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... THE FALL LINE SPRING 2015 PIEDMONT VIRGINIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE THE FALL LINE Spring 2015, Volume 7 PIEDMONT VIRGINIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE The Fall Line, Spring 2015, is the sixth volume selected, edited, and produced by Writers Unite, the PVCC Creative Writing Club. Ashley Costantini & Lizzie Keatts, Co-Presidents Jenny Koster, Adviser Editors: Annette Cashatt Gannon Combs Olivia Cooper Russell Wright Lay-out and Design: [TBA!] Comic Relief- Steven Krenitsky Special thanks to the PVCC Copy Center for printing The Fall Line and to Aaron Miller and his Communication Design II class for designing this edition. This year, in addition to our submissions, The Fall Line is publishing the winners of the Writers Unite 3-Minute Horror Story Contest held in Fall 2014, as well as the winners of the colleges QEP [Quality Enhancement Plan] Essay Contest. Jennifer A. Koster Associate Professor of English/Writing Center Coordinator Piedmont Virginia Community College 501 College Drive Charlottesville, VA 22902 434.961.5478 (o) 434.961.5274 (f) www.pvcc.edu Table Of Contents 1 Elegia - Hannah Ho 2 Excerpts From a Book Ill Never Write- Ashley Costantini 5 Carrying Their Voices- Annette Cashatt 7 Run- Joseph Taglavore 10 Im That Girl- Eileen Wilcox 12 A Proposal Outline to End War, Hunger, Poverty, and Disease in the World- James Irving Mann 15 From One to Another- Veronica Haunani Fitzhugh 18 Nepenthe - Hannah Ho 19 Squabbling Gods- Spencer Wood 22 Image in the Mirror- Michelle Stanislaus 24 Too Busy - Annette Cashatt 25 The Woman of a Thousand Faces- R. Lewis Wright 32 In the Absence of You- Skyler Gunderson 33 Education Transcendence- Hana Alomar 41 They Live Among Us- Annette Cashatt 43 Unbarren- R. Lewis Wright 44 Today, Through Her Eyes- Mary Buck 46 Choosing My Future- Dorcas Yoder 48 Pac-man vs. Magikarp - Annette Cashatt 52 Chief Ellowis Grave- Joanna Vondrasek I. Cantabile In the dusky light dust-motes dance. Hints of gold glint in your eyelashes I am drawn to them as a moth to flame. Breath whispers on the surface of my skin. Fingers brush feathery patterns on my shoulder blade and the soft curve where hip meets thigh. II. Adagio You heard the whisper of falling mist and smiled at its soft melody, reverent. You traced the path of the moon across the night, brimming with glow, each kiss tasting of cool starlight. ELEGIA Hannah Ho III. Pianissimo I stare unseeing at the hazy glints of light reflected on the surface of my tea, and imagine for a moment that they are fireflies drifting through a summer night. IV. Pi mosso The bone-white birches stretch their limbs in the bitter breeze in the ancient swollen hills, veins of the earth where the sky bleeds into the horizon. V. Doloroso Stand, defeated in the rain the broken curve of your back a graceless threnody And I, as sad as a willow tree without any leaves 1 Excerpts From a Book Ill Never write Ashley Costantini I m three, and Im confused, and Im pretty sure North Carolina is a made-up state, like Arkan-soowah, or Nevada. They keep talking about moving South, after all, and everyone knows that South is comprised of New Jersey, Texas, and Washington, DC. I cling on to my grandmother as my uncles help load the moving truck that will carry us exactly 700.5 miles from New York to Charlotte and worry about whether or not they have pizza in such strange, mythical lands. They eat pasta, right? Raw mussels with lemon juice? Coffee with breakfast? (I will learn that they do not, and I will also learn that youre not really supposed to give toddlers coffee.) I will be pried, sobbing, from my Papa, and I will crave tricolore cookies that do not exist in places like North Carolina. I will be a product of two cultures, a foreign object in a Southern oyster. I will not become a pearl. **** Im four. Were sitting in another apartment. I dont remember which one this is, if its the one with the broken chimney or the one with the beautiful, shining lake that I discover years later was actually more of a drainage pond. Lets say its the latter. Memories could use a bit of romance. In a thick, Yankee accent, I practice the words Ive learnt at preschool like its a new language. Ma, whatre you fixin for din-errr? My mother laughs so hard she nearly drops the pasta, and calls every relative we have while I dig my toes into the ragged carpet and eat with the arrogant pride of a toddler that knows shes brilliant. We laugh. We talk. We ignore the empty seats. **** Another late night. Another grumbling stomach. Another cracked wall. Im five, and Im wondering why Im here, and why, if Heaven is so great, I cant be there. Its only a few days later that I learn I have a new father, one who art not in Heaven. I take it as a sign. 2 **** Were at a Fourth of July parade. Im eight, nine, ten, and my dad doesnt let us wave the flag. We dont salute. We dont Thank God for Our Troops. The sizzling juice from our neighbors hot dogs feels like a sin, and I ask again in vain why he hates the military. We still have your service badge, I complain aimlessly, wriggling my red, white, and blue painted toenails through my old Nikes. He tells me its all brainwashing and violence. I dont ask again. It takes three years, a wooden box, and two broken families for me to understand his hatred. It takes another year and an Iraqi refugee for me to share it. **** Okay, but will your real dad be there? The dust pricks my eyes like little bursts of sun, playing hidden amongst the pews. I dunno. Hes not, like religious. But I think so? The father frowns down at me, eyes kind and bemused, just barely missing the meaning of my words, like singing a hymn you havent heard in a while. Mr. Costantini will be there, you mean? Im twelve. Its the first time I have to defend what family means to someone that thinks it begins and ends in blood. **** I am a juxtaposition of assorted bones and tendons and joints jutting out at strange angles. I dont see my mother in my hips, triangles of hard stone sticking out from my form like the handles of a bicycle. I dont see my aunts in the patterns of my ribs, each one standing proudly visible. I am fourteen, sixteen, too old to be taken seriously, the same size now as I was when I was twelve and landing with a sickening crunch on the floor mat, bones cracking where my ass should be. (You know cheerleaders. If a girl falls in the middle of a stage and nobodys around to notice, can you still hear the retching in the bathroom stalls?) My mother looks at my legs. Thats just not fair. I think of the hunger in the pit of my belly. No, its not. **** I am a chorus of sins and the world is listening. Im fourteen when I have my first thoughts about a girl, when I cant help it. Which is fine. Ive always been okay with. that kind of thing. Except it isnt fine. Except its never been me that was One of Those, except it was never me that they talked about when they said girls can be hormonal. Every word Ive said about God and love seems hollow in my throat as I stare at the ceiling, and against everything I believe in, I whisper a desperate prayer. Just in case. I believe in God, but does He believe in me? **** The water in Queens isnt anything like the kind you see in Florida. I am seventeen, and the Woodstock bead I played with when I was two is now hanging from my neck. Its previous owner is floating out to sea, ashes flecked against teal water like an oil spill. The sight chokes me, but theres no National Geographic photographer to capture that, no clamouring outrage on behalf of a teenage girl, no petitions to put an end to sudden strokes. The tears come thick and fast, but understanding doesnt. Years will pass, and I will still be waiting for my grandfather to burst, larger than life, from the surface of the waves. **** Amazing Amy is touted as a villain, a liar, a detriment to feminism. She is the opposite of praxis, an example to be used and discarded. She wears the blood of her attacker like a turtleneck, flicks it from her golden locks and allows herself a moment of triumph, and where the media sees murderer, I see survivor. I am eighteen, and the tears in my eyes are not for him. Amy Dunne is not your Cool Girl, she is not your peaceful narrative of the silent victim, and she is not your shining star of a woman that has learnt her place. If only the rest of us could have such revenge. **** I am nineteen, and I am drowning in a city two sizes too small. I am a poor kid, a Yankee, a city dweller, a reluctant patriot, and my last name does not match that of my parents. I am a hungry cheerleader, a raging queer, a survivor and a sinner. I am ashes adrift in a boundless ocean. I am standing on a precipice, and all I have to do is fall. Carrying Their Voices Annette Cashatt Honestly, I dont think you can make it to a universitya GED is just a good enough diplomais English even your native language? Various people from my life People are cruel. Its a non-debatable fact of life; 99% of people will admit to being unkind at least once, and the other 1% are liars. We often speak of the external battles we face when pursuing our dreams, yet neglect our internal distresspain that is often caused by other people. I reached a point in my life that every time conflict came knocking on my door, I would lose some of myself and replace that piece of me with someone elses voice. I even began writing a poem about it that started like this: The ghosts from years past laugh at you. They nip at your heels then when you look down dissipate into nothing. They caress their fingers over your soul and whisper sweet nothings into your ear. But the ugly, blistered truth reveals itself when you reach out to touch, to grasp, to embrace and find yourself holding nothing more or less than smoke And right after that I wrote: I hate my writing. I can almost hear the little voice mocking my writing; it was the voice of someone who once criticized me, and then asked Is English even your native language? But I told the voices to shut-up. That summer, the water to our house was cut off. The short story is that my dad was dead, my mom and I were not quite making enough to make ends meet, and I was working part time while going to PVCC. I would fill jugs of water from the river and carry them up to the house, go to work, and then go to my evening class. Fast forward several weeks and we got the water turned back on just in time for the power to be cut. I would now go between two jobs, stay until 10pm at PVCC to complete my ITE119 assignments, and still do homework by candlelight on the weekends. God bless the computer lab and the library. Around then, I decided to get my GED. I studied every day, and received flying marks on my 5 test. When one of my friends heard this, he told me in all seriousness that it was really just a good enough diploma. An echo of another voice began to ring in my head. Soon after, I was practicing driving this same friends truck late one night. It was an old clunker, with the seat stuffing spilling out, and we had a blast driving it down the rural roads of Nelson County. But when we discussed possible colleges to transfer to, he leaned over and told me that that he did not think I can make it to a university. That night another badgering voice was hoisted onto my back. But I told the voices to be quiet. I stayed with my two part-time jobs. Then added a third job. Then a fourth job. Finding no time to sleep, I cut it down to two jobs. I was finally finding my rhythm Except then mom was diagnosed with stage three cancer last year. She did not have a car, but she had radiation treatments five days a week at UVA. We lived about forty minutes from the hospital, so for months my schedule became a hectic jumble of who-is-pickingup-who and may-I-pretty-please-have-an-extension-on-my-paper? She is now in remission and is doing well, thank God. Then our dog was diagnosed with cancer. It was surreal. The voices Id collected over the years opened their mouths and asked why I kept trying when nothing seemed to go right. Finally, I told the voices to surcease. And I continued writing my poem: Then the sun rises. It shatters the quiet night like a modern day bomb. It sweeps the cloth of stars away with a tapestry of colors - pale yellows, piercing blues, burning reds and dancing violets. The stone that has slowly sheathed your skin and encased your mind shys away from the light. But it cant hide - it breaks, it is destroyed by the warmth and its leftover pebbles are taken away by the wind. Once again, you breathe. There is an entire cosmos singing to us. If we never quell the voices we carry, we will never hear its beauty. A voice wont drown out my name when its called on graduation day. RUN Joseph Taglavore The sound of a set of fingers could be heard throughout room 832. Adie breathed a sigh of relief as she stretched back into her chair. How long have I been at it? She pondered to herself. She glanced around the once crowded computer lab, her eyes passing over the clock on the wall. Nine- Fifty! She quietly exclaimed. Adie stood up from her chair and walked toward the printer. The hum of the fan was the only noise save her feet hitting the cold blue floor. Adie searched the printer for her print job. Come on, where is it? Where is it?! She exasperatedly muttered. Her print job was nowhere to be found. She looked around and saw the remains of some poor students paper left on the desk. Huh? That wasnt there before. Or was it? She pondered this to herself as she crossed room 832 to investigate the abandoned workstation. Her eyes scannedthe papers and glowing computer monitor. A word document was open on the screen.18-21-14 18-21-14, the text read. What does that mean? she half wondered. BURRRRRM! Adie jumped at the sudden loud noise. Her heart skipped a beat. The printer hummed quietly after its initial outburst. Adie breathed an easy sigh as she realized how silly she was being. A printer, printing. Yup Adie, definitely a strange occurrence, she thought to herself with a smirk. She once again crossed the blue floor toward the printer. Finally I can get my paper printed. She picked up the troublemaking document. She quickly looked at the document. It took her a minute to make heads or tails of the thing. It was a black sheet of paper with green text on it. What kinda freaky class is this kid in? She asked aloud. She flipped over the document, and was greeted by the same message that was on the computer: 18-21-14 18-21-14. Is it a phrase? A problem? What is it? And what is with this green blob?! She asked loudly to no one in particular. BURRRRRM! 7 Adies heart and body collectively jumped for the second time that night. Freakin printer! She angrily spat at the machine. Another document had made itself known. Adie picked up the document and stared, slightly more unnerved than last time, at it. R2114 R2114. She read aloud. What does that me...? BURRRRRM! She was cut off again by the infernal machine. You know, youre really starting to get on my nerves! She angrily stated to the machine. It responded with yet another document. She picked up the new document. R-U-14 R-U-14. Roo14? Rout 14? What is wrong with this printer?! She huffed angrily. All I want is to print my paper! BURRRRRM! As if in response the printer gave her one final document. She dutifully picked it up and looked it. The paper contained the green blob again. Her eyes went wide. On the back of the document, she saw four lines. 18-21-14 18-21-14 R-21-14 R-21-14 R-U-14 R-U-14 R-U-N R-U-N Her eyes widened. She ran for the door. SLAM! The wood door slammed shut. She slipped on the first document. Her head cracked against the ground. The last thing she saw before blacking out was the cold blue floor. She finally knew what the green blob was. A picture of a student. A male student. Rendered in green text on a black background. BURRRRRM! The printer printed one more document that night. A picture of a student. A female student rendered in green text on a black background. With the numbers 8-5-12-16 13-5: typed on the back. The printer hummed contently. LOVE TREES Yu Prue I M T H AT G I R L 10 Eileen Wilcox A Proposal Outline to End W a r, H u n g e r, P o v e r t y , James Irving Mann I. Call for a seven day conference of world leaders in a neutral setting. A. Perhaps, Geneva, Switzerland would be a good place to meet. B. All leaders would be required to bring: (1) pictures of their children and/or their grandchildren (other family member pictures could be included, if so desired), (2) a three gallon container of their favorite ice cream, (3) a large package of their favorite cookies, and (4) their favorite axiom. II. A. On day #1 The leaders will share their pictures with one another and discuss the dreams and the hopes they have for their children and grandchildren. B. The leaders will also share what they feel is the most important gift and/or legacy they can leave their children and grandchildren. III. A. On day #2. The leaders will summarize their discussions from the previous day. 12 1. They will discover the greatest gift they can leave their children and grandchildren is a world at peace. a. All leaders will then decide to cease hostilities with other countries. B. A discussion will also be held on deciding what to do with all the weapons and armaments that each country still has since they no longer have any useful purpose. 1. It will be decided that a discussion on this matter will come at a later date. IV. On day #3. A. The leaders will spend the day sharing their ice cream and cookies with one another. V. A. 1. On day #4. The leaders will discuss ways hunger can be eliminated in the world. They will discover that when all countries start sharing their surplus food with other nations, there will be enough food to feed the entire world. B. The leaders will also discover that many countries will need newer and better farm machines to help in the planting and harvesting of future crops. 1. Concerns will be raised that the world may not have enough steel to manufacture such a large number of farm machines. a. One of the leaders (perhaps, it will be the King of Norway) will point out since all of the worlds weapons and armaments are of no use, they could be melted down and made into tractors, plows, and other farm machines. b. A motion will be presented to do so; it will pass by a unanimous decision. VI. A. On day #5. This day will be broken into morning and afternoon sessions. 1. In the morning session, the leaders will talk about their favorite axiom and what is means to them and how it has shaped their lives. a. Many of them will quote the Golden Rule in its various forms, meanings, and structures. 2. In the afternoon session, the leaders will discuss ways that poverty can be eliminated in the world. a. When the discussion turns to the elimination of poverty, it occurs to them that actually living by the Golden Rule would mean nations sharing their resources with each other and making sure all of their brothers and sisters in the world community are taken care of. b. A motion will be made (perhaps, it will be the President of Mozambique) who will say, that since the world has enough stuff , we should simply start living by the Golden Rule and begin sharing with our neighbors throughout the world. c. The motion will pass by a unanimous decision. VII. A. On Day #6. The leaders will discuss how disease and illness can be eradicated from the world. 1. The leaders will discover that war, hunger, and poverty are primarily responsible for many of the diseases and illnesses in the world. a. Hence, since these three Teratogens will soon be banished from the earth, the nations leaders will realize that they need to concentrate on their citizens maintaining a healthy lifestyle in an era of freedom and choice. VIII. A. On Day #7. The leaders will depart from Geneva and return to their homelands. 1. They will leave with peace in their souls, joy in their hearts, and a prayer on their lips as they look toward a future guided by a Divine Principle which states, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. FROM ONE TO ANOTHER Veronica Haunani Fitzhugh You spend a lot of time hiding who you really are. You think others will judge you unkindly if they knew the real you. You feel this way, because you judge yourself and others harshly and are overwhelmed with feelings of shame and hostility. I know you. I know there are multiple days in a row you cannot sleep. I know the deep phantom voices you begin to hear. I know the murderous plots you begin to believe. Insomnia, hallucinations, paranoia... I know what it is to not trust my reality. I know when you cant get out of bed. I know when you cant do the work of your life. I know when you cant learn anything beyond how much you hate yourself and want to die. Depression, lethargy, suicide... I know what it is to be a danger to myself. I know your impossible highs followed by your crushing lows. I know how you cheat, lie, and steal to try to make it better if only for the moment. I know your band aid solutions are wearing thin and will soon fall away leaving way for unchecked, unfettered severe mental illness with no coping or healing skills. 15 I know you very well. I know you feel lost. Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves. Henry David Thoreau This feeling of being lost means a time of growing and learning. Your current confusion has a reason. I know it feels like it will last forever. I know it gets in the way of your goals and hopes. I know you think no one is capable of understanding. I know it is painful. I know it seems like senseless suffering. Not all wounds are visible. Some we bury within ourselves creating for ourselves cages of secrecy. Your secrecy keeps you locked within yourself. Your secrecy keeps you from asking for life affirming help. Your secrecy slowly kills you. Free yourself from your secrets. Unlock yourself. Come into the light, and truly see yourself for the first time. To share your weakness is to make yourself vulnerable; to make yourself vulnerable is to show your strength. Criss Jami There will be an end. It will come with a lot of personal work and responsibility, therapy, medication, truth, and faith. It will take years. It will cost you transitory, illusionary things like wealth, fair weather friends, and prestige. It will also gain you amazing, lasting gifts like patience, compassion, and strength. Through your new blessings, you will heal the pain and estrangement in your family. You will learn how your mother views you as a woman of Aphrodite and Joan of Arc caliber. You will teach your father how to love without always understanding or agreeing with that loved one. Trust me. Our sorrows and wounds are healed only when we touch them with compassion. Buddha Your biggest hurdle is not overcoming any shortcomings due to your mental illness, but meeting yourself and others with empathy, acceptance, and kindness. You must learn these lessons for the suffering to subside. Until you put away your prejudices and criticism, the pain will seem insurmountable. No one is a bum. No one is crazy. No one is stupid. No one is worthless. No one is beyond love. Not even you. And learn these lessons you will, in lone padded cells, in baptismal pools, in handcuffs. Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars. Khalil Gibran And remember to be led by your dreams, not your memories. Remember your creativity in lieu of remembering your painful history. Remember the creative force who made you and loves you. You will find Her, too, in lone padded cells, in baptismal pools, in handcuffs. Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to the sunset sky. Rabindranath Tugore You are more than a summation of your past actions, thoughts, moods, and feelings. You are not your diagnosis. You are not the monster you paint yourself to be. You never were. Whether in times of personal calm or personal storm, you are always the heavenly sky. You are victory! You are a miracle! You are spirit! You are life! I was you. And you will be the best part of me. Yours Truly, Veronica Age 36 P.S. Dont be ashamed that I know your story. It inspires me daily. Your brilliance outshines all but the brightest of stars. Your face blooms serenely down at mine, upturned, luminous. Planes slice across the constellations, leaving gossamer trails in their wake. Whirling thoughts recall blurred fragments, dissonant loops of sound: Nepenthe Hannah Ho The crunch of frozen leaves beneath boots, a buttered half-moon, perfectly framed by inky branches painted against an inkier sky, the diaphanous sheen of faint starlight kissing your hair. Our perception of distance is a measure of heartache and restless dreams. From the top of the earth to the bottom of the sky, unbearably vast your day is my night, and I, mesmerized cannot fathom the depths of a single glance, let alone the infinity of your lips whispering life, life, life. 18 SQUABBLING GODS Spencer Wood This is a story told by the Undrani people, a small, bison-herding culture in the Maha mountains of central Asia. Right, so. In your grandmothers grandmothers grandmothers time, when people were wise and pious and respected their elders, and the Mother of Spirits was still smooth-skinned and starry-eyed, there was a god by the name of Koya, who governed malice in its lowest forms, and who was patron of the loud and the cruel, and who was kind of a twit. Each god ruled a world of their own; the Mother of Spirits plucked new gods from her mind (ahem); the Many-Mouths-Talker spun new stories for their people to tell; the Swallowing Thing ate the world to keep it from getting too big. In Koyas mind, his world was that of laughter and merriment, and his duty was to create as much of it as possible. Even if, more often than not, he was the only one laughing. Koyas sister was Agga, youngest and fiercest of the spirits, whose task was to protect the order of things; each thing had its place and shape and color, and Aggas job was to guard that order, and keep things as they were. She took her duty perhaps more seriously than any of those around her, not that she aware of that. Agga, naturally, was Koyas favorite target. Whenever Agga slept, Koya would poke tiny holes in the night sky, letting drops of day leak in. Try as she might, she could never plug them all up. Whenever she blinked, he would pluck each of the planets from their perch in the heavens and juggle them, getting their alignments all mixed up. Whenever she talked, he would switch her words with someone elses, until there were too many for anyone to remember. He was kind of a 19 twit, is what Im getting at here. Eventually, when Agga couldnt take any more, she decided to get back at Koya. Agga, though, was not a trickster, and didnt know how to play Koya at his own game. She was a warrior, fiercest of the spirits, and she decided to make him play hers. Right, so. Agga waited for a dark, warm night, when Koya was sleeping under the stars (his stars). She came upon him in the night, dressed as a wolf (all good hunters dress as wolves), intending to grab him from his campsite. But Koya slept lightly, and heard her approach (Agga was fierce, but perhaps she was not so subtle). Before she could come upon him, he hopped from his bedroll and ran off into the world, Agga giving chase just behind him. She chased him through forests and over plains, hopping from mountain to mountain, diving beneath the ocean, under and over the houses of humans (who were used to squabbling gods invading their homes in the dead of night by then, unlike the children these days, who rarely have to deal with more than a passing devil or two), tumbling from country to country, eventually world to world, jumping from one earth to the next. Finally, as day was just relieving night, they landed at the Bottom of Everything, where only one spirit lived. Koya landed first, crashing through the spirits house with a scream head all the way at the Top; Agga landed just after, nearly crushing her brother beneath her. The spirit woke with a start, not altogether surprised to see the two in his room at dawn, a fresh hole in the ceiling (this spirit was maybe not so different from humans when it came to dealing with squabbling gods). The spirit who lived at the Bottom of Everything was named Oyok, oldest of the gods. They (Oyok had no gender, the idea being too newfangled for a cosmic abstraction from the beginning of time) were the God of Curdled Milk, People Who Trip Frequently When Walking in the Forest, and Children Who Interrupt Their Elders Right in the Best Part of the Story (shhh). In the beginning of time, when the gods were making themselves, and choosing what they wished to govern, no one wished to govern any of the worst things; so Oyok, in their kindness, had chosen to govern all of them, so that none of the others had to. So they lived at the Bottom of Everything, all by themself. What exactly, Oyok said, grimacing, brings the two of you to my hut, at this odd hour? Koya and Agga gave each other no time to speak, trying to retell their story at the same time, contradicting each other at every turn. He poked holes in- She woke me up- He keeps changing my words- She chased me- After a few minutes of patiently listening and trying to decipher their story, Oyok silenced them both with a wave of his hand. The two of you have behaved poorly, each to each other, and for that, you must be punished. He turned first to Koya. Little Koya, the trickster, you are loud and uncaring, your amusement comes at the suffering of others, and you offer little to the world, less than even the smallest gods. In short, you are a twit, and your jokes are bad. Next, he turned to Agga. Fierce Agga, you are serious and quick to anger, and believe you can solve your problems with violence and force. You are fierce, but that is all you are. The two tried to interrupt, but Oyok silenced them both again. What you have done is wrong, and you must be punished. But it was also, maybe, a little funny. So, too, shall your punishment. Right, so. Oyok raised their arms and began chanting the ancient language of creation, from which all things sprang (though they didnt remember all of it, so they had to make a few words up). To their horror, Koya and Agga lost their place and their shape and their color, swirling together, their thoughts and feelings and bones and blood and memories and skin falling into each other like two waves crashing against each other, and soon enough neither could remember which was which. Oyok smiled, and looked at the single god standing where, soon before, there had been two. Koya-and-Agga was- were staring at their body in confusion, unsure of who they were and werent. Perhaps, little ones, you may now find harmony, between the fierceness and merriment, or duty and Well, being kind of a twit. And so it was that Koya-and-Agga returned to the earth theyd come from, unable to tell themselves apart, and taught the spirits around them the new thing Oyok had taught them, called balance. IMAGE IN THE MIRROR Michelle Stanislaus A s I sat at my desk on that cool summer evening, I found myself doodling my bucket list. It consisted of the basic things any person would write when they are looking at the second half of their life. Things like traveling to Paris, learning to play piano, and learning to speak Italian. Things that were all fun to consider. Then there was the big one, the one that was underlined, the one that had the stars around it: Go to college. I sat and thought hard about that one. I can do this, I thought. I knew there would be obstacles- money, time, and family- but I knew I could overcome those obstacles. However, I had one obstacle I did not know if I could overcome. That obstacle was the image in the mirror. It was me. Money was not an issue. I worked for a company that would pay for my education. Time, time was always an issue, but I knew if I thought hard and planned carefully I could find the time. My family was so supportive that I knew I could not use them as a reason not to go, so what was left? Why was I so afraid to go to college? It was me, it was that image in the mirror. I never felt that I was important enough to go. I was married at one time to a man that always told me, College was a waste of time. He would say things like, How stupid could you be to want to go to college at your age? He would ask, What will I get out of you going to college? Once those thoughts were in my head they just did not go away no matter how ridiculous I knew they were. I would hear his voice every time I looked at that image in the mirror. For many years other things needed to come first before I could ever consider going to college. I had three kids, which I was essentially raising alone. They were young; they needed an education way more than I did. The time I would need to spend on school was needed for things much more important like taking kids to sports after school, helping them with homework, making sure everyone had what they needed for the next day, running errands. I was a wife, a mother, and surely not a student. Now my kids are grown and out on their own. The husband is now an ex-husband. The obstacle are all gone with one exception, the image in the mirror. Now what was stopping me, nothing? I can do this, I thought. I needed to look at that image and realize I was deserving of a college education, and fifty three years old is only a number. I needed to take the voices in my head and put them out with the ex. I can do this, I can do this, I repeat- 22 ed time and time again. I replaced all the negative thoughts with images of me walking the lawn in a cap and gown. I needed to change the image in the mirror. I began with reorganizing my day. I took my wasted time and turned it into study time. I made my school schedule fit into my work day. I have learned to be flexible, and there are times when life just throws a wrench into my perfectly planned day. I have mastered the art of dusting myself off and getting right back on track. I am embracing the art of surprise in my new and wild adventure. After one semester of college under my belt the image in the mirror has a wonderful new look. It has the image of a woman, a mother, and a passionate student. Today, I love the image in the mirror. I was so busy, see So busy that Death couldnt be with me He tried to make an appointment (But my mom canceled it for me) Then he tried to surprise me (But my car had just burst into flames and I couldnt pay him any attention) A might bit exasperated now, he sent a doe to speak with me (But I had to swerve around her because I was running late and had no time to stop) What about me could it be? Death, my love, it just was never meant to be between thee and me 24 TOO BUSY Annette Cashatt THE WOMAN OF A THOUSAND FACES R. Lewis Wright There it was again, that annoying buzzing sound, pulling Katelyn out of the best sleep shed had in a month. She twisted and turned in the pale satin sheets, trying to avoid waking up, but the sound of her phone vibrating against the dresser began again. Reluctantly she threw the top sheet to the side and sat up in bed. She snatched the offending phone off the dresser and answered it. Speak, she demanded. A light, young, male voice on the other end said, Hi Katie. Its Max. I thought I told you and the agency that I was on vacation for the rest of the month. I also told you never to call me before 9 A.M. Im sorry if I woke you, but it would help if you told me which time zone you were in. Cut the baloney. We both know youve tracked this phone and know Im staying at a resort in Saint Lucia. Now I am going back to bed and after that, Im going to continue my vacation. Well, I hope you already took time to see the Pitons, because I need you, Katie; I need the woman of a thousand faces. She looked out the open window of her bungalow framed by the pale, gossamer curtains stirring in the warm early morning breeze. I told you to stop calling me that, and Im not taking another job right now. Ill make you a deal. Double your usual fee, and I promise to stop calling you the woman of a thousand faces. Max might be the closest thing she had to a friend. Being a private intelligence contractor was a lonely business, never knowing who to trust. The roaming lifestyle provided an ever changing array of scenery, but companionship, even having a pet, was an unaffordable luxury. Dont make promises you cant keep. Ill do it. He chuckled and said, Thanks, Tiger. I owe you one. The mission pack with pocket cash, details, and plane tickets will be delivered to your bungalow within the hour. She shrugged, hung up the phone, and headed for the shower. Twenty minutes later, while sitting in front of the mirror in her blue bath robe brushing her long, straight, naturally black hair, a manila envelope was shoved under the bungalow door. She walked over 25 and picked it up. Inside were all the usual little bits. She opened the passport to the photo page. Predictable, she said to herself. Max liked blondes and had put her picture on the passport with long blonde hair and generous candy apple red lipstick. Then she saw the name on the passport, Woatf, Willow E., and choked back a laugh. She shook her head and said to herself, Woatf, woman of a thousand faces, that joker. She pulled her two bags from the closet, and threw them open on the bed. The slightly smaller bag was filled with her wigs, makeup, latex facial appliances, and the other tools of her trade. She pulled on her red and orange sundress decorated with tropical flowers, blonde wig, and then packed the remaining contents of the closet into the larger suitcase. Two hours later she took the resort bus to the airport and boarded the first of two flights that would take her to London via Miami. The ticket, security, and border agents spent more time looking at her dress than at her passport. In the back corner seat of the first class cabin, she pulled the mission brief from the envelope and began looking over the details while the jet took to the air. It was a two part mission, surveillance and infiltration. The target was just your usual scumbag arms merchant, code named Scorpio, originally from some corner of Russia, and graduating to dealing in nuclear materials. The agency wanted her to watch his movements, listen in on his conversations, and get close enough to intercept his phone communications. Ultimately, she would break into his office and use the included USB drive to search his computer. She shuffled the contents back into the manila envelope as the stewardess arrived. Can I get you anything, maam? she asked. Just a glass of chardonnay, please. When Katelyn landed at Heathrow airport, she took a taxi to Piccadilly Circus. The plethora of shops, cafes, and neon signs around this traffic circle reminded her of New Yorks Times Square. She stopped the taxi and walked the remaining few blocks along Coventry Street, rolling her suitcases behind her until she reached the hotel Thistle Piccadilly, where her contact had reserved a room for her. The room was beautiful, more luxurious than she needed for this short-term assignment, with a separate seating area, and, as an added touch, Max had ordered up fruit and flowers whose beautiful fragrance greeted her when she opened the door. The bellman set down her suitcases on the stand near the closet and after she tipped him quietly exited. She unpacked a few dresses and hung them up in the closet, but left everything else in her bags. She was only scheduled to be here for five days, and preferred to remain prepared to leave in a hurry. First things first, she said to herself. She walked into the bedroom, slipped off the long blonde wig, and pulled the sundress over her head. She quickly changed into a pair of jeans, a gray t-shirt, and tucked her hair up under a black baseball cap. Time to survey the territory, she said out loud. Before leaving the room she grabbed her bailout packet from the hidden pouch in the lining of the smaller suitcase. It contained another passport in a fake name, two thousand Euros, and a lock box key. If the job went sideways and she couldnt get back to the hotel, she would have an escape plan. First, she walked casually around the area at least a block from her hotel. When she found a suitable place on a barely used side street and no one was watching, she slid the bailout packet into a small space at the meeting of two walls. Comfortable that no casual passer-by would accidentally discover it, she turned her attention to the job. Her target had rented an office right on Piccadilly Circus, and she scoped out the entrance, taking careful note of all the restaurants and cafes she could use for cover before returning to her hotel. The next day she tied her hair up at the back of her neck and wore a gray running suit. She spent most of the day bored, sitting in a coffee shop, staking-out the front of his building, trying to deduce the habits of her quarry. He typically wore dress shirts with black or gray slacks, and a medium length black leather coat. Usually, he left for lunch around noon, dinner around six, and returned after dinner. The surprisingly short Russian man with dark hair and several days of beard growth seemed to be staying in his office overnight, and always traveled with at least one oversized bodyguard. On the second day, Katelyn wore a simple black dress and conservative black heels. She had on a blonde bob wig and full makeup. It took at least an hour in front of the mirror each day for her to apply the makeup, along with any additional latex appliances. In her experience, minor facial changes were the key to a good disguise. It wasnt like being in the movies; no amount of foundation could cover excessive use of latex. A small modification to the bridge of her nose or airbrushed shadows to accentuate her cheek bones usually did the trick. Anyone could stakeout a target with a huge telephoto lens and a parabolic microphone. Working a target this closely required subtle and believable changes in appearance. She trailed Scorpio more closely, following him to one of his usual lunch spots. She looked so different each day that neither he nor his bodyguard gave her a second glance. Sitting at a nearby table, she watched him in her peripheral vision as he ordered a steak for lunch and drank a carafe of vodka. She nibbled at her plate of grilled chicken breast with buttered peas, ginger carrots, and steamed broccoli, while pulling out her tablet computer and inserting the special USB dongle which allowed her to intercept cellular phone communication. The targets phone, even though it was sitting silently in his pocket, updated itself on the network every ten minutes, and while he sat eating, he received several text messages. Once she had captured the unique identifier of his mobile device, she uploaded all the information she had gathered to the agency. They operated a sophisticated network of electronic listening stations, and with his mobile device I.D. would be able to record and decipher all his communications. When Scorpio got up to leave the restaurant from his table in the back, she made her way to the bathroom and, passing by him, took the opportunity to slip an audio bug, disguised as a one Pound coin, into the pocket of his coat. Day three, she opted for her silver business suit, white shell, square rimless glasses, and a medium length red haired wig. When she looked in the mirror, she didnt even recognize herself. She spent the day listening to the audio from the bug, and following him to lunch and dinner. He took several meetings with a variety of men and one woman, and as Katelyn watched them, she diligently but discreetly took pictures of everyone using cameras hidden in her ink pen, watch, and makeup compact. As usual, she uploaded everything to Max. Scorpio took the last gulp of his after dinner aperitif, wiped his mouth with his napkin, and headed for door. Walking past Katelyn, he took a second glance at the redhead in the business suit. Silently, she cursed herself. She had gotten sloppy, wearing the same disguise for lunch and dinner. If he had recognized her, she might have blown the whole operation. On the fourth day, she took more care. For the lunch game, she wore her jeans and gray t-shirt with the black baseball cap, but for dinner, she contacted on old resource to pose as her male companion. He had a narrow face, a pointy jaw, and looked good in his black jacket and tie. Hiding in plain sight while being the center of attention was one of her specialties. She looked stunning in a red oriental style satin dress with her long blonde wig. She and her tall dark-haired friend laughed and pretended to be on a date to deflect any suspicion. She dutifully took over fifty pictures and sent them all back to headquarters where teams of analysts would identify all of Scorpios contacts. Finally, the last day of her mission dawned. Dressed in a simple white shirt and black slacks paired with a shiny purple collarless jacket, she followed him at lunch. When he went to dinner, it was time to infiltrate the mans office. She was waiting, leaning against a wall half a block away, dressed in her jeans, a black t-shirt, and her long black parka. As soon as he was out of sight, she approached the door to the office. The door had a high quality electronic keypad lock, difficult to defeat directly, but the metal and glass door was too well used. There was a very slight gap between the door and the frame, into which she slipped a flat flexible piece of metal. In a second, the door unlatched, and she entered the building. Up two flights of narrow stairs and she was standing at the door to his office. She deftly picked the deadbolt lock and stepped inside checking the corners for video cameras. There was no desk in the office, which looked more like a lounge. White fabric overstuffed chairs and couches, along with numerous coffee and end tables, ringed the room. On the coffee table farthest from the door next to the large bay windows she spotted his laptop computer. She strode confidently across the room, opened the laptop, and inserted the USB drive, which broke past his password and began decoding his files. The infiltration program took a couple of minutes to run, and she used the time to poke through the targets email. She sat in stunned silence when she noticed a third of the mans communications were to or from the internet domain woodandtrail.com. She knew from experience that it was a cover for homeland security contacts, and opened a few of the recent emails. One in particular included photos of her walking in Piccadilly Circus wearing her blonde wig with the text Thanks for sending your agent. Shes been very helpful and agreed to work for us. The infiltration program had finished its work and shutdown the computer. They were running counter intelligence surveillance on me the whole time. Did someone at the agency tip them off? Katelyn asked herself in wonder. I need to get out of here, now! She pulled the USB drive and shut the lid on the laptop before running for the door. She leapt down the stairs two at a time, making a mad dash for the exit. Just when she reached the front door of the building, she met the target and his bodyguard coming back in. The bodyguard lunged at her and tried to get his massive arms around her. She ducked under his grasp and kicked him in the back of the knee while grabbing and pulling his shoulders from behind. His leg collapsed and he fell backward hitting his head hard on the unforgiving tile floor. When she turned to face Scorpio, he had a six inch flip-out locking knife in his hand and made a wild swipe at her with it. She felt the hot burning sensation as it cut her left arm from shoulder to elbow. She grabbed his knife hand and twisted it in a wrist lock, which forced him to drop the weapon. He went berserk, lifted her injured left arm, and began punching her over and over in her left side. What his attack lacked in finesse, it made up for in sheer ferocity. She jabbed the thumb of her right fist into the side of his neck, which stunned him long enough for her to get free, swivel around behind him, and put him in a choke hold. He finally went limp and dropped to the floor, just as his bodyguard was staggering to his feet. She didnt hesitate. There was no one now between her and the exit, and she made a run for it. She flew out the door and dashed down the street, away from the circus, in search of a secluded area to hide. After taking several turns, she found a deserted alley and dove into an open dumpster, pulling the lid closed over herself. She lay there in silence, leaning against the bags of smelly refuse, waiting. After a few moments, she heard the heavy, hurried footfalls of her pursuers run past. Katelyn stayed there for ten minutes to make sure they didnt double back before she pushed the lid open with her one good arm and dragged herself out of the dumpster. She flopped onto the ground like a fish, gasping for breath, and clutching her broken ribs with her injured left arm. The pain caused her to take halting breaths, but it was bearable. She lay there looking up at the clear starry night sky and took a moment to thank those stars she was still alive. She had evaded capture, but laying there she couldnt ignore the facts of her situation. The mark had escaped, and due to the information he had sent them, the agency now believed she was a turncoat. She sat up and climbed the side of the dumpster to help her stand, shakily. She searched around until she found some fairly clean napkins and used them to wipe the blood and grime from her face, arms, and legs. Then she straightened her hair and pulled her coat tightly around her slender frame. Exiting the alley, she walked a block and a half on the dark and deserted street before she spotted an open coffee shop. She slipped through the door and picked her way around the dozen patrons some standing and some sitting in booths with red velvet benches, making her way straight to the ladies toilet. Once inside, she locked the door behind herself and pulled her coat off to take stock of her situation. Her left arm had stopped bleeding from the long gash and didnt appear to be broken. She touched her left side and winced at her painful ribs, but they would heal. From the looks of her injuries she could avoid going to the hospital, although tomorrow she would be covered with dark bruises, impossible to ignore. From the pocket of her coat, she retrieved her compact and began applying her makeup again. She tied her hair up in a bun at the back of her head just as someone began knocking on the bathroom door. Just a minute, she replied. She braced herself for anything as she opened the door, but it was only another woman, waiting to use the facilities. Katelyn checked the dining area and the street outside for any signs of her enemies and, when she was sure it was safe, slipped out into the moonless night. She thought it doubtful they had traced her back to the hotel, so she retrieved her bailout packet from its hiding place and decided to carefully work her way back to her room. She was able to get through the lobby without anyone noticing her wounded condition. Once in her room she took a few minutes to scrub out the gash in her arm, apply alcohol, and bandage it with gauze and medical tape. Then she switched into a clean pair of jeans and a long sleeved black shirt, that would hide the bandage on her arm, and was ready to leave the room in less than fifteen minutes. On her way out, she stopped at the front desk, just long enough to drop off the key and told the stunned clerk, Im sorry. Im in a hurry, just bill the card on file. She stepped into the waiting cab, and then noticed a man emerge from the dark alley across the street. He was smoking a cigarette, watching her. Max didnt smoke, but this guy seemed familiar. Then she recognized him; his name was Martin. He was a washed up field agent, assigned to a desk after a series of dubious failures. Her phone beeped. Martin disappeared, walking along the street as she looked down to check her phone. The message from Max read, Major blowback from operation. Ghost until I contact you by alternate method. She flipped the phone over, popped off the back, pulled out the SIM card, and snapped it in half. She wanted to ensure she wasnt followed, so she asked the driver, Im leaving London tonight, would you mind driving me past a few sites? He was only too happy to run up the fare. She directed him to drive by Trafalgar Square and the Millennium Wheel before finally going to St. Pancras station. She arrived only moments before the last departure and boarded the high speed train heading through the Chunnel to Brussels. She kept a small crappy apartment there, stocked with an assortment of non-perishable food and a shelf full of books, on the third floor above a little pastry shop. The tiny flat barely accommodated a bed, mini-fridge, microwave, and a bathroom. The walls and door were painted with an ancient black lacquer, which looked strange in the modern compact florescent lighting. On her way from the rail station she stopped in a grocery and, while ensuring her trail was still clean, grabbed the essentials. When she arrived, she plugged the mini-fridge into the electrical socket, and stored the groceries inside. She would need to stay here and keep out of sight for a couple of weeks until Max posted the prearranged phrase on the internet forum. The agency might not trust her right now, but she knew she could count on Max. He would signal her when the coast was clear and she could resume her normal routine. She pulled her copy of Sun Tzus The Art of War from the shelf and eased her aching body down on the bed. She couldnt relax as she continued to seethe over the betrayal. Martin had, almost certainly, sold her out. Her next task would be to track him down, beat some answers out of him, and settle the score with Scorpio. Wistfully she looked around the tiny cell and lamented, What a way to spend the rest of my vacation. This time last week I was enjoying a beautiful bungalow in paradise, and now look at me... In the absence of sound we bled into each other. Dividing The cells in our bodies rubbed raw Rubbed out Gone. *** IN THE ABSENCE OF YOU Skyler Gunderson In