TU Review Oct 2015

TIFFIN UNIVERSITY

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 2

T HE

T U

OCTOBER, 2015

R EV I EW

TU FACULTY EDITION

DALVA CHURCH: ED ITOR

“Seasons” by Jeanette Berry I want that every season love, not just weather getting chilly now it's time to shack up.

INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

I want that Spring time walking through the flowers sharing a lunch outside holding POETRY BY BRANDON CLAY CYANOTYPES BY LEE FERNSIDE

hands 2,

type love.

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I want that summer time love, fresh juicy fruit and cold beer sharing walking on the board walk SHE KNEW” SHORT STORY BY JEANETTE BERRY

3

skin tan holding hands through the evening rain type love.

Don't just give me winter time apple pie lovin’, autumn leaves falling like your standards simply

STORIES FROM SPRINGFIELD BY TERRY COLLINS

47

PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAN LAMBERT

ART BY JOE VAN KERKHOVE

Give me all of you.

All of your colors, all of your seasons.

7, 11, 12, 14

POETRY BY KRISTA PETROSINO

because you're lonely love.

9

My soul evolves and changes like the seasons, but just like mother nature herself, stays consistent in her change.

Give me your seasons baby, I'm not afraid of change.

ART BY VINCE MOORE “HONOR AND RESPECT: LEARNED, SEEN, HEARD, EXPERIENCED, FOUND AND MISSED”

8

BY: GORDON A. CREWS, PH.D.

SELECTIONS FROM “THE TERMINAL LOVE OF NEAL LISZT AND SOBIE IHT”

1020

BY JAMES ROVIRA CONTACT INFORMATION

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Jazz 2 Digital Art by Vince Moore

“Nocturne”

By Brandon Clay Jaguar prowls through oil black night walking, stalking feels your fright like Blake’s tyger, eyes burn bright— kill tonight then hide from light.

Bull shark circles nightly rounds

searching, sensing sickly sounds rows of teeth poised to prey, maim and slay, then shun the day.

Screech owl spies scurrying meat flurry of flesh, flash of feet

silently splits unlit air

Christmas Lima Bean Cyanotype by Lee Fernside

swooping, seizing talons grip and tear.

In dusky desert viper waits, poised like dagger anticipates limbs to strike, skin to rend,

little life with venom end.

Wolf howls high into the gloom, snarling, snarling— song of doom alpha leads omega on, lips curl, fangs paint red with blood

of fawn.

Scarlet Nantes Carrots Cyanotype by Lee Fernside

“She Knew” by Jeanette Berry

This day hadn’t meant anything to Akiva in several years. After getting back from Paris, working with her aunt for the Black Paris uprising, and coming back, immediately working in Baltimore, she knew.

She knew that something was going to happen. She didn’t know it would take this long, but she could feel something boiling under the surface. All the tell-tale signs; Twitter had been set ablaze in the past couple days, people fighting in the streets for weeks, clashing with the police, it’s happening.

As she sat up in her bed she looked to her left and remembered him. He was so alive, so passionate about life and about freedom. He enjoyed good food, good music and great sex. Akiva rubbed the pillow and turned away. When would she see him again? She didn’t know if it would be behind bars, or hanging from a tree. All she knew was her fight was to make his capture not in vain.

She turned on the TV and saw that the tanks were coming in.

After years and years of doing this and working with her aunt Ci Ci, she knew, she knew today would be different. She knew preparing herself for the rest of her life may be just preparing herself for today. July gave her a call. July warned Akiva not to do anything irrational, but Ju Ju knew. She could feel it over the phone. Akiva was ready. Akiva knew that the work that had been done up to this point was for this day. The people were tired, the people were fed up. No longer listening to what the news, what the

radio, what their pastors, what their religious leaders had to say. All they wanted was freedom. The only way to get freedom is to take it. She knew this wouldn’t be easy, so she decided to start writing her message. Maybe if written those that were against it would understand, she knew that there wasn’t much hope in that, but maybe then the ones were with it would understand better.

She stood up, went to her computer at the window and typed, I f bravery is found through love, let me never tire of the act, let me choose to be brave each day. If words spoken in hope and grace mean more than those spoken out of envy, let me know them of the former and less of the latter. Let darkness fade on the coward. Let light shine, let love glow.

Even if painful, let it be triumphant in my heart. I pledge allegiance to love.

She hoped that writing this and sending it to the right people would get out in time. So she pressed send. Retweet after retweet after video after facebook share came. And as she prepared herself for the worst, the first bomb fell. This was the second civil war, and her fight, her allegiance, were in love.

Excerpts from Stories from Springfield

By Terry Collins

Earliest Memory It was a day when I was very young. My mother and I are in the back yard just outside the boundary of the screened back porch of our weathered farmhouse. My mother is wearing a long apron with a bowl in her lap. She is sitting on an old wooden kitchen chair peeling peaches for canning. There is a large bushel basket next to her full of orangey-pink fruit. Her head is bent over her work as she concentrates on carving the peaches. A long tendril of peel hangs down as she turns the peach over and over in her hands.

