouch!” Bumpy cried, collapsing and thudding softly on the ground. Kneeling, he keeled over, cradling his right hand. “What’s wrong?” asked Bill, leaning over his friend. “Nothing, just cut myself,” replied

Bumpy, straightening up with his ring finger in his mouth. He pulled it out with a popping noise like a kiss. The bleeding had already almost stopped; just a small red sliver was visible on the bottom of his finger. Almost as one, both boys riveted their eyes to the ceiling of their new castle, faces blank and jaws slightly agape as they gazed upon a ceiling shredded as though some strong, sharptaloned bird had swooped upon it. Bumpy looked back down, lips tight as a small tear formed in the corner of his eye, his hopes for the wonderful new clubhouse shattered. “This ain’t no clubhouse,” he muttered. “A king has got to have a better castle than one with holes in the roof.” Bill stood away from his friend, taken aback by Bumpy’s tears. He thought for a moment, desperate to make the uncomfortable crying stop. Confused on what to do for his crying friend, he stood stiff, head held perpendicular to his torso, eyes darting around to avoid Bumpy, who was now sitting with his head in his knees. Pausing there so awkwardly, Bill had to fight back tears himself. “Hold on,” he said finally, desperate to distract both himself and his friend from the horrible crying. He scrambled back out the hole, turned sharply around the corner of the clubhouse, and scrambled through the crossbars of old scaffolding that had its maroon paint chipping off to reveal a dull, deep gray beneath it. He emerged behind the mountain of scrap and wood to see exactly what he had hoped for. Along the side of the building, accumulated in long, thin, deep black puddles dried in the sun, were the dregs of tar used on the factory roof high above. Grinning, Bill sprinted over to the dried remnants and squatted down next to them. He dug his hand, which was shaking with anticipation, inside of his pocket and extracted his pocketknife, which he snapped open. He cut away the tar in long strips from the ground and stacked them in a pile. After

finishing the first puddle, he realized that he had no way to transport it. He darted over to the scrap pile and found a small pail, which he grabbed by the handle and tore from underneath a thick wooden pole. He stumbled backwards. Catching himself, he turned and dashed back to the tar globs, immediately crouching and setting back to work. “What’re you doing?” he heard Bumpy’s dejected voice say behind him. Bill, excitement pounding in his ears, barely heard the question as he dumped the last of the tar chunks of that pile into his bucket and leapfrogged over to another puddle to begin harvesting that, too. “Get some wood and get a fire goin’ so we can get this melted!” shouted Bill, though he didn’t need to. Bumpy had already whirled around and darted back through the scaffolding to burrow through the scrap piles for loose pieces of wood. Bill scraped up several more globs of the black tar, almost filling the bucket. He snapped his knife shut, stuffed it back into his shorts, grabbed the handle of the pail and clambered back through the heaps of scrap, passing Bumpy, whose torso was buried and feet were flailing in the air as he dug for loose pieces of wood. Bill marched towards the center of the lot. Setting the bucket down there, he kneeled on the ground and started uprooting chunks of grass, clearing the dirt for a fire ring. Bumpy soon joined him, stretching his arms out and allowing the wood he had collected to topple next to Bill’s bucket. Bill then grabbed the uprooted grass and laid it in the center of the fire ring as tinder. “Lemme get some matches,” Bumpy said, and Bill watched him dart across the lot, clamber over his chain-link fence, and return moments later with a package of matches from his family’s barbeque pit. As Bumpy climbed once more over the fence, Bill looked back to the pile in front of him and arranged the kindling and timber over

the grass, pressing down the grass on top to create a niche for the bucket. He lifted up the pail, balanced it in the center of this niche, and withdrew a long, sturdy stick to remove the pail when the tar was ready. Bumpy, returning, skidded to a halt, knelt next to the woodpile, whipped out a match, and struck it on the box. As the match flared up, he tossed the box aside and Bill backed away from the pile. As Bumpy touched the infant flame to the grass, the dead vegetation lit almost instantly, and the crackling flames fanned out, soon charring the grass and catching the smaller sticks. Bill and Bumpy sat back away from the heat, cradling their knees in their hands and leaning back as the flames fanned out across the pile. As the flames began to lick the bucket, Bill stood and watched the tar swirling before his eyes in the heat become thick, bubbling goo. When it appeared melted enough to his nine-year-old eyes, Bill slipped off a shoe and stood, wobbling on one foot as he rolled off his sock. He wriggled his foot back into his shoe on the ground, placed his sock in his left hand, and bent over, picking up the stick in his right. He extended it slowly, touching it to the pail just beneath the handle. He scraped it cautiously up the side, careful not to shove the bucket over, and the handle slid onto the stick. Bill lifted it up the rest of the way until the handle rested completely upright. He then raised the pail, swung it out from the fire, and rested it on the ground. He drew out the stick and tossed it aside into the burning pile where it clattered and a column of embers exploded. He took his sock from his hand, crouched down, and wrapped it around the still erect handle as an insulator. As he grabbed the handle the hot metal seared his skin. His lips puckered, his cheeks puffed, and his back straightened as he tried to ignore the pain. The goal of tarring the roof of their new hangout was so fixed in his mind that he did not for a

