2132 lines
95 KiB
Groff
2132 lines
95 KiB
Groff
From owner-morpo@phoenix.creighton.edu Sat Jan 21 14:07:35 1995
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Date: Sat, 21 Jan 1995 13:05:07 -0600 (CST)
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From: "Robert A. Fulkerson" <rfulk@phoenix.creighton.edu>
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To: The Morpo Review Subscriber List <morpo-subscribers@phoenix.creighton.edu>
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Subject: The Morpo Review v2i1
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Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.91.950121130439.25810A-100000@phoenix.creighton.edu>
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MIME-Version: 1.0
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Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
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Sender: owner-morpo@phoenix.creighton.edu
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Reply-To: morpo-comments@phoenix.creighton.edu
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Status: O
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+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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T M M OOOOO RRRRR PPPPP OOOOO RRRRR EEEEE V V IIIII EEEEE W W
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MM MM O O R R P P O O R R E V V I E W W
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H M M M O O RRRR PPPP O O RRRR EEE V V I EEE W W W
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M M O O R R P O O R R E V V I E WW WW
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E M M OOOOO R R P OOOOO R R EEEEE V IIIII EEEEE W W
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+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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Volume #2 January 21, 1995 Issue #1
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+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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CONTENTS FOR VOLUME 2, ISSUE 1
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Column: Stupid is as Stupid Does . . . . . . . . Robert Fulkerson
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Column: From the Belly of the Dough Boy . . . . . . . . Matt Mason
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Potter's Wheel -- Shades of Arizona . . . . . William C. Burns, Jr.
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Enigma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Julie Keuper
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When I Get Back From the Holy Land . . . . . . . . . Richard Cumyn
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The Airplane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sam Barasch
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The Onset of Autumn . . . . . . . . . . . . . William C. Burns, Jr.
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In The Basement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pearl Sheil
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Vagina Dentata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Carrie L. Adkins
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Supreme Extra Value Meals . . . . . . . . . . . Mitchell Cleveland
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Hips and Cheese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Andrea Krackow
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Night Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Arthur Shotmind
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Things in Motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Doug Lawson
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Pictures of Perfection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sung J. Woo
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About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Authors
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In Their Own Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Authors
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+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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Editor + Poetry Editor
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Robert Fulkerson The Morpo Staff Matthew Mason
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rfulk@creighton.edu + mtmason@morpo.creighton.edu
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Layout Editor Fiction Editor
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Kris Kalil Fulkerson J.D. Rummel
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kkalil@creighton.edu rummel@creighton.edu
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+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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_The Morpo Review_. Volume 2, Issue 1. _The Morpo Review_ is published
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electronically on a bi-monthly basis. Reproduction of this magazine is
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permitted as long as the magazine is not sold and the entire text of the
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issue remains intact. Copyright 1995, Robert Fulkerson and Matthew Mason.
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_The Morpo Review_ is published in Adobe PostScript, ASCII, ReadRoom BBS
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Door and World Wide Web formats. All literary and artistic works are
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Copyright 1995 by their respective authors and artists.
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+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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EDITORS' NOTES
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o _Stupid is as Stupid Does_ by Robert Fulkerson, Editor:
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Forrest Gump was an idiot boy who grew up into a philosopher, among
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other things. I was a normal boy who's still striving to figure out my
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place in this world.
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_Forrest Gump_ the movie spoke to something inside of me, something
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deep inside of me. Forrest Gump the person also spoke to something
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inside of me. After seeing the movie five times, I'm still not sure
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what it is about Forrest that intrigues and inspires me so much.
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I'm pretty sure it's not the "idiot makes good" theory that the news
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media is trying to force down our throats. Anywhere you turn these
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days, the newspapers and newscasters are crying it out: "America
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embraces stupidity, thanks to movies like _Forrest Gump_ and _Dumb and
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Dumber._"
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But I don't think that those of us who are going to see movies like
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_Gump_ are embracing stupidity. There's something else at work in the
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movie. It has something to do with the way that Eric Roth took Winston
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Groom's 1986 novel and transformed it from a rough, lewd story about
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Forrest Gump the lucky simpleton into a moving parable for the 1990s
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about a devoted friend and family member.
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Who wouldn't want the kind of devoted love that Forrest has for Jenny?
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Who wouldn't want to _love_ the way that Forrest loves Jenny and his
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mother? Who wouldn't want the fortitude to always say exactly what's
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on your mind? Who wouldn't want to be in their mid-30s and still be
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able to act like a child, to be able to hold on to childhood dreams
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and remember and relive them as vividly as if they were _still_ a
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child?
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I think that what's at work in _Forrest Gump_ is not seeing an "idiot
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makes good" story, but rather an "I can make myself better" story. We
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walk away from the movie using Forrest as a yardstick by which we can
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measure ourselves and our lives. Are there things in my life that I'm
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not happy with that I can change? Can I be a better partner for my
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spouse? Can I be a better friend? Whatever happened to that toy truck
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I used to play with when I was a kid?
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Thanks to Winston Groom and screenwriter Eric Roth, Forrest Gump has
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become a real person -- someone that many of us can identify with.
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Someone that most of us wouldn't mind knowing or having as a friend.
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This is the power that the written word can have. Certainly Tom Hanks
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is to be lauded for bringing Forrest Gump to life so vividly, but if
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it weren't for the brilliant minds of Groom and Roth, Forrest Gump
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would not exist today in the lives of so many people around the world.
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Both writers had a vision of who Forrest Gump should be. Both writers
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took slightly different angles on defining who Forrest Gump is. They
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took a chance that this character and his story would speak to
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someone. That Forrest would _live_, given a chance.
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This is the chance that many authors take. Regardless of whether or
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not their characters or stories ever become blockbuster movies is
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beside the point. The fact that they believe strongly enough in a
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character and a storyline to write it down for others to read -- this
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is what gives those characters and stories life.
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In this issue of _Morpo_, you're going to read about the characters,
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stories and worlds that eleven individuals created. You may believe in
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some of them or you may not. Some of these characters and situations
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may speak to you, or they may not. For one reason or another, they
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spoke to the editors of _Morpo_, and we wanted to give them a chance
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to live outside of our worlds, outside of the authors' worlds.
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We hope you enjoy this issue of _The Morpo Review_ and enjoy entering
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these worlds and meeting the people in these worlds as much as we did
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when we read them for the first time, second and third times.
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----------
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o _From the Belly of the Doughboy_ by Matt Mason, Poetry Editor:
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And here we are getting wild and happy, entering our second year of
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_The Morpo Review_. As I look back, I have to ask myself certain
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questions such as, "did _Morpo_ make the world a better or safer
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place?" and "Why would anyone live in North Dakota?"
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The first question, as much as it may sound like a credit card
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commercial, makes me plunk down in front of the TV like a sleepy mule
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as I've never been good at philosophy or existentialism, but boy can I
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watch _Hogan's Heroes_ reruns without any anxieties.
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As for that second question, I don't know. All I know is that I used
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to be co-editor around here with Bob, then I went on a trip to Europe
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and couldn't edit the last issue of _The Morpo Review _and when I came
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back there were two new editors and people expected me to mop floors
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and empty trash.
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Kindly, they still let me include my sputterings here, but I have been
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banished to Grand Forks, North Dakota for the winter. But they tell me
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that if I behave, I can come back to Omaha and be promoted to dusting
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and filing, maybe even by spring.
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Anyway, I was talking about _Morpo_'s first anniversary before that.
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Happy Birthday to _Morpo_. With your submissions and comments and
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general interest, there'll hopefully be many more. As for me, I'd
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better go, it's 9 below outside but Sergeant Schultz just fell for
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Hogan's strudel bribe again...
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+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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"Potter's Wheel
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Shades of Arizona" by William C. Burns, Jr.
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Terracotta
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Smeared across your cheek
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and over chocolate-amber eyes
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Integrating you into the scenery
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You laughed when I asked
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just how to throw a pot
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"Overhanded"
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your reply
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Your hands stained to the elbow
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Deep inside your latest undertaking
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A thing of soft geometry
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Taking shape in your palms
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Undulating
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Defying gravity
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Defying the Earth that bore it
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Graceful
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gentle
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delicate
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This thing swims up
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to meet your hand
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Unwilling to steal you
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From this place of mind
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That you love so
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so much
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I orbit just out of reach
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scratching paper with pen
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Cartographer of the moment
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+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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"Enigma" by Julie Keuper
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He sits silently
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in his chair
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as people stare
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at his ugly hair
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biker shorts with
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middle age creeping in
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living a lie on the edge
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he stares at his feet
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and tries real hard
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+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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"When I Get Back From the Holy Land" by Richard Cumyn
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The night Row told me about it, Winton Marsalis was on the stereo and
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I was watching La Serie Rose on the French channel with the sound off.
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One woman was lashing another one on the bare ass with a wooden
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switch. I was supposed to believe that blood was coming out of the
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welts. It was about half past one in the morning. Roweena's paintings
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were stacked all over the apartment. I could not walk without tripping
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over one.
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"I'm having the baby underwater," she said and I said, "That's fine."
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At the best of times, Row is a basket case. I think that is why I love
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her.
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She said, "With dolphins. In salt water. They'll have to be brought
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in."
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I said, "I hope it's a good bonding experience. You going to have a
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life-guard on hand or what?"
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Nothing surprised me anymore, not since she told me that I had to
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vacate because her best friend, Debra, was moving in with her, and
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they were going to live together like husband and wife. Her exact
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words. Husband and wife. I scratched Rafferty behind the ears and
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flicked off the show. They just discovered each other, Row and Deb,
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like explorers finding new land.
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One-thirty in the morning. She was cooking potato soup that was this
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thick, humid thing filling the air in the apartment.
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I said, "What if one of the dolphins butts the baby with its snout and
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kills it?"
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"You're just upset about having to leave."
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"What the hell am I supposed to say?"
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What I really needed was another month. She had no idea what it was
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like out there. There was nothing. I was just back from Africa. I
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wanted to stay in this country, but there was nothing.
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Then she got all agitated. She said, "I never noticed before. This
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place has no fire escape. We're on the third floor of this rat trap.
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How am I supposed to get out if there's a fire?"
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I said, "Can I at least take the cat? He'd be company for me. I was
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reading somewhere you're not supposed to keep cats around babies,
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anyway. Something about their litter boxes."
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She was thinking out loud. "I'm not sure about the logistics of this
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trip. First I have to get to New York somehow. Then meet up with the
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other women in the group. Then we fly over together. How am I supposed
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to pay for this?"
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"What about the cat, Roweena? Can I take him?"
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She wasn't listening. She said, "Do you remember when we got to Deb's
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that night, after you rescued me from Ray, I made you sleep in the
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other room and I said, "Don't you try coming into my bed in the middle
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of the night or I'll shoot you"? I didn't really mean it."
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"I know you didn't," I said.
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She said, "I wish you weren't here right now, but I don't want to have
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to close the door after you go. Does that make any sense, William, to
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you? Does it make any sense that the cat just isn't enough to keep me
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from disintegrating most days? But people...people -- you're not going
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to be here when I get back from the Holy Land."
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I said, "You don't have to worry about me."
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She said, "Do you want to go?"
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"Where? Israel?"
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"No. Away. Out of here. This apartment."
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I said, "We could get a better place. Bigger. You said that guy at the
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print store was going to phone you back. I could work."
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"The three of us live together, you mean? You, me and Deb?"
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"Four soon."