I sit in a galvanized tub filled with cool water. The hot summer sun beats down on my head, and from time to time, a puff of hot wind fluffs our hair. The hum of tires whine on the pavement of the county road that runs in front of our house. There is a graveled drive on my right that leads from the road up a slight hill to an unused barn behind me. The barn is old and the white paint is peeling from its derelict walls. The great door of the barn hangs crookedly from its hinges. The grass around me is green and the stems are tall.

I am playing with the water, cupping it in my hands and then letting it fall back into the tub. The water creates sparkling, multi-colored gems in the air as the water escapes my baby fists. Then, the tall grass around me catches my attention and I reach down on either side of the tub to break off stalks and drop them in the water.

They float like little canoes on top of the water and swirl in the eddies I make with my hands. I like watching the patterns and so pull more sheaves of grass from the blades within my reach. I am suddenly aware of a flutter in my closed fist. Something squirms against my palm and I open my hand in wonder at the sensation. There in my open hand wriggles a black and yellow garden spider lying on her back and clumsily trying to set herself upright. The spider’s bulbous body throbs against my tender palm and I shriek for my mother dropping the spider into the water where it struggles to gain footing.

My mother is there in a moment and lifts me dripping from the water. I am safe – for the moment. ******************************************************************************

The Maiden Aunt

My aunt Mary Ella was a stern-eyed spinster and she had the effect of solemnizing our antics whenever she entered the room. Her grey hair was permanently curled in tight close-cropped ringlets and she wore wire-framed glasses perched on a finely chiseled nose. When she walked, her shoulders were slightly stooped as if she were in the act of bending over a child’s desk. I remember that she almost always wore dresses and sensible shoes. On the rare occasions when she wore pants, one could not help but notice that her broad backside was all out of proportion with her small torso.

“Galileo”

Photography by Dan Lambert

It was a strange kind of ambivalence we all felt towards her. She could still you in your seat with a steely stare, but she always produced the most wonderful and thoughtful presents at Christmas and on birthdays. It sort of made sense when we learned that she was a high school math teacher in Mansfield. She had the stare and the voice and the general demeanor of a classroom authority and she rarely smiled. Once, my brother Marvin offered a tribute to her profession by asking her if she had heard of the constipated mathematician who had had to “Work it out with a pencil!” The temperature in the room dropped about 25 degrees as she sat in stony silence staring him down. Awkward.

Early one summer, Aunt Mary Ella asked my mom and my Aunt Vi if Debbie and I could spend a week with her in Mansfield. She told them she couldn’t take all 10 grandchildren, but she could manage Debbie and me who were the only girls (well–there was my baby sister Nancy, but she couldn’t really do anything interesting). I remember making some kind of refusal saying I had other important plans for the summer. The prospect of spending five whole days with my maiden teacher aunt sounded a lot like being kept after school. My mother didn’t even debate the issue–I was going.

What was so unexpected is that my aunt became this different person when Debbie and I got to her apartment. She was animated and smiling–almost girlish. She had meticulously planned this whole week’s events for us. Every day, I found I grew more fond of her and it was obvious she had considered each day’s events carefully with the pleasure of two preteen girls foremost on her mind.

Early in the week she took us to a concert in the park. It was the year that the 7-year locusts emerged from their hibernation. While we walked from the car to the bandshell, the cicadas sizzled a high-pitched squeal all around us. Our feet crunched on the abandoned chrysalises that littered the ground like a crispy brown carpet. I don’t remember what music was played that night, but the memory itself is pleasant as I sat there with my aunt and cousin while the duet between the strings and cicadas washed over me, each ensemble vying to make its voices heard over the other.

On another day, Aunt Mary Ella took us down to her tidy, well-lit basement. The walls and ceiling were painted in clean pastels and the room had that freshly laundered clothes smell. She watched our expressions as our eyes fell on the brightly colored plastic bowling pins set neatly at the end of a vinyl sheet painted to look like bowling lane. Debbie and I looked at each other smirking. We were too old to play such baby games. Yet, we said nothing and in the next moment were deep in competition. We spent an hour challenging one another, throwing down the gauntlet, boasting of our prowess as sportswomen on the bowling circuit. Rip Van Winkle had nothing on us that night.

Late one night toward the end of the week, my aunt stole into the room where Debbie and I slept and gently jostled us awake. She led the way into the small yard and we lay on our backs as she named sparkling constellations that twinkled over our heads. After a while we followed her back into the little kitchen where she produced all of the ingredients for monster sundaes. It seemed like she had thought of every delight a young kid could desire.

When our conversation lagged and eyes drooped, she hustled us back to bed with instructions that we would have to be packed and ready to return to Springfield the next morning. And Debbie and I looked at each other, a little astonished–was it possible that the week was over so quickly? The next morning, our aunt had breakfast ready and urged us to organize ourselves for redeployment. Our conspiracy already executed, Debbie and I whined that it was impossible to leave because we had no shoes. In exasperation, our aunt herded us before her from room to room asking where we had left our shoes last. Debbie and I smiled slyly to one another because, although we resisted coming, we now resisted leaving and we believed our plot to delay our departure would succeed. And we were winning the battle.

My aunt must have caught the exchanged glance, no doubt from all her years reading the messages on prepubescent faces. She moved in the direction of our gaze into the tiny bathroom and jerked open the shower curtain.