moment consider setting it back down. He stood up and waddled cautiously to the metal box, his legs perfectly straight so as to avoid brushing the bucket held as far away from his body as his little arms would allow. When he reached the scaffolding, he realized that he could not lift it to the board on top. Bumpy immediately saw the problem, removed both of his socks, and darted over barefoot to help Bill. He thrust his hands inside his socks and squatted to grab the underside of the bucket. He turned his head away from the still-bubbling tar, eyes shut tight against the heat and teeth gritted with pain. Together they lifted the bucket to the wood floor above them. Bill wriggled his foot out of his other shoe and whipped his other sock. He wedged his foot back in haphazardly, the sole of his foot pressing down the back of his shoe as he wrapped the sock around his right hand like a bandage. Using his stockinged hand, he pressed against the bottom of the pail, fingers spread wide under the hot metal, and eased it over to the far right of the board. Then he wedged his left foot between the crossbeam and leg of the scaffolding. He pushed off the ground from his right foot, which he rested on the intersection of the crossbeams and grabbed the floorboard. He then pushed away with his left foot and heaved himself up onto the board. Slowly, deliberately, he raised himself up, his knees shaking as he tried to maintain balance and not let the bucket go tumbling off. When he stood straight, he reached out his right hand and carefully closed it around the sock on the handle. The tendons in his arm tensed as he raised it and turned towards the clubhouse roof. Tiny, jagged edges poked out from the roof like thorns from a vine. Bill took a deep breath and savored the feeling of preparing to patch this roof as he’d seen grown-ups do. Summoning all of his strength, he leaned forward slightly and let the

momentum carry the bucket back, forth, back, and forth as he began to swing it. His arm swung like a pendulum as he felt the weight stretch out his arm. Finally the moment came, and he released. A split second after Bill threw the bucket onto the roof, he realized there couldn’t have been a worse way of pouring the tar onto the roof. This moment died when a sudden spurt of oil flew from the bucket, checkering the roof of the clubhouse. A glob flew straight at Bill. Time seemed to slow as Bill’s bubble of triumph was popped, and his eyes widened as he realized his mistake. The glob collided with his right hand, and in the next instant he collapsed on top of the scaffolding. His forehead pressed hard against the metal pole of the leg as he shouted a shout that seemed to tighten around every airway in his lungs, emptying him of air and of pain. His left hand had snapped with almost magnetic force to his opposite wrist; the back of his right hand was coated in still-simmering tar. From his hand emanated a pain so great it had almost become detached mentally from his body, becoming a whole new entity in order to accommodate such a burning. It seared with unrelenting fire in his mind, and in his panic he almost thought that his hand was aflame and withering into a black crisp. Bill fell backward, his head and back colliding against the wood, and lay still, his grasp unbroken, his knees pointing skyward and the backs of his feet pressed up tightly against his rear. His eyes closed so tightly shut that they seemed to press back into his head, and his teeth clamped shut as he growled ferociously in pain. It seemed they would shatter and fly out of his mouth. Bumpy leapt up next to him, trying to see what could be done. “C’mon,” he encouraged, though he didn’t sound so confident. He slid his hands underneath Bill’s shoulder blades. “We…” He paused. “We need to get to my house; you