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She didn't say anything for a minute, just chewed on the ends of her
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hair. She hadn't calmed down much. Then she said, "I don't know. I had
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it all worked out. This baby was going to arrive balanced and
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connected. You know what I'm saying? And familiar, I mean to me. It
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doesn't matter that half of her is Ray. She'll be coming out of a salt
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sea into a salt sea. Well, it'll be a swimming pool beside the sea,
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but you get the picture. It'll still be holy land. And she'll arrive
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among her cousins. Dolphins are smarter
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than us, you know that? It's documented. But if my baby is not
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familiar to me, if I don't have something to link her to, then I'll
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start to lose her right away. I have to do this. Doing this is like
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putting a photograph away safe in a tea can so I can pull it out and
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remember who I was."
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"I could use another week," I said.
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"Debra will be here day after tomorrow. You know that."
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I said, "Who would you be if you weren't running people's lives for
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them?"
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She said, right out of nowhere, "You remember that time at Oom-Pa-Pa
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when we rescued you from that slut who wanted to hump you right there
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in the middle of Bob Jokinen Arena? It was Oktoberfest. There was
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plywood down covering the ice."
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I said, "What does that have to do with anything?"
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"She's serving beer and she takes one look at you and the slut is in
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love with you. She comes out from behind her counter and starts
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unbuttoning your shirt. If Deb and I hadn't pushed her back onto her
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keister she'd of jumped your bones right there and then."
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"That was months ago. So?"
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"So, you and I have known each other forever, since we were babies
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practically. You never touched me. You were always a gentleman."
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"We were kids, Row. I didn't know anything."
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Suddenly switching, she said, "You think you have Deb pegged, in your
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mind, don't you? You think she's this bull dyke who chews men off at
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the root."
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"Now there you go making sense. Right on. Exactamundo."
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I could see that that hurt her. She said, "Why don't you get out of
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here right now? Why don't you leave? OK? Now."
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I scooped up the cat. I was all ready to go. I just wanted her to make
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a decision about Rafferty.
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"You never touched me, William, all the time in high school when we
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were going together. Why can't it be like that again?" Her pupils were
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blurring, starting to swim.
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"What about the cat?"
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"Forget the cat!" she screamed. "Just leave. Get out of here!"
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I got my clothes together in about half a minute. There was not much
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to stuff into the bag. She wasn't going to brush me off like this,
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though. She wasn't going to close the door. Not talk about dolphins
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and the Holy Land and then close the door on me.
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I hoisted the bedroom's little dormer window up as high as it would go
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in the frame and climbed out. As I swung myself up onto the roof,
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Rafferty scooted past me and perched against a chimney. Once I was
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settled I began to think about our finding each other again, ten years
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after high school, and about my rescuing her from Ray.
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_________________________________________________________________
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It was the middle of December and freezing like Antarctica when I
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called her from the bus station to say that I was back in the country.
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She pulled up in a rust-spotted Chevy Caprice station wagon with wood
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paneling painted on the side. I had been teaching Namibians how to
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build irrigation systems. I had never even seen an irrigation system
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before, but I was the development officer and I had the cheque book.
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They loved every sweet thing I did and said.
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The heat and the flies, though. I was starting to go thin in the head.
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I got Roweena's new address from a friend and wrote her a letter,
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never expecting to get anything back. She wrote me and I wrote back
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and pretty soon we had a regular correspondence going. She mentioned
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that she was married now, but mostly she wrote her thoughts about art
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and politics. I told her about the fighting in Namibia, about the time
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soldiers stopped the bus I was on and began pulling people off at
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random. Eight, ten people, all black. There was no settlement there,
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just bush. Then they let the bus continue. We got about two hundred
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meters down the road when we heard the shots. The bus driver did not
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even slow down.
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Roweena's husband, Ray, was away selling for most of the week, she
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wrote, and she was thankful that she was able to read my letters and
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learn about an exotic part of the world she might never get to. I told
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her that it was not all that exotic.
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She began painting to fill the days. In her letters she described what
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she was working on, floral and still-life arrangements. She had not
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let anyone see them. Her husband did not even know she did it. She
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wrote that it was not something he would necessarily understand. She
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did not want to upset him too soon by showing him a part of her he did
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not know about. We exchanged nine or ten letters before I returned to
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Canada.
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The day she picked me up, the heater in her station wagon was broken.
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She said that things were a little tight right then and Raymond needed
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the other car, the Marquis, to be in good working order because that
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was his livelihood. We held each other for a long time in the front
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seat, rubbing each other on the back, hugging for warmth. She told me
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how good it was to see me again. I wanted to ask her how she got
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herself into this. We drove to a coffee shop in a mall where we got
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warm before continuing to her house.
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It was a Saturday. Raymond was home waiting for us in the kitchen when
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|
we came in through the back door. I guess Row and I had identical
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looks on our faces because her husband kept moving his eyes back and
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forth from one of us to the other as though he were watching a tennis
|
|
match.
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|
After he shook my hand, he said, "Problem with the car?" and Roweena
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|
said, "No, why, Ray- dear?" and he said, "It doesn't take two hours to
|
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drive to the bus station and back." She told him where we went, but I
|
|
could see he did not believe us. He was breathing heavily, clenching
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and unclenching his fists.
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Roweena said, "Why don't we all go into the living room and you two
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can get acquainted."
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Ray looked at her as though she had just spoken to him in a language
|
|
he did not understand, and then he glared at me. I excused myself to
|
|
use the washroom, which she pointed to at the top of the stairs. From
|
|
up there I could hear them.
|
|
|
|
"Don't make such a big deal of it. I'm sure he has a place to stay
|
|
tomorrow night."
|
|
|
|
"The weekend is my only time, you know that."
|
|
|
|
"He was such a long way away from home, though. He's made this
|
|
effort."
|
|
|
|
"Why'd you tell him those things about us?"
|
|
|
|
"What things?...you didn't read my mail. That's private."
|
|
|
|
"Just what do you two have to keep private, anyway?"
|
|
|
|
She said, "Don't be silly."
|
|
|
|
Then I heard a slap and the table legs scraping on the floor and a
|
|
thud that I figured was Roweena falling. I was finished in the
|
|
bathroom, but I kept still and listened through the door.
|
|
|
|
She said, "If I lose this baby..." and started to cry.
|
|
|
|
"Tramp. I want him out of here."
|
|
|
|
She said, "You have no right to read my personal mail. It's all in
|
|
your head. I'm sorry, Ray...Don't." A whack like the sound of a cane
|
|
on fabric. Another slap. She sobbed, "Stop, I'm sorry. I won't do it
|
|
again, Ray. Sorry. Please."
|
|
|
|
"Tell him to go away. Tell him we've got family coming to visit and he
|
|
can't stay. Tell him something like that."
|
|
|
|
"All right. I'll tell him."
|
|
|
|
"Good. Get up off the floor. Clean yourself up."
|
|
|
|
I waited until things were quiet, then came downstairs. They were
|
|
sitting together in the living room, side by side in the same love
|
|
seat. Her eyes were puffy and red, and she was holding her hand
|
|
against the side of her neck.
|
|
|
|
He said, "I suppose you heard us." I did not say anything. He said,
|
|
"You don't know the first thing about us."
|
|
|
|
I tried to keep my voice calm. "Maybe you and Roweena should spend
|
|
tonight apart."
|
|
|
|
His face reddened. Ray was a big man. He was off the couch and into
|
|
the kitchen quicker than I thought it possible for someone his size.
|
|
He was there and back before I knew what he was doing. In his hand he
|
|
was holding a thin fiberglass curtain rod about the length of his arm.
|
|
|
|
|
|
"You're out of here, mister," he said.
|
|
|
|
Roweena got off the couch and ran up the stairs.
|
|
|
|
"Count of five," he said, sliding the rod across his open palm. He was
|
|
smiling stiffly as if he expected to be photographed.
|
|
|
|
"I think Roweena had better come with me, Ray," I said.
|
|
|
|
"You don't know me. You don't know me well enough to use my first
|
|
name."
|
|
|
|
I was just about to say, "All right, you win," when Roweena rattled
|
|
back down the stairs two at a time and then slid something across the
|
|
pine floor. I felt it hit against my foot. I looked down.
|
|
|
|
She said, "Pick it up, William. It's loaded."
|
|
|
|
I did not want to touch it, but Ray was moving toward me. I crouched
|
|
on one knee, picked the thing up, and pointed it at him.
|
|
|
|
"He doesn't even know how to use it," he said, but he had stopped
|
|
moving. The switch was still raised above his head.
|
|
|
|
Roweena said, "William and I are going, Ray. You can keep everything.
|
|
I don't care. Don't try to follow us. Come on, William."
|
|
|
|
I began to shake as I tried to keep the pistol trained on him. Roweena
|
|
held me by the collar as we shuffled backward toward the front door.
|
|
She bumped into the half wall that separated the living room from the
|
|
front hall and when I bumped back into her the gun went off. She
|
|
screamed. The bullet hit the ceiling above Raymond's head. Chunks of
|
|
plaster and dust fell down on him.
|
|
|
|
He began to blubber. He said, "Don't go with him. Don't leave me here.
|
|
I love you," but we were already out the door. We ran to her car as if
|
|
we had just robbed a bank.
|
|
|
|
|
|
_________________________________________________________________
|
|
|
|
I thumped on the roof with my heel to get her attention.
|
|
|
|
She stuck her head out. She had to twist her torso around to get a
|
|
look at me in the dark. The sky was packed with stars.
|
|
|
|
I said, "This would be the way out if there was a fire."
|
|
|
|
"Oh. Well, that's good," she said.
|
|
|
|
"Put your foot on the eavestrough when you first climb out. It'll
|
|
hold. Once you're on the roof you can step over onto the building next
|
|
door. You should maybe put a couple boards across for a bridge.
|
|
Something like that so it's safe."
|
|
|
|
She said, in a tired voice, "Do you have somewhere to go, William,
|
|
this time of night?"
|
|
|
|
"Oh, I've got places," I said.
|
|
|
|
She said, "It's cold. Maybe you should come back in."
|
|
|
|
I said, "I was just wondering about something. What happens if the
|
|
baby opens its eyes under water? Won't the salt burn its eyes? How's
|
|
the kid supposed to breathe?"
|
|
|
|
This perked her up. She smiled and said, "Oh, the baby will still have
|
|
the protective mucous covering from when she's in the womb. I'll be
|
|
weighted down on the bottom of the pool - it'll be deep, over my head,
|
|
but body temperature warm - and breathing with scuba gear. When the
|
|
baby comes out she'll float around for a few minutes still attached.
|
|
She won't be breathing yet. I won't even hold her
|
|
|
|
until later. After I cut the cord, the dolphins are there to guide her
|
|
to the surface, instinctively. They'll treat her like one of their
|
|
own. They're very gentle and loving."
|
|
|
|
"Her first contact won't be human, then," I said.
|
|
|
|
"That's what I like about it," she said. "It will be pure and holy.
|
|
You better come back inside before you fall, William."
|
|
|
|
I swung feet-first back in through the dormer window. I said, "What
|
|
are you going to say to Debra? She's not going to like it that I'm
|
|
still here."
|
|
|
|
"I don't want to think about that yet. I don't know what she'll say. I
|
|
mean, what can she say? Will you just stay and keep talking to me? I
|
|
didn't mean what I said before. I'll paint. We'll grind some fresh
|
|
coffee. I'll paint. Let's not worry about it right now. I'm pretty
|
|
sure it'll be all right. Don't go yet."
|
|
|
|
I said, "I can do that. That is something I can do, at least."
|
|
|
|
It was getting pretty cold, but I left the window open wide enough for
|
|
Rafferty to squeeze back in.
|
|
|
|
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|
|
"The Airplane" by Sam Barasch
|
|
|
|
|
|
Strangers with magazines sit all around me.
|
|
My ears pop in the second hand air.
|
|
Red lipstick skitters up and down the aisle whispering loudly,
|
|
"Please make certain your lapbelt is securely fastened,
|
|
and that your traytables & seatbacks
|
|
are in the upright & locked position."