There piled in a heap were our shoes where we had stashed them as she had been laying the breakfast table. I saw a smile play at the corners of her lips even as she scolded us for being so recalcitrant. She was proud, she was flattered, she liked what we had done.

She never acknowledged the compliment and we, with heads hanging down, pulled our shoes onto our feet.

We filed out of the apartment with those same feet shuffling reluctantly toward her car. The drive back to Springfield was quiet–both melancholy and reminiscent as we savored the recent memories of our time with her. When we got home, my brothers commiserated with me for having had to spend a whole week with Aunt Mary Ella. I never told them the truth–how the time was sweet and the relationship strengthened; I just kept it all a secret in my heart. ****************************************************************************** The Henhouse Marvine was ten or twelve years old then, but she was a tough kid. She had to be. Her lot was as an illegitimate child of an unwed mother growing up during hard times between the two great wars. That’s a pretty big bur-

den for anyone to shoulder. Especially when your mother, not ready to settle down and be a mother, spends her time drinking and flirting wherever and whenever a good time is to be had.

So Marvine lived with her grandparents, and her grandmother Florence took on the major part of caring for this nearly homeless child. It’s easy to get lost in the crowd, too. Her mother had seven sisters who came and went –stepping over her or past her or around her. Her two uncles had left for the Army–everyone said they were brave, but she wondered if it had been an act of cowardice. Perhaps they merely wanted to escape the crowded female enclave. No one ever scolded her; that might have been better than being ignored. Their silence shouted at her with the unspoken words of resentment. It’s hard to say whether this antagonism was aimed at her or her mother; perhaps, Marvine thought, she was only the vicarious recipient of feelings aimed at the mother who was rarely there to face them.

So Marvine grew stronger and more independent as she moved about in her own private world. She was a slight girl, partly from neglect and partly genetic. Her short brown hair was clumsily cut in someone’s idea of a bob. Because she was usually pushed to the shadows, she often saw things no one else saw. Her dark blue eyes watched and read the expressions and body language of those around her. At the time, her aunt Esty was only a year older; they could have been friends. But Esty was the baby of the family, and to her, Marvine was an interloper and not to be regarded as an equal. So, Esty fought to maintain her place as the youngest: coddled and spoiled; Marvine, rather than retaliate, just shrank deeper into herself.

Times were tough, not just for this family, but for every other hard-working farmer in the low hills of southern Ohio. Despite her preference for the easy life, Marvine’s mother did her fair share of work on the farm.

All of the women worked hard taking care of the sprawling agricultural complex that included caring for both livestock and crops. Marvine helped, too, slipping into the company of her aunts without words or acknowledgment.

She was not a lazy kid but was never sure if she would be welcomed or not. She kept her head and eyes down and did chores without being asked. But she rarely earned praise or thanks. She learned that, if there were little to criticize, she would not have to apologize for sitting at their table.

Apparently life was hard for others who live nearby. One evening at dinner, the conversation drifted to the loud alarm that had erupted from the chicken coop the night before. Squawking and crowing birds had awakened the whole family and some of the women had even gone to the back porch to see if a fox had crept into the coop.

After shining a bright beam from a large flashlight onto the structure, the women found that there was no obvious reason for the clatter. Maybe a hen had startled the others awakening from a chicken nightmare of being served up as a steaming entrée on a large platter. No matter—everyone had returned to bed, glad the uproar had ended.

Marvine, a curious kind of girl, listened to the conversation in silence. Her eyes followed the faces of the speakers, looking from one woman to another as they spoke. As they laughed about the silliness of farm creatures, she wondered what the fox had looked like. She had never actually seen a live fox, and she didn’t believe the hens had raised the alarm without cause. The more she thought about the incident, the more she was convinced that something had tried to snatch a sleeping hen from her nest. She thought about the discussion long after the meal was over, and as she lay on her narrow bed, she kept thinking about the fox long after the lights had been turned off and everyone had gone to bed. Convinced she could garner a little attention by capturing the wily fox, she slipped from her bed, dressed quickly, and quietly let herself out the back screen door.

She knew where her grandfather Carl kept the old double-barreled shotgun. Since no one ever really planned on using it, it was rusting on a shelf at the back of the barn. She pulled it down from the shelf, and its length was as long as she was tall. It was heavy and unwieldy, and she remembered vaguely how her uncle Hardin had told her that the gun’s kick could dislocate a person’s shoulder. Straining to remember what else he had told her, she dimly thought about his advice to lodge the butt of the weapon against something firm and stable. There was a large oak in the dusty yard just about twenty feet from the door of the chicken coop. She thought that she might be able to fire the old gun by pushing the stock under her arm and against the tree trunk. She found the shells in a tattered box next to the shotgun and loaded both barrels. Then she crept out of the darkened barn and stationed herself in front of her fellow sentinel, the oak. After her eyes became adjusted to the night, she realized she could see quite plainly. Although the moon had already set, the stars provided enough light to just make out the rectangular opening of the hen house.