can wash it off there.” Bill, seeing logic in this statement (even though Bumpy sounded more as if he were trying to convince himself), slowly sat, swinging his legs over the side of the scaffolding. He slid off, hitting the ground with a force magnified in his head by the pain of his hand. The sudden surge of his senses made the burning seem to heighten, and he keeled over once more. Bumpy leapt down, landing more agilely than his friend. He put his left arm on Bill’s shoulders and placed his right hand on Bill’s wrist above Bill’s own hand. Bumpy guided Bill up, and the two set off across the lot together. Bill’s legs were shaking almost uncontrollably with pain, and the two waddled together like partners of a three-legged race slowly marching to their destination. The friends made their way to the corner of the lot, walked alongside the house on the end and turned around it to walk down their street. They passed three other houses before coming to Bumpy’s. They stumbled to the center of the walk in front of the house and turned sharply, heading up the flight of stairs to the front door. They stopped a good three feet before it, and Bumpy dropped his grip on Bill’s arm as he grabbed the latch of the storm door, swung it open, held it back with his foot, and moved to open the main door. He turned the knob, and the two stumbled over the threshold. Bill tore away from Bumpy, through the living room, past the flight of stairs leading up to the next floor, into the hallway, and through the first door he came to: the bathroom. He ran flat out into the sink and ignored the new pain in his chest from hitting the porcelain counter as he used his good hand to snap the faucet to the coldest temperature and highest pressure. Bill’s hand darted out into the cool jet, and for the first time in minutes (though it seemed a lifetime), he felt relief, and a long sigh escaped him as his eyes closed and his eyebrows arched upward.

Bill’s satisfaction was once again cut short as a strange feeling enveloped his hand. It occurred so slowly that at first he did not feel it, but as he stood there allowing water to cascade onto his hand, he eventually noticed that his joints seemed to be hardening, as if his hand were turning to stone. His eyes darted to the blackened mess, and he realized that the cool water had hardened the tar over him. He jerked his hand out of the water, speckling the front of his shirt with droplets. His whole body trembled with fright. His eyes widened as he stared at the enveloped mess, and tears slowly dripped from his eyes as he whimpered. Bumpy peered in and immediately saw Bill’s new suffering. “Mom!” he called. “Bill’s in the bathroom! Help! Please!” Bumpy took off out the door in the direction of Bill’s house. Bill heard Bumpy’s mom race down the stairs as he cradled his wrist once more, kneeling down on the hard, cold linoleum. She burst into the bathroom, horn-rimmed glasses askew beneath her curly auburn hair, and gasped as she saw the mess of Bill’s hand. She knelt down beside him, cooing and comforting him in words that he couldn’t make out. Soon, Bill’s own mother burst in, grasped his shoulders tight in her hands and guided him upward, out of the bathroom, and into their car in the street. Bill sat in the seat next to his mother as they drove. After a few minutes, he mustered the heart to whimper, “Where are we going?” “The hospital,” was his mom’s only response as her sweaty hands shook on the steering wheel. They walked through the emergency room doors. Patients and doctors swirled all around Bill and his mother. They all melded together into a mass of bodies and noise in Bill’s mind, which was still preoccupied with his suffocating hand, the blood cut off by the tar glove. The next few minutes blurred by. He only registered where exactly they were

when he was seated on a bed and told to wait by a man in white whom Bill assumed to be a doctor. Several minutes passed as he and his mother sat in there alone. She was on a chair across from his bed, distraught but still managing between nervous draws of breath to give him a rambling lecture about playing safe. Bill heard almost none of it. Images danced in his head of the rest of his life with his hand encased in tar or worse, with no right hand at all. Finally, the doctor arrived, carrying a clear liquid in a corked jar. He exchanged a few words with Bill’s mother, explaining something which Bill imagined was whatever procedure they were about to do on him. The doctor turned to Bill, unfolding a white cloth. He then uncorked the container, wadded the cloth over the lid, and turned the bottle over, pouring the substance on. He leaned over Bill, and Bill immediately smelled what the substance was: ether. Panic seized Bill for a split-second as he feared what sedation could mean. However, before he could pull away, the doctor began dabbing the cloth onto Bill’s hand. Terror and anxiety were replaced by a euphoric relief as Bill felt the tar suddenly begin to detach from his hand. Euphoria faded away into rest as the scent of the ether took its toll on Bill’s little body, and he slowly succumbed to sedation.

solar print by Jacob Colvis

Meramec Matt Smith left, forward, down, back right, forward, down, back again again again skidding along the waterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s edge smooth as skipping stones swift as breeze in an alpine valley silent as unspoken goodbyes or missed greetings honey sunlight nudging my back like a begging dog bone white cliffs on both sides standing stiff as decorated soldiers oak trees on top, Roman laurels dark caves cut through like bayonet wounds birds float around my ambling craft erratic colors, like fever dreams before me runs the river behind me runs the river left, forward, down, back right, forward, down back I move on