|
|
While outside our pressurized coffin,
|
|
the wind sprints by,
|
|
and the wings rattle like tissue paper.
|
|
|
|
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|
|
"The Onset of Autumn" by William C. Burns, Jr.
|
|
|
|
|
|
The clouds
|
|
sequester the Sun
|
|
But some of the honey-amber light
|
|
still melts through
|
|
|
|
The Sky moves
|
|
out on the bay
|
|
Impossibly bright
|
|
flickering tiles of light
|
|
advance
|
|
|
|
I hold up my hands
|
|
embracing the Autumn air
|
|
And dance
|
|
|
|
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|
|
"In the Basement" by Pearl Sheil
|
|
|
|
|
|
I like you, floor, all grey with paint spatters near the walls
|
|
Dirt and dust collecting at your edges,
|
|
And a microchasm fading out to nowhere in particular.
|
|
You are a good listener, floor, and you are adept at holding up my feet;
|
|
A privilege, might I add, that you wouldn't have had in another
|
|
gravity.
|
|
As I walk to and fro across your chest
|
|
You don't moan as wood does, nor shush me to silence as does the snow
|
|
outside.
|
|
You seem very content between your walls, floor.
|
|
You seem very sure you ARE a floor; that whole heartedness impresses me.
|
|
Unpretentious, unoffending, chaste, you lie contentedly between my walls
|
|
As a good floor should. You don't vie for my attention nor my eye
|
|
Flaunting flamboyant rugs nor peek-a-boo furniture.
|
|
But perhaps, floor, you would like a coat for your nakedness
|
|
To colour you the same as your vertical companions?
|
|
Or would that confuse you and make you guess that you are now a wall
|
|
And should stand up? That wouldn't do at all.
|
|
Did your crack come from you making that very assumption before
|
|
As paint spattered down across your belly?
|
|
Just in case we'd best not risk it, for your sake.
|
|
Did I ever tell you, floor, that I like you ...
|
|
|
|
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|
|
"Vagina Dentata" by Carrie L. Adkins
|
|
|
|
|
|
The men then, and maybe now
|
|
had great fears as they watched their penises
|
|
disappear into the dark mystery of a woman.
|
|
Will it ever, they wondered, come out?
|
|
Perhaps this s why my lover
|
|
prefers to move in and out of me
|
|
while I prefer
|
|
to rub hard against his dick
|
|
and feel my toes, my legs, the top of my head
|
|
begin to disappear.
|
|
The vagina dentata
|
|
swept across cultures...
|
|
the toothed cunt looming in nightmares
|
|
like the devil, indeed, herself.
|
|
So this endangered penis
|
|
obsessed with the miraculous disappearing act,
|
|
comparable to only Houdini himself,
|
|
became godlike.
|
|
Priapus stands perpetually in city parks
|
|
and English gardens reminding us
|
|
that no, my little darling, he is not peeing.
|
|
So they masturbate or go to whorehouses
|
|
where their masculinity, their penis power
|
|
can protect them from
|
|
the filthy slut kneeling before them...
|
|
as he centers his whole hateful being into his dick
|
|
that he is cruelly pushing down her throat.
|
|
She just wants enough money to go to acting school
|
|
in New York City....
|
|
She wants to be a singer....
|
|
She wants to be on Broadway.
|
|
He interrupts her reverie with a panted
|
|
"faster, bitch"
|
|
and feels her teeth running against his dick.
|
|
He knows, yes, he knows
|
|
that he now has power over the toothed cunt.
|
|
The Vagina Dentata is powerless against him
|
|
while she's kneeling on the dirty, sticky floor.
|
|
|
|
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|
|
"Supreme Extra Value Meals" by Mitchell Cleveland
|
|
|
|
|
|
No Nuts watched as Dival's Chevy Luv crept up the driveway and
|
|
eventually stopped in front of the house. An enormous green tarp
|
|
covered something tall and bulky sitting in the back. Dival sat behind
|
|
the wheel for a few minutes, apparently fascinated by something in the
|
|
rear-view mirror, possibly the tarp. Or a dirt clod. Or maybe it was
|
|
something in the sky. A bird, or those black planes again. Maybe they
|
|
weren't planes. The government wasn't telling. Eventually Dival got
|
|
out and walked around the truck twice, slapping each door as he
|
|
passed. Satisfied, Dival walked up to the porch and grinned.
|
|
|
|
"Look."
|
|
|
|
No Nuts, having been looking for several minutes now, nodded. "You got
|
|
a tarp there."
|
|
|
|
"Yes." Dival nodded, grinning. He grinned at the tarp a while and sat
|
|
on the porch.
|
|
|
|
"I hear we could be in for some rain."
|
|
|
|
"Sure could use some rain. Been almost a month. Dry your teats out."
|
|
Dival pulled a pack of gum from his pocket and carefully tore a stick
|
|
in half. One half was carefully rewrapped and replaced, the other half
|
|
chewed. Dival shook the pack at No Nuts. "Has been determined to cause
|
|
cancer in laboratory animals. More exciting this way, braving death
|
|
every time." Dival took a deep breath and stretched. "Wouldn't it be
|
|
great?"
|
|
|
|
"What?"
|
|
|
|
"Being able to live your whole life in a plastic bubble that only you
|
|
could see through?"
|
|
|
|
No Nuts shook his head at the Luv. "So what you got under the tarp?"
|
|
|
|
Dival leapt to his feet and grabbed No Nuts by the arm. "Follow me!"
|
|
He dashed to the truck and unhooked the tarp. He yanked it aside with
|
|
a flourish. It was a Zaxxon game.
|
|
|
|
No Nuts considered this. "It's Zaxxon."
|
|
|
|
Dival hopped into the back of the truck and dusted the game with his
|
|
shirt sleeve. "Yes! Isn't it incredible? I just bought it from the guy
|
|
who used to run The Pittt over in the other county. You know the place
|
|
with the plastic Indians? And all those tires? Well, I met Bo, the guy
|
|
who owns it. He just got convicted, so he's closing the place down and
|
|
sold me his Zaxxon game for ten bucks! Isn't it incredible?"
|
|
|
|
No Nuts stayed on the ground. "It's very... large. What are you going
|
|
to do with it exactly?"
|
|
|
|
"I'm going to start my own arcade, of course! I now own the only
|
|
Zaxxon game in this part of the state! People will come from all
|
|
around to bask in the glow of my Zaxxon game. I'll make a fortune on
|
|
this puppy." Dival's eyes shined with capitalism. "I'm going to charge
|
|
a dollar per game."
|
|
|
|
No Nuts coughed on the dust and his yawn. "You're going to charge a
|
|
dollar? Who the hell do you expect to pay you a dollar to play a game
|
|
of Zaxxon?"
|
|
|
|
"Why, everyone!" Dival slapped the case. "This is Zaxxon, man!
|
|
Everyone loves Zaxxon! And I'm the only one who has it. I name the
|
|
price, and I make the rules. I can have this whole town eating out of
|
|
my hand. I have the power."
|
|
|
|
"Dival, it's just a fucking game of Zaxxon! It only cost a quarter to
|
|
play when it was brand new, and that was ten years ago! No one gives a
|
|
damn, and no one's going to pay you a whole fucking dollar to play
|
|
your fucking Zaxxon! What the hell are you up to?"
|
|
|
|
Dival stood motionless, staring through No Nuts like Elvis through a
|
|
cheeseburger. Hitler invades Poland, film at eleven. Fifty-nine,
|
|
seventy-nine, ninety-nine. "So that's how you feel, is it? You cast
|
|
aside Zaxxon like some worthless, shriveled hulk? I don't think you
|
|
really have any idea of what I have here."
|
|
|
|
"It's a fucking Zaxxon game! Get a fucking grip, Dival!" No Nuts
|
|
flapped his arms at the game, trying to get it to leave.
|
|
|
|
Dival unlatched the back of the truck. "Here, help me get it out."
|
|
|
|
"What?"
|
|
|
|
"I said help me get it out. We need to get it inside before it rains."
|
|
Dival hopped down.
|
|
|
|
"Why is it getting out here?"
|
|
|
|
"I'm giving it to you." Dival squinted at the sky, looking for clouds,
|
|
or the black planes. One of them had crashed once. The Air Force
|
|
wouldn't let anyone near it. Pig miscarriages were up sixty percent.
|
|
One of them had four heads. "I want you to have it."
|
|
|
|
No Nuts stared at the hulking box. Memories of the Carter
|
|
administration, destroying glassware in high school chemistry. "I
|
|
don't want me to have it. It's your Zaxxon game. What are you doing?"
|
|
|
|
"I want you to have it. You're better off with it than I am. Come on,
|
|
it's heavy. Don't lift with your back. Let's put it next to your
|
|
couch."
|
|
|
|
"Look, I don't want it. It's yours. You haven't even gotten a chance
|
|
to use it yet. Take it. I don't want it." It didn't want to leave.
|
|
|
|
_________________________________________________________________
|
|
|
|
Dival's phone rang. He answered halfway through the third ring. "This
|
|
is the telephone."
|
|
|
|
"Dival, it's No Nuts."
|
|
|
|
"Yes?"
|
|
|
|
"Dival, I've been up all night staring at your damn Zaxxon game. I
|
|
don't get it."
|
|
|
|
"Yes?"
|
|
|
|
"Dival, I can't figure out what you're doing. I know you've got a
|
|
point. It's driving me batty. I know you've got some kind of moral
|
|
here and I can't figure out what it is. I give up."
|
|
|
|
"Look, you just don't get it. There isn't any moral. Sometimes there
|
|
just isn't any point to anything. You've got to accept this. No one
|
|
has to win, no one has to lose. The earth will continue to spin, Dick
|
|
Clark will continue to host television bloopers shows. Everything just
|
|
goes on the way it always has. The only difference is that you now
|
|
have a Zaxxon game. What you make out of this is up to you."
|
|
|
|
Silence. Home of the Whopper.
|
|
|
|
"Did I wake you up?"
|
|
|
|
"No."
|
|
|
|
"Well, all right. Talk to you later."
|
|
|
|
"Yes."
|
|
|
|
_________________________________________________________________
|
|
|
|
Dival's phone rang. He answered halfway through the third ring. "This
|
|
is the telephone."
|
|
|
|
"Dival, it's No Nuts again."
|
|
|
|
"Yes?"
|
|
|
|
"Dival, um, look, I found something here. I tried the Zaxxon game, and
|
|
it doesn't work."
|
|
|
|
"Yes?"
|
|
|
|
"I mean, I plugged it in, and the screen comes on, but it's just
|
|
blank. It's sort of bright, but nothing ever appears. I can't get it
|
|
to work. It's not working."
|
|
|
|
"Mmm."
|
|
|
|
"So I've been thinking about what you said about morals."
|
|
|
|
"And?"
|
|
|
|
"Dival, I think there's always a moral. There has to be. You can try
|
|
to ignore them, but they're there. You need them to string things
|
|
together, to keep things from happening and then disappearing. Like,
|
|
like Zaxxon." Fries with that? All our miles are free.
|
|
|
|
"Mmm, maybe you're right. We do need a moral. Well then there's this:
|
|
what makes this country great is that we each have the freedom to
|
|
choose to imprison ourselves."
|
|
|
|
"Thanks."
|
|
|
|
"God bless America."
|
|
|
|
"Talk to you later."
|
|
|
|
"Yes."
|
|
|
|
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|
|
"Hips and Cheese" by Andrea Krackow
|
|
|
|
|
|
Sister makes me cheese sandwiches
|
|
with the plastic wrap
|
|
left on the cheese.