Practiced in the art of waiting quietly and patiently, she leaned against the tree and soon was lost in her own thoughts. There had been no sound—no sound at all, but she became aware of a distinct dark shape slinking toward

Untitled Ceramic By Joe Van Kerkhove

the small opening at the front of the coop. She quietly raised the shotgun. Even though she had made no sound, the shadowy figure stopped suddenly and turned to look in her direction. She froze standing motionless, holding her breath. Her eyes fixed just above the figure, she used her peripheral vision to get a clearer look. After an eternity, the dark figure resumed its stealthy progress moving silently on all fours and disappearing through the small door. All at once, the chickens, realizing the approaching threat, sent up a loud alarm and instinctively reacting to the sound, Marvine let loose with both barrels. The recoil, softened by the tree behind her, was still powerful enough to knock her down. She fell backwards, hard, on her rear end, her feet flailing in the air.

She heard a tremendous sound of something’s thrashing and crashing through the corn field that lay just behind the coop. In the next moment, there were the cries of her aunts as they tumbled out the back door, clutching nightgowns to their throats, crying out in fear and confusion. The commotion lasted a long time as they hysterically questioned the girl, all speaking at once and none allowing her enough time or space to reply. After a very long time, they were calmed enough to return to their beds.

Henhouse, continued The next morning, as soon as it was light, they went to the chicken coop to inspect the damage. A huge gaping hole showed where the small door of the hen house had been splintered apart and the back of the coop fared only slightly better having a smaller matching hole where the shells had blasted through the old wood. Miraculously, none of the chickens had suffered anything beyond the night terrors that had caused them to erupt in alarm. The corn field beyond showed where someone had run cross-wise across the rows plowing a wide path through the waist high corn plants. Instead of running down the space between rows, the midnight marauder had fled across the rows as the stiff young stalks would have clawed and mercilessly battered his nether regions.

The experience didn’t really garner any open approval for Marvine, but she noticed that her aunts, even Esty, seemed to regard her with a bit more deference than before. She sometimes caught them looking at her, not with a smile, but with expressions that were softened and respectful. It was enough and she felt her burden had been lightened, if only just a little.

And of course, there was the added benefit that no one ever tried to break into their henhouse after that night. ***

“Honor and Respect: Learned, Seen, Heard, Experienced, Found and Missed” By: Gordon A. Crews, Ph.D. I first learned about honor and respect in the spring of 1973. It was about 6 months shy of my 9th birthday, on a very hot and humid day in Columbia, South Carolina. I saw honor and respect that day while sitting next to my mother, as I looked out the side window of the family car. We were in a large, black, escorted limo that was part of my grandfather’s funeral procession. At every intersection along the final mile of the short trip to the cemetery there were uniformed traffic enforcement city police officers. They stood at attention next to their blue and white painted Harley Davidson motorcycles, each slowly moving to attention and saluting the hearse as it passed. On the left upper shoulder of the uniform shirt, each had a patch comprised of a bright red wheel, shinned with white wings, and an equally bright gold arrow cutting through it at an angle. Little did I know that some thirty-nine years later I would again see this same insignia. It would be on the sleeves of many of the men and women who came to see my father in his final days at our family home.

About thirty minutes later I would hear honor and respect in two very distinct ways. The first was from the U.S. Army Honor Guard from Ft. Jackson, South Carolina as they fired three volleys of seven rounds, to offer the traditional 21 gun salute at my grandfather’s grave site. After experiencing this at many other funerals in my life, I finally learned that this evolved from very early military salutes. Warriors attempted to demonstrate their peaceful intentions by pointing their weapons in a safe direction and firing them as a salute. The second sound of honor and respect was “taps” being played by a lone bugler: a young soldier wearing a shoulder patch of three white slashes across a royal blue square, who began playing as the sound of the rifle blasts dissipated in the distance.

My grandfather was a retired U.S. Army Second Lieutenant. Actually, he was a Sergeant in the 3rd Infantry Division, but had received a battlefield commission during the Korean War in 1951. He fought prior to this with this old “Rock of the Marne” group in World War II, in Italy, France, and Germany from 1943 to 1945. The bouts of pneumonia he repeatedly endured during these years while serving in very harsh war zones contributed to his eventual demise. The eventual congestive heart failure twenty years later placed a burden on his scarred lungs, which was simply too much to survive.

My father was standing next to me at the gravesite. He was a police officer, and had been one almost my entire life. He would continue this career path for another 20 or more years. He had volunteered for the Air Force during the Vietnam War, but due to his eye sight, he was not accepted. Instead, he turned to police work. He would, in the late 1970s, work hard to become a member of a very tight unit of traffic police officers who rode massive motorcycles in and out of very dangerous situations, all day, every day. As I grew older I would watch him mark out the names of the members of this original unit on an old photograph as they died, either in the line of duty, or from some work-related health issue.

Sometimes, these men would die by their own hands. He would change jobs from uniformed to homicide investigator during these years, but always would say he loved these guys, and these days, the best.

My father and grandfather had spoken to me often about honor and respect. Up to this point they had been just vague concepts that were loosely thrown around in “war stories,” that I often heard around holiday dinner tables. Apparently, honor and respect could be just as easily found on a dark city street as they could on a fiery battle field. They could be found between any men and women who depended on each other for their lives; dependence which could present itself at a moment’s notice. The police officers and soldiers present at my grandfather’s and father’s funerals were there out of honor and respect, they were there to remind all of the importance of these two words.