the absence of you I bled into the ether. I me you alone In the absence of ether (which never existed, you know.) I bled into me. and inside of me I found you. 32 E D U C AT I O N TRANSCENDENCE Hana Alomar T hinking back, my life seems like a dreary made-for-television movie; surreal and packed with nightmares and cliched violence. So many people hear my story and comment on my ability to overcome situations. However, I do not feel exceptional or like a heroine. I feel my actions were (and continue to be) the ones of a woman with something to live for, with something to prove, and with something to accomplish. Wouldnt everybody persevere through these horrors to get what they wanted? Ever since I could walk and talk, all I ever wanted was to learn. I asked for a lunch box, backpack, and notebooks for my 3rd birthday so my mother and I could play school. My mother, an elementary school teacher taking time off to raise her family, and my father, an instructor in the U.S. Air Force, were thrilled about my interest in education. They continued to nurture this academic curiosity into my teens. Despite my interests and their promotion, as a teen I was only an average student. However, I never let my lack of excellence stifle my desire to continue learning. I attended a local college my first year out of high school. Although my grades from high school were enough to get me accepted into a few universities, I was undecided as to a course of study (major). While my family was considered middle class, I had to take two jobs to help pay for school 33 (my grades did not earn me any academic scholarships, nor did any other special talent or ability). The first semester was a disaster and I landed myself on academic probation. I could not juggle work and school with the social life I was desperately trying to hold onto. The second semester I performed much better and barely brought my G.P.A. up high enough to transfer to Virginia Commonwealth University i Richmond, where I was going to study Mass Communications. My first year at VCU was a customary experience. I lived in the on-campus dormitory and worked two jobs as a student assistant in the English Department and as a mail room assistant for the upper-class dorm. However, I felt a huge disconnect from my peers - something in my life was still missing. I felt socially stunted - an infant amidst young adults. At 20 years old, I still had never had a boyfriend (or anything even close to one) while all of my new college classmates and old high school friends were past their adolescent interactions and were committed in serious relationships. It made me feel inadequate, abnormal, and estranged from society. During my second year at VCU, I met an Arabic man through my best friend (who was dating the mans cousin). He was intriguing and charming with stories from places around the world - places I had always dreamed of seeing. The best part was that he was interested in me! I was enthralled. Finally I could participate in the same lifestyle my friends and peers were - a lifestyle that was expected of me as a young woman from my own family, friends, and society itself. i Literally grabbed onto the first man to come along and was determined to make the relationship work. School, family, and all other aspects of my social life suffered as a consequence of the importance and attention I gave this man and this relationship. Two months after meeting him, we moved in together, and four months after that we were married. The marriage was a private (and secretive) affair as my family was opposed to the rapid succession of events, the difference in age (I was 21 and he was 35), and the cultural disparities. Unbeknownst to me at the time of our marriage, I was pregnant. This fact alone solidified my resolve to make this relationship work, putting ALL else aside to ensure its success. I tried to finish out that academic semester, however, the pregnancy and my new husband proved too much for me to handle. My husband began showing extreme control, suspicion and jealousy, becoming threatening and forceful if he felt I stayed after class too long and questioning library visits or other meetings to work on group projects. I withdrew from all classes, intending to return after the birth of my baby. Instead, within 6 months of my first childs birth, I was pregnant again and my husbands violence paranoia and suspicion were beyond control. Life became very scary. As the years passed, I continued to try to make my husband happy, to create a loving household and to be the woman both society and my husband expected me to be. I was beginning to realize the contradiction between the two could never be reconciled. At this point, I remained in the horros and violence of my everyday life for the sake of my children (or so I thought). I sacrificed any ideas of ever returning to college to earn my degree so that I could keep my family together as a unit, no matter how dysfunctional. Unfortunately, the violence, humiliation, shame, abuse and terror continued to escalate. After six children, complete social and familial isolation, and five years of a bruised, broken and shattered existence, my husband finally cracked. At approximately 4:00 P.M. on January 9, 2003, my husband attacked me more violently than ever before, threatening and assaulting me with a gun. After putting the gun down to continue assaulting me with his hands, I acquired the weapon myself. The long-story-short version of events is that I shot my husband, called the police to report my actions and surrendered myself to jail. The jail officers informed me immediately that my six children were dispersed into four different foster homes. The threat of a trial and life imprisonment loomed over me for over a year. Upon entering the jail, I met several women familiar with the Virginia Department of Corrections and womens prison facilities. The question of whether or not I would serve time in such an institution was never an issue. The real question was how much time I would have to serve. I was handed down a sentence of 35 years with 21 of those suspended, which I quickly learned meant that I would be going away for 14 years. I immediately formed alliances with other females who were also on their way to (or back) to prison. I tried to learn as much about what lay ahead of me as possible - what the facility was like, the officers, available employment,programs and classes. I learned I could earn my college degree from behind bars if I could finance it through correspondence courses. I made goals for myself - number one on that list was to leave prison with a college degree. When I reached Fluvanna Correctional Center for women late in 2004, I immediately inquired about taking correspondence courses and earning a degree through such classes. The costs were astronomical! I immediately was disheartened. Financial assistance was only available to offenders under age 25 - a youthful offenders grant. Traditional forms of financial aid were inaccessible to me because of my incarceration and offender status. My family was taking care of my six children after being isolated from me for five years preceding my arrest - there was no way I could ask them to sacrifice anymore or to reallocate monies to me that were intended to be used in raising my children. I resigned myself to the situation and realized a degree was not in my immediate future. However, I also realized that many educational opportunities lay before me at the institution. I refused to sit idly by, marking my time off a calendar and wasting time away. I longed to be productive - to learn. More importantly, I was free to learn - free from the demands and restrictions of my husband and free from so many so many of the responsibilities faced by my un-incarcerated peers. The vocational programs offered at Fluvanna caught my interest, particularly the ones requiring higher minimum requirements. I began with the Optical Lens Technology class - an all day class that taught ophthalmology and the craft of making eyeglasses. I found the math very challenging, however, felt something inside me awaken. It was a hunger, a deep yearning for knowledge and learning. Upon completing Optical, I enrolled in Computer Aided Drafting and learned how to draw up schematics and floor plans using computer software. I explored the advanced aspect of CAD learning 3-D drafting. During the CAD class, the institution began accepting applications for participation in a new Braille program. Those selected would learn how to read and produce Braille, transcribing books for visually challenged public school students in Virginia. I applied and was selected as one of the 12 offenders to participate in the Braille program. Within 2 years, I submitted a Braille manuscript for evaluation and received my Braille Transcriptionist Certification from the U.S. Library of Congress... but I still didnt have my degree. I enrolled in Electrical classes while learning Braille, ensuring busy days and a plethora of information to keep my mind active. During this time, a new program was introduced to FCCW - Ms. Doris Buffet, sister of Wall Street magnate Warren Buffet, was to offer college scholarships to 25 offenders through her Sunshine Foundation. I submitted my application minutes after learning of this program. I was selected as a Sunshine Scholar to earn my Associates Degree through Piedmont Virginia Community College. At this time, I still had seven years left on my sentence - my goal to earn my degree before my release was rejuvenated! I submersed myself in my studies while maintaining employment and participation in other programs and vocational classes. My children began to see me as a role-model of perseverance and determination. I used my situation and hard work to illustrate to them that regardless of circumstance, great things are possible. I taught to avoid a defeatist attitude and to always look for the opportunities that abound in any given situation. I completed my Associates Degree and am now working towards my Bachelors in Sociology through correspondence courses. My church, upon hearing of my continued drive and tenacity regarding education, is sponsoring me, paying for the courses and course materials. Included in the furthering of my education, I have continued to take classes at PVCC that interest me and/or will be useful towards my B.A. Education saved my life. Education salvaged the lives of my children. Observing me in my circumstances and my actions and attitudes regarding education instilled a desire for learning in my children. My oldest daughter graduates from High School just after my release. She is a National Honor student and will be attending college on an academic scholarship. My other children (aged 12 to 17) are all honor roll students as well, and each have plans to pursue a higher education. My children beat the statistical odds prescribed to them by society and created by those who came before me. They were able to do so because of the opportunities I took advantage of as a survivor of domestic ause and a convicted, incarcerated felon. Education saved more than just my life - it saved my family! MY MESSY ROOM ALPHABET Yu Prue THEY LIVE AMONG US Annette Cashatt H e eats the shadows, one by one by one. They always squeak such as rats are prone to do whenyou douse them in kerosene and violate their noses with phosphorus. Not that his elegant claws have ever done such a grotesque thing; he leaves that sordid business for the calloused help. Sometimes though There are times (When hes not filling his misshapen belly with the souls of the unfortunate, whistling a perfectly pleasant howl that would raise the hair on anyones skin) That he perches on the slants of roofs and stares down at the abyss of humanity. He watches the swarms scuttle by as the roaches they are. They crawl over each other, clambering to the top, sliding back down under a stampede of kicks, knuckles, thrusts; they look quite orderly though. They never actually press flesh, but they all know what theyre doing every single day. Except...except theyre always oblivious to the unseen and while they scrape their knees every day to their owners, they actually believe they are free. And he simply must filthy his hands with the Homo sapiens. How can you not? Some among the circle of brethren argue he has a choice. Why be amid them at all, they say. Because, he tells them, humans are art in motion. To ignore them would be to sip the finest wine ever tasted, but sully it with rotten meat, and decaying flowers. Of course he must be among them. He drifts to the pavement now. Old glass crunches underfoot and a tin can rattles as something scurries away from him. Its sundown and the citys odor shifts from putrid pollution to the 41 spices of a restaurants barbeque and sauted mushrooms. His lungs take in a deep inhalation of air and another scent: the delicious aroma of human. Humans have intense scents; exquisite and varied fragrances. Fear gives off a sharp taste, while anger is a bitter and musky thing. Happiness is faint, but sweet, and nervousness seems sour. Everything inbetween merges into a blend of fine eating, and he can smell it all wafting by the alley. He falls in behind a young couple. Theyre holding hands and walking their ridiculous little lapdog. To the world they seem quaint and happy. To him, he smells the truth; the woman is wafting off bitterness, anger, resentment; the man is slightly angry, but mostly nervous. So, where were you last night? she asks suddenly. The man shrugs and mutters something about just being out with a friend. And why did she have to be so nosy? That sets her off. Hed love to stay and listen to the couple fight, but he just spotted supper. Its an old woman sitting alone on a bench, tucked away in an alley. She wears a too-large coat, probably a rescue find from the Goodwill. Her hair is frazzled and thin. Shes the lady children often stop to stare at, or talk to, before their parents whisk them away. flesh... He lands just beside her, eyeing the ragtag coats hem. It reveals a sliver of still unwrinkled Oh there is my baby, oooh? You cutie, have you been naughty, hiding from mama? she asks. She throws a handful of crumbs to the ground and he, as well as a dozen other pigeons, begins pecking away. (He can wait. What species ever reveals itself right away?) Parched ground, smooth cracked clay, thirsty earth absorbs the first droplets of rain. Welcome bits of joy on desolate plain. UNBARREN R. Lewis Wright Teardrops from heaven become a deluge. Craving moisture, unable to consume the onslaught, relief turns to death, destruction, and chaos. Life reborn from rushing water and earth. Famine survivors now feast. Days beyond count, escaping all memory. trekking in the desert, forgotten in one moment. Granted the essential element, the invisible host offers up its cherished bounty. 43 T O D AY, T H R O U G H H E R E Y E S Mary Buck Things are different today. I dont know why. Nothing smells strange. I see you and you are here. But things are different today. You call me to you and you smile. I come. I always come when called. You pet me and you tell me things. Good girl. Sweet girl. Baby girl. I wag my tail and I smile. I smile. But you cant see my smile. Happy. Glad. You rescued me. Ill never forget that. I lick your hand and then I go lay down on my bed and blanket. But things are different today. Im running today and we are playing. The sun is warm and the breeze is cool. You throw my toy and I take it and run. You yell at me but you are just playing. You chase me but you are just playing. Im running today. You follow me and you take my toy. You throw it for me. You tell me to get it and bring it to you. I always do. Today is a good day. Im running today. You have to leave today. Im not sure what you mean. You leave and come back every day. Im at a different house today. But my bed and blanket and toys are here. Things are different today. You smell of sadness. You have wetness around your eyes. You tell me that you love me. You pet me and tell me things. Good girl. Sweet girl. Baby girl. I lick your eyes and I smile. But you dont know that Im smiling. Its okay. I love you. You rescued me and Ill never forget that. You have to leave today. You are gone today. You have been gone. You said you had to leave. But you always come back. I dont know where you are. I sleep. I eat. I bark. I play. But you are gone today. I catch your smell on the woman and the man. But they are not you. They put a thing to my face and tell me to say hello to mommy. I dont smell you. I dont feel you. I dont hear you. You are gone today. I am running today. I see chickens. I smell trees. The sun is warm and the breeze is cool. I see a squirrel and I chase it. The woman yells at me to come. I am running today. I sit at a tree. The squirrel is there. I lay down. He will come down. Today is a good day. The man yells at me to come. The man pets me. The woman pets me. I wag my tail and I lick their hands. They are nice to me. They sometimes smell of you. I am running today. You are here today! You say its only for a little while. The woman hugs you and there is wetness around her eyes. You smell different today. I follow you. You pet me. You sleep and I lay next to you. You are here today. We play. We laugh. I am happy. I love you. You rescued me. I remember. Today is a good day. You are here today. I am tired today. I get up. I lay down. I eat. I sleep. I go outside. I dont smell you today and I am so tired. The woman talks to me. The man pets me. I dont wag my tail. I dont take the treat. I lay on my bed. I lay on my blanket. I get up. I sniff my toy. I lay on my bed. I am tired today. I hurt today. Something feels painful and different. You are not here today. The woman takes me in the car. A man looks at me. In my ears. In my mouth. In my nose. He presses on my belly and sticks something in my rear. I dont like him. I hurt today. He pets me but I do not lick 44 him. He smells different. He doesnt smell right. He smells of death. He gives me a treat but I dont eat it. The woman talks to the man and then looks at me. There is wetness around her eyes. She smells of sadness. I hurt today. Today. Tired. Hurt. Sleep. No eat. Too hard. Go outside. Hard to breathe. Lay down. Sleep. Hurt. Tired. Today. You tell me goodbye today. You give me chicken nuggets and French fries. You carry me. I lick your face. There is wetness there. Your eyes. Your nose. You tell me things. Good girl. Sweet girl. Baby girl. You pet me and kiss my head. We are in a room today. There are two woman. They smell different. They dont smell right. They smell of death. The tall woman pets me. You look at the tall woman and she talks to you. The other woman puts her arms around you. She smiles and she pets me. There is wetness around her eyes. The two women leave You look at me. You smile. I smile but you cant see my smile. You see my eyes today. You see me today. I hear you today. I feel you today. I see you today. I love you, my dear, sweet Mandi. I hear my name. I lift my ears. I wag my tail. You put your arms around me. You squeeze me. I feel happy. I hurt. Im tired. But you are here today. You are going to feel better, baby girl. I promise. No more pain. You kiss my nose. I lick your nose. Your eyes are different today. Things are different today. You are here today The two woman are in the room again today. The tall woman talks to you. The other woman puts her arms around me. She holds my paw today. You kiss me. You tell me things. Good girl. Sweet girl. Baby girl. The tall woman puts something into my arm You tell me goodbye today. My pain is gone. My weariness is gone. You promised no more pain. I feel no more pain. You never lie to me. You rescued me. Ill never forget that. You took my pain away. Ill never forget that. I smile but you cant see me smile. I wag my tail but you cant see me wag my tail. I lick your face but you cant feel me lick your face. Happy. Glad. My pain is gone today. You took my pain today. You tell me goodbye today and I am free today. In loving memory of Mandi July 1996-April 2012 CHOOSING MY FUTURE Dorcas Yoder T he cold wind stung my tear-stained face. My feet grew numb as I trudged through the snow in my worn-out tennis shoes. Crying, cold, and hungry, I had spent all day wandering the frozen fields and woods behind my home. Without any food, a coat, or a phone, I felt as lost as a three year-old wandering the Rocky Mountains. I sat down beside a fence post and hoped it would shield me from the wind. I thought about my high school classmates and wondered if they had missed me. I considered my options and wondered what would happen if I stayed here in the woods. I wanted desperately to escape my life, but I knew that was impossible. I had left the house earlier that morning after an argument with my parents about whether I should go to school or work. My parents needed money. They wanted me to get a job and give them my paycheck. I didnt want a job. I wanted to finish high school and go on to college. My future looked as promising as a dead end street. Even if I finished high school, I knew my parents would want me to get a job and help them pay off their bills. College wasnt a part of their plan for me. They didnt understand why I wanted to go to school. For them, working at Food Lion was a perfectly acceptable career. For me, a life as a cashier looked as depressing as a life in prison. I wanted options, and I wanted an education. What I didnt realize then was that my winter morning spent wandering through frozen fields would prove to be a day that shaped my life. It was a day when I decided that my circumstances would not determine my future. Although they looked overwhelming, I realized that I could choose to fight my circumstances. Like Liz Murray, when she was waiting for her letter from Harvard, I realized that my life could never be the sum of one circumstance. It would be determined, as it always had been, by my willingness to put one foot in front of the other, moving forward, come what may (321). Like Liz Murray, who chose to finish high school against all odds, I chose to go to college even though it seemed impossible. As a teenager wandering through snow-covered 46 fields, crying because my parents wanted me to quit high school and work, I chose to disrespect their wishes and finish school instead. Two years later, I chose to move out of my parents house, support myself, and start taking classes. For my first semester, I worked all day and took classes during the evening. I was broke, and I was barely surviving; but I was happy because I was pursuing my dream. I had chosen to finish my education, but it was a choice I would have to make over and over. At the end of my first semester, when final exams were looming over me and I was still working nearly full time, I chose to use every spare moment I had for studying. During the summer, when it was 95F outside and I wanted nothing more than to jump into the pool and then lay in the hot sun while looking at the Blue Ridge Mountains, I chose instead to use my summer as a chance to take extra classes. I missed my summer vacation, but I knew Id never regret taking classes to get a jumpstart on the fall semester. A year after I first started taking classes at PVCC, Im still a busy student, and I choose every day to reach my goal of finishing college. When the late nights of studying get exhausting, when balancing the schedules of work and classes seems overwhelming, I remind myself of the choice I made as a teenager. Wandering outside in the cold that day, I chose to not let my circumstances keep me from pursuing my dreams. It was a choice that I would have to make over and over, but it was a choice that I would never regret. PAC-MAN VS. MAGIKARP Annette Cashatt Ye days ere old, ye birth of that which we do not say came to be...and conquer In the latter part of President Carters office, in the midst of the assassination of John Lennon, the Chinese year of the Monkey, twas the year 1980. Comrades of company Namco ventured into the new and seething, twisting territory of video games. Programmers wept with carpal tunnel syndrome night after night, searching for a new game to pour into their magic computer screens and befuddle their children. Namco vowed to respond to the demand for a new instrument of mind torture. Born of their terrific yet highly disturbing imaginations, the one doom-slayer was born. They called him Pac-Man. Mortals knew not of Pac-Mans inner-most nature. He was presented, with much fervor, as a hero to all, a champion of all that is good and comely. Meanwhile, his adversaries were cast as vengeful antagonists of a most hateful nature. This unbalanced divide between Pac-Man and his foes was even seen in their appearances. Pac-Man was the color of fresh corn on a hot summers day and was perfectly round and pleasing to the eye. His foes, however, were crafted like crude picket fences. Jagged and of an assortment of odd colors, with demented eyes that rolled in their sockets like marbles in a jar, they were clearly neglected and abused in their period of creation. His foes were hence called Pinky, Blinky, Inky, and Clyde or collectively the ghosts For many years these two groupsthe so-called protagonist and antagonistsmade war with one another. As ever many a battle was fought, the object of glory was nourishment. Pac-Man was rapacious, gluttonous and heinous, however. The main stapledotswere coveted by his mammoth of a mouth and the special treatsstrawberries, cherries, bananas, and such things.were especially tantalizing to him. The ghosts necessities of life meant nothing to him and indeed he would as soon see them starve into the void. Indeed, he conjured spheres that allow him to decimate the ghosts. Once he cast his voodoo over the spheres, the ghosts became vulnerable to Pac-Man and he would leap upon them in a fury fearful to behold and swallow them whole! They would reappear after a time, in a box so tiny it was unsuitable for bread, with their egos and mental states reduced to a fragile crisp of their former selves, and all the while Pac-Man continued his slaughter. Eventually they would escape their minuscule prison, but frightened and distraught.1 For a quarter of a century they fought, with Pac-Man always seizing the upper hand.. Through the trumpet calls, falling banners and blinking GAME OVER, the ghosts hung on by a thread, their sanity long past devoured by the spacious jaws of Pac-Man. That was until the year of the Rat, during President Clintons office, the time where Walkmans, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Nirvana reigned. It twas the year 1996. In yonder year the birth of a magnificent game came. Its songs were sung across the lands like a phoenixs praises. It was Pokmon for the Gameboy. 1This experience is especially distressing to Pinky, who is claustrophobic. 