|
|
This is the year
|
|
mom goes to buy peaches
|
|
and never comes back.
|
|
|
|
Our kid years evaporate inside a radiator cap
|
|
off a tireprint in Kentucky --
|
|
for an introduction
|
|
to a man called
|
|
Dad in a Baltimore bowling
|
|
alley.
|
|
|
|
This is the year
|
|
summer is hot soup, and
|
|
Sister wraps our blankets
|
|
in the freezer. She has the wide
|
|
|
|
forehead of Grandpa.
|
|
Mom would tease
|
|
her.
|
|
|
|
She's 14 years old, hates that I
|
|
sneak into her bed. She burns the
|
|
spaghetti, ties my hair with her
|
|
barrette.
|
|
|
|
She can't know she'll be pretty:
|
|
scraggle-fuzz, just ribs;
|
|
that in two years
|
|
Mom's heart
|
|
|
|
will sweat from inside
|
|
her
|
|
hips.
|
|
|
|
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|
|
"Night Light" by Arthur Shotmind
|
|
|
|
|
|
The vicar points his nose at the text,
|
|
But my mind slips away.
|
|
The wind scatters my blankets, woven of straw,
|
|
To places I cannot reach.
|
|
I dangle by a thread like a spider
|
|
Hanging from a tree branch.
|
|
"Perhaps if we tighten the skull a bit,"
|
|
I hear the mechanic say.
|
|
He is guessing.
|
|
|
|
"No, we'll just sing and play our drums,"
|
|
The princess tells him.
|
|
She thinks I am a banjo.
|
|
The soldiers join hands
|
|
And circle the light.
|
|
I turn away,
|
|
Wondering which of us is lost.
|
|
Now they point their rifles
|
|
At the linen closet.
|
|
|
|
"Who's next?" asks the vicar.
|
|
He shoves me into a cave
|
|
And tells me to draw pictures on the wall.
|
|
I draw a spider and a banjo,
|
|
I draw a bedsheet riddled with bullet holes.
|
|
I step back to look at my drawings,
|
|
But I can't see a thing.
|
|
I can still hear the soldiers
|
|
Buzzing around the light.
|
|
|
|
There is a flash at the cave entrance.
|
|
Pushing aside the cellophane curtain,
|
|
I escape into the hallway.
|
|
The mechanic lunges at me with a screwdriver.
|
|
The princess sits on her stool
|
|
With her face frozen.
|
|
The vicar folds his glasses
|
|
And puts them in the case.
|
|
"Good morning," he says.
|
|
|
|
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|
|
"Things in Motion" by Doug Lawson
|
|
|
|
|
|
I'm looking down at the highway from the front porch. It's early. The
|
|
trucks roar past, clearing their throats on the hill, and I can read
|
|
the names off their sides-- Shop-Rite, Coke, Ames, BJ's Wholesale,
|
|
Filene's Basement. I can hear these sounds in my dreams now; the
|
|
shifting gears, the exhaust, the noise of heat-blasted rubber rolling
|
|
between lines on the cold macadam. It's like a language I can almost
|
|
make out the words to, I know them so well. I can make out the shadowy
|
|
forms of the drivers from my perch, dark and unshaven, caps with brims
|
|
pulled low, those men who rocket between coasts, filled with
|
|
McDonald's and Mobil and Maxwell House, who fly past me, through
|
|
fields and towns and cities while the air is still pale early in the
|
|
mornings, when no one's had a chance to breathe it yet.
|
|
|
|
Inside I hear my father wandering around, bumping into things.
|
|
"Jeremy," he says. "Jeremy?" I stay out until he's asleep again, then
|
|
wander around the house with a nearly hairless cat, a book on crop
|
|
rotation, and the cordless phone. I listen to my Aunt Silkie talk.
|
|
|
|
"Saw a UFO last night. Pulled right up to the pump next to me."
|
|
|
|
Imagine my Aunt Silkie as a big, paisley housefly with an incredibly
|
|
large mouth. I do. She likes to spend a lot of time in her window,
|
|
watching everybody in the trailer park off route twenty-three, past
|
|
Jim's Village Deli on the right.
|
|
|
|
"Regular or Unleaded?"
|
|
|
|
"A big glowing ball."
|
|
|
|
"Self-serve or full?" I can hear her suck on the end of her cigarette.
|
|
|
|
"He was dressed all in silver, from head to foot. He had hundreds of
|
|
these tiny teeth."
|
|
|
|
"What did he say?"
|
|
|
|
"Hundreds." The static of the phone drifts in the air between us. Aunt
|
|
Silkie's one of my mother's half-sisters. One of, because my
|
|
grandfather got around a lot before the accident. That and the fact
|
|
Branchville's a small town make it so that everywhere I go there are
|
|
these people with big noses and bald spots and eyebrows that come
|
|
together that I'm supposed to remember, who, though I'm a freshman in
|
|
college now, point out the hair on my chin as if I didn't know it was
|
|
there, and talk about my growing up like turkey vultures circling a
|
|
dead deer. I can't escape them. I have to hitch out to Forrenger's
|
|
Drugstore on two-oh-six to buy a rubber. Anyway, Aunt Silkie's not so
|
|
bad. Since Mom died, we're like siblings, sort of. Friends. Only
|
|
different.
|
|
|
|
"He wanted to know how to get to Poughkeepsie." I feed Knucklehead,
|
|
get some Jell-O out of the fridge and eat it with my fingers while she
|
|
tells me about her lover, this guy who drives for Roadway that I've
|
|
never met. According to her, he eats pasta plain, without boiling, and
|
|
watches old movies in black and white on a portable set while he's
|
|
driving. They meet, she tells me, once a month or so while he's in
|
|
town. He parks down by the soda machines outside of Chet Wilkinsen's
|
|
Laundromat. You have to take Aunt Silkie with a grain of salt
|
|
sometimes. I think the sixties went to her head.
|
|
|
|
"I like him," she says, with her throaty voice. "He moooves me." She
|
|
starts to tell me what they do in the back of the truck and I know
|
|
it's time for me to go. "Talk to you later then, hon," she whispers.
|
|
|
|
"I watch TV until I fall asleep. It's some sitcom that goes on
|
|
forever. The actors move back and forth across the screen, sometimes
|
|
touching, sometimes not. All the girls have big breasts and thin
|
|
shirts that show their nipples. All the men are clean-shaven and look
|
|
like they live at the gym. I guess I fall asleep somewhere in the
|
|
middle of it because I remember a close-up shot of the male lead. His
|
|
mouth opens and closes, like a tollgate, and I'm letting my foot off a
|
|
clutch on the ottoman and about to drive down his tongue.
|
|
|
|
|
|
_________________________________________________________________
|
|
|
|
Ever since the transmission fell out of my eighty-one Datsun on route
|
|
eighty westbound, I've been trying to get out of this town any way I
|
|
can think of. Can you blame me? Agriculture classes at the county
|
|
college are not my idea of a life. Still, I'd rather go to class,
|
|
listen to some ex-farmer go on about fertilizer, than visit my
|
|
grandfather. Nursing homes depress me, and this one sits just over
|
|
Sparta Mountain, a low brick building that hunches into itself, with
|
|
these narrow, slatted windows that watch you if you get too close and
|
|
a large expanse of artificially green lawn. My father waves to Gus,
|
|
the maintenance man. He smiles from the back of this lawn mower that
|
|
has tires like the pick-ups Uncle Ernie and some of my cousins drive.
|
|
|
|
The nurses at the desk crack bright pink gum as they look us over like
|
|
wardens. We show them what we've brought. A fuzzy green hand towel. A
|
|
stiff-bristled, brown handled shaving brush. A mug with Miss Piggy's
|
|
face on it and a safety razor. Grandfather's room is down on the end,
|
|
near the ambulance doors, and he switches on his hearing aid and
|
|
powers up the head of the bed as we walk in.
|
|
|
|
"'Bout time." He starts off complaining about the amount of time the
|
|
staff spends discussing floor wax. "They're more concerned with what
|
|
they're stepping on, than where they're going in the first place," he
|
|
says. His white, bushed out eyebrows go up and down over his hatchet
|
|
nose. He has no cheeks with his teeth out. "Now, if those young girls
|
|
spend more time with those bed baths, well, there we have an idea!"
|
|
Dad makes me brush on the lather. They watch.
|
|
|
|
I hate it when they do this. I'm the only thing in the room that
|
|
moves, and it's as if they catch everything I say or do on film so
|
|
they can go over it later and decide what I did wrong. The corner of
|
|
my mouth is too folded; I'm being too sarcastic. The way my left leg
|
|
dangles over the edge of the bed, swinging next to the half-full
|
|
catheter bag, means I'm too casual, too careless. I'm dabbing on the
|
|
lather spot by spot, like paint, and my father says "Not like that.
|
|
Turn your wrist back and forth like a plug wrench so it builds up the
|
|
foam." So when my father sits with the razor, and carves away foam and
|
|
spit, I walk to the window and imagine myself at the wheel of one of
|
|
those tandem trailers, with three jointed sections, thirty-four tires
|
|
and eighteen forward gears at my command.
|
|
|
|
"Pay attention," he says. "You'll have to do this soon," but I'm off,
|
|
barreling across the bridge between Port Jervis, New York and
|
|
Matamoras, Pennsylvania doing forty-five. The stick-shift is alive in
|
|
my hand. The CB is full of other guys all talking to each other about
|
|
things, like where the troopers are set up, where the best coffee is
|
|
on the turnpike and where to find all the easy women. Outside the
|
|
window I watch old Gus cutting the grass with enthusiasm. The sound of
|
|
the mower fills the room and drowns out my father's voice. Gus jounces
|
|
in high gear around the lawn, pulling two-wheelers and flying over
|
|
rocks and tree roots like they're not there. Each bump makes his jowls
|
|
flap. Each time he turns a corner of the lawn he has to turn in on
|
|
himself, though, so he drives in smaller and smaller circles. I feel
|
|
like if I don't get out of here, that this is the way I'll end up.
|
|
Doing wheelies and doughnuts on a tractor around a piece of Astroturf.
|
|
|
|
Behind me, my father and grandfather talk about me and my relations in
|
|
whispers. It'll be hours. It always is.
|
|
|
|
|
|
_________________________________________________________________
|
|
|
|
The next night after class, the girl Kathleen I've been seeing for a
|
|
few weeks decides it's time. We drive her old Toyota out through
|
|
Walpack to this place I know where there's a graveyard right on the
|
|
banks of the Delaware River. We're kind of cold so we leave her engine
|
|
running while we drink some beer and then get her backseat down and
|
|
covered with this old afghan blanket she says her grandmother made.
|
|
It's got elephants and bears and fishing poles all over it.
|
|
|
|
I have to tell you, it's not all that great. I have to fiddle around
|
|
with the rubber in the dark and first I get it on upside down and it
|
|
won't unroll right so we have to use another one, and then the car
|
|
stalls so we have to get up and start it again so we don't freeze.
|
|
Then somebody else pulls up in a van and parks, and it's my Uncle
|
|
Rudy. He wants to sell us some dope.
|
|
|
|
We talk some afterwards. She drops me home, and I heat up some
|
|
cheeseballs in the microwave. As I'm chewing I look in the mirror in
|
|
the bathroom. I move my eyebrows up and down and flare my nostrils and
|
|
watch my father and my grandfather look out of my face. I put on my
|
|
running shoes and go out to my grandmother's Dodge Dart that's up on
|
|
blocks in the backyard. I climb into the seat, work the gas and brake,
|
|
and shift the gears. There are some mosquitoes batting against the
|
|
inside of the windshield, and I think this is what a bug must feel
|
|
like, trapped between the wiper and a hood of a truck in motion. Tiny
|
|
and powerless and out of control. Carried down a dark road to a place
|
|
you don't want to go with a ton of wind in your face and thick glass
|
|
between you and the steering wheel.