In eventually following in my father’s footsteps and becoming a police officer, I would soon experience the importance of these concepts. I had the opportunity to help save a few lives, and have mine saved many times, by men who were much better and stronger than I. Upon leaving law enforcement to return to graduate school, I would soon realize that I had apparently left these two concepts behind me as well. I would always long for, but seldom see again, the honor and respect I found in those early days.

“I said yes, but I meant no”

By Krista Petrosino I am 95% sure I’m in trouble.

My adding machine is spitting out a rosy red budget instead of the black ink certainty that I need.

On Tube a young Mick Jagger clad in a paisley shirt and bell bottoms

confirms my suspicion: “you can’t always get what you want”.

And somewhere between Fielding, Stowe and a stumbling Twinkle Twinkle (Little musician Star wannabe who brags too much about Mommy’s new nose and Daddy’s new yacht) “Freehand Trumpet Player”

my head throbs an uncertain waltz

Digital art

in ¾ time:

By Vince Moore

I said yes | but I meant no.

I want to lose faith in percentages.

So each semester I remain perched precariously on the tightrope between the education that I love and the rent checks that bounce like staccato.

*** Originally printed in The John Carroll

Review, Fall 2006

Selections from “The Terminal Love of Neal Liszt and Sobie Iht”

By James Rovira

1 Adam Iht’s days as the owner of a metal shop were a routine stream of jobs, estimates, contractors, and customers. One day an electrician came in asking him to cut a circle in the side of a meter can to fit a 2” threaded nipple. Adam placed the end of the nipple flat against the side of the can, traced a circle around it with a magic marker, punched a small hole into the side of the can with an awl, and then slowly started cutting, by hand, with a

pair of shears. His massive hands and arms worked carefully and precisely through the tough metal. By the time he had finished he left the electrician stunned: the circle was cut so perfectly the nipple could be threaded into the hole with no gaps anywhere around it. He handed the meter can back to the electrician and told him the work was free of charge. He just wanted to see if he could do it.

When Adam came back that night to his gloriously pregnant wife he laid a hand on her belly and felt a single, perfect moment of gratitude and contentment. She felt fat. He told her she was beautiful. When she watched him say it, she felt beautiful too, just for a moment. It was that moment, rarest of all in the entire cosmos, that

caused the convergence to occur. The stars move toward any single spot that achieves perfection. The sign of these moments is always gratitude. Thankfulness. Joy. And at that moment, every radio station in the world -- every single one on Earth -- started playing “Get Back,” but no one noticed. A few thousand North American listeners flipping between stations noticed that the same song was playing at the same time on a couple of stations but thought nothing of it. A small percentage of those suspected the truth but could not admit it. The song was the Divine blessing upon the three lives present in the center of the convergence: the father, the wife, and the daughter. When the last chord struck, Adam’s wife went into labor.

Eleven hours later, Sobie Iht was born on her parents’ bed.

2

From the time Sobie was about six months old to the time she was about three and a half, her father used to like walking her around on his shoulders. She’d sit there and giggle and rub her father’s bald head, oblivious that she was generating massive amounts of luck. Luck runs like electricity, producing alternating currents of destiny that seem generous and cruel in turns but are always for our best, for it is

luck. Sobie generated enough in three years for a lifetime of small, static sparks. Or maybe just two or three really big

strikes.

3 Neal Liszt first saw Sobie when they were in first grade. Her little ginger bob was parted a bit to one side and it curled around her face. She was sitting under a tree with a couple of her friends, talking. Or, not so much talking as making declarations. The quick movements of her hands matched her quickly changing facial ex-

pressions. She acted the same way later, filled with nervous energy, when she was about to make a big sale at the electronics store where she started working when she was eighteen, or when she was really interested in something. No matter how fast she moved, though, flitting back and forth like some kind of hummingbird, her movements were all very exact and precise. She always knew where her hands and feet were. But she never could do anything about her face. It was a like a television screen for her feelings. She lived her life on permanent Facetime. The moment Neal saw her he wanted to talk to her so badly he didn’t know what to do or say. He just walked over and stood there looking at her. The girls giggled and ran off, but he remembered her clearly. It was the first time she saw him. She looked at him and smiled, saying, “You have really pretty big chocolate brown eyes and pretty brown hair” before she ran away.

He felt very stupid, but he had no idea how strong an impression he’d made on her too.

Untitled Plaster Print & Mixed Media By Joe Van Kerkhove

6

Three days a week over the summer between the ninth and tenth grades, Victor and Neal followed a strict schedule. Dressed in bathing suits, flip-flops, and t-shirts, and carrying short surfboards, they would catch the 8 a.m. bus to Huntington Beach. Seal Beach had crappy waves, Laguna Beach was too weird and rich, Newport Beach was a bit too far, but Huntington Beach was just right. They would sit in the back of the bus, set up their short surfboards, and drink pint bottles of Southern Comfort on the way to the beach. Once there, they would smoke a joint and then hit the waves in a drunken, stoned stupor. They surfed until about 4 p.m. and then caught the bus back. The return bus stopped in front of a Safeway with a fifteen-minute wait until the next bus came along, giving them enough time to walk into Safeway,

shoplift ice cold milk and chocolate donuts, and then get back on the return bus. They had to shoplift food because, of course, they had spent all of their money on Southern Comfort and bus fare.