48 Meanwhile, the leader of the ghosts, Pinky, was plotting. She was a simple being, not unlike her friends, except she had developed a wily cunning streak bred of sheer experience fighting the monster. It was a desperate ploy, dangerous and unheard of. It had to work though, for all other options had run out. Pinky had to burst forth from the confines of her world and into another world. From there she would entice a fellow creature to come into their world and with utmost haste dispatch Pac-Man forever. October 23rd dawned as bright as any other. Everything was as per usual, with no more extraordinary events occurring than were usual in the world. There had been one little odd thing, though. All who had a network connection and turned on their Pac-Man game discovered a malfunction: Pinky was completely absent. Our small heroine, Pinky, was barreling through cyberspace. She thrust her way past, between, over and even through streams of nonsensical code. Pinky slivered between hundreds of gateways, doorways to hundredsthousands!of games. She knew not what she was seeking. Then she stopped dead, hovering just outside one gateway. It towered out from the abyss, golden light seeping out of its edges. This was it. Pinky cracked the seal of Pokmon: Blue and dived in. She landed in the pixelated cyan water of Lake Eriwin. She, a non-mortal creature, felt, smelt and touched nothing, though saw everything. Like a stone on sea, she sank into the water. The lake was almost deserted, save for a few tiny fishes darting about. Disappointed, she rose to the surface. Wait! At the shore was a disturbance. She drew closer, curious Where the water mated with land was an elephant of a man. He had barbarian muscles and a thick neck and wore nothing but a thin muscle shirt and jeans. He pointed one hamsized finger at a creature in front of him and laughed. The creature he laughed at would have fit neatly into his massive palm. It was shaped like a fish, but with the whiskers of a lion. Its scales were smooth and shiny, an elegant combination of scarlet and gold. The fish began to thrash about in the shallow water, splashing water onto the barbarians boots. Pinky floated a little closer, hovering just behind the fish now. The man stopped laughing. He started screaming. He could not give the ground under his feet away fast enough. As he ran off into the distance, he yelled something that escaped Pinkys ears. It was just one word: Ghost. Pinky was more than impressed: she was stricken with the fish. What type of beast could strike such terror into a big mans heart? There was no doubt. She had found their defender. Friend, she bellowed. Whats your name? The fish flopped around until it stared up at her with one of its massive eyes. Its eye was yellow and glassy and rolled back and forth with wild abandonment. Pinkys respect was deepened. What a monster! Whats your name? Pinky asked. It croaked, and then screeched MAGIKARP! [An ode to Magikarp] Flail! Thrash! Splash! One, two, three! Be all you can be! Glitter and gold and honey of old Pac-Man is all glitter and gold and honey of old. Red and gold and crown of old. and the crown of old for old nobility. Yet under the glitter is dust; Under the gold is mold; and the honey is far too old. Flail! Thrash! Splash! One, two, three! Be all you can be! Red for blood! gold, pure and lovely; MAGIKARP! The arena was set. The curtains opened. The stage prepared. The time had come. They all gathered in Level 1, huddled in an unseen corner. Twas October 24th and Pac-Man was deep in slumber. Without Pinky, he had relished a particularly boorish day of consumption and desired an intense rest. Magikarp barely spoke, but this fact only embellished upon them a sense of its deep royalty. Clyde drifted into the room. It was their own room, invisible to humans and inaccessible to PacMan. If the ghosts wishes were to become true, they would never venture from their room. However, they had an obligation to go forth and battle with Pac-Man over the dots for food. The room was a cozy hideaway, built from their own imagination and grasp of programming. A bowl of orange tulips floating in water, shag rugs, and sleek metal tabletops filled the space. It expanded and shrank to each ghosts desires and not one ghost saw the room quite the same as the others. What did Magikarp see? Mayhap we shall never know. Perhaps it saw as humans did the visible Level 1, a sea of blackness lit only by the ghosts auras and neon borders. Perhaps it swam at the bottom of an ocean or an ice-cold lake. Or maybe all it saw was a gurgling, seething splatter of colors and twisting shapes. Its time, Pinky, Blinky, Inky and Clyde chorused. The room began to shrink, giving everyone the intense feeling of being pushed through the cork of a bottle. Magikarp rolled its eyes back in its head and flopped left to right. A burst of white and they materialized in a small neon box on a black screen. na-na-tee-dee-dum. The arcade music began. GAME START! READY! nom nom nom. That was Pac-Man chewing through the dots. The ghosts slid out from the narrow entrance of the box with Magikarp in tow. They circled to the right and up and to the right again. There was Pac-Man, at the end of one long onyx corridor. Magikarp was at the other end now. Pacman gazed at Magikarp, his mouth opening and closing like a ridiculous plastic flamingo at a mini-golf course. Magikarp simply stared back. Now Pac-Man thundered down the corridor. His eyes were blazing like the fires of Dante and his roar was akin to a thousand packs of wolverines. Magikarp was a credit to its ancestors. It floated, steady and true, with an unerring grace and an unflinching nature of pure steel. It merely swished its tail and screeched SPLASH!2 The ghosts were tight on Pac-Mans tail, determined to prevent any cowardly escapes. Truth dawned o the moment. Pac-Man fell upon Magikarp. He unhinged his mighty jaws and his cavernous hole stretched to its fullest extent and then, in the flash of an eyelash, he swallowed Magikarp whole. Glop! The ghosts froze where they were, horror etched into their features. Pac-Man twirled about, smug as a little yellow bug could be. Pinky stopped where she was, as if permanently paused. A long, low whimper escaped Inkys mouth. Then another cry, and another, until the Ghosts Wail was born. Low and mournful, echoing with a haunted sorrow, it drowned out the dee-dee-bop arcade music. Pac-Man flinched. Then shuddered. Then his eyes bulged like a googly-doll. The ghosts stopped and stared as the events unfolded. Pac-Mans movements became jerky and twisted. His skin protruded out in little bumps like some creature was in his mouth with a BB-Gun and a case o pellets. HARR-AEICH! The shrill scream came from Pac-Man. Never had he made a sound before and never would he again. Magikarp! cried Pinky. SPLASH! SPLASH! bellowed Magikarp. Its head now stuck out from Pac-Mans mouth. Pac-Man made gurgling noises and frantically shook himself. Nothing happened, though Pac-Man became more panicked as he fought to dislodge the obstruction in his throat. It was to no avail. Pac-Man gave one last heave, sputtered and then fell. As his body hit the black screen, it dissolved into tiny wisps of gold. Hell be back, Pinky said, right away. 2 Splash is an unknown command; we hypothesize it is a powerful tribal chant from Magikarps home land. Sure, but I bet he wont be so friggin greedy, replied Blinky Thank you! You are one cool cat, Magikarp. The praise and thanks were echoed by all the ghosts. Magikarp blinked, looked at its audience and then croaked one word: Splash... So thus concludes the legend of Magikarp and its entrance into the arcade world and its valiant battle with Pac-Man. Pac-Man did come back, but he nere dared to cross paths with Magikarp again. CHIEF ELLOWIS GRAVE Joanna Vondrasek w, e the fifth grade campers, decided to scare the fourth graders. We sat roasting marshmallows and scheming outside of our cabin. We had already taken the little kids to the grave a simple cairn on a wooded hill, adorned with multicolored gods eyes. In the waning hours of daylight, we had told them the tragic story of Chief Ellowis beloved daughter, her untimely death, and the Chief s continued haunting of the camp, which could be countered only by squawking like a chicken and walking backwards after visiting the grave. The counselors were already irritated with us because a few of the first graders had returned to camp crying. We collected the fourth graders and began walking toward the grave, spinning tales and singing the mournful Chief Ellowi song. It was moonless and dark by the time we reached the gravesite. Wed sent two girls ahead to hide in the bushes near the cairn to jump out at the appropriate moment in the story, which theyd accomplished with aplomb. This had the unexpected effect of sending two of the fourth graders, Traci and Amber, sprinting and shrieking back down the trail toward camp. We were startled by their sudden exit and decided to take the remaining fourth graders and our accomplices calmly, but quickly, down the trail, skipping the backwards chicken walk. We arrived back in camp and saw the counselors casually sitting around the fire. We asked if Traci and Amber were okay, and they looked at us blankly and asked us what we were talking about... werent Amber and Traci with us? The panic began to rise in my throat. The adults mobilized and began a search of the woods. A few other fifth graders and I were sent along the path toward the main lodge to search. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes ... fruitless, empty calls of Amber! Traci! We returned to camp, unsuccessful and scared. The fire was out and it was dark. The counselors had returned, unsuccessful as well. The camp director suddenly turned to us. Did you do the chicken walk when you came back to camp? No -- wed been too concerned about Traci and Ambers sudden flight to go complete the ritual. Well, said the camp director, you had better go back and do it right this time. We inched our way to the gravesite, whisper-singing, dutifully circling the grave, and beginning the chicken walk retreat. As we descended the trail, someone saw something move in the bushes. We all clumped together, grasping each other, whimpering, and shuffling as a single unit toward the safety of camp. We heard another noise from the other side of the trail and turned to look. There was 52 nothing there. Suddenly, with an explosion of leaves, a specterlike figure leapt out behind us. A second, moaning figure followed close behind. Never before has a group of ten-year-old girls moved as quickly as we did. We barreled into camp to find the fire relit and the adults doubled over with laughter in their camp chairs. One counselor even fell out of her chair. Adrenaline coursing through our bodies, we stopped and stood, lungs on fire,dumbfounded. As a unit we turned to investigate the trail behind us -- the terrible truth dawning on us -- and saw Amber and Traci, sleeping bags wrapped around their shoulders, rolling on the ground, laughing. Yu Prue The Fall Line: Anarrow zone that marks the geological boundary between an upland region and a plain, distinguished by the occurrence of falls and rapids where rivers and streams cross it.  ...

... THE FALL LINE PIEDMONT VIRGINIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE SPRING 2014, VOLUME VI THE FALL LINE PIEDMONT VIRGINIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE SPRING 2014,VOLUME VI THE FALL LINE Spring 2014, is the sixth volume selected, edited, and produced by Writers Unite, the PVCC Creative Writing Club. PRESIDENT Ryan Harris ADVISER Jenny Koster EDITORS Ashley Costantini Lizzie Keatts LAY-OUT AND DESIGN Pennie Newell FALL LINE (noun) 1. The natural boundary between an upland and a lowland marked by waterfalls and rapids. 2. An imaginary line along the eastern United States between the Piedmont and the Atlantic coastal plain. Special thanks to the PVCC Copy Center for printing THE FALL LINE and to John Kingsley and his Communication Design II class for designing this edition. This year, in addition to our submissions, THE FALL LINE is publishing the winners of the Writers Unite 3-Minute Horror Story Contest held in Fall 2013, as well as the winners of the colleges QEP (Quality Enhancement Plan) Essay Contest. INSIDE THE FALL LINE WRITINGS ART Vinegar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 PAGE TURNER Drawing Solla 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 ASHLEY COSTANTINI Gabby S011 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 A Greyer Beard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10 DANA RIGG Sally Humes, Blind Contour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Spring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 RYAN HARRIS Taylor Wright, Charcoal Shapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Love Song . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 APRIL OLIVER John Merkle, Charcoal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 Oh Nellie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 JO ANN MOORE Emma Vreler, V010 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Simple Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 QUINCY WRIGHT The Disappearance of Nathan Polk . . . . . . . . . . 28 AVIE THACKER Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 CALEB KELSEY Self-Portrait . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 RYAN HARRIS Joseph Holsapple, New Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Levi Houk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Eric Valtierra, Birdy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Emma Vreler, Inquiry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Chris Williams, Hopper Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36 NICOLE HARRER Sally Duinn, Inquiry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 ASHLEY COSTANTINI Maddie Feden, Zapped . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43 Ekphrasis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 HANNAH HO Gabriella Streit, Inquiry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Ni Hao . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 KATYA BEISEL Jimmy Galano . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49 Dog Gone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48 JOHN RHEA Ashley Garner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 ANTHONY JEWETT Ebony Bibbins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52 Ablaze . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 DANA RIGG Maddie Feden, Inquiry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53 Granny Who . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 QUINCY WRIGHT Kate Snell , Z was Zapped Inquiry . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 RYAN HARRIS Pennie Newell, Graphite & Chalk . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 VINEGAR Page Turner MotherAmerican Heritage Dictionary, noun 1. A female that has borne an offspring. She gives birth. It was in February, on the first. I hear it was in a snowstorm. My grandfather, flies a small plane to Charlottesville to see me, excited about my birth. My father is an architect. She once worked in New York on the runway. Tall, stunning, and beautiful. I am a teenager. Her closet is filled with sweaters, shelves and shelves of sweaters on the left. The walk-in closet is white wood paneling, real wood, not the cheap plastic wood. Bags of dresses on the right in which evening clothes are enshrouded like butterflies, ready to shed their cocoons and take flight. Sacred dresses. I never touch them. On the evenings when she went out, she always started in the bathroom, putting on her eyes and red lipstick. Sometimes I would sit and watch her ready herself for the evening. I could only dream about ever looking like her. I felt so plain and boring. I didnt wear makeup and I hated wearing dresses. Most of the time I was in jeans and at the barn. After her face was done, she would go into her bedroom and shut the door. I would sit down and wait for her to emerge. She would come out of her room bearing an aroma of rich flowers, slightly sharp around the edges, and looking more than beautiful. Bedecked in gold and either diamonds or pearls, she looked like a queen. Before leaving for the evening, Dad would drape either her fur stole or fur coat around her tall, slim body and they would leave for an evening of sophisticated entertainment. It all sounds so wonderful, so normal. Its not. It never was. Always a drink in her hand. 4 THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College Sophisticated entertainment was a party with friends. Lots of booze and a little bit of food. In time, she skipped the beautiful dresses. Parties were free booze. Dad doesnt go. Pictures in the hallway tilted helter-skelter. Asleep on the toilet mothered 1. to give birth to; instigate and carry through She instigated, and she carried through; Three girls A lifetime of division, friction, anger, hurt, pain 2. to watch over, nourish and protect No watching over Controlling No nourishing Feeding No Protecting Punishing 3. A woman having some of the responsibilities of a mother: a house mother I went to Villa Maria in seventh grade, a Catholic boarding school. Sister Anna was our housemother More like a house witch. Long bulbous nose with a hair growing out it. Flat out mean and ugly. 5 Sister Anna is really mad! Shes been mad since yesterday. She isnt paying any attention to us! Every time she comes in a room, it becomes silent cause everybody is scared theyre going to get into trouble! It snowed and we didnt have school. -February 1, 1972 mother(2) n. a stringy slime composed of yeast cells and bacteria that forms on the surface of fermenting liquids. It is added to wine or cider to start production of vinegar. Also called mother of vinegar. [Probably from MOTHER, partly from association with afterbirth] Mother is the bottom gunk in non-filtered vinegar. It makes more vinegar.When I lived in Switzerland, there was a jug, made of grey pottery. The mouth of it was quite wide. The liquid inside was dark and aromatic. Whenever we had leftover wine, it went in there. The mother made it into vinegar. I have always wanted a mother, and to make vinegar. Now I have one, a mother for apple cider vinegar. The organic, non-filtered apple cider vinegar sold at health stores, Trader Joes and Whole Foods, has a mother. But I still need a mother. Vinegar, bitter, acidic, not drinkable Slimy, bacterial fermenting Starts the vinegar Mother Yes, she was our mother. We are the vinegar. 6 THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College Drawing Solla 6 7 UNTITLED By Ashley Costantini QEP Essay Contest, Honorable Mention W hen I blinked awake, my first thought was something along the lines of arson and homicide, as was typical of the average pre-teen when woken before noon. Luckily, due to my receiving less than ten hours of sleep, I was too lethargic to act on these aggressive urges, and instead rolled out of bed with all the grace and charm of a dying antelope. The thin, tattered carpet barely clung to life beneath my feet, which was enough to remind me that I was in my grandparents apartment- a fact that roused me from slumber far more effectively than the bracing chill of the early morning. Stumbling to the kitchenas per protocol in any Italian householdI found a slice of fresh bread and chewed languidly, watching the shadows of the city cast dancing figures on the tiles. It was 6 a.m, which was an ungodly time for anyone to be awake, but I was excited. The pot that stood, tall and proud, upon the surface of the stove promised what Id been yearning for since I was old enough to walk and complain at the same time: the family sugo recipe. Id been stirring the gravy and ducking the spoon since I could remember, but Id never known how to make it myself; the wafts of fresh tomato and basil and garlic would billow around my face, and it always felt like home, no matter whose home it was cooking in. To be able to make it wasnt purely a question of age or skill any fool could throw tomatoes in a pot and stir but a test of the heart. 8 (Cooks are born, not made. Of course, one can learn, but only a true cook can make. Thats what separates food and sustenance.) My grandfather lumbered in, a great big wall of a man with meaty hands and a beard like a forest. He spared me a smilemy smile, the one where his eyes crinkled at the corners and his mustache twitched up in a parabolaand waved me closer: You dont make gravy by sitting on your ass. Sleep was still heavy in my stomach, melting through my heels and rooting me to the floor, but I was nothing if not stubborn. He set me to work chopping the garlic (an age-old task of great skill and prestige) and began a long line of instructions that I struggled to memorize.The kitchen quickly began to fill with that fragrant steam of tomatoes and spice, and I hurried to finish before I was soaked. Eventually, he directed me to fetch the fan from the dining room and I did, struggling under the weight of the ancient device. Its blades were slow dinner plates coated in what I suspected to be the same amount of dust located beneath my bed, and it cut on with a grinding noise that foretold of the Great War of Sin and Vice, as was written. Demonic appliances aside, I was finding my niche. I was small enough to avoid getting underfoot, but nosy enough to manage being mildly annoying, which balanced rather nicely. Once the spices had been sufficiently added, the gravy was set to simmer until we added the meat. The trick to a good sauce, Papa said, punctuating his words with a jabbing finger, Is THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College 9 to give it time. Nothin special about my recipe, it Thats the thing about cookingits aint hard, but youve gotta let it cook. Thats the raw and natural. You dont need to dress it up problem with jar-sauce. People rushing, rushing, or make it pretty. Good food doesnt just keep rushing. Dont wanna give it time to be good. people alive; it brings people together, makes them laugh and talk and yell. Good food simSo we gave it time and waited by lolling on mers on a stovetop and lets you stick your finger the maroon couch, eating good bread with olive in when the old people arent looking and brings oil and watching the Food Channel. Problem you home after a terrible day. Good food, with her, Papa would begin, Is she uses too more than anything, comes from good people. much. You dont need all that for a good steak, yeah? You got to let the meat speak for itself. Some people paint. Some write. Some And when the time came to add the meat, sing and dance and understand calculus. And we did: browning it, letting it sing its own song. somethe ones that are very luckycook. A GREYER BEARD THAN LAST YEAR By Dana Rigg Im sitting at the bar in our kitchen watching my dad make beer. He siphons the dark malty mixture out of the metal pot on the counter, and it rushes through a clear hose into a glass bottle the size of a child. He dips a bit of the liquid out into a beaker, and then floats a bubbly glass measuring device in it. He mutters numbers to himself. I dont say anything, and he doesnt say anything. I like watching my dad do things hes good at and knows a lot about. I get the same feeling when were in the car together, and he starts explaining Middle Eastern politics for half-hours at a time. Look at it clarify already, he says, without glancing at me. If the whole batch ends up that clear, it will be good. I was noticing that, I say. Even though were speaking, the silence isnt broken. 10 THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College Gabby S011 11 SPRING By Ryan Harris As a child, I climbed trees, pressed lips to branch, peeled back bark to expose pale wood-flesh. My mother, the realist, would watch me cradled by chinaberries dangling one-armed and shed tap windows to draw me down; she did not trust the earth, not like a child can. I stripped boughs for swords to fight off bees and ants, the monsters of my primal flesh memory. I buried my feet in sand and asked, of course, for tallness. I wished for branches and birds nests and I whispered to dead leaves, gave them each names (these repeating often, as there were billions) and gave them sanctuary under my bed, on the windows and when I grew older, I scattered them all across Florida, as much a mother to them as their own. 12 THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College Sally Humes, Blind Contour 014 13 LOVE SONG By April Oliver QEP Essay Contest, Honorable Mention I can still see her sitting on the top step her already broken spirit with the foulness of their of that old houses antique porch, head bowed words. They engraved her memory with the looks in shame, posture slumped in hopelessness and of disgust on their faces when they noticed the despair. The warm air swirled around her as if to bulge beneath her shirt. It was at this time that embrace her in a badly needed hug and the smell her self-image was altered. It was during this time of honeysuckle filled her nostrils as the hot July that she made a promise to herself that no matsun scorched the nape of her neck. It was sum- ter what the future held, she would endure with mer now and school was out of patience and long-suffering. She I can still feel that litsession so the thrilled voices of would be more than a just a children playing in a neighbor- tle girl as the emotions mere survivor, she would be a ing yard echoed in the air. They raged within her, too conqueror, withstanding all the seemed to be enjoying their day many to decipher at turmoil that pursued her dreams. while hers was falling apart. Sorthe time. Yes. I remember that young row flooded her eyes, spilling lady so vividly, whose innocence over like a gushing waterfall tryhad been stolen by the bitterness of past wounds. ing to find its way, creating a pool of wetness upon Within her formed a blessing, breathed on by God, the shirt she used to bury her face in. She was only that people would try to make her believe was a fifteen. A child trapped in a womans body, faccurse. She sat there as if in a trance, rehearsing how ing adult circumstances. The sting of life had crept she got to this point. Late nights, sweet talk, nave upon her and was bound to change her forever. giggles and a young man so charming she couldnt I can still feel that little girl as the emotions help but be enticed. He was her Mr. Right, or so raged within her, too many to decipher at the time. she thought, fulfilling all of her unspoken desires, She was afraid but excited, defeated yet somehow giving her all of the attention shed been longing for. persevering. She was heavily burdened and con- She was in heaven, having no idea that this heavenly fused, searching for some light in a world of dark- realm was really a mirage induced by infatuation. ness. Who could she talk to? No one seemed to She spent most of her days with him and eventualunderstand. Instead of lifting her up and offering ly some nights, too. She was thirteen and he was reassurance, people beat her down and bruised sixteen, both allowed entirely too much freedom. 