|
|
|
|
|
|
_________________________________________________________________
|
|
|
|
Back inside, Aunt Silkie calls and wants to tell me about her dream.
|
|
|
|
"I'm driving around on the interstate, right? I'm looking for an exit
|
|
cause I have to go to the bathroom." In the background I can hear the
|
|
sound of scraping porcelain as she loads her dishwasher. "I'm naked.
|
|
But instead of passing signs or something, I keep passing crows! Old
|
|
crows. With deformed beaks and these dark intense eyes."
|
|
|
|
"What do you do?"
|
|
|
|
"And teeth. Lots of tiny, tiny teeth." My father comes into the
|
|
kitchen and opens the fridge. The little light on the door makes him
|
|
look blue, like metal. "Hundreds. Sharp, like needles." He takes out
|
|
the red bowl of solidified gravy and tries to figure out what it is.
|
|
He does this a lot. Knucklehead purrs circles around him, leaning in
|
|
against his legs. "Then I finally find a truckstop full of old men,
|
|
but each stall costs a quarter and I don't have any change. I go up to
|
|
the guy at the register, and it's your grandfather!" Then she wakes
|
|
up. She tells me about her negligee then, and about this neighbor she
|
|
met, this guy Todd who's about my age, who she got to undress her on
|
|
her little fold-out table. I tell her I have to go, but then she tells
|
|
me that her trucker will be back in town tonight, probably in about an
|
|
hour. "You should meet him, Jer. Maybe he needs some help or
|
|
something."
|
|
|
|
"Where are you meeting him?"
|
|
|
|
My father stares, clueless, into the gravy, tilting it back and forth
|
|
and watching it pull away in a clump from the sides of the bowl.
|
|
"Here, Jeremy. Right here." She sighs, pulls on her cigarette. In the
|
|
background her dishwasher lurches into motion. "Where else is there?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
_________________________________________________________________
|
|
|
|
I sit in the bathroom deliberating, and smoking a little of Uncle
|
|
Rudy's finest, until it's about two a.m. and I know I've got to go
|
|
over and know or not go and wonder, so I go. I know where the keys
|
|
are, and I ride my father's Escort down the hill on the clutch so I
|
|
don't wake him. Out on the road, the smoke from our woodstove crawls
|
|
close to the ground, like a blind, probing worm in the headlights. I
|
|
take a long way down five-nineteen to exit twelve, and get on the
|
|
interstate, sliding in between a decorated Peterbuilt, with busty,
|
|
big-hipped women on its mudflaps, and an old Diamond Reo. We jockey
|
|
for position. A Freightliner changes gears and howls by in the right
|
|
lane, hell-bent, and the Peterbuilt leans heavy on the horn. Up and
|
|
over Sparta Mountain the road goes from four lanes to eight. The
|
|
Diamond Reo signals, changes lanes, and begins to pick up speed.
|
|
There's a figurehead of a Doberman on its hood that leans forward,
|
|
bright silver in the light of the moon. I can make out the face of the
|
|
driver in the instrument lights. I look over and wave. He nods
|
|
distantly and pulls away with a deep, diesel throated roar.
|
|
|
|
I get off at exit seven and work my way back northeast on three-twelve
|
|
and twenty-three north. At the Cumberland Farms I get some coffee and
|
|
say hi to Aunt Gert, who's planted behind the counter. At Jim's
|
|
Village Deli, all the lights are out. At Aunt Silkie's trailer,
|
|
they're all on. I don't see a truck anywhere.
|
|
|
|
She meets me at the door in a housecoat she holds loose at her chest
|
|
with one hand and offers me a bourbon and Coke with the other. We talk
|
|
for a while, about the nature of things in motion, how something
|
|
moving will tend to stay that way, and how something stuck will more
|
|
than likely stay stuck. "Like cavities in teeth," she says. "Once
|
|
they're there, you just have to make the best of them." She reads my
|
|
horoscope, burns some incense I'm allergic to and puts my hand up
|
|
against her left breast.
|
|
|
|
|
|
_________________________________________________________________
|
|
|
|
OK. It goes on from there. My body goes through the motions well
|
|
enough, but all I can think of is that Diamond Reo and its driver, the
|
|
way his eyes looked through me without seeing, just looked right on
|
|
past and I imagine the things he's looking through while I'm under the
|
|
tapestries of my Aunt Silkie's bedroom. I'll bet he's not just passing
|
|
crows, but signs for places that I've never even thought of, places
|
|
with names like Great Bend and Independence and Pocotello. I can see
|
|
him driving through the long, endless stretch of Pennsylvania.
|
|
Tannersvile. Reading. Allentown. Pittsburgh. He rolls through Ohio,
|
|
Indiana, Illinois, Nevada. I see him at the casinos in Las Vegas, on
|
|
the beaches of the Rio Grande, chugging frozen drinks somewhere in the
|
|
Keys, and in every truckstop between here and Fort Wayne, Oregon
|
|
there's a woman waiting.
|
|
|
|
"Oh, Jeremy," Aunt Silkie sighs. But out on the highway I know there's
|
|
a diesel engine with my name on it, calling me too. I can hear it.
|
|
Right now it's downshifting, working its way up that long, winding
|
|
hill into town.
|
|
|
|
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|
|
"Pictures of Perfection" by Sung J. Woo
|
|
|
|
|
|
I was stumbling back from the Wheelbarrow when the phone rang.
|
|
|
|
"They just fired that dope Dunn," Marty said.
|
|
|
|
Marty and I used to be drinking buddies, but ever since he got the job
|
|
at the local newspaper office, I've been drinking a lonely bottle.
|
|
Marty was working as a janitor while I was collecting unemployment.
|
|
|
|
"Who's Dunn?" I asked.
|
|
|
|
"The dope that cleaned the first ten floors."
|
|
|
|
Then I realized what Marty was actually trying to tell me.
|
|
|
|
"I was head janitor of that motel, Marty, remember?"
|
|
|
|
"You were the only janitor."
|
|
|
|
|
|
_________________________________________________________________
|
|
|
|
It was an easy job and the pay was good. Twenty floors, about twenty
|
|
rooms each floor, and split between the two of us, that meant
|
|
something like two hundred garbage cans each. Most of the garbage was
|
|
crumpled up paper, so it wasn't too disgusting. The lounges on each
|
|
floor were probably the roughest, each having a tall garbage can with
|
|
food, coffee grounds, and everything else. But since we cleaned up
|
|
each weekday, it was only a few hours old and didn't stink. Mondays
|
|
were probably the worst because some people worked during the weekends
|
|
and left banana peels and half-eaten yogurts in their wastebaskets,
|
|
but even that wasn't a big deal. Compared to some of the other jobs
|
|
I'd held, this one was heaven.
|
|
|
|
We had to sweep, but we didn't have to mop or clean the bathrooms. All
|
|
that was done by a tiny, white-haired Polish lady who didn't speak a
|
|
word of English except for "Hello" and "Goodbye."
|
|
|
|
Marty cleaned floors eleven and up while I took care of ten and down.
|
|
My favorite room was the corner office on the seventh floor because it
|
|
had a big view of the seaport, and because it was summertime, the sun
|
|
would set around eight o'clock and I would be right there for it. When
|
|
it was a beautiful sunset, I would stop everything, sit in that big
|
|
leather chair, prop my feet up on that huge desk -- and just take it
|
|
all in. It was a shame, I thought, that the neckties who worked in
|
|
these offices never got to see these sunsets.
|
|
|
|
When done, I would roll my garbage can back into the little cubbyhole
|
|
in the basement, go up to the main lobby, and have a smoke outside.
|
|
After the first week, I always finished before Marty, not by much,
|
|
maybe five minutes at the most. I wasn't trying to show him off or
|
|
anything. That was just the way things were.
|
|
|
|
After work, Marty and I would cruise on over to the Wheelbarrow for a
|
|
couple of beers. We were drinking buddies again.
|
|
|
|
But then things started to go a little strange. I was finishing way
|
|
earlier than Marty, sometimes by half an hour. It wasn't that I was
|
|
working any faster; it was Marty who was working slower. I had first
|
|
thought that it was just that Tuesday, but when it continued on for a
|
|
week, I thought maybe something was wrong. Maybe there was another
|
|
bunch of rooms that had opened up (some offices were empty one day
|
|
then occupied the next), or maybe another lounge. I didn't ask Marty
|
|
about it because, well, to tell you the truth, I had a feeling it was
|
|
going to be bad news.
|
|
|
|
But when Friday rolled around, I finished up and decided to take the
|
|
elevator up to the eighteen floor to find out exactly what was going
|
|
on. I took a quick look around, but he wasn't anywhere. I climbed the
|
|
stairs and got to the nineteenth floor.
|
|
|
|
And there I found him in an office, the office of Brad Eyestone,
|
|
Editor of Arts and Entertainment, staring at the pictures on the
|
|
walls.
|
|
|
|
He didn't hear me and I didn't say anything. Standing there at the
|
|
door, looking at Marty looking at these pictures, I was afraid. He
|
|
scratched his beard every now and then, but he never took his eyes off
|
|
the pictures. He was absolutely still, hypnotized by whatever he saw.
|
|
What I saw were family photos of the Eyestones. The one on the far
|
|
right wall was a picture of a good-looking man, a pretty woman, and
|
|
two kids in a boat, a boy and a girl. The man and the boy were both
|
|
holding onto a big fish, probably a tuna.
|
|
|
|
Marty still hadn't noticed that I was in the room with him, so I snuck
|
|
out a couple of feet, started whistling "Oh Suzanna," and yelled out
|
|
Marty's name.
|
|
|
|
"I'm almost done," he said from the office, and came out rolling the
|
|
garbage can.
|
|
|
|
"What took you so long?" I said. "The Wheelbarrow ain't gonna wait up
|
|
for us, you know."
|
|
|
|
"Just doing some extra cleaning," he said.
|
|
|
|
I supposed it was something he didn't want to talk about. Maybe
|
|
Eyestone's kids reminded Marty of his kids, but then I remembered that
|
|
he didn't have any. He hadn't been married and I was pretty sure he
|
|
hadn't gotten any girl in trouble when he was younger.
|
|
|
|
I guess I could have asked him about it, but I didn't. I figured that
|
|
if he wanted to talk about it, he would.
|
|
|
|
Actually, I think he did tell me. He babbled about a lot of things at
|
|
the Wheelbarrow, but afterwards, I couldn't remember a thing. We both
|
|
got very drunk that night.
|
|
|
|
|
|
_________________________________________________________________
|
|
|
|
So I thought about telling all this to Jackie, but we were having
|
|
problems.
|
|
|
|
Jackie and I saw each other pretty much every day. It was obvious that
|
|
neither of us had many friends, but it was more than that. When we had
|
|
first met at the Wheelbarrow, we thought we were wrong for each other.
|
|
That night, I told her she thought too much and she told me I didn't
|
|
think enough. We laughed, shook hands, and agreed to be friends for as
|
|
long as we were drunk.
|
|
|
|
But now -- now we were used to each other. It was getting harder for
|
|
her to leave my place or for me to leave her place, and that was
|
|
making the whole thing weird.
|
|
|
|
Maybe sex was the answer. Neither of us had any in a long time. But
|
|
according to Jackie, "that is the short-term answer to a potentially
|
|
long-term problem." She always had words like that, advice- words, I
|
|
called them.
|
|
|
|
So maybe we were in love and maybe we weren't. Or maybe I was in love
|
|
and she was just lonely. I don't know. My life at the time was full of
|
|
problems.
|
|
|
|
But anyway, I went over to her place that night after the Wheelbarrow,
|
|
very drunk but still able to steer my van for a mile and a half to
|
|
tell her about Marty and his pictures when she said: "We have to talk,
|
|
buddy. We have to."
|
|
|
|
So I listened and she talked, about how she was feeling uncomfortable.
|
|
I told her that I was drunk, but that didn't stop her.
|
|
|
|
"I don't know what to do," she finally said. We were both sitting on
|
|
the couch. "We've become such good friends."
|
|
|
|
She had on a long flannel shirt that ran a little short of her knees,
|
|
knees that were hugged by a pair of black leggings, ankles that were
|
|
surrounded by thick, red socks. Her face was a little pale, but that
|
|
made her rust-brown hair all the more rusty.
|
|
|
|
At that point I grabbed her by the shoulder, pinned her down on the
|
|
cushions, and started kissing her all over.
|
|
|
|
"Oh Jesus," she said, pushing me off with her legs. I fell off the
|
|
couch and banged my head against the coffee table. I shook my head.
|
|
The pain was something else.
|
|
|
|
"Oh Jesus," I said, rubbing the side of my head. I could already feel
|
|
the wound. "That really hurt."
|
|
|
|
Jackie cradled her legs and balled herself away from me. "Maybe you
|
|
better leave," she said. She didn't sound mean; she just sounded
|
|
exhausted.
|
|
|
|
"All right," I said, and got up.
|
|
|
|
"Can you make it home?"
|
|
|
|
I nodded and left. The pain did wake me up, and driving home
|
|
semi-drunk wasn't a big deal.
|
|
|
|
|
|
_________________________________________________________________
|
|
|
|
After that night, Marty got better. He wasn't late anymore; in fact,
|
|
there were a few days when he finished earlier than me. And he seemed
|
|
brighter, happier, even at the Wheelbarrow, even when he was drunk. I
|
|
guessed that whatever that had bothered him worked itself out, as I
|
|
knew it would. Sometimes that's the best way to solve a problem, to
|
|
just let it go away.
|
|
|
|
Jackie called me a couple of days later. It was the first time we had
|
|
spoken since I kissed her and hit my head.
|
|
|
|
"Hey, guess what. I finally got a job," her fuzzy voice said. A month
|
|
ago Jackie hadn't known whether she was working at Dunkin' Donuts or
|
|
at a plumbing parts place as a secretary, so she quit.
|
|
|
|
"We should celebrate," I said. "I'll buy, I'm in the money."
|
|
|
|
We went out to a Chinese restaurant and ordered General Tso's chicken
|
|
and a couple of Tsingtaos. Jackie wore a slinky blue dress with white
|
|
polkadots. She looked really good, so I looked the other way.
|
|
|
|
"I know you're thinking about last time," she said, her mouth chewing
|
|
away at the chicken. Bits of chicken flew out of her mouth as she
|
|
talked. It got me horny, watching her.
|
|
|
|
"I was drunk," I said, and sucked on my bottle of Tsingtao.
|
|
|
|
"It's a bad idea. You and I both know that."
|
|
|
|
"I guess," I said. "I think we both better find someone, though. And
|
|
fast."
|
|
|
|
She raised her bottle of beer. "To that someone else," and we clanged.
|
|
|
|
We talked about our jobs for the rest of the evening. I told her about
|
|
my garbage cleaning job, which wasn't the most exciting job around,
|
|
but she listened anyway. I told her about the corner office on the
|
|
seventh floor, and I almost told her the Marty-staring-at-pictures
|
|
bit, but I didn't. Things were fine, things were smooth, there was no
|
|
reason to bring up things that had nothing to do with anything.
|
|
|
|
How Jackie got her job, or jobs, was quite a story. She saw in the
|
|
classifieds that somebody needed a nanny of sorts -- "a glorified
|
|
babysitter," she told me -- and since she did like kids, she went
|
|
after it.
|
|
|
|
"Gorgeous place," she said, chomping on a drumstick. "It wasn't a
|
|
really big house but it was so nicely decorated. The place looked
|
|
bigger from the inside than the outside, you know? This lady,
|
|
Michelle, she knew what she was doing. Fluffy drapes and the whole
|
|
nine yards." Michelle hired her on the spot.
|
|
|
|
"The kids are totally adorable and very well behaved," she said. "I
|
|
don't even know what I'm supposed to do, you know? It's not like I
|
|
have to keep an eye on them. The boy, Christian, is four and the girl
|
|
is three, Melissa. Cutest things you've ever seen."
|
|
|
|
The only part of the house that seemed to worry Michelle was the
|
|
basement, so she took Jackie down there. "I don't want the kids to be
|
|
in here," Michelle had told her. And there Jackie got her second job.
|
|
|
|
"You wouldn't believe the set-up they had. Radial arm saw, table saw,
|
|
a full-sized lathe, disc sander, drill press, planer -- I mean this
|
|
place had more equipment than the shop I worked at." Jackie, all by
|
|
herself, had made the table that I banged my head against a few nights
|
|
ago. Although she never had formal training for carpentry, she was
|
|
pretty good with her hands.
|
|
|
|
When Michelle saw Jackie's eyes light up, she asked her if she knew
|
|
anything about woodworking because they were looking for someone to
|
|
make them a couple of pieces of furniture -- children's furniture. She
|
|
told Jackie that it was important for both her husband and herself
|
|
that their children have "significant memories, tangible things that
|
|
they could call their childhood." Her husband had wanted to do it
|
|
himself, but work had taken over his life. It seemed all very hokey to
|
|
me, but Jackie seemed to understand.
|
|
|
|
"If you saw these kids, you'd want the exact same thing, I tell you.
|
|
You wouldn't ever want to see these angels grow up," she said. So
|
|
right now she was all into making a desk for the boy. She worked in
|
|
the basement in the mornings and took care of the kids after school
|
|
until dinnertime.
|
|
|
|
"They're paying me pretty good," she said.
|
|
|
|
"So dinner's on you next time," I said.
|
|
|
|
|
|
_________________________________________________________________
|
|
|
|
Life was plain and sometimes even boring, but it was good. When your
|
|
ex-wife isn't hounding you for alimony, when you don't get laid off
|
|
and you do get laid, then life is what I call good. I was earning
|
|
enough money to send the checks to my ex, Marty and I were working
|
|
enough to not get fired, Jackie was having a great old time at her
|
|
job, and I finally found a girl to sleep with me.
|
|
|
|
She was kind of fat -- pudgy, I guess you could say. Nothing to look
|
|
at, a plain and usual face, but those are the kind of women who are
|
|
the easiest. The ugly ones get laid all the time because everybody
|
|
thinks they're easy and the good-looking ones get laid all the time
|
|
because they're so good looking. I keep my eyes open for the
|
|
middle-of-the-row ones.
|
|
|
|
You couldn't get much more middle than Sarah. She was middle class,
|
|
had medium-sized breasts, had a ring on her middle finger, and
|
|
preferred her steaks cooked medium. Although neither of us were very
|
|
serious, I was happy and she was happy.
|
|
|
|
It was a good time. I couldn't remember life being this fine for me
|
|
and everybody else I cared about, so I wasn't stupid about it. This
|
|
kind of happiness-across-the-board doesn't happen too often, so I
|
|
remembered and enjoyed every moment (and I barely drank). Because
|
|
sooner or later, things were going to fall apart.
|
|
|
|
|
|
_________________________________________________________________
|
|
|
|
"I got fired," Marty told me at the Wheelbarrow. I knew that already
|
|
because I had seen a guy with a glass eye, Jimbo, introducing himself
|
|
to me at work. It was Wednesday, a sweatshirt night in September.
|
|
Winter was around the corner.
|
|
|
|
"How the hell did that happen?" I asked.
|
|
|
|
He looked down into the bottle of Bud and said, "Didn't do such a good
|
|
job, I guess."
|
|
|
|
"Yeah," I said.
|
|
|
|
Then we drank for a while in silence. Marty worked at peeling the
|
|
label from the bottle.
|
|
|
|
"What are you going to do?" I asked him.
|
|
|
|
"Don't know. The classifieds probably have something or another. If
|
|
not now, then maybe in a couple of weeks."
|
|
|
|
"It had something to do with those pictures, didn't it?" I asked him.
|
|
I didn't want to sound accusing, but I think it came out that way. I
|
|
was mad at myself; if I had asked him about it that time, maybe he
|
|
would still have a job.
|
|
|
|
He didn't say anything for a long time. I drank up and avoided looking
|
|
at him until he pulled a messy piece of paper from his back pocket and
|
|
laid it on the table. He unfolded it and ran his hand over it to
|
|
flatten out the creases. It was the picture with Eyestone and his kid
|
|
holding the fish.
|
|
|
|
"You stole the picture? You stole the fucking picture? Jesus! Didn't
|
|
you think he would notice?"
|
|
|
|
Marty just sat there and stared at the picture. "Look at it," he said,
|
|
pushing it toward me. "Look at it."
|
|
|
|
"I've already seen it," I said, pushing it back. "What the hell?"
|
|
|
|
"I had to take it."
|
|
|
|
I gulped my beer and stared him down.
|
|
|
|
"It's perfect, don't you see? This guy's got what I don't have, what
|
|
I'm never going to have. This guy's handsome, he's got family, got
|
|
kids, it's just..."
|
|
|
|
I didn't know what to say. I'd never seen him like this before. "I
|
|
don't understand," I said. "What's so perfect about this picture?
|
|
About him and his wife and his kids?"
|
|
|
|
"I don't know," Marty said. "If I knew I would tell you, don't you
|
|
think?" He quickly folded the picture back up.
|
|
|
|
"So they fired you for taking that picture?"
|
|
|
|
"Yeah," he said.
|
|
|
|
"One picture?"
|
|
|
|
"I took more than that," he said, looking at the beer again. "Took
|
|
some other pictures," he said.
|
|
|
|
"That is the...forget it. Let's just forget the whole thing," I said.
|
|
|
|
|
|
_________________________________________________________________
|
|
|
|
"I can't work there anymore," Jackie said. We were in her kitchen,
|
|
having some coffee.
|
|
|
|
"Why not? The kids are wonderful, you're working with wood."
|
|
|
|
"It's so depressing," she said, blowing the coffee to cool it. "You
|
|
look at those kids and..."
|
|
|
|
"Yeah?"
|
|
|
|
"I don't know. They're so perfect."
|
|
|
|
"What do you mean they're per..." That's when I put it together. "Wait
|
|
wait wait. Who do you work for?"
|
|
|
|
"Michelle, I told you."
|
|
|
|
"Last name."
|
|
|
|
"Eyestone. Michelle Eyestone. What's the sudden fascination with my
|
|
boss?"
|
|
|
|
Bingo.
|
|
|
|
"So you say they get you depressed because they're so perfect, because
|
|
they have a family, they have money, they have spankin' beautiful
|
|
kids," I said.
|
|
|
|
"Yeah, you could say that."
|
|
|
|
"But you can't put it in words if you really had to."
|
|
|
|
"Hey, you reading my diary or something?"
|
|
|
|
"Don't have to," I said. "Remember my friend Marty that I sometimes
|
|
talk to you about?"
|
|
|
|
"Sure, the guy who got fired last week?"
|
|
|
|
"Yeah, him," I said, and smiled. "I think you two should meet."
|
|
|
|
|
|
_________________________________________________________________
|
|
|
|
At first, I thought it was a mistake. Marty and Jackie were very
|
|
different people. They weren't exactly made for each other -- Marty's
|
|
dream woman was a Southern belle, not a tomboy. And Jackie's was "a
|
|
criminal defense lawyer with broad shoulders," not some skinny
|
|
janitor.
|
|
|
|
But see, this business with the Eyestones was just plain fucking
|
|
weird. You had to be there. If you had talked to both of them and
|
|
listened to how they thought about the Eyestones, you'd thought that
|
|
they were the same people. It was like fate. No, it was fate. If I
|
|
hadn't brought them together, something else eventually would have.
|
|
|
|
But I'll admit it; my real fear was for me. These two people were the
|
|
closest thing to a family I had, and once they got together, I had a
|
|
feeling that I wasn't going to be needed any more.
|
|
|
|
And that's exactly what happened. They were very happy and excited and
|
|
spent a whole lot of time together. Marty and I still drank after
|
|
work, Jackie and I still talked on the phone, but things were
|
|
different. When they talked to me, they talked about nothing but each
|
|
other. So in a way, I was in the center and not in the background --
|
|
but at the same time I wasn't. It was complicated, I guess.
|
|
|
|
And to make things worse, Sarah dumped me for some other guy. He told
|
|
her that he was a doctor, a gynecologist. She wasn't the brightest,
|
|
let's just say that. "I hope you're not mad, but Pierce is a wonderful
|
|
man." Pierce! And she thought that was his real name? A guy named
|
|
Pierce, a doctor, hanging around in a scumpit like the Wheelbarrow
|
|
until last call? I wasn't mad that she left me; I was mad that she was
|
|
so fucking stupid.
|
|
|
|
So this probably sounds like a whole bunch of bad things and I was
|
|
really depressed. But really? I wasn't all that unhappy. Around that
|
|
time, when things were falling apart around me, my mind was on
|
|
something else.
|
|
|
|
My mind was on Brad. Michelle. Christian. Melissa.
|
|
|
|
My mind was on the Eyestones.
|
|
|
|
|
|
_________________________________________________________________
|
|
|
|
Because Jimbo had a slight limp, he asked me if I could take floors
|
|
eleven to twenty. I didn't quite get it because we used elevators to
|
|
go up and down, but I didn't want to argue. Jimbo wasn't all right in
|
|
the head and that glass eye of his made me nervous, the way it swam
|
|
all over the place.
|
|
|
|
Now that I was in charge of the top ten floors, I had Brad Eyestone's
|
|
office. Every time I cleaned that office, I think I sort of saw what
|
|
Marty had seen. There were new pictures on the walls now and all of
|
|
them were beautiful, as if those pictures were the ones that had come
|
|
with the frames.
|
|
|
|
I didn't want to take any of them, but I was spending more and more
|
|
time in his office. I could tell because Jimbo, who used to finish
|
|
after me, was gone by the time I rolled my garbage can back into the
|
|
cubbyhole.
|
|
|
|
But anyhow, things were sort of back to normal. I was shifted up ten
|
|
floors and maybe lingered in Eyestone's office a little bit, but I was
|
|
still meeting up with Marty at the Wheelbarrow after work (he got a
|
|
job at the downtown warehouse) and everybody was getting along.
|
|
|
|
Then one day I actually saw him, Brad Eyestone, in his office.
|
|
|
|
I saw him but he didn't see me. He must have been working late because
|
|
paper was strewn all over the place. In person he was even better
|
|
looking. He looked bigger.
|
|
|
|
I thought about introducing myself and going in with my garbage can
|
|
when the phone rang.
|
|
|
|
"Eyestone here. Hello, Em. Yeah. Yeah." End of conversation.
|
|
|
|
Em, which probably meant Michelle, his wife. I quietly rolled my
|
|
garbage can away and took it back to the basement -- and waited
|
|
outside.
|
|
|
|
I was on my second cigarette when a fancy blue car pulled up in front
|
|
of the building. She wasn't Michelle Eyestone, but she was a pretty
|
|
good looker herself. She had that slutty look about herself, dirty,
|
|
the kind of women I sort of like if they're brunettes, but this one
|
|
was a bleached blonde. She gave me a fake smile and went into the
|
|
building, her heels clicking and clacking against the linoleum floor.
|
|
|
|
When her elevator started climbing, I jumped in the other one and
|
|
followed. She would be slightly ahead of me, which was exactly what I
|
|
wanted.
|
|
|
|
When I reached the nineteenth floor and Eyestone's office, the door
|
|
was closed. But there were people in there.
|
|
|
|
The walls were thin so I could hear just about anything above a
|
|
whisper, but they weren't whispering anything. It took them about two
|
|
minutes before they were going at it, thumping and groaning like mad.
|
|
I could tell that she was a screamer because her moans and groans came
|
|
out like there was a hand over her mouth. They had to be careful;
|
|
Eyestone wasn't the only one I saw in his office that night. Listening
|
|
to them may have gotten a few guys hard, but it didn't do anything for
|
|
me. I was hearing them screw, but I wasn't really listening.
|
|
|
|
I sat in the dark hallway for at least half an hour. Then they
|
|
stopped, and for a while there was silence. I lit up a cigarette and
|
|
then put it out, remembering that nobody was allowed to smoke inside
|
|
the building.
|
|
|
|
So they weren't so perfect after all, I thought, giggling to myself.
|
|
Pictures may say a thousand words, but catching a few moans outside
|
|
someone's office was just as telling, if not more.
|
|
|
|
"How's _Michelle_," Em said like she was mad.
|
|
|
|
"Do you always have to ask that?" Eyestone said.
|
|
|
|
"Jesus, you're on the edge."
|
|
|
|
"I went to see Dr. Prasad today. That's why I had to work late," he
|
|
said. I heard the zip of a zipper and the snap of a button, an evening
|
|
quickie coming to an end.
|
|
|
|
"What did he say?" she asked.
|
|
|
|
"You're not going to have to worry about getting pregnant, Em," he
|
|
said, and laughed a little. "Fuck your little dial of pills, fuck fuck
|
|
fuck," he said.
|
|
|
|
"You mean..." she trailed off. Then he started crying. "Oh baby, don't
|
|
cry," she said. "Don't cry."
|
|
|
|
At first I couldn't figure out what he was saying through his tears;
|
|
it sounded like "Mean Michelle bought." But after the third time he
|
|
said it, I realized what it was. "Me and Michelle both," Brad Eyestone
|
|
was saying.
|
|
|
|
_ Me and Michelle both_. Both of them were out of luck. How do you
|
|
like that?
|
|
|
|
|
|
_________________________________________________________________
|
|
|
|
Last night Marty stopped by to say hello. We talked about, who else,
|
|
Jackie. I asked him about the pictures he stole. He told me that he
|
|
didn't need them anymore, so he went to my kitchen garbage and dropped
|
|
the picture that he carried around in his pocket, as if to prove his
|
|
full recovery.
|
|
|
|
Right after Marty left, I dug the picture out of the trash. After I
|
|
wiped off some spaghetti sauce and a couple of potato peels, the
|
|
picture was in good shape. I rinsed it off and smoothed it out on the
|
|
table.
|
|
|
|
Brad Eyestone, a beautiful, dark-haired man who should be a movie
|
|
star, eyes so blue that they stood out even when surrounded by miles
|
|
and miles of ocean. Christian Eyestone, an angel, his youthful blond
|
|
hair just starting to turn brownish and his blue eyes as bright as his
|
|
dad's. Michelle Eyestone, almost as tall as her husband, in a bright
|
|
pink string bikini that showed what Brad had and what everyone else
|
|
didn't have. In the picture she sat with her legs crossed, her long,
|
|
red hair flowing down to the middle of her back, her hand holding onto
|
|
her daughter's hand. Melissa Eyestone, a curly blonde of three,
|
|
wearing the captain's hat, her hands on the wheel of the boat. That
|
|
day the wind was a soft breeze -- you could tell from the gentle waves
|
|
-- and the skies were streamed with strings of clouds.
|
|
|
|
They were perfect, all right -- but not quite. Anybody could tell.
|
|
Well, maybe not anybody. Maybe only the people who are looking over
|
|
and above the picture, maybe only the people who can do that. I'm not
|
|
saying that I'm somebody special or anything like that. I'm just
|
|
saying that I was at the right place at the right time. But in any
|
|
case, you could tell those kids had zero resemblance with the two
|
|
parents.
|
|
|
|
|
|
_________________________________________________________________
|
|
|
|
"You must be Marty," Michelle says.
|
|
|
|
"Sure am," I say.
|
|
|
|
Marty's out of town, visiting his suddenly sick mother in Oklahoma.
|
|
Jackie finished Christian's desk for the Eyestones and she's deciding
|
|
whether or not to quit. Seeing the Eyestones and those kids still gets
|
|
her down, but the pay is good.
|
|
|
|
Michelle invited Jackie to tonight's dinner a week ago. Jackie was
|
|
going to go with Marty, but now I'm going with her. She told me that I
|
|
should pretend to be Marty because that's who she promised Michelle
|
|
would be at dinner. I didn't argue. Sometimes I don't understand
|
|
Jackie at all. Marty agrees with me, so I know I'm not alone in this.
|
|
|
|
It is a beautiful house in every way, the kind of home that you see in
|
|
all those homemaker magazines. Or the kind you see when you visit
|
|
apartment models, the ones that agents show around, the ones made up
|
|
to look as if there is a family living there. But of course there is
|
|
no family. All they have are hundreds of strangers who come in and out
|
|
during the day, and at night the house is silent.
|
|
|
|
I'm wearing a tie and it's making me uncomfortable. My jacket fits but
|
|
my pants are a little too tight around the crotch. I can't take it
|
|
back, either, because nobody can argue with that bastard at the thrift
|
|
store.
|
|
|
|
Jackie, all dolled up, her hair kind of poofy, looks pretty good under
|
|
the rainbow lights of the chandelier. She's making talk with Michelle,
|
|
who sits across from me. Brad is sits at the head, and the kids,
|
|
Christian and Melissa, are at the corner. I'm looking at the kids,
|
|
then at Michelle, then at Brad. I do this several times. I look, I
|
|
peer, I scrutinize.
|
|
|
|
Adopted. No doubt about it.
|
|
|
|
I think about telling Jackie and Marty about the Eyestones, but that
|
|
would probably be a bad thing. Something tells me that I shouldn't,
|
|
and I probably won't. Things are fine, things are smooth, there's no
|
|
reason to bring up things that have nothing to do with anything.
|
|
|
|
"So Marty," Brad says.
|
|
|
|
"Marty," Brad says again. He's talking to me. I forgot.
|
|
|
|
"Yes, Brad," I say. He doesn't look so handsome anymore, I'm thinking.
|
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He looks old and tired. Every time I look at his face, I imagine him
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crying in the arms of the bleached blonde Em, saying those four words,
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_Me and Michelle both_.
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"How's the job?" he asks me.
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+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS, VOLUME 2 ISSUE 1, TMR
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o William C. Burns, Jr. (burnswcb@gvltec.gvltec.edu) is a nationally
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published author of poetry, engineering texts and science fiction
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|
short stories. He is an artist as well. Many of his murals and
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|
sculptures are on permanent display at various colleges as well as
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|
numerous, privately held works. He is indigenous to the eastern part
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|
of the planet and sustains his family teaching electrical engineering
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|
courses. Other occupations have included pumping diesel, mining coal,
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peddling heavy equipment and fixing traffic lights. His poem,
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|
_Twilight Dancers_, appeared in Volume 1, Issue 4.
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o Mitchell Cleveland (puffball@halcyon.com) works for an environmental
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|
consulting company, doing something with computers and spending your
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|
tax dollars.
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|
o Richard Cumyn (aa038@cfn.cs.dl.ca) has had fiction published in a
|
|
number of Canadian publications, including the prestigious _Journey
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|
Prize Anthology_, and can be read on-line in such e-zines as
|
|
_InterText_ and _The Blue Penny Quarterly_. He lives and writes in
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|
Halifax, Nova Scotia. _When I Get Back From the Holy Land_ is one
|
|
story in the collection, _The Limit of Delta Y Over Delta X_,
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|
published in 1994 by Goose Lane Editions. You can read more about
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|
Richard on his World Wide Web home page at
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|
http://www.cfn.cs.dal.ca/~aa038/Profile.html.
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|
o Robert Fulkerson (rfulk@creighton.edu), Editor, is in what should be
|
|
his final semester of graduate studies. Whether this is actually the
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|
case remains to be seen. He spends most of his time passing his lovely
|
|
wife in the hall, since their graduate studies and work arrangements
|
|
don't allow for much time together.
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|
o Julie Keuper (a013183t@bcfreenet.seflin.lib.fl.us) was born in June
|
|
of 1975. She still lives with her parents and hopes to escape soon
|
|
before it is too late. She is a journalism major with a minor in
|
|
political science. She tries to write some everyday. She began writing
|
|
at the age of seven and probably (hopefully) will never stop.
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|
|
|
o Doug Lawson (boothby@aol.com) has been a Henry Hoyns Fellow in
|
|
Creative Writing at the University of Virginia, where he's currently
|
|
teaching, and he'll receive his MFA in Fiction this year from the very
|
|
same place. He's been a co-moderator of America Online's Fiction
|
|
Workshop, currently edits _The Blue Penny Quarterly_, and has work
|
|
published or forthcoming in _The Willow Review_, _Al Aaraaf_, _The
|
|
Alabama Fiction Review_, and other literary places.
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|
o In a universal context, Matt Mason (mtmason@morpo.creighton.edu),
|
|
Poetry Editor, is almost infinitely insignificant.
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|
|
o Pearl Sheil (pearl@bpecomm.ocunix.on.ca) has also had a poem
|
|
published in _Atmospherics_. She is in her last term of her Honours
|
|
B.A. in Linguistics, specializing in the teaching of English as a
|
|
Second Language. She will be looking for work as an ESL teacher in the
|
|
Ottawa (Ontario, Canada) area.
|
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|
|
o Arthur Shotmind (eddas@huber.com) is, in real life, Don Smith. "I
|
|
live in New Jersey where I work as a data administrator. I use the
|
|
pseudonym Arthur Shotmind (my middle name followed by a permutation of
|
|
the letters in "Don Smith") not for the purpose of anonymity, but
|
|
quite the opposite, in fact. Don Smith is a name that provides me with
|
|
all the anonymity I would ever need. There is another Don Smith that
|
|
works for my company. My wife's cousin married a Don Smith. On the
|
|
other hand, I bet you've never heard anyone say, 'Oh, you mean _that_
|
|
Arthur Shotmind.'" Arthur's (er, Don's) poem, _Philosophy_ was
|
|
published in Volume 1, Issue 5.
|
|
|
|
o Sung J. Woo (whirleds@delphi.com) is the editor of _Whirlwind_, "an
|
|
electronic literary magazine striving for the very best in fiction,
|
|
poetry, and essays."
|
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|
|
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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IN THEIR OWN WORDS, VOLUME 2 ISSUE 1, TMR
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|
|
o _Potter's Wheel--Shades of Arizona_ by William C. Burns, Jr.
|
|
"This particular work is a remembrance of my checkered college
|
|
days as an engineering student. I was not your typical
|
|
electrical engineering type. Whenever a little free time
|
|
materialized, I took art related courses, ceramics in this
|
|
case. I was befuddled when the instructor said we were going to
|
|
throw pottery, my mom had always been of a somewhat different
|
|
opinion."
|
|
|
|
o _Enigma_ by Julie Keuper
|
|
" I wrote this poem about a man in my math class who has some
|
|
problems. I found him intriguing so I created this about him. I
|
|
used the word enigma as the title because it really identifies
|
|
the man in my class correctly...'a mystery wrapped in a
|
|
riddle'."
|
|
|
|
o _When I Get Back From the Holy Land_ by Richard Cumyn
|
|
"I read the story, of women traveling to Israel to give birth
|
|
among dolphins in the Red Sea, in _The Globe & Mail_ a couple
|
|
of years ago. The character of Roweena had been rattling around
|
|
aimlessly for some time until the news story and the details of
|
|
her escape from her husband brought it all together. That she
|
|
would want her baby's first contact to be other than human is
|
|
crazy, pathetic, and hopeful all at once."
|
|
|
|
o _The Onset of Autumn_ by William C. Burns, Jr.
|
|
"Autumn is without doubt my most passionate season. I was on
|
|
the Battery in Charleston, SC on a partly cloudy day this year
|
|
and the scene I describe in the poem actually happened. My eyes
|
|
were closed when I was dancing, so I can't tell you if anyone
|
|
was amused."
|
|
|
|
o _In The Basement_ by Pearl Sheil
|
|
"'The Basement' was written from the thinking about the
|
|
expression 'bare floor' and thinking what its opposite would
|
|
be... thinking how someone might think a floor feels - a
|
|
harmless sort of application of imposing ones own set of morals
|
|
on something outside yourself in the case of a floor. The
|
|
egocentricity of the narrator is supposed to add to the sense
|
|
of absurdity in the way of thinking."
|
|
|
|
o _Supreme Extra Value Meals_ by Mitchell Cleveland
|
|
"Has anyone ever noticed that fast-food places all really serve
|
|
the same food? They all just take some kind of meat-like
|
|
substance and squirt it into a 'pattie' (or, occasionally,
|
|
'nuggets') and cover it with an algae-based vegetable goo. Then
|
|
they spend millions on television ads convincing us that their
|
|
meat-like algae pattie is better than the other guy's meat-like
|
|
algae pattie. Well, that's not what this story is about."
|
|
|
|
o _Night Light_ by Arthur Shotmind
|
|
"I don't know what it means, and I'd keep sharp objects away
|
|
from anyone who does."
|
|
|
|
o _Things In Motion_ by Doug Lawson
|
|
"For me, this story is an autobiographical nightmare of a
|
|
piece. It coalesced over a period of two years around the image
|
|
of the shaving brush, and the times my father actually did
|
|
shave my grandfather, who was bedridden from a stroke, in the
|
|
Methodist Manor of Branchville, New Jersey. (Parts of my
|
|
father's family can be traced back to the late 1700's in
|
|
northern New Jersey.) Many things are real, many are real but
|
|
twisted, many are based on nothing, but I'll leave it to the
|
|
reader to speculate on the specifics..."
|
|
|
|
o _Pictures of Perfection_ by Sung J. Woo
|
|
"This work was written during my senior year at Cornell and
|
|
presented at Prof. Robert Morgan's _English 448: The American
|
|
Short Story_ for workshop. Started on 1/6/94; completed on
|
|
2/8/94; final revision on 12/28/94."
|
|
|
|
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|
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|
|
WHERE TO FIND _THE MORPO REVIEW_
|
|
|
|
Back issues of The Morpo Review are available via the following avenues:
|
|
|
|
= Electronic Mail (Send the command get morpo morpo.readme in the body of
|
|
an e-mail message to lists@morpo.creighton.edu)
|
|
= Gopher (morpo.creighton.edu:/The Morpo Review or
|
|
ftp.etext.org:/Zines/Morpo.Review)
|
|
= Anonymous FTP (morpo.creighton.edu:/pub/zines/morpo or
|
|
ftp.etext.org:/Zines/Morpo.Review)
|
|
= World Wide Web (http://morpo.creighton.edu/morpo/)
|
|
= America Online (Keyword: PDA, then select "Palmtop Paperbacks", "EZine
|
|
Libraries", "Writing", "More Writing")
|
|
= Dial-Up Bulletin Board Systems
|
|
- The Outlands BBS in Ketchikan, Alaska, USA [+1 907-247-1219,
|
|
+1 907-225-1219, +1 907-225-1220]
|
|
- The Myths and Legends of Levania in Council Bluffs, Iowa, USA
|
|
[+1 712-325-8867]
|
|
- Alliance Communications in Minnesota, USA [+1 612 251 8596]
|
|
|
|
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|
|
|
|
SUBSCRIBE TO _THE MORPO REVIEW_
|
|
|
|
We offer three types of subscriptions to The Morpo Review:
|
|
|
|
= ASCII subscription
|
|
You will receive the full ASCII text of TMR delivered to your
|
|
electronic mailbox when the issue is published.
|
|
= PostScript subscription
|
|
You will receive a ZIP'ed and uuencoded PostScript file delivered to
|
|
your electronic mailbox when the issue is published. In order to
|
|
view the PostScript version, you will need to capability to uudecode,
|
|
unZIP and print a PostScript file.
|
|
= Notification subscription
|
|
You will receive only a small note in e-mail when the issue is
|
|
published detailing where you can obtain a copy of the issue.
|
|
|
|
If you would like to subscribe to The Morpo Review, send an e-mail
|
|
message to morpo-request@morpo.creighton.edu and include your e-mail
|
|
address and the type of subscription you would like. Subscriptions are
|
|
processed by an actual living, breathing person, so please be nice
|
|
when sending your request.
|
|
|
|
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|
|
|
|
Addresses for _The Morpo Review_
|
|
|
|
rfulk@creighton.edu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Robert Fulkerson, Editor
|
|
mtmason@morpo.creighton.edu . . . . . . . . . Matthew Mason, Poetry Editor
|
|
rummel@creighton.edu . . . . . . . . . . . . J.D. Rummel, Fiction Editor
|
|
kkalil@creighton.edu . . . . . . . . Kris Kalil Fulkerson, Layout Editor
|
|
|
|
morpo-submissions@morpo.creighton.edu . Submissions to _The Morpo Review_
|
|
morpo-request@morpo.creighton.edu . . . Requests for E-Mail subscriptions
|
|
morpo-comments@morpo.creighton.edu . . . Comments about _The Morpo Review_
|
|
morpo-editors@morpo.creighton.edu . . . . . Reach all the editors at once
|
|
|
|
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|
|
|
|
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES FOR TMR
|
|
|
|
Q: How do I submit my work to The Morpo Review and what are you looking for?
|
|
|
|
A: We accept poetry, prose and essays of any type and subject matter. To
|
|
get a good feel for what we publish, please read some of our previous
|
|
issues (see above on how to access back issues).
|
|
|
|
The deadline for submissions is one month prior to the release date of
|
|
an issue. We publish bi-monthly on the 15th of the month in January,
|
|
March, May, July, September and November.
|
|
|
|
If you would like to submit your work, please send it via Internet
|
|
E-mail to the E-mail address morpo-submissions@morpo.creighton.edu.
|
|
Your submission will be acknowledged and reviewed for inclusion in the
|
|
next issue. In addition to simply reviewing pieces for inclusion in
|
|
the magazine, we attempt to provide feedback for all of the pieces that
|
|
are submitted.
|
|
|
|
Along with your submission, please include a valid electronic mail address
|
|
and telephone number that you can be reached at. This will provide us with
|
|
the means to reach you should we have any questions, comments or concerns
|
|
regarding your submission.
|
|
|
|
There are no size guidelines on stories or individual poems, but we ask
|
|
that you limit the number of poems that you submit to five (5) per issue
|
|
(i.e., during any two month period).
|
|
|
|
We can read IBM-compatible word processing documents and straight ASCII
|
|
text. If you are converting your word processing document to ASCII,
|
|
please make sure to convert the "smart quotes" (the double quotes that
|
|
"curve" in like ``'') to plain, straight quotes ("") in your document
|
|
before converting. When converted, smart quotes sometimes look like
|
|
capital Qs and Ss, which can make reading and editing a submission
|
|
difficult.
|
|
|
|
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|
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|
|
Our next issue will be available on March 15, 1995.
|
|
|
|
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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