One day Sobie came with them. She was bodysurfing the waves closer to shore while Victor and Neal were farther out on their boards. Victor leaned over and said to Neal, “Let’s surf right by Sobie and grab her ass.”

Neal laughed. “Me first.”

Neal raced down the face of the wave, got ahead of the lip, then cut back right and surfed it toward the shore on the leading edge of the whitewater. As he neared Sobie he thought she was. . . perfect, just standing there like an Irish muse, like some kind of red-headed Madonna of the waves.

Neal laid down on his board, reached out his hand, and right before he reached her he pulled it back and went “AAAAAH!” At the very moment that she was jumping and screaming, Victor surfed by and grabbed her ass.

Untitled Plaster Print & Mixed Media By Joe Van Kerkhove

She opened her mouth wide in shock and lashed out to hit Victor, but she was blushing and smiling at the same

time.

Over the next three weeks Sobie and Victor would spend time making out anywhere they could, so long as Neal wasn’t around. By some kind of unspoken agreement Sobie and Victor decided not to tell Neal. Sobie finally broke it off because she felt guilty. She hated all of the sneaking around.

Victor didn’t understand why. He’d been telling Neal about it all along, but he hadn’t told Sobie that. But he didn’t argue with her either.

7 Dear Victor -I’ve been thinking about your proposal for the last four days. Honestly, it’s been impossible for me to think about anything else. I’m sorry I reacted the way that I did, but I’m glad you understood. I’m going to write what I write here not just to give you my answer, but to help you understand how I’ve been thinking about the answer too. I want you to know everything that’s on my mind.

Victor. . . ten days ago I graduated from high school. Four days after that, my parents died in an accident. Two days after that I had my eighteenth birthday. And then when everyone was over for. . . I don’t know what it was. . . a funeral or a birthday party. . . you saw me falling apart. You held me. You told me you loved me. And then you asked me to marry you.

I can’t process everything. I can’t process anything. I can’t think. I can’t even begin to explain all of my emotions. I think you’re mainly feeling sorry for me and don’t want me to be alone. And then I think you feel that way because you do love me. Of course. We’ve been friends for years. And then I picture my wedding. . . but without my mother. Or my father. And I think ahead a few years and imagine I’m having my first child, but without my mother there. And I think maybe I never want to get married. But I know that’s not right. So I just don’t know. I don’t know anything.

I just know that you held me and told me that you loved me, and I know that when you did I felt more sane at that moment than I had in a while. And I need more of that. That’s all I know.

So my answer is yes. Let’s get married at the courthouse next week. I don’t want a ceremony.

I love you, Sobie

24

One week later, Neal arrived at the wake at Sobie’s house thinking too many had gone on there before. She was right. God. She wasn’t even 25. He found her right away. “How are you?”

“How do you think?” She put a wall up in front of her hazel eyes and then murmured, “Tell me what you really thought of him.”

“His mom gone yet?”

“About ten minutes ago.”

“How’s the wake been?”

“Eh. Dead.”

They didn’t laugh at the unintended joke. They laughed at how bad it was.

“He died with some guy named Marty. I only met him once.” She looked calm, patient, and vaguely desperate. “Please tell me. What did you really think of him?”

He leaned forward and whispered, “Total asshole. I’m glad he’s dead.”

The first little chink: a wrinkle on her freckled nose. “Victor’s been your best friend since we were kids. . . “ “Alas, poor asshole, I knew him well. My gorge rises at it.” Looking at her, he realized

her hair was still about the same now that it was in first grade even though she’d done all kinds of weird things with it in high school.

She leaned forward and her eyes saucered just a little bit. Her face looked like a delicate porcelain heart. With freckles. She was twenty-five and still had braces, which on top of everything else was totally unfair. “Prove it.”

“You want me to tell on him?”

“Yes.” “No.” “Why not?”

“Code of guys. Bond among men. It’s in the book.”

“If you’re going to talk in clichés, you’re not going to be very helpful. Besides, you’re not ‘men.’”

Neal declared that to be a “mere technicality.”

“So there’s a book?”

Untitled Plaster Print & Mixed Media By Joe Van Kerkhove

“No, of course not. What book? I never said anything about a book.”

“Of course. You’re really not telling?”

“Not for the wide world. Not for a million dollars. Not for a hundred million dollars. I’m serious. It’s too big a betrayal.”

She slowly looked to either side, leaned in, and whispered, “If it’s a good enough secret I’ll sleep with you.”

“Remember that time I went to the Grand Canyon with him and his family? We were like fifteen or something? Really late in the summer, like the last two weeks before school started.”

“Isn’t that the trip where you got really bad gas and. . . “ He kept it to a loud whisper, “Yesss. . . that was the one. It was before the gas. We’d snuck out into the woods to smoke some grass and these two girls were there. One was a totally hot blonde. . . like, she had this platinum blonde hair and translucent skin, and she. . .”

“Can we skip the blonde?”

“Okay, well, the other one was this brunette with really. . .”

“Can we skip all of those details?”

“We all sat down together on some logs and started getting high. After about ten minutes the brunette was all over him.”

“Really?”

“He kissed back. Felt guilty like anything because he was seeing you, but he still did it.”

Neal’s confession threw her off as she didn’t realize that Neal knew about her and Victor’s fling back then. But she recovered and said, “Right hand feeling strong tonight?”

“Not cutting it?”

“I already heard about it.”

“Okay. . . mmm. . . you heard about the water cooler?”

“Put dish soap in it and gave a bunch of kids diarrhea?”

“The mistletoe?”

She squenched up her nose and said, “Poisoned a kid? Three weeks in the hospital or something?”

“How about that time he was arguing with some girl about whether or not Superman could be killed by magic?”

“When at the end he took the girl’s favorite pillow, threw it down between them, and peed on it to end the argument?”

“Yeah.”

“That was me.”

Neal started flexing his right hand. Sobie laughed. “I hope you win this dare.”

“You know. . .”

“No, you have to win fair and square. Come up with something else.”

“But you have to admit that we have real asshole material here.”

“Not really.”

“Come with me.” That very minute the room became Neal’s arsenal. It was at least half full of women, all of them appropriately half drunk for a wake in its later stages. Some of them had to have some stories. He led Sobie through the room by the hand to the first girl he thought would have something on Victor.

“Pam, can I ask you a question? It’s important and I need you to be honest.”

“Okay.”

“Did you ever kiss Victor?”

“No. God, why would you ask that?”

“Sorry.”

Pam fiddled with her hair and walked away, notably embarrassed.

Sobie whispered to Neal, “You’ll have to do better than that.”

“What?”

“Look at me. Look.”

She stood there like a delicate reed. She wasn’t really that tall, and she wasn’t short either, but she looked tallish because she was so slender and liked wearing tall heels. Her wrists and her hands were slender, like they were made for picking up very fine

objects. She saw him remember and blushed. “Okay, back to it. Pam’s never gotten over him, you know.”

“I know.”

Neal looked at her. “I know just how that feels.”

More quietly, and looking down, Sobie said, “I know.”

“Bobby! My man. . . come over here.”

“What?”

“What’s the worst thing you can tell me about Victor. Needs to be real.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” “With her here?”

“Yes. That’s what she wants.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.” “Doesn’t go past here?”

Sobie promised for both of them.

“When we were like ten or something. . . he kissed me in his backyard. On the lips.”

Neal tuned out.

“Sobie. . . I’m really sorry. You lost a good man. We all did.”

She looked Bobby straight in the face. “Thank you. I know.”

“I mean it.”

“I know. Thank you.” She touched him briefly on the arm then looked down and away and started twirling the hair on the back of her neck.

When Bobby walked away, Sobie finally noticed Neal’s silence. “Neal?”

“What the hell? W hat the hell?”

“He told me about this one too.”

Neal looked directly at her, wrinkled his entire face, and said, “What the hell?”

“It’s okay Neal. Just remember why you’re here.”

“What the. . .”

“Neal, look at me.” It was only about five seconds, this time, before she blushed. “Don’t you have anything good? I mean, really good?”

“Why did you marry him to begin with?”

“That’s what I’m trying to forget.”

“I feel like I’m not what you need.”

She laid a soft hand on the side of his face and said, “No, my darling Neal Liszt. You are perfect. You are exactly what this Sobie Iht needs.” He noticed she used her maiden name. “Just keep trying. But I know you will.”

He said in a slightly rushed, hoarse whisper, “I have this one thing. Guaranteed. And I’m almost 100% sure he never said anything to you.”

“Oooh. . . sounds big. Somewhere private?” This time, she led him by the hand into her bedroom and shut the door.

She looked at him exactly the same way his little sister looked at him while she was waiting for him to finish making her a sandwich. Except that he was the sandwich.

“Sometimes I think it’d be like sleeping with my sister.”

“That’s kinda sweet and ew at the same time.”

“It gets worse.”

“How?”

He started laughing before he started talking so couldn’t quite get the words out, but she finally figured out that he was say-

ing, “And that turns me on.”

She scooted away from him a bit and said “EW!” “I’m just kidding.”

“Really?”

“No.” This time she stood up and shook her hands at her sides. “EW!” “Oh come on.” He slipped his hand gently into hers. “Sit.” She did. Then she settled down into the sandwich look again. If anyone had asked him he wouldn’t have been able to put it into words, even for himself, but he realized this wasn’t a date or a hookup or an engagement. It was the beginning of their honeymoon.

“Okay, so we were about fourteen that time you guys dated for awhile, right?” Even now, he didn’t know that she didn’t know until tonight that he knew.

She wasn’t sure how to respond. “I guess you could call it that. Yes.” “So it was sometime around ninth grade. Maybe after. Victor and I always took PE together. Every year after that too, all through high school. He told me about you guys all along, about almost every date early on especially. One day he came in he told

me that he hadn’t washed his hands since his last date.”

“Why?” “He wanted me to smell his finger. . .”

“That’s weird. Why would he. . . EW!” This time she was standing straight up in full hummingbird mode. “He shared that with you? Then?”

“I’m trying to figure out the exact look on your face.”

“It’s called ‘horrorficationxiety.’”

“We were fourteen or fifteen and that was a serious conquest.”

“What an asshole!”

“You were his first for that.”

“Bigger asshole!”

“We were just fifteen.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Masquerade” mixed media collage by Dalva Church

“I thought it smelled good?”

“EW!” Her look said, “Did you actually have to say that?” Her mouth said, “You wait here.” She breezed out of the room quickly, shutting the door behind her. He had already resigned himself to not moving off the bed until she got back, much less not leaving the room. He hit the play button on an iPod plugged into a clock radio on the nightstand and turned the volume down low. It was set to a classic rock mix. Then he picked up a copy of Love in the Time of Cholera sitting next to it.

Before he started reading, he pulled a pen out of the nightstand drawer and wrote a haiku on one of the inside pages, inside the front matter.

A limpid, liquid light in a dark, lonely night: lovely, lovely meadow.

He had no idea why he wrote “Meadow” instead of “Sobie.” He felt a vague presentiment that somehow he had happened upon her real name, or a name that she has in another world, some alternate reality about which both of them were ignorant. He felt that some part of him knew her better than, somehow, either of them knew her, but he didn’t know what part of him this was. He just knew that writing the poem gave him a sense of contentment, and he settled into reading the novel while waiting for Sobie to return.

She came back about a half hour later. It felt like the house was empty. She shuffled through the closet and handed him a white Oxford shirt and a navy sports coat. “Want to try these on? I think some of his clothes will fit you.”

He pulled the Oxford on and buttoned up the bottom three buttons over his Iron Maiden t-shirt and then pulled the sports coat on. “Fits pretty good.”

“You two always looked about the same size.” She slowly sidled up to him and pressed the side of her face against his chest, then slid her hands up along his sleeves and over his shoulders and around his back.

He just stood there and held her while she closed her eyes.

She sounded like she was standing somewhere on the other side of town when she asked, “Why did you have to go?”

“When did I. . . ?” A thought struck him. . . ew. Then another. And then he said, “I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to go. I wanted to stay right here, just like this, forever.” He felt a little wetness around his chest area.

“That’s not how you really feel, but I know you didn’t want to go.” She touched his face again and gave him a moist, misty -soft kiss, the best kiss he’d ever had in his life. “I told you that you were perfect, Neal.”

He held her. “Thank you.”

One year when he was eight all he wanted was a G.I. Joe set. It was one of those massive sets with a tank and a helicopter and a bunch of gear, plus a bunch of Joes too. His birthday was in August and he started asking for it around March. All his mom would ever say was, “Just wait and see.” Every time. “Wait and see.” Finally his birthday came around and he got some G.I. Joes, but not the set. Still pretty cool, but not what he was looking for. So he started asking for it again around October. His mom would

smile bigger every time, but she never said anything but “wait and see.” Whenever they’d go to the store he’d spend some time with

the box. By Christmas time he knew its exact size and shape and weight, so when it was finally handed to him he knew just what it was before he even started to open it. By that time, though, he’d learned: he’d learned the value of “wait and see.” So he opened that present not the most quickly but the most slowly. It was a careful, delicate process. He didn’t want to even slightly rip the paper.

That’s just how Neal wanted to slip Sobie’s shirt off.

She said, “It was bound to happen sometime.”

He said, “I never thought it would, but of course I wouldn’t deny it now.”

“We’ll never stop missing him.”

“It’s okay. I don’t particularly want to either.”

“Do you have to leave yet?”

Neal pulled back, “Do you want me to?”

“No. I just wanted to give you the chance.”

“I might leave, but there’s something I can’t recall. Is there anything outside of this room? Or is the whole world really right here?”

“Yes there is. There’s a living room with a t.v. And a bathroom. And then a kitchen. And the kitchen has food in it.”

“Okay. I might venture out of the room eventually. Maybe as far as the kitchen. That’s about it, though.”

She smiled into his ear, “Sounds perfect.”

“What’s going to happen next? With us? I mean tomorrow? And the day after that. The month after that.”

“I don’t know. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

The next convergence started at that moment. “Get Back” began playing in the background, but neither of them were paying attention. What Neal felt most was a sense of infinity, like the inside of the room had grown bigger than the outside, expanding without boundaries in all directions. He felt like Adam with his Eve at the creation of the world.

Then she stood back and looked at him like the sandwich itself.

Portions of this story were previously published in the anthology Bald Eagle Stew, Michigan Author’s Syndicate, 2014.

“Dill� Cyanotype by Lee Fernside

Haiku

By Brandon Clay A fox licks lips and blinks. Nearby a luna moth lands on bark to rest.

Www.tiffin.edu TIFFIN UNIVERSITY DRAGON WRITERS Prof. Dalva Church Bridgewater #4 35 S Sandusky St Tiffin, Ohio 44883 Phone: 419-448-5132 Fax: 419-443-5027

Email: churchdk@tiffin.edu

Tiffin University

For more information on the student/ community writers group, or to submit work for consideration, contact Professor Dalva Church at churchdk@tiffin.edu

Corrections: Last Edition incorrectly stated the author’s name for the poem: “NEVER SAW IT COMING” THE AUTHOR’S NAME IS LAWRENCE BLACKFUL