14 THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College They continued on like this for two years strong before things began to change. Arguments became physical and she acquired new habits to deal with the pressure. Soon she began skipping school just to be with him every moment, and even though she knew she was messing up, she just couldnt seem to stop this downward spiral. She was in love and just refused to let it go, dedicating all of her time and energy into making it work. Eventually, she became pregnant, and while she thought this would bring them closer together, he decided that the stress was too much and disposed of her, leaving her to fend for herself. Once again she was alone. Her family began treating her like a failure and parents withdrew her friends. For now she was considered to be a bad influence and, who knows, this pregnancy thing just might be contagious. She was treated like an 15 infectious disease, isolated by the embarrassment she had brought to her family. She soon became a master of disguise, learning how to hide all of her pain, and living each day became a challenge. Then one day she met Love. Love came to her in many forms: women of wisdom, divine intervention and the new life that had formed within her. Love became her companion and delivered her from herself. Love picked her up out of that dark place and taught her that she was not a problem but that she was a solution. Love taught her how to laugh again. Love taught her how to trust again. Love taught her that even though she hurt right now, she would be a testimony to the other young women that were enduring similar circumstances and that she was being conditioned for something greater. Love put a song in her heart. I was that young girl and love taught me to overcome. OH, NELLIE By Jo Ann Moore I am driving through the beautiful countryside on my way to Charlottesville, Virginia. It is a cool crisp morning in December and the sun is shining on the barren trees. This is not my first trip to Charlottesville; I have been here twice before with my friend from New York, Adah. Adah Anita Lotti is a medical student at the University of Virginia. She will be graduating next spring and she will be the first woman to become a doctor at UVA. We are old friends, and she is quite a remarkable woman. So remarkable that I have found myself moving down here. Even if nothing develops between us, we will still always be friends. Moving down here is a good decision either way because I have a job and an apartment waiting for me. On one of my previous trips, Adah and I visited a local speakeasy, The Town Club. Thats how I met Nellie, the owner of the club and the drug store that is the legitimate business upstairs. Nellie and I became instant friends and she offered me a job as the bartender in The Town Club. Nellie is the type of person that makes you feel warm and welcomed as soon as you meet her. When talking to Nellie it feels like shes giving you a big warm hug. I dont know if its her smile or the way she looks at you, but it seems to come from deep inside. Im looking forward to the change; it is time for me to leave the city. to them, sitting outside her store. I think the feeling is mutual between them and Nellie. She is well liked and respected by everyone in town, but you can tell she is a lonely soul and helping them brings joy to her already big heart. I get out of my car, walk up, and nod good morning to the gents. They nod back. I wonder how many of them know whats going on in the cellar of the drug store. As I walk into Millers, I see the stairwell that goes to the two apartments to the left just in front of the main door. Thats where I will be living, on the second floor; the third floor apartment is vacant. In the drug store I am met with a variety of fragrances that are overwhelming my senses. I cant distinguish the perfumes from the soaps. On the left is the counter and behind the counter is Nellie. I have never seen her in the daylight before, but she is still a striking woman for her age; she must be in her early fifties. She has not had an easy life; her husband died of influenza just six months after they were married. That was thirty years ago and she has never remarried. She has no children. The only thing her husband left her was this drug store and a lot of debt, but that didnt stop Nellie. She is a fighter who has done everything to survive, and she has done it well. Behind the staircase that goes up to the apartments is a broom closet and when I park my car on Main St. and I see sever- you open the door you see the mop, bucket and al locals sitting out front of Millers Drug Store. brooms that are used to clean the drug store. You Some of them are down on their luck, and Nellie would never see it unless you knew, but if you push makes sure they dont go without food and that past the cleaning supplies and knock on the wall everyone has a warm place to stay. It is a comfort in a special way; one slow, hard knock followed by 16 THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College three fast, tap, tap, taps, the back wall miraculously opens and you walk down the steps into another world. This other world is not available until later in the evening, after the drug store closes and the streets are empty. She opens every day but Sunday because Nellie would never open The Town Club on Sunday; after all, she is a good Christian woman. She goes to services every Sunday at the First United Methodist Church and spends the rest of her Sundays helping at the church. Nellie sees me come in and comes around the counter to greet me. She throws her arms around me and gives me a great big bear hug. Boy am I glad to see you, but you must be exhausted Yes maam, I respond, both out of respect and just a little fear. after your long trip. Why dont you take today and go get settled in? Take your time and relax; I dont need you to start work until tomorrow night. Its Friday and the drug store will be busy. Come down at 5:00 and you can help me close up while I show you around. She gives me a wink, and I know that not only am I helping her close up the drug store but I am working downstairs and starting my new job. Let the good times roll. I unpack quickly; I only have one suitcase and one box. I decide to take a walk around the town and have dinner on the corner near the university. After a much needed good nights sleep, I wake up in the early afternoon. After all, I am a bartender, and I am used to being up until the wee hours of the morning and sleeping most of the day. 17 At least now I am back on schedule for the new job. I get dressed in my best black pants and a new pressed shirt. I want to look good, and it doesnt hurt with the ladies or the tips. I go down the narrow stairs and walk into the drug store where Nellie is again behind the counter. The druggist has left for the day so its just me and her. Millers is a long narrow store with tile on the floor, a long wooden counter on the left and wooden shelves all around the room filled to capacity with pills, bandages, soaps, lotions, liniment, and what seems like everything else you can imagine. Nellie is in her usual attire, a muted gray-blue dress that is modest and unflattering. Well hello there, she says, I thought I may have lost you; havent seen you since you got in yesterday. I respond,I was just taking it easy and getting ready for tonight. Well I will be done here shortly and then I will show you the ropes. Why dont you give me a hand and sweep up the place. You know where the broom is, dont you? She gives me a big knowing smile and I get busy. At 6:00 pm on the dot, Nellie and I walk out and she locks the drugstore door behind us. The apartment door and cleaning closet are on the other side. She takes a quick glance up and down the street and we disappear into the broom closet. Inside she pushes past the brooms and there in the top left corner is a keyhole. You would never see it if you didnt know it was there. She unlocks the door and hands me the key, saying, from now on this is your job, every day except Sunday, same time. Okay? Yes maam, I respond, both out of respect under the counter. and just a little fear. Dont worry, Nellie; Ill take care of everyDont call me maam, Nellie snaps back thing. at me followed by her big smile. I respond with a I continue to work, polishing glasses and smile but make a mental note not to do that again. We descend down the dark stairs and when we putting out what I will need for the night and reach the bottom, Nellie reaches up and pulls the before long I hear the infamous knock at the door: one slow, hard knock followed by the tap, tap, tap. cord to the light. I run up the stairs and unlock the door. Two big The room is big, long like upstairs, but burly guys are standing there wearing overalls, big much wider. The basement must be the length of heavy coats and hats, and they have a dusting of three buildings on the street. A good place for a snow on them. The taller one steps forward and good time, as I see it. As I look around the room, I introduces himself, Hey, Im Kermit Shifflett and see it is not fancy. It has a wooden floor with ten this here is Sam Coles. You must be the new barto twelve tables and eight wooden chairs around tender from New York City that Nellie was tellin each table. There is a big dance floor and a good us bout. He sticks out his hand and gives me a size stage with an upright piano. On the walls are great big smile, a genuinely warm and friendly smile hung interesting paintings of buildings and scenes even though three of his front teeth are missing. from around Charlottesville. I recognize a painting I shake hands with Kermit and offer my of Lee Park because the park is right around the corner. Along the left wall is the bar which is about hand to Sam, Nice to meet you both, I say to half the length of the room and looks similar to the them. Sam smiles warmly but doesnt say anything. wooden counter in the drugstore upstairs. Behind Well come on in; its cold out there and it looks the bar is a big mirror and a small ice box. I walk like the snows coming faster. around behind the bar and start pulling out everySam finally speaks, Let us get this stuff in thing I will need for the night. We open at 7:00 here, there is nobody on the street now, just leave pm but it doesnt start getting busy until around the door unlocked and well bring it down. I do 9:00. If you are ok, I will be back later. as he says and go back to work. Sam and KerIm fine, I answer, I know my way around mit bring in six wooden crates of quart jars that all contain what appears to be the same clear liqa bar. uid. Right behind them stands another fellow that Good, says Nellie, Oh, I almost forgot: introduces himself as the doorman for the evening the guys will be here in about a half hour with the and a woman who is to be the waitress. She is a liquor. Their names are Kermit and Sam. Theyre pretty young thing, thin with a twinkle in her eye. I a little rough around the edges but they are good bet she can cause some trouble given half a chance. guys. They are coming from Franklin County; just Working behind bars for the last ten years you get listen for their knock at the door upstairs. Its the to know people and you have a sixth sense about only way in or out. The money is in the cash box them just by looking at them. 18 THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College I offer the envelope of money to the men and Kermit quickly reaches for it and puts it in his pocket without counting it. They both have a seat at the bar and order a drink of their own shine. Nellie dont charge us nothin, says Kermit. I dont doubt him but I will check with Nellie when she comes in. Looks like this is going to be the easiest bartending job I have ever had. We only have three things to serve, moonshine, moonshine with water or moonshine with Coca-Cola. Not like in the New York bars with all those fancy cocktails and the ten or more different liquors we could get from the mob. At least here I wont have to worry about those gangsters anymore. I think Im going to like it here. 19 and we both laugh. Before it starts to get busy the waitress tells me about Nellies boyfriend who is the pastor of the new Methodist church on the other side of Lee Park. No wonder she spends so much time at the church. Pastor Robert Deloy was born in Delaware and raised the son of a drunk. He had a hard childhood and left home as soon as he could and eventually went to seminary school. The Methodist church sent him to Charlottesville about three years ago to oversee the construction of the new location of the church that opened last month. Nellie has been a member of that church before they began construction and started seeing Pastor Deloy about two years ago. Methodists dont mind drinking; they just dont always do it out in the open. Pastor Deloy is wet by nature and he He thinks all those women in his church that belong to the Temperance Society are just wound too tight and dont have anything better to do with their time. Around 9:30 the knocking at the door is getting pretty steady and the crowd is getting bigger and louder. Not long after, Nellie comes back and she is all decked out for the evening. She is looking good for her age; shoot, she is looking good even for a younger woman. Dressed in a bright red dress and high heeled shoes, her face and hair are all done up. She walks up to me and I give her a long slow whistle. I ask, Something special going on tonight? thinks this whole prohibition thing is a farce. He thinks all those women in his church that belong to the Temperance Society are just wound too tight and dont have anything better to do with their time. Of course if they ever found out Nellie owns a speakeasy, and he is a patron and her beau, they would probably have him run out of town. As the evening progresses the crowd is steady with a wide variety of people. There are farmers still wearing their overalls with mud on Nellie ignores that comment and says with their shoes, townspeople, professors and students a wink, You dont know me well enough for that, from the university and my dear friend, Adah. By young man, and what would my fellow say if he day, Adah is an earnest, conservative student. She has to be or she wouldnt be taken seriously by her heard you whistling at me like that? professors and the other male students. She has I respond, I think he would agree with me, what it takes to make it. She works hard all day drunk. Sam seems like a real southern gentleman from southwest Virginia. Before long Adah and Sam are headed to the dance floor. For a moment it feels like I am back in New York watching Adah dance in her flapper outfit to the jazz music, but then I look around the room and there is no doubt I am in Charlottesville. The jazz gives a buzz to the atmosphere of the joint; the place is jumping as the night goes on. The smoke in the room is A bunch of guys have come in and set up getting thicker and the people are getting drunker. instruments on the stage, from what I can see This moonshine is some crazy stuff; we dont see it there is a guitar player, banjo, mandolin and fid- much back in the city. dle. Pastor is sitting at the piano; I guess he has Nellie dances several songs with Kermit. I many talents. They started playing some bluegrass music and I can feel the crowds pulse surge with dont think she does it because she likes it; she the music as I continue to pour drinks and collect does it because its good business. Keep your supthe money. The dance floor is full on the first tune; pliers happy and keep your supply coming and your I have never seen dancing like this in the city, but prices down. I look over at Pastor once or twice and he doesnt look too happy about it. There isnt everyone is having a good time. much he can do because he is here but he has to Kermit and Sam have been sitting at the keep a low profile. He isnt the only one in the bar the entire evening and Kermit has really been place having to keep a low profile; I see the mayor putting down the shine. It should be ok; Im sure and the president of the university in the crowd. Sam will look out for him. Nellie walks up to the The customers here are from all walks of life, from bar, Hows it going on your first night? rich to poor, and they are all here for one reason: I reply, Its going great Nellie, nice group to have a good time and a little drink. and most nights, but when she gets a Friday night off from school and the hospital she takes the rare opportunity to let loose and unwind. When I knew Adah back in New York, before medical school, she was young and wild. A real roaring twenties flapper. She brings that other side of her down here: her dress, hairstyle, and make-up stand out and adds more variety to the already eclectic clientele. of people. Kermit turns to her and says, Hey Nellie, how about a dance? She looks at him cautiously and says, Ok, but just one, Kermit. They take off for the dance floor just as the group of musicians change. Now there are three different guys on the stage playing a guitar, a sax and drums and now they are playing jazz. Pastor is still hanging in there on the piano. Adah is sitting at the bar and starts talking to Sam. He has had a few drinks but he doesnt appear 20 It is a little past midnight and I hear shouting on the dance floor. I guess Pastor has had a few too many after all and Kermit is getting a little too free with his hands on Nellie. Next thing I know the Pastor dives across the dance floor and lands his fist right in Kermits nose. Kermit is not expecting this and is taken back for a minute (him being so drunk doesnt help), but he is a good ole country moonshiner and he can handle his liquor and take a punch. He responds within seconds and gives one right back. Before you know whats happening every man in the bar is throwing punches. THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College I dont think they care much who they hit; they are just caught up in the moment. Most of the women are huddled up at the end of the bar except for Adah; she is by my side, and Nellie is on top of the bar yelling at the top of her lungs for everyone to stop fighting and sit down. At this point no one can hear her over the roar of the fighting. 21 but she would not let go, she grabs onto his coat and would not release her grip. I dont want to call the police; it would be the end of Nellie. The customers that are left are mostly locals and friends of Nellie. They think it would be best to move his body down the street and into the alley. It would be best for him and for Nellie. The church will never have to know where he was shot. Several of the men and I cover him up, then we lift his body and take it outside into the cold night air. One of the guys checks around outside and there is no one around so we proceeded to carry his body down the alley. We lay him in the dark alley next to a bunch of trash cans. The alley is hidden on both sides by brick buildings. It will be late Saturday morning before anyone finds the body. Sam has been sitting at the bar this entire time and finally says,I guess I better get Kermit out of here before he hurts someone. Sam moseys over to Kermit in the middle of the crowd and grabs Kermits arm and out of instinct Kermit turns around swinging and lands his fist right in Sams eye. Before he can recover, Sam gets punched by two other guys. As some of the people start to leave, I see the mayor, the university president, and a couAs we lay him down one of the men says, ple of local cops take off. No way are they going to We should take everything out of his pockets so get caught up in this. it looks like a robbery. That is a good idea but Sam is raging mad after getting hit three everyone turns and looks at me. I dont bother to times and he pulls a pistol out from his coat and protest; I just want this to be over and done. I kneel points it at some guy in front of him. Get outta my down and go through his pants pockets and remove way. Were leavin, he says, but before he could get his wallet, keys and some change. I check his coat out the last word, two guys see the gun and jump pockets and there is nothing else. Dont forget his on him trying to get it away. inside coat pocket, someone says. I reach inside The gun goes off and everything stops. his coat pocket and there is a small box. I pull it There is total silence. The men start moving away out and open it. Inside is a diamond engagement from the dance floor one by one. When the floor ring. This is the night that Pastor Deloy was going is cleared there is one man lying in the middle of to propose to Nellie. the floor, face down in a pool of blood. It is Pastor Deloy. Nellie jumps down from the bar and runs over to him crying and screaming. She falls to the floor sobbing and lies down next to him. Adah comes from around the bar and kneels down on his other side. She fells for a pulse and then looks at me and shakes her head. He is dead. I come around and kneel next to Nellie. I try to get her up Taylor Wright, Charcoal Shapes 22 THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College John Merkle, Charcoal 23 SIMPLE SOCIETY By Quincy Wright A world smothered in ignorance, a land where man weds wealth Where greed runs rapid and affection is unfelt Uncaring for others, for our fianc is finance Betraying our brothers to dwell in societys trance Modern marvels and prehistoric prejudice Racist bigots and biracial president Redundance in essence though true in our time Sins by nature though unpunishable crimes Change a clich?.. or an unattainable goal? President position of power or puppetry role? Questions asked but unanswered, though werent meant rhetorically Expressing unrelentless effort, but is there hope for me? Or for you, or for she, or the next to read? Will Katrina be repeated for the next in need? 24 THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College Will Obamas death to Osama cause that era to be forgotten? Or will another attack and excel and success to Bin Laden? We bloat as the best nation but dont mention the China men As we strut in the shirts and jeans theyve put the linen in Resembling gullable gazelles, because CNN says its true Blinded we believe, thinking the newsman wouldnt lie to you Racists compare our president-elect to a tree-dwelling monkey An ape in this nation represented by an elephant and a donkey Who decided these two symbols should rule the masses? Maybe a metaphor for overfed egos and deliberate asses People judge though why thats the job of our heavenly Father Expressing thoughts onto paper and you ask why do I bother? Because I once heard of a man and that man had a dream That dream was his thoughts and those thoughts had a theme He wished me equal to you and you equal to another That race would be irrelevant as I state you my brother 25 And this should be in this time we live And in this time we must forgive For he who bore the whip no longer breathes And he who felt the whip no longer bleeds And he who longed for freedom no longer needs Those before us, they were the seeds And us here now, we are the trees Great grand trees that none could smother Results of the work of our negroe others Take heed these thoughts of a young black brother And do as I in hopes of inspiring another. 26 THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College Emma Vreler, V010 27 THE DISAPPEARANCE OF NATHAN POLK S By Avie Thacker Three-Minute Horror Story Contest, 2nd place herriff Breaux stood outside the Polk residence, a small home deep in the heart of the bayou. This was his third visit in a single week, and he still wasnt sure what he was hoping to find. He knocked on the door, knowing that Mrs. Polk and her elderly mother were home. The sweet smell of home cooking wafted through the breeze. Abigail Polk cracked the door open. Well, good evening Sherriff! she exclaimed in her sweet, southern voice. Would you like to come in for a bit? He nodded and removed the well-worn hat that sat upon his graying hair. Thank you kindly. Id enjoy that. Breaux stepped inside. Abigails mother was seated at their table, and gave him an acknowledging nod. The old woman never said much. Would you like some pork gumbo, Sherriff? Abigail asked brightly, stirring the pot. For a woman whose husband was missing and presumed to be dead, she had sure been upbeat over the past few days. Not a tear ever fell down that lovely cheek. Pull yourself up a chair. Thank you for the offer, Mrs. Polk, but I dont think my wife would appreciate it if I spoiled my dinner. He smiled, trying to keep things friendly. He knew that Abigail was weary of him prying. Were still trying to find him, maam. No ones seen or heard a thing. I was hoping you had. Abigails demeanor changed. It was slight, but Breaux had been doing this long enough to recognize it. She didnt smile quiet as brightly, and her eyes turned cold. Word about town was that Mr. and Mrs. Polk didnt have the best relationship. Nathan Polk was a vicious, cruel man, especially to his wife. Everyone was surprised that Abigail had put up with him for years. Now he was missing. Hed left the bar last Saturday night, and no one had seen him since. Abigail claimed he never made it home. Breaux knew better. Havent heard a thing. But youll be the first to know when I do. Abigail began pulling dishes out of her cupboard. Is there anything else, Sherriff? Id like to feed my mama her dinner. Of course, maam. Breaux glanced around the room while Abigail busied herself in the kitchen. No signs of foul play; everything was as it should be. Breaux had no doubt that Abigail hated Nathan enough to murder him, and if she didnt do it, then she told someone to. And most men in town would have been eager to hurt Nathan. 28 THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College 29 But there was no body. It was as if Nathan Polk had disappeared in a puff of smoke. Breauxs gaze met Abigails mother. The old woman was scowling, and clearly wanted him out. According to rumor, her husband, Abigails good-for-nothing father, had abandoned them. This was years ago and miles away, but word traveled fast and people in small towns remembered such things. She didnt like or trust anyone as far as Breaux could tell. Ill see myself out. Thank you, ladies. Breaux stepped out into the cool night, and the door shut behind him. Abigail spooned gumbo into a bowl. Mama, I bet old Breaux would have a heart attack if he knew what he was looking for was right in front of him on the stove the whole time. Her mother nodded. Just a few more bowls and that sorry man will be gone for good. She took a bite. I think he tastes better than your father did. Abigail laughed, and the women ate their dinner. Joseph Holsapple, New Life UNTITLED By Caleb Kelsey QEP Essay Contest, 2nd Place My cellmate, Mark King, was missing an arm. He asked a lot of questions. And despite being away on a three-year bid, he was notorious on the tier for being upbeat, positive, always cracking jokes. On my second night, we lay in the dark, fantasizing about being out, about eating comfort food and choosing our own clothes. The silence spread and filled the cell, and then he whisked it away. Hey man, whatchu do on the outside? Me? Oh, Im a cook, bro. The answer was simple, rolled off of my tongue and was accurate. But something about the way hed asked made me think. What do I do? Is this the kind of person Im going to be from now on? My lawyer stared at me from across the table in the sad downstairs cafeteria. It was full of pumped-in cold AC air, but not nearly as cold as jail was. I knew from all the times before. He assured me when I came back to him for my third DUI, hed try and secure me the best felony deal he could. Get me as little jail time as possible. I hadnt even served my time for the second yet. What he said scared me, and that was his goal. He wanted me to wake up. To take stock of all the good things in my life, and realize I was drowning it all in the bottom of a bottle of cheap vodka. I had a beautiful, whip-smart, funny girlfriend. I had a good job in an industry in which Id already spent 8 years. I could have my freedom, if I wanted it and worked for it. 30 THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College 31 And so, from inside that Prince William County cell, laying on a flattened foam mattress that still held the shape of the last inmate, I decided to take control of my life. I stopped making excuses. I took personal responsibility. I got out on a rainy day. Some people would look at that as a bad sign, but rainy days are my favorite kind. Id never seen my girlfriend look as beautiful as she did then, until our wedding day.When her father walked her out on grass Id cut myself, down the aisle past our families and friends, when I told her daughter Id always be there for her, Id be her dad if she wanted it, when I put a hundred-year-old ring on her finger. She had on my favorite pair of shitkicker boots. She had her hair down, fine and auburn and radiating the joy that split her mouth into a beatific smile. I stepped outside and wrapped her up like a boa waiting for an exhale. I knew I could never put her through it again. I told her I loved her for the first time that night. Laying in a bed that didnt smell like disinfectant. Holding her close and laughing and whispering. We still lay close in our bed, laughing, whispering. I hold our daughter and son in that bed. I am content in that bed. I chose to get sober, and remain so to this day. I put in the time and the effort. I dont shirk my responsibilities, and I own up to my mistakes. I take each day as a challenge. To be the best version of myself as a grown man as I can. I relish the opportunities afforded me that Mark King couldnt grasp. Hes probably getting out about now. Hes stepping out of the jail, onto the wide, slick concrete steps at the front of intake. Maybe his wife is there. Maybe one of the several girls he corresponded with while inside are there. Maybe no ones there, and hes got a bag over his shoulder, headed for a bar or a bus station or a friends house to surprise them. No one has to help him, of course. King was always proud, and capable, even though he was missing an arm. He was the best basketball player in the cellblock. He ran the myriad trade schemes that took place during meals better than anyone. He was making his choices and doing the best he could, with what he had. And now, on the outside of a jail cell, no third DUI, no more troubles or hiding from what Id done, I was making my own choices too. I have my freedom. I wanted it, and I work for it every day. Levi Houk 32 THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College Eric Valtierra, Birdy 33 SELF-PORTRAIT By Ryan Harris Here is an old truth: there are hordes of me. I crowd every doorway. In dreams, I dance in a circle of my brothers. Lets refer to this as: disassociation divinity delineation or, to delineate: augury. I must be naked, all of me, to be seen, or else descend into dirt, nestle maskedly into the nests of rabbits to prepare for the winter time. Here is an old truth: I wish that I could lose my body. I would love indiscriminately, 34 THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College having, of course, nothing to give. I would soak myself out and sleep such sleep. But you must know this: there is no sleep anymore; all these things are trampled in the day, made naked and wanting and bloody. Exhale And inhale. Within, I am a whirler; I am a runner; I am a field of startlingly yellow daffodils petals unfurling, stems undone. 35 UNTITLED By Nicole Harrer QEP Essay Contest, Honorable Mention At nine years old I never thought that anything could drastically change my life or my outlook. I didnt know anything about life or what it meant. I still dont. I knew that I loved summer camp and capture the flag. I knew that multiplication tables were irritating and writing cursive was fun. We were children. Nothing was unfixable, the school days were spent too long and our minds were sponges ready to absorb knowledge, and above all else, summer was our favorite season because it meant sunshine and freedom. I positioned myself almost diagonally to catch it as it tumbled by, although this probably was the worst thing I could have done, because the last thing I saw was the umbrella whip around with enough momentum to thrust its wooden pole into my eye and send me flying through the air for a few feet. I landed on my back and all the air left my lungs. I heard screaming and wondered where it was coming from. Then I realized it was coming from me. Immediately I could feel the blood running down my face and the pain was sharp and unrelenting. I heard the shouting voices and the feet kicking up sand as they ran to where I had landed to roll me over. Someone was cursing and I heard sand kicking up as someone else was running to a phone to call for an ambulance. The EMTs arrived after what seemed like an eternity. They dragged me across the beach while I protested the entire way. The man in the ambulance said they were going to open my eye when we reached the hospital. I informed him that under no circumstance would this ever happen. One day that summer my dad drove us to the beach. We stopped on the way and got a cherry milkshake. He let me try some. It was pretty good, but it wasnt my favorite. We would arrive at the beach and I would jump from the car burning my bare feet as I ran across the hot sand. When youre nine years old everything is new and interesting. The pieces of shells lodged in the sand arent fragments at all, but merely the wreckage of After another eternity we arrived at the what were once masterfully crafted masterpieces, emergency room. I could hear the voices and the worthy of topping a sandcastle. doors opening, felt myself being lowered from the The day went on and the waves grew with ambulance and the stretcher hit the pavement the increasing wind. The light faded to a warm with a jerk. The man from the ambulance told me glow, and I sat on our blanket watching the waves I had been very brave. I disagreed. He gave me a crash on the rocks. I heard some louder voices small green bear. to my right and watched as their beach umbrella The radiologist said they were going to put began to tumble down the shore with surprising force. My mom suggested that I catch the runaway me through the giant doughnut-shaped machine. I had a ruptured globe and I needed a cornea for the owner, so I started running after it. 36 THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College transplant, a new lens. I could hear the continuous murmuring continued between the distant voices but wasnt able to decipher any words. When the radiologist addressed me again she told me I was going into surgery. I didnt like that too much, Not at all actually. They wheeled me around some more, and when they stopped a younger man said he was going to give me a shot. I felt the sharp sting in my arm, and then everyone was gone. When I woke up I tried to open my eyes, but it hurt too much, so I gave up. My parents were asking me if I wanted anything and I said no. I was still wearing my bathing suit from the day before under the hospital gown and the elastic was beginning to dig into my leg now. The doctor came in after a little while and asked me to open my eye. I refused the offer. With the help of a few extra people to hold me down and some coaxing I finally opened my right eye, my parents were sitting in a few chairs placed across the room looking at me and there were a few nurses standing around the bed. The room didnt look at all like Id imagined it. I closed my eye again and they went away. I fell back asleep. Finally they let me go, and wheeled me out in one of their chairs. I was too disoriented to walk. When I got home my dad made me eat. He would walk me to the kitchen, and then back to my bed. He brought me different things for me to hold and guess what they were. My mom would read to me from my large stack of library books. I listened to books on tape and my dads Huey Lewis cd. I returned to school for my fourth grade year with sunglasses and a withdrawn attitude. But still they looked. Eventually they got used to it and stopped staring, and my sunglasses were replaced with an artificial eye and I felt normal again. I didnt have to explain my 37 sunglasses anymore, but I still had to wear eye protection for physical activity involving flying objects. My mom kept saying how I wasnt normal anymore, that I couldnt live my life like a normal kid. I never really figured out why she said that. Sometimes parents are just wrong. I still have that green bear the man in the ambulance gave me.When you look at it you can see how small and cheap it is, the artificial but softly crafted material, the black beady eyes, the little bow attached to his neck. To me it means a lot more than a stuffed animal. Conclusively theres really only one thing I could name as a positive consequence of that loss. I would have to say that things happen, whether they be dynamic or not, and they change youre outlook. It was a freak accident of sorts, but it made me realize how lucky I am and value everything so much more. Everything you have is so valuable, and we take things for granted. I think it really did change who I am; I wouldnt have the amount of appreciation I do had it not happened. Emma Vreler, Inquiry 38 THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College Chris Williams, Hopper Study 39 UNTITLED By Ashley Costantini Three-Minute Horror Story Contest, First Place H e has spent a lifetime crafting his own hidden world in the shadows of old promises and grinding teeth, tucking secret after dog-eared secret on shelves that grow dust like a garden. (Theres enough of it on the news, every morning for a week after the hunt. The mothers like to cry, pupils vibrating like the moon on the waves. The fathers do it too, and sometimes they even swear, spittle framing their foul words and broken pleas. Sometimes he perches against the towerHed find it amusing if it werent quite so ing stacks and the silence plays on, as silences are wont to do, until his skulls accompaniment ceases distasteful.) to waltz along. (One two three, ONE two three...) He is a perfectionist. Both a logician and an artist, he is built of carefully constructed contradictions, and he adores sculpting them in his own hidden paradise, there between those shelves. After all, he is an artist. This is why he prepares his ingredients with such finesse, and this is why he executes his brush strokes with such delicate precision; what few necessary drops that have scattered are scrubbed away so that his canvas may be perfect. His best books are the ones created in the Its a simple form of poetry, really, to see shadows of people; he adores them, always has. They come and go, milling quietly and respectfully something so raw and spread before him, half-bent through the shelves of his haven, and he thinks and bursting at the weathered seams. them beautiful. (Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. He sees what most lack the courage to look for.) Except. Except the ones that arent. ____ He doesnt much care for the mess. 40 Such romance can only be treated with great care, and he pairs his conquests with the finest wine- a butterfly binding in the colder months, he thinks, with a lovely red. Its rich, dark, clouded like her eyes had been in his parlor just moments before she understood where her path was leading. He adores that moment, just as their hearts THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College 41 There is twenty feet of maze that tells its are undone; their eyes black as pitch, skin taut and tense and poised to flee. It is only then that they own story, but its trapped in her gut and he has the pleasure of releasing it, remaking and refolding it discover their true form. into treble clefs that will sing of wars and symphonies. The blood will fade, but shell stay with him. And hes careful not to lose the wee piglets, you know. Hes a clever butcher in the end, and he His fingers play the binding like a violin, and curves the tracks that lead to him so that he may so do hundreds that come after him, until one day truly enjoy the moment they see the blood. someone thinks to ask why the book is falling apart, ____ and his true beauty will be recognized. This is how he binds his books: (Because everything has its time, and he is no exception, and neither is that elegant butterfly He pricks his fingers - for clarity, you seeand then he pricks her throat. Her life bleeds out stitch taken from Ms. Eliza Plummings.) like a hurricane, in leaps and bounds and then in a peaceful stream. (Shed been very rude to be so loud in his sanctuary, but a librarian must always respect his patrons. That last, lingering plea remains on her lips and he thinks it so poignant, so raw, that he must preserve it forever.) Sally Duinn, Inquiry 42 THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College Maddie Faden,Zapped 43 EKPHRASIS Adele Bloch-Bauers Portrait - Gustav Klimt Hannah Ho Haloed in gold breathing, diffusing gown stitched with countless kohl-rimmed eyes gliding across milky skin exposing blue-tinged collarbones a necklace winks with gems. sunset lips, barely parted, murmur luscious secrets and taste of shimmering. 44 THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College Gabriella Streit, Inquiry 45 NI HAO Katya Beisel QEP Essay Contest Winner, 3rd Place C hina and the United States are not the best of friends. Their relationship status reads: mutual dislike and spying; not exactly the stuff of great friendships.They are two shipwrecked passengers each clinging to the other in a turbulent and shark-infested sea while at the same time scheming to drown the other. I did not quite get that as a kid in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. I was in second grade, in Mr. Nettys classroom. A kindly, if elitist, South African man, he engaged us in a number of intriguing classroom activities. One such activity involved learning greetings in a new language every week. We started with English, until, on a blustery October day, we got to Chinese. I mouthed the words with the enthusiasm of a seven-year-old, tasting them. When Mr. Netty was satisfied, we moved on. Fall ran on with blustering winds and crinkling leaves until winter snows turned into grimy slush on the streets. Finally, the snow began to melt. I forgot about Chinese and Ni Hao completely. They fled in the wake of the prospect of T-shirts, light jackets, and shoes other than my clunky boots. While my parents and I were out walking down a nondescript gatve lined with restaurants and shops, surrounded by the aromas of gourmet Baltic food and a central Asian spice shop, I noticed that my parents had stopped mid-amble to talk to two other adults. They were Asian, definitely older than my parents. They wore sleek, shiny leather coats that 46 carried even the smell of expense, and expressions that painted a painfully polite landscape brows crinkled ever so slightly, mouths stretched into tight, fixed smiles. How nice to see you here! We were just out for a walk. Our son is out with some friends, but this our daughter Katya. My mother introduced me to the couple the Wenlins and pressed me with a look that I was well acquainted with after a year of crashcourse charm school. Her lips formed a thin pretense of a smile, with her brow furrowed and her teeth clenched. Her expression was enough to give anyone lockjaw. It was her please-dont-doanything-embarrassing-in-front-of-the-importantpeople look. Suddenly recalling Mr. Nettys odd and preclusive side-lessons, I blurted out, Ni Hao! It was rushed and bereft of anything resembling a proper accent. Looking back now, Im certain that I butchered it as much as you can butcher two simple syllables. I didnt have time to think about that though, because just as suddenly as I had greeted them, the Wenlins launched into a string of Chinese that was completely incomprehensible to me. They eventually gleaned from my dumbfounded face that hello was the extent of my Chinese. It didnt faze them at all though. They lingered and talked to my parents for far longer than courtesy demanded. They bent over and leaned-in close enough for me to suffocate on their colognes, and THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College 47 finally, after what felt like forever under my parents event hosted at our house and presented my parflabbergasted scrutiny, they bid us a farewell that ents with the customary gift of domestic liquor, and was much friendlier than their welcome. handed the artistic, expensive gift of a genuine Beijing Opera mask to me instead of my mother. As soon as they were out of sight and earshot, I was faced with a frantic interrogation. I The gifts piled up over the course of our explained as simply as I could that all I said was tour. Among the complete set of Beijing Opera hello, and that I had absolutely no idea what was paraphernalia and accessories were invitations to said after that. formal dinners where children were not usually welcome. At that age, all I understood was that I My parents were impressed, but more relieved was getting cool, pretty stuff, and my parents were that I had not managed to insult one of my fathers spending more time with people that made other counterparts in the span of two syllables. None of Americans at the embassy uncomfortable. Of course, us thought about the incident again until my par- when I look through my trunk full of Beijing Opera ents started getting more invitations to Chinese masks, calendars, plates, and antique tea boxes, I Embassy functions than the prerequisite two-a- could never have guessed what an impression two month. In turn, they extended more invitations to the Wenlins. But the impact of what I had done broken syllables of Chinese would have. didnt really hit us until the Wenlins arrived for an DOG GONE John Rhea QEP Essay Contest, Honorable Mention I am not an animal lover, but in the last eight years, by virtue of my marriage, I have mourned the loss of six animals (five dogs and one cat). I fell for an animal lover and I have paid the price in sorrow. on the way to the vet, it hit me the hardest of any of our animal losses. The cat I received with my wedding vows, Kermit, seemed to degrade into a dirty mess, tracking wet kitty litter throughout the house, until we took him to the vet and learned he had diabetes. For nearly two years I, the non-animal lover, gave him daily insulin injections, before a sickness and honest questions about his quality of life forced us to let yet another pet go. When I married on a bright summer day in 2005, I received two dogs and a cat in the bargain, each of which my wife had had for more than a decade. Despite my inclinations, I embraced these animals as my own, even if only by my own stanWhen we moved to the Charlottesville dards. Within two months, though, the eldest dog, area in 2010 we picked up a dog from the SPCA Oliver, became sick and within the space of a week died.The vet could not give us a satisfactory expla- to be Simons friend. Her name was Rosie and she was a devil of a dog, pooping in the house and nation, but suspected a nasty, tropical virus. eating everything in sight, such as lengths of carpet Nearly a year later, a different vet diag- fiber, and, well, lets call it recycling things she left nosed Tyler, the younger of the two dogs, with gas- in the house. tric cancer. After two long weeks of chemotherapy, But we stuck with her and trained her and when we had pushed both him and ourselves to loved her for three years. She did not shed all her our limits, it became more painful to watch him problems, but when she got lymphoma, we made hold on to life than to let him go. her as comfortable as possible and helped her live Before we learned of Tylers cancer we out her days with as much joy as we could give. As picked up a second dog out of a laundry basket in the lymphoma grew, putting pressure on her respithe parking lot of a Food Lion. The woman from ratory system and increasing her pain we took her the newspaper ad came with her kids and four to the vet one last time. The vet found a chocolate rambunctious puppies for us to choose from. We donut for Rosie to enjoy and we sent her off to picked a small black and white puppy, the daugh- heaven with a sugar high. ters favorite, and dubbed him Simon. He taught A month after we adopted Rosie, my wife me about caring for something that cannot care for itself, particularly when it needs to pee at 3am talked me into fostering another dog for a month or when it needs guidance on proper choices for while the SPCA had their floors repaired. Gloria, a chew toys. He provided great training for father- hound mutt, used to sneak up behind me and howl hood, which came eight months later. Four years at the top of her lungs. The month came and went later, when Simon died suddenly and mysteriously without an adoption or a return to the SPCA. 48 THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College After a year of putting up the foster facade, we adopted her. We had her for another year before she got necrotizing pancreatitis, which sounds terrible and deadly, and it is, but after a lengthy vet stay she beat it. During her recovery, however, she developed blood clots. One went to her brain and that was the end. 49 life and death, that asked whether an animals care was worth more money than we had, or if a life of pain and suffering was better than no life at all. I began by saying I am not an animal lover, but, above all else, I love my wife. And whatever pain and tempest may come from that choice, be it physical, emotional or financial, I will meet it gladly and still more, I will welcome it, for that is what it means to These six animals have caused more hard- love. ship, financial turmoil, and heartbreak than I can say. I have been asked to make decisions that weighed UNTITLED Anthony Jewett Three-Minute Horror Story Contest, 3rd Place B illy knew he was not alone in the brush. All around him, black branches and poison-green leaves from countless bushes reached for him like so many hands. A cool, weak wind whispered through the trees and shrubs as scattered rustling could be heard about. He looked back up the embankment that he had slid down, through the hole in the chain-link fence from which he had crawled. The sounds of his fellow classmates playing on the blacktop drifted down to where he sat in the expansive ditch next to it. How he hated them. Arent you a little old for a teddy bear? stand. Billys a baby! All they did was taunt, judge and condemn. Never once did they try to under- What are you going to do without your bear, baby? The biggest one had sneered. Billy could still see his obnoxious yellow shirt outlined against the white box van parked beside the playground as he threw Billys bear. Now his bear was over the fence, in the brush that no one ever went into. Or at least that no one ever returned from, according to his peers. Dont let the monsters get you! Watch out, Billy! There are dragons down there! They jeered as he crawled through the fence and slid down the bank. Now he regretted his decision. Standing up and dusting himself off with trembling hands, he scanned the brush. No luck. The greenery was a wall, obscuring the grey sky itself. Steeling his 5-year-old resolve, he walked forward and was promptly swallowed by the brush. Five steps and he was lost. All around him was green and black; pushing against him, grabbing at his clothes, and clawing at his face. Every step he took was followed by rustling and more rustling. He tried to run, to escape the chaos that surrounded him, but the brush inhibited his every move. Plowing through the brush like an underpowered tractor, he burst into a small semblance of a clearing. His visibility limited, he failed to notice the clearing was occupied before he entered. A black mass exploded before Billy, equipped with a hideous beak and long, sharp talons. The beast beat Billy and the brush with its wings, making a guttural hissing noise. Billy screamed and fell back, 50 THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College 51 his heart a pounding jackhammer. But the brush would not yield, holding him in the fury of the beast. As quickly as he had burst upon it, it was gone.The blackness had sprung wings and flown off. Only as it flapped away did he realize it had been a nesting buzzard. As his eyes drifted back down to earth, they caught a soft brown shape in the brush. Collecting himself, he rushed for it, clamoring at the bush it was caught in. Sure enough, it was his bear. Overjoyed, he hugged it close to him and forged his way back to the playground. No doubt the teachers were concerned about him. As his hands touched the embankment to climb back up, he froze. An angry voice drifted down the embankment followed by a scream. A great roar hammered his ears and the world brightened for a moment. Fire licked the fence above him and he was knocked over. Slowly, the earth darkened as smoke drifted into the sky. Billy crawled shakily up the embankment. His classmates were gone, along with half of the school. Only a few singed outlines were left; where the van had been, only a large crater remained. And they told me there were monsters down there, Billy whispered to the teddy bear he was clutching tightly. Ebony Bibbins 52 THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College Maddie Feden, Inquiry 53 ABLAZE Dana Rigg I read my own palms last week (It was a joke) (of course it was) I learned that I have Fire Hands That I love too deeply, and too long I learned that tragedy will come for me soon. I am more superstitious than I like to admit But I am more stubborn than you would believe and if you think I will be quenched before my time you do not understand what I am made of. I am fire and my fate is not fixed by the doom of skin and stars. I will burn, burn, burn to my last ember in the fullness of time I will rise as ash on the wind Having used all I had nothing more remaining. 54 THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College Kate Snell Z, was Zapped Inquiry 55 GRANNY WHO . . . . Quincy Wright Granny who bought that SS Monte Carlo Oh how she purred Relapse of Cataracts Oh how she swerved Into a car, tree, mail box Granny whats wrong? But my little old Granny was gone.. Alzheimers lurked and Grannys forgotten me Me? Spoiled little rotten me? Granny its me The before school kisses The double shifts to fulfill my birthday wishes Bikes, go carts, every gift perfect Nintendos before I was old enough to work it Come on Granny you have to remember us running through your house Dancing on your couch, cutting buttons from your blouse Oh do you remember the switch? That was your little side kick Could whip the flame off a candle with a well-timed flick 56 THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College We called you Granniana Jones just to make you red in the face Oh how I miss seeing that red in your face We went to see you yesterday, it was your birthday To tell the truth, it was my worst day Completely blind now, you look past me Fondly reminiscing as you look and ask me The same questions youve asked only minutes before I answer all the same, each time arranging my words with a slightly different dcor Red ash tray still beside you, faded and worn Rocking chair in the corner, pale and torn They awaken the memories, and Granz it works for me They allow me to carry on even though it hurts to see The grey today of Mary Edda Mae But everydays a blessing as my Mary Edda say I have a memory for each of your forgotten moments And to your wishful ear, everything Ive got, Ill loan it 57 Pennie Newell, Graphite & Chalk 58 THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College 59 UNTITLED Ryan Harris QEP Essay Contest, First Place W hen I arrived home for Christmas, I noticed that not much had changed that year: the basket of clean clothes that lived at the base of the stairs was still there, half-filled with wrinkled white undershirts and socks; the living room table was covered in old mail and DVDs; the kitchen smelled of canned tomato sauce and garlic bread. It had been my first year away from home. My mother, hysterical, snatched my suitcase from my hands and gave it to my brother to haul up to his bedroom. She gave me a long hug, rocking me slightly. Oh, Ive missed you, she breathed. how to make coffee on, had been replaced by a Keurig. My grandfather and his wife arrived a few hours after I did. My grandfather has always been one to linger in doorways; I think that he would always rather watch people from a distance. His wife sat down on the couch (perched, really) and looked me over. My grandfather, in a sudden moment of affection, tousled my hair. What a mane. You havent had a single haircut this year, have you? I laughed and shrugged, but my mother gave him a glare that immediately subdued the room. We sat, mostly in silence, while the rest of It was Christmas Eve when I arrived. the family arrived. Christmas had always been a strange time for my As always, my grandmother brought with family; we were a group of irreverent consumers, her several large catering pans full of food. As we but we pooled together in my mothers house, regardless, and stood uncomfortably around the carried it all in, she told me about her various ailliving room every year, looking at one another and ments: And the diabetes! Its making me blind, feeling distant without knowing why. But it was Ryan. I can hardly see a thing! I didnt ask how she I rocked him back and forth and hummed to him until he slept, and for the first time that I can ever remember, I really prayed. I prayed for my brother, sleeping in my arms. early yet when I arrived, so no one but my mother and siblings were waiting to greet me. Instead, I was bustled into the kitchen, where my mother sat me down and gave me a bowl of Spaghetti-Os. I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, that the old coffee machine wed had, the one that Id learned 60 managed to drive the sixty miles to my mothers house. Instead, I asked her what shed made, what we were going to make. Theres a package of veal with your name all over it, she promised. I feigned gagging while my stepfather pulled into the driveway. THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College While the rest of the family chatted in the living room, my grandmother and I made braciole, a kind of Italian roulade. I hammered at the veal with a meat tenderizer until it was thin and firm. Meanwhile, my grandmother made the stuffing and, while doing so, told me things that my mother hadnt: my youngest brother had pneumonia twice that year; my mother lost her job and was looking for a new one; Grandpa John, a family friend, died a few weeks back. As we rolled the braciole, my mother walked into the room. I noticed, suddenly, that her hair was a bit more grey and that her eyes had new wrinkles around them. She stood behind me and rubbed my back as I rolled. She sniffled and I did my best to smile reassuringly. 61 about the coffee machine. Instead, I ate lasagna and braciole and salad. My youngest brother coughed a wet, sad cough. And that night, when I heard that same cough outside my door, I let him in. He was crying a little, his 3-year-old body feverish and in serious need of a cuddle. I didnt sleep much that night; I rocked him back and forth and hummed to him until he slept, and for the first time that I can ever remember, I really prayed. I prayed for my brother, sleeping in my arms. I prayed for my mother and grandmother and old Grandpa John. When, in the morning, everyone stirred, my eyes were red-rimmed and burning. We solemnly drove my brother to the hospital and had coffee and pepAt dinner, no one made eye contact with any- permints in the waiting room. Sitting there with my one else. We stared at our plates and ate in silence. Styrofoam cup, I wondered how things had changed I wanted to ask about Grandpa John. I wanted to so much while I was gone. ask about my mothers job hunt. I wanted to ask Jimmy Galano 62 THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College THE FALL LINE | Spring 2014,Volume VI | Piedmont Virginia Community College Ashley Garner 63 THE FALL LINE FALL LINE (noun) 1. The natural boundary between an upland and a lowland marked by waterfalls and rapids. 2. An imaginary line along the eastern United States between the Piedmont and the Atlantic coastal plain. PIEDMONT VIRGINIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE SPRING 2014,VOLUME VI  ...

... THE FALL LINE 2013 1 THE FALL LINE PIEDMONT VIRGINIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE SPRING 2013 VOLUME V THE FALL LINE Spring 2013 volume V The Fall Line, Spring 2013, is the fifth volume selected, edited, and produced by the PVCC Creative Writing Club. PRESIDENT Stephanie Morris ADVISER Jenny Koster EDITORS Amy Chafee Ryan Harris LAY-OUT AND DESIGN Shelia Clark Special thanks to Danielle Johnson for printing THE FALL LINE and to Rob Tarbell and his Communications Design 2 class for designing this edition. This year, in addition to our submissions, THE FALL LINE is publishing the three winning essays from the colleges QEP [Quality Enhancement Plan] Essay Contest. CONTENTS 5 6 7 8 11 15 16 18 19 20 22 25 26 28 31 32 33 34 37 Daughter of the Stars ~ Sarah Murphy BLUE SILK DANA RIGGS Pool ~ Nalani Williams PAUL ABERCROMBIES HAND JOHN RUDOLPH Raven ~ Natalya Majorin Lino ~ Alison Watkins QEP E s s ay C ont e s t Wi n ner I WAS A SURLY TEENAGER RYAN HARRIS #1 ~ Austin Rich Self Portrait ~ Clara James ROOTS, TREES, AND SAPLINGS REBEKKAH GIBSON HURTING TRUTH COMES WITH UNEXPECTED EPIPHANY HEEYUN (JASON) JOO At Arles ~ Stacy Sheer Pear 5& 6 ~ Anonymous QEP E s s ay C ont e s t Wi n ner OUR TEARS ANNA MURPHY Cactus ~ Allison Smith CRIMSON MEMORIES 38 40 43 46 47 48 51 52 56 61 65 66 67 68 MARIA CHAPMAN Untitled ~ Susan Otis TRIP TO FLORIDA ALEXANDRINA TVERSKY Flying Fish ~ Erin Chilton 70 71 72 1 RYAN HARRIS PLAYGROUND PURSUIT STEPHANIE MORRIS Prep Peas ~ Jane Freeman Untitled ~ Cameron Tanous PERSEPHONE DREAMS OF GOLD STEPHANIE MORRIS THE PERFORMER TOM STEVENS Back Line ~ Bridget Moriarty THE FERAL FLY NICKOLAS URPI 7/20/1969 TODD BURKS Strange Bedfellow ~ Garland Caldwell Face ~ Anonymous SUNDAY RYAN HARRIS Untitled ~ Paul Loykedis QEP E s s ay C ont e s t Wi n ner WHAT I UNDERSTAND ABOUT COMPASSION GALE GIBSON TASTE OF SUMMER STEPHANIE MORRIS Watch Your Step ~ Emma Terry People of the First Light ~ Sarah Murphy \me-t-ni-\ noun A transformative change of heart, especially spiritual (Artwork) Daughter of the Stars ~ Sarah Murphy BLUE SILK DANA RIGGS Last night, I was on the phone too late. I talked outside, under a deep, starry sky. The Milky Way was a dusty stripe in the blue silk. I lay on the hood of my car. On the other end, I heard him laugh, dry and quiet, and I reached up and trapped a star between my thumb and forefinger. For a second, I thought that maybe I could catch it, pull it down and stow it in my pocket. It seemed so close. He seemed close, too. I got up and walked barefoot down the center of the street. As I neared the corner, I saw the moon coming up. It was huge and orange and half-full. It sailed slowly upward over the black tree line on the horizon, and I was the only one awake to watch it. Last night, I was on the phone too late. I should have hung up an hour earlier. But my velvet weariness beautifully matched the silken sky, and my solitude matched perfectly the sound of his laughter. 6 Pool ~ Nalani Williams PAUL ABERCROMBIES HAND JOHN RUDOLPH We were all around 15, I think, and used to hang out on those late summer nights in the neighborhood park. This was before the time when people would freak out if they knew teenagers were hanging outside this late at night.You probably remember those nights during summer breaks yourself, where you and your friends would hang out practically all night, just sitting outside and talking about the world, the existence of God if there really was one, and the girls in the neighborhood and who we all liked, etc. There was never a dull moment back in those late nights, and it was on one of those nights we came to wonder about a few things of a certain kid named Paul Abercrombie. You see, Paul wasnt an ordinary kid, by any standards, and his dad? Well, he wasnt so normal either. Pauls dad so happened to be my science teacher, and he was, well, lets say, waaaaay out there, and totally unlike any other teacher Id ever know for the rest of my high school days. Mr. Abercrombie did some weird stuff. I had heard hed trade Playboy mags with some of the guys in his class, but after school hours. We all thought he was just an old pervert. I knew that he and his son and his wife lived in the same apartment complex as we all did. Mr. Abercrombie used to do a lot of kids some big favors in the summer months and one of them was where hed watch pets while some of his students families went out of town to hit the lake up north, or would go away for a week or a weekend. Hed watch those animals for them for free. But whenever he got started on science stuff in class, he never ran the class the way the other teachers did, no way. He was into telling stories about scientific theory and all. He used to tell us the one about the atom particles, how some guy split up two particles, took one to Japan and the other to England and such, and how he made one spin in one way and the other one, on the other side of the planet, would spin in the opposite direction. There were no tests in Mr. Abercrombies class. All you had to do was listen to whatever crap he had to lecture about, and you damned well better know it the next day when hed sit on his stool and point right at you and ask something about what he said the previous day. One time he watched this girls cat during the summer. When we all got back to class, she was crying because Mr. Abercrombie told her the cat went missing and such and he couldnt find it. But one day a week later, Mr. Abercrombie came in with something really cool. It was the skeleton 8 of a cat mounted onto a piece of black wood and the bones looked like they were shellacked, I think thats how you say it. Anyway, we were all looking at it behind the glass of the cabinet where he put it, and thats when Joey Mitchell looked at Roseanne the way he always did with those giant glasses of his, real sincere-like, and he told her that this was really her cat, that Mr. Abercrombie killed it and all, and boiled the hell out of it so there was nothing left but a skeleton and he is the one who mounted it onto the wood. This freaked out Roseanne so much that she left school for a long time and got really upset. But Mr. Abercrombie kept on telling the kids that he bought the skeleton from The Edmund Scientific catalog. Mr. Abercrombie and that damn scientific catalog of his. One time I met Paul Abercrombie sitting out on his front porch and it looked like he had a rocket. I asked him where he got the rocket and he said his dad got it from the Edmund Scientific catalog. Knowing them, they probably got their groceries there as well. He said he wanted to fly the damn thing but he was going to have to make rocket fuel for it, so I told him he should just buy those Estes model rocket engines we could get at the five and dime down the street and where you could get three of those engines for two bucks and they even came with recovery wadding to protect the parachute and also came with igniters. But he told me no, he wanted this thing to fly into the clouds so he was going to make his own rocket engines, fuel and all. Paul was about as weird as his dad was. He was kind of a loner and youd see him outside with that camera of his, snapping pictures of weird stuff, like grass, the inside of peoples parked cars and such. He never really spoke to many people and I think the only reason he used to even talk to me was because I lived in the same court as he did at the apartments, and he knew I dug science and used to make my own model rockets. I remember he laughed his head off when I set the woods on fire once with my rocket.You see, I stuffed that thing with cotton balls soaked in gasoline and glued the nose cone to the body so that whenever the ejection charge lit off to release the parachute, instead, gas-soaked cotton balls would come down out of the sky. I did this at night once and the damn thing, sure enough, came down in flames, but it went into the woods. The fire department took all of my rocket stuff away, telling me never again to even think about making any more rockets, and that was the end of it after my folks grounded me for three weeks straight! They took all of my books and writing materials away and left me up in that room with nothing to do, except come downstairs for dinner, wash the dishes, and march right on back upstairs again to my room. So anyway, Paul took this rocket into his house, and he told me to come inside. His house wasnt unlike anyone elses, except there was a bad smell of cats and litter boxes everywhere. He had like, twelve cats running around. Not only that, his curtains were always drawn up tight and it was dark as hell inside his house. The hallway was full of stacked nudie mags and newspapers. He led me down to the basement, and for the first time I saw some really cool stuff that I thought only existed in horror movies. He and his dad had this giant lab set up in their basement. It looked like a scene from an old Boris Karloff flick. There were Bunsen burners, glass tubes, pipes of all kinds, and different colored 9 liquid in different beakers and such. One of the beakers, I swear to God almighty, looked like it had blood in it. There was a jar that contained a baby pig. One even had what looked like a human brain. He then showed me something in a beaker and told me to sniff it. I did, and lemme tell you, I got dizzier than a kite caught in a wind tunnel! This was the rocket fuel he made up for his rocket. Powerful stuff! I remember him saying there was something like ammonium nitrate in it, and something he called a stabilizing agent that would burn off as the rocket engine was ignited, making the rocket fuel extremely volatile and unstable, it would act like some sort of catalyst, but he said that his rocket would take off like a lightning bolt once that engine ignited. The rocket was made totally of aluminum and it looked almost exactly like the rocket in that movie where people had to leave the earth to avoid the collision with another planet. It was slick and silvery and such. I asked him if he was going to paint it and he said no, that this was the only color he wanted because hed be able to track it down better as it gleamed in the sunlight when he launched it. I hung around a while in his basement. Thats about the time when my hand landed in something furry, and I realized what it was. It was a cat skin, dude. I aint even lying. It was a genuine cat skin. Thats when I decided to leave well enough alone and get the hell out of Paul Abercrombies basement. Besides, it was time for me to head home for lunch, and that is exactly what I did. Well, you know what happened after that just a day later. Thats right, there was this huge BANG. I woke up to this ear shattering explosion. I looked out my window with this goddamn ringing in my ears, and sure enough, from across the court I could see thick black smoke looming out of the Abercrombie basement windows. It looked as if he had been burning tires down there. Thats how black this smoke was. I could even see a fire. I went into my moms room and she woke up, freaking out. We could then hear sirens off in the distance and they got louder as fire trucks roared into the apartment complex. Sure as anything, everyone in the damn neighborhood came to check it out. The ambulance guys came in and took out a body and it had a blanket over the head, which told me and the fellahs in the neighborhood that someone had died. There was a really bad smell coming out of Pauls basement windows. I was betting it was that goddamned rocket fuel that he was mixing and it blew up. Maybe he forgot to add the stabilizer and it went off, who knows. But man, that summer was unforgettable. Turned out that Paul was hurt really bad and all. He lost an eyeball and also his left hand. It broke off at the elbow, so actually he lost his hand and the forearm bit as well. We all felt bad for him, but something else happened that summer. Mr. Abercrombie and his old lady split up and we never heard from her again because she moved out. She probably got sick and tired of our old science teacher. So, Mr. Abercrombie and his son ended up alone in that apartment, sitting around eating Chef Boy-ar-Dee Beefaroni, and watching Bugs Bunny, but let me get back to telling you about Paul and his injuries and such, and what happened. Paul ended up with a damn pair of steel hooks mounted on the stub of his arm. He looked like something out of a grindhouse flick. But he had a flesh tone colored piece of wood dangling from the stump where his forearm used to be. It looked a bit insulting as if to say goddamn right I am a real arm. The hooks were attached to a steel cable that ran up this fake wooden pink arm, attached to eyehooks like a rudder cable on a radio controlled model plane. His face was all twisted up, and where there used to be an eyeball was nothing but a pair of fused up shut eyelids. Man, he looked like something from a horror movie. During that Indian summer, the other kids at school would 10 Raven ~ Natalya Majorin tease him, calling him a freak and all. This was about the same time, oddly enough, that Paul and I became best friends. During the winter that followed, I used to wonder about something, but I was afraid to ask Paul the question. My friends I hung out with used to ask me to ask him the question, but I couldnt do it. These jerkoffs wanted to know that one thing I wanted to know too: What happened to your arm and where did it go? You know, that question, the one that any right minded teenager would want to know, but were afraid to ask. Wed probably go to bed at night asking ourselves what the hell happened to his arm and all. Did it end up getting thrown out by the hospital? Did it end up getting incinerated? Or, even more interesting: Did Mr. Abercrombie salvage the arm and mount it, probably like he did to Roseanne Rosss cat? Well, as those winter months passed, none of us asked that question. It was too bizarre to even think about (but all of us did anyway) and one day we even sat around the parks ice rink and asked ourselves if maybe we were all warped by just thinking about it. We just threw it off, put on our skates and played an intense game of ice hockey. As the years went on, I graduated from high school with honors. Mr. Abercrombie retired the year before from teaching; Paul moved out of the apartment complex and ended up taking drugs and stuff, probably because his mind was so messed up from the accident. I had this full years scholarship to the University of Michigan because I won the John Philip Sousa Award in high school band. I was also thinking about becoming an animal doctor. But, one day, I went down to the navy recruiting office and went into the navy, full bore, and went on to finish up with twenty years under my belt. Well, you know that bit already. So now I bet youre going to ask me to move on with the damn story, so here goes. I met this girl in Spain, we fell in love, we got married, and one time when my ship went out to sea, she decided to cheat on me and so there I was, left alone and with an apartment so full of stuff that I decided to give it all away and move back onboard the ship as a single man. I decided Id go back up to Michigan and all, to visit my parents for a couple of weeks to just relax. I flew up that way and dad picked me up, so we went on back to the apartment complex where they lived. During one of my days in Michigan I ran into some of my old buddies from the neighborhood. Johnny Granger got married and he was divorced, just like I was about to be. Steve Orendorf, he was still single and got a job at Farmer Jacks as a manager; and Charlie Barclay was doing roadie work for the rock band heavies that used to come to Detroit; what a cool job to have. Anyway, Paul Abercrombies name soon came up. Seems he was back in town and became a complete screw-up on dope. Steve said he was on some serious drugs and became homeless and such. I felt bad for Paul, man, let me tell you. He was a good kid in high school and he just turned into a freak after his accident. I have to say at this point, I really felt bad for him. Know what I mean? One day as I was walking out of the Southland shopping mall, I heard a voice call out my name. Sure as hell, it was Paul Abercrombie. He was looking like he was still tripping out and 12 looked like he had slept in a garbage can. He asked me what happened and why did I get all of my hair cut off. I told him I was in the navy. Feeling bad for him, I took him to that Greek restaurant down on Fort Street, and he chowed down on some souvlakis like no man has ever eaten before. He said he wished he couldve done something with his life, how he even met a girl he liked, and they broke up mainly because of the same shit that happened to me and such. By this time, you know what? That freaky damn question we used to ask each other came up in my mind, so guess what I dropped the question on his lap like I would drop a hot steam iron on someones chest, who was sound asleep, just to watch them wake up suddenly, screaming in pain. What happened to that arm of yours? I really needed to find out. Surprise, out of the blue one day, he started to tell me. But it freaked me out the way that he did. He looked right well annoyed. I felt as if I was asking him the darkest of secrets. Although he looked like he was really angry, he barked out the story, but it bewildered me the way he told it. Seems that Pauls dad got the arm from the basement right before the ambulance and fire trucks arrived. Being the damn psychopathic lunatic he seemed to be, he put the arm inside a steel tool box, took that real horror show looking thing to the woods and buried it underneath an old oak tree that had fallen down some years ago but was never seen again. Thats all he knew. But when I told him that I wanted to find it to see it with my own eyes, he told me to leave it well enough the hell alone. Paul also went on to tell me how his mom ended up committing suicide and his dad, well, he took a really bad stroke one day and fell down a set of stairs, snapped his damn neck in three places, and he died with a chunk of meat and cartilage sticking out from the side near his right ear. Paul went through some major stuff though. I gotta tell you. Sure as anything, Paul was living in his old car, the same car he had a few years back, an old beaten up olive green Ford Maverick with a raggedy black Naugahyde top. After the lunch we had, I went back to my parents apartment, went up to my room, and took a nap. Soon after, I woke up, and started to think about what Paul said to me, what his dad did with his arm and such, and sure as shit, this got me thinking and wondering out loud: I wonder if that old toolbox can be found? Instead of eating dinner with my folks, I told them I wasnt hungry, and that very late afternoon I decided to jump the fence over by the creek and headed out into the woods. Realizing it might grow dark out there as the sun set, I took one of those honkin huge flashlights I found under the kitchen sink at the apartment along with me. I crossed the creek at the same place where my friends and I once built a dam and that same shopping cart from K-Mart was in the creek where we put it there years ago. I went on into the thicket. Where was that oak tree at, I wondered, as I marched on into the cool autumn air. To make matters a bit dreary, it sure was getting right dark and spooky in these woods already. Suddenly I got this anxious and edgy feeling that I was being watched. At one point I stood by a tree, and I caught someone moving off to what would be about my eight o clock position, right over my left shoulder. That really freaked me out. I started to feel that I was being stalked. 13 I went all through the woods, even past Coates hill where we used to go for tobogganing down the hill and all and even where one time we stole a kids big wheel and rolled down that same hill faster than that goddamn plastic tricycle ever moved in its life. I crossed the same field where I used to launch my model rockets, and thats when I started asking I wonder what happened to that aluminum rocket Paul had, and how I would like to have that. Anyway, as sure as anything can be, I could see it directly ahead, plain as day my intended location. I spotted an old fallen oak tree. It was still partially alive, or may have somehow managed to survive the fall. I went over there, and started looking around. Nothing seen, no spot where anyone mightve buried this damn arm of Pauls, but then again, if it was buried, the spot might never be found unless someone who was smarter than me took along a trusty metal detector and dug the grisly thing up. So as I started walking away, I felt my foot hit something with a CLICK. This turned out to be the rusty handle of a damn tool box, sticking out of the ground, halfway buried like. Come and get me, it seemed to cry out. I dropped to the ground and began moving old, smelly leaves out of the way. Sure enough, Mr. Abercrombie, being the lazy son of a bitch he was, didnt bury the toolbox. Instead, he buried the damn thing with leaves in a low point of the ground. All it took for me to do was dig up the leaves with my hands, and soon enough I got to the point of digging around a rusty old toolbox. Sure as anything, you know what my next step was: to open the toolbox! I carefully sprung open the two latches that held it shut. Inside, I found the nasty remains of a forearm and a hand. Believe it or not, you know how youd think that after all these years the flesh would have rotted off? I mean, this thing even smelled bad. Some of his skin had clung to the bones like dry parchment paper. It was hideous it was just sitting in that old rusty toolbox and was unceremoniously placed in there. But there was a note inside. It read: Dear John, You really shouldnt have come here looking for my arm. I am watching you, right now. I am standing right behind you, crouched low in the brush. Dont look around, I dont want you to see me when I get ready to swing these steel hooks of mine deep into the base of your skull, just as Ive done with those other creepy bastards you knew as friends. Try your very best not to scream.We dont want to disturb anyone. Sincerely, Paul Abercrombie Lino ~ Alison Watkins I WAS A SURLY TEENAGER RYAN HARRIS QEP Essay Contest Wi n ner I was a surly teenager. There wasnt much behind my surliness: teenage angst, certainly; a touch of egocentrism, of course. These things are typical (or, at least, I like to think that they are), and they are things that everyone experiences. I blamed my parents, my classmates and my friends for my dissatisfaction with my life. Id had numerous conversations with similarly burdened peers in which we bemoaned our lots in life, the family members that didnt understand us, and other such things. During these conversations, we carefully kept the blame off of ourselves. This is normal. I was also immensely drawn to books. Fantasy books, specificallythere was something about the hacking-and-slashing Dragon-slaying adventurousness that piqued my interest, but mostly it was the concept of The Hero. In these books, The Hero was always kind, always a listener as well as a speaker; he understood the problems of others and did what he could to lessen the sufferings of the people that he cared about. More than anything else, I wanted to be a Hero of some sort. So, one night, after a long period of time spent deliberating on the matter, I identified the traits that I wanted to cultivate in myself; these were listening, understanding and kindness. After figuring out what I wanted to be, I brainstormed for actions that I could take in order to better embody these traits. My first step was to bring a tray full of brownies to school. For all of my failings, I could make a mean brownie, and I always got joy from eating them (and honestly, Id thought, even a bad brownie is a good thing). So I brought these brownies and gave one to each person that I passed by, even if I didnt know them or if they had been mean to me in the past. This is a tradition that continued, taking place every second and fourth Monday throughout my junior and senior years of high school. This was a Kind Act that I understood, one that was easy for me to use as a stepping stone. My second step was to stop talking about my problems and listen, instead, to other people. In 16 writing, this seems insignificant and small, but it was probably the hardest step to take. Listening to someonereally listening to them and hearing the things that they are sayingis a difficult thing to do; it requires attention and care. I began to learn about other people and how to empathize with them; this is no insignificant feat, especially for an egocentric teen. These traitslistening, understanding and kindnesswere, to me, the core of Compassion. In time, I began to take more steps. There were meditative practices that Id read about that were geared toward developing this thing called Compassion. I practiced them, extended kindness to people outside of my small circle of friends. I began volunteering with a club at school, helping clean up the nearby beaches. I made it my mission to perform at least one kind act every day. At first, I was proud of myself for doing these things; I was being the Hero. Then I began to forget to notice that I was doing them. This, too, is an element of Compassion. Finally, I graduated high school. I felt the need to leave home, go somewhere else. I didnt like who I was, didnt want to be around people who remembered me as I had been. I moved away, drove a thousand miles to remake myself. I ended up in Richmond,Virginia, living in a tiny apartment with an aunt who had been looking for a roommate. I found a job and worked to make myself the very image of Independence, and worked to obliterate all of the parts of me that I didnt want: the shy parts, the awkward parts, the scared parts. It took a long time before I realized how impossible it is to get rid of these aspects of oneself. For the better part of a year, I thrust myself into situations that I was uncomfortable with, hoping that I would somehow come out of them stronger. As time went on, though, I began to realize my error: compassion isnt just something that you do for other people. Compassion involves forgiving and loving oneself; by doing this, one can better forgive and love others. Loving oneself and forgiving oneself, however, is much more easily said than done. After all, weve all done things that were ashamed of. Weve all done things that we hate. Weve all hurt other people. Weve all been hurt. It took a while, but I realized that part of being a compassionate human being is realizing that everyone is hurting and everyone is scarred. The compassionate person has to be able to see that and love other people, regardless of these hurts, these scars. Doing so allows us to grow as people, enables us to become something that creates change in the world. From everything that Ive seen, from all of the people that Ive spoken to, this seems to be the reason why were here in the first place. Were here to love. 17 #1 ~ Austin Rich Self Portrait ~ Clara James ROOTS, TREES, AND SAPLINGS REBEKKAH GIBSON Take a look around this house; trees and wood stacks and tumbleweed in the breeze, only some several yards from the gentle street, with furry little creatures on little cat feet and Emma sitting tall. But caution my memories, please dont fall into a deep fold before I can hold you close to me. You: so many, many memories. Oh, how these roots have made me strong! Lasted me this long, and will continue to last me forever still. Heaven looks down with a delightful shrill. Here he comes cradling with the corner of his heart, his precious, most blinding art, 20 that little baby girl wrapped in his arms. Echoing along the hills are the many farms, but here he is priceless across the grass; soft against the grown mans laugh. This is our family, our love in all. I am about to crawl over his arms to that safe stead, but I take a picture here instead. He has my heart, my soul too, for, I laugh, how quickly it flew! Latched itself onto his devoted core which I couldnt help but adore. I smile so benign and step a little further, and give a little murmur, whispering sweet somethings to my daughter, and then to my husband, a sweet kiss I offer. This is my home. 21 HURTING TRUTH COMES WITH UNEXPECTED EPIPHANY HEEYUN (JASON) JOO HaloI didnt see it when his heart drew a horizontal line with a long beeping sound followed by dead silence. Bright lighthe might have seen it, but I didnt. I wasnt there when his life was turned off by a doctor with his parents permission, but I was sure that he would get better treatment than the hospitals treatment in either world, heaven or the earth. I was 9-years-old when I got out early from my elementary school. It was a fairly sunny day after a few hours of rain; a perfect day for a funeral. My parents took me to my grandparents house right after I got home. While we were in the car, I tried to break the unusual silence. I tried to guess why we were going to my grandparents house all of sudden, why I was pulled out of school early. I heard Grandpa and Grandma just finished remodeling their home! Yeah, honey. It looks like a brand new house, Mom replied in a low and awkward voice. I knew my guess was wrong, but I felt she was not in the mood for talking, so I remained silent. The smell of new furniture tickled our noses as we entered the house. I looked around, shocked because the house was nothing like how I remembered or imagined it to be. I started to wonder why we were there. I noticed my parents were having a serious conversation with aunts, uncles and grandparents. It did not look like a celebration for the newly remodeled house. Now even more curious, I went to my mom. 22 Mom, are we here because John is sick? I asked, pretending I did not see the serious conversation between them. I became the spotlight at the moment. Yes, yes we are honey. Mom answered with a deep, dismal voice that I had never heard before in my life. I returned to the spot where I was hanging out with my brother and cousins. I wasnt too concerned about the reason we were there; I was just happy about skipping the rest of the school day. I was worried about John being sick, but I thought it was momentary. However, I did not know that the happy day would turn into one of the most tragic moments of my life. Everything had started a few weeks earlier. My cousin, John, had been standing at the street corner, waiting for a bus and holding a balloon in his hand. He was 15-years-old. Although I wasnt there, once I tried to imagine what happened to him, it became an unforgettable scene. John tried to inflate the balloon despite the strong winds he was facing. However, when he was inhaling the air through his nose, a gust knocked his face and forced a rubber piece deep inside his throat. Five minutes was all he had to find a way to live. He must have been running around with soundless yelling from his mouth. His lungs must have filled with the smell of rubber instead of fresh air. His tongue must have tasted frustration towards people who were wondering, Whats wrong with this kid? After four minutes and fifty nine seconds, John must have known that he would no longer live, that he wouldnt be able to spend his time with us, his family. John must have realized that even a little rubber piece is capable of blocking a passage between life and death. At the same moment, I realized the body we saw at the hospital was Johns body breathing, without the presence of his soul. 23 I tried to convince myself that John was just sick. He would be okay very soon and would play with us like he used to, with his angelic smile (condensing the sentence). But my Maginot line collapsed when I got the answer from my father. On a week day morning, I called my father to my bed. I threw a question at him. Dad, isnt John going to be okay? Father looked confused; he seemed to be trying to find the right words to say. Well, son, the Lord called him before us. He needed him so badly. My cousins body was placed in the crematory on a clear sunny day. I stood with my mom watching John becoming millions of pieces. It was terrifying and depressing. I thought, From this moment, I will not be able to laugh much during the family reunion. But I was wrong. After a few months, everything went back to the way it used to be. Even Johns parents went back to work. I was furious that they went back to their normal lives when John was not there anymore. However, I did not know that I was one of them as well. When I was in middle school, I suddenly remembered John, but not a single tear was coming out from my eyes. I remembered from Biology class that Humans adjust themselves to the environment. I never thought that what I learned from my Biology class would have anything to do with my personal life, relational life. I still have an image of John playing board games with me, but since that day thirteen years ago when I cried all day long, no tears have come out. 24 At Arles ~ Stacy Sheer Pear 5& 6 OUR TEARS ANNA MURPHY QEP Essay Contest Wi n ner Devans mother was not a stranger. Id spent time with her on half a dozen occasions. I always told Devan that her moms mannerisms reminded me of my stepmom. Devans mother, Laura, was usually joyful and always wanted to make sure we were having a good time. Id never seen her in disarray or upset, so when she came to Devans apartment in tears, that was a first. At the time, I didnt know it was to be one of the last occasions Devan and I would see her alive. I held the telephone in my hand, having no clue how to talk to someone whod lost a mother. Devan wasnt particularly close to her mom, so I wasnt sure how I should approach her with my condolences. Id known her for five years, and at that moment, no number of our good or bad memories together could help me. I decided to just call-- it was my duty. Hello? Devans soft voice answered. Hi, its Anna, I read about what happened. Immediately the shift in atmosphere was felt over the phone. I was hesitant to say anything more, but felt that my friend needed to hear a voice of familiarity. I did not regret my descion to call, as Devan sounded relieved to hear from me. Half an hour later, I hung up feeling better about calling, yet worse about hearing what had happened. She was pleased that Id called. I was the first person to call and send my condolences. Devan assured me that my call was not at a bad time, at least given the circumstances. It had been about two or three days since she heard the news, and for the most part her sadness was in remission. It wasnt for another two or three weeks after that fateful day that Id truly understand her pain. It took a Friday night with a box of wine to bring the subject up into conversation. When the subject of her mother, Laura, came up, it was like being hit with the news article all over again. 28 We spoke about our relationships with our parents. Part of why Devan and I got along so well was because each of us were capable of understanding the difficulties we faced in those relationships. Both of our fathers were compulsive liars, and each held their daughters at arms length. My father never gave straight answers. Id always have to decipher between what was truth and what was fiction. His lies varied from small to large, one of the largest being that he had a 26-yearold son he had never mentioned it. Despite all the issues I had with my dad, Devan told me that I should take advantage of having him because his number might come up suddenly, and then Id never have those opportunities to talk to him again. Our mothers were both delusional women, never in check with reality. Their children suffered from the consequences. Devans mother, Laura, was easily manipulated by others. She had been in a relationship with a man who had taken advantage of her overly active imagination, and made her believe that he was a legitimate businessman. For years Devan had pleaded with her mom to see the truth about this man; she constantly tried to snap Laura back to reality. This man was a wedge between them, stopping any relationship from forming. When Laura did finally learn the truth, it was ten years too late. The deeper our conversation went, the closer we came to crying. When a hot tear rolled down Devans face, I cried too. She sat on her corner of the bed and held her face in her hands. It was the first time Id ever seen my friend cry so hard. Devan was a very reserved person, always nervous about how her actions would translate to others. The image of her slender form crying helplessly into her hands was overwhelming for me. I felt like I was watching a stranger cry, but she was one of my closest and most cherished friends. My chest ached and I felt a sour ball of emotion rise into the back of my throat. My friend, my brain twin as we used to call each other, was so miserable, and I felt her misery. What was worse, I knew I did not hold the power to lift that loss from her heart. The minutes passed like hours, and we held each other and cried hysterically. What had been a light shedding of tears for me had transformed into an episode of extreme sadness. Id never expe- 29 rienced losing a loved one, especially not someone as important as a parent.Yet in an evening I had experienced it through the eyes of another, and it had weakened my body and my mind. Devan had not had an easy life. Her father struggled to make ends meet, and Devan usually received the pleasures of life such as clothing or high end chocolate through the kindness of others. Her childhood had suffered because of constant poverty. At the climax of our anguish, I lightly lifted her head from my chest and said, from the bottom of my heart, I am so sorry for what has happened to you. Never in my life had I meant something so sincerely. Devan looked at me with her shining eyes, her face wet with tears. In a raspy voice choked by emotion she replied, Thank you. The next morning, waking up in my home, I felt as if Id hiked up and down mountainous trails without food or water. My body was sore, and my eyes burned. Despite my physical discomfort, I felt that Id truly not only helped my friend get through the hardship, but that Id helped myself to understand compassion, to mentally and physically feel someone elses feelings. I learned that there is a distinct difference between compassion and understanding. We can look at a persons situation and understand the difficulties they are experiencing.Yet when we feel compassion towards that person, we are emotionally involved, and our feelings are parallel to the other. 30 Cactus ~ Allison Smith CRIMSON MEMORIES MARIA CHAPMAN Why is it, that as a writer I rarely express myself (by or with) the art form I am talented at? Instead I keep a pensive expression fixed on my face. The similes, short stories, thoughts and memories swallow my want to be social. Simply, because Ive found something massive and I need to put these eclectic ideas into words. I rub the skin behind my ears with my index finger. Three fingers wait on my earlobes and my thumb rests on Gods imaginary hand. 32 Untitled ~ Susan Otis TRIP TO FLORIDA ALEXANDRINA TVERSKY I have a very emotional and reactive personality. I engage easily, I raise my voice, I use my hands and I assume a lot. I have gone to many seminars to learn how to deal with my over-grown ego telling me to take over or to fight, how to develop emotional intelligence, and how to interact with people in more peaceful and productive ways. The seminars were helpful at some level, but mostly I have to remember the techniques to make them work. And because emotions and rational thinking reside in different hemispheres of the brain, I still struggle here and there. I also find this kind of struggle interferes with my driving. Since my ego from time to time takes over the wiser me, I consider myself a mediocre driver despite never having had a ticket or a collision, thank G-d. I have not had many chances, though. I have been driving for only four years. For the same reason I do not drive far away either. On all the car trips my family has gone on so far, my husband has been driving us on each and every one of them. So this past summer when we decided to drive to Tampa Bay, Florida, I saw an opportunity to try myself on the long road. I wanted to try. I thought I could control myself and keep calm, even though I sometimes get intimidated by trucks. Their roaring bulks swish by with condemning speed, almost making my car lift and swirl in their tail current. Even some people drive in such a manner it seems they learned offensive driving. Have self-concerned tailgaters ever heard about keeping distance? They get so close, the radiators grill practically gets pressed to my neck; I could almost feel the drivers breath behind my ears. My ego said, Stop abruptly right in front of him. Make him scared to get that close to you! I fought that urge and instead I learned to flip the rear-view mirror to erase that 34 picture of the radiators grill from my sight and mind. And when this does not help, I exercise the golden rule of the 3 Ds. In Russian, Dai Dorogu Duraku means Let an idiot pass. Given my nature, it is hard for me to yield, let go, forget and move on. My ego would nag at the back of my mind, asking Why do you let them pass? Are not you going to keep up with them? But I consciously choose to be happy over being seemingly right because when I get angry, I am more likely to make stupid mistakes. Even my husband, one of my harshest judges, recognizes me as a safe driver. Last fall he presented me with a new elegant silver town car. The car was not very mighty, but it had some nice features my old car did not have: continuously variable transmission, iPad and iPod connections, and, most importantly, it has a big enough trunk to hold backpacks, groceries, books, coolers, and whatever else a family of four may need to carry. Unfortunately, my prize lost a bit of its shine within the first three months with some help from one elderly lady. I was backing out of parking spot, twisting my head like a spinning top to avoid knocking over any pedestrians. They do not mind cars in parking lots. I guess they do not see the danger presented by a slow moving car. With caution I was backing into the space between two rows of parking cars, about to shift into drive, when I saw the white reversing lights of another car aiming into my new cars rear end. It was the first time I was in such a situation. Obviously, I thought slowly. I did not return to the parking spot and could not yet move forward. Instead, I started honking, trying to draw her attention to me out in the middle of the lot. She did not even dent my car, only scratched it a bit. In that particular spot the finish was no longer smooth and sparkly. But my car was only three months old. I was furious about her lack of attention and about my own stupidity to expect an elderly person to be as agile as a youngster. I stepped out. She did too. I only remember some small details about her: neatly done, absolutely white curly hair, manicured nails, and wrinkly skin. I realized she was much more seasoned than I thought. Whatever I wanted to accuse her of got stuck in my throatI chilled. I still wanted to remind her that she has to watch around, and for some reason, I hesitated for which word best fit the purpose: watching or looking. Next moment I felt all the sensations shame can bring: cold sweat, a hot wave across my face and a tremor in my hands because watching and looking got mixed up together and I heard my mouth saying, I wish you were walking. It was very rude considering her age and my equal participation in the fender scratching (rather than fender bender). She returned to her car and sped away. I suddenly felt like that idiot from my golden rule, to whom it is easier to yield then to protest. 35 I was boiling over that tiny scratch on my brand new car for another week or so. But still today I feel so embarrassed for my words. I have learned my lesson. I live close to the assisted living facility, and if I see white reversing lights (especially by the steering an elderly driver) in the rearview mirror, I know better than to dispute who has to yield to whom. I just move as fast as I safely can from their path. A few months after the scratch, when planning the Florida trip, my sweetheart was thinking of fun activities he and the kids could do while it was my turn to drive. It was about sixteen hours to our destination. We planned to take turns every four hours. My husband was very generous; he allowed my turn to last for two whole hours. I do not know if I am an intolerable driver or if my dear accepts only one way of doing things: his way. During my turn he found he could not stand me driving with him present. After that he took his turn and it did not end until we got there. In some places I was even happy he did. In South Carolina we rode through some town where most houses were crooked or had broken windows, many businesses were closed, grass tall and un-mown. It seemed we drove into Halloween in the middle of June. At some other place we got stuck behind a tractor pulling a strange looking agricultural machine. It had huge green arms so widely spread it was taking both lanes and there was no way to pass it. We and many other cars dragged ourselves along like small ducklings behind mother-duck for a long while.You almost could hear a sigh of relief when the tractor pulled aside. In addition, I got a feeling all the trucks from all the US gather in Florida. There were so many of them bustling about with nearly cosmic velocity. I felt much safer observing them from the passenger seat than if I had to navigate between them. Thanks to being a passenger I could fully enjoy one of the most remarkable roads I have ever ridden onthe Sunshine Skyway Bridge to St. Petersburg, Florida. This road across the Tampa Bay meanders through water for about four miles. Somewhere in the middle, the road elevates over the sea to allow passage to ships and boats. The bridge hangs on numerous cables high in the sky. Driving over this marvel is breathtaking; it feels like flying. I was grateful I did not have to concentrate on keeping car from becoming airborne, because wind certainly tried to blow us off. For a whole ten days in Florida and all the way back home my dear was driving all by himself. I did not object. As soon as a year ago I would have tried harder to prove to him that I was a good driver. I would make noise and talk a lot. But I did not. I did not need to. I did not feel like it. I did not want us clashing. I do want to be recognized and appreciated, but at what cost? I would rather be in peace and enjoy reading, sleeping, keeping the kids quiet, and seeing the majestic view of the roads I passed by. All of a sudden I heard Freddie Mercury singing Surrender your ego, be free and it dawned on me that I had changed. I guess I had started developing emotional intelligence. 36 Flying Fish ~ Erin Chilton 1 RYAN HARRIS I was born a tree. I understand, I say. This is not at issue. But it is. A tree, long-limbed and twisted, but a tree, yes. I remember: I was ripped from bark to leaf; I cut off my own roots. I am not the first to do so. There was need of it, I say.Wasnt there? Need, yes, and knowing. There is knowing that must be had to shuck off the heartwood, lay bare the naked back. The need, then, was consequence. Consequence, of course. If there is anything at issue, it is consequence. Sin, hurt, knowing -- 38 Love of air and light, of warmth. I was a lover. I skinned myself for love. There came a time that I, as all trees do, left my audience of squirrels and gave myself up to wolves. It is not trees that succumb to wolves, I almost say. This is what I learned: wolves. There is nothing evil in wolves, but there was something hurtful, black-furred and gripping that eats away at trees, at stillness. I have known that, I say. I have known wolves such as this: wolves with teeth and fur and warmth. Of course. Whats at issue here is not hurt or treehood or wolves; it is the heartwood, that naked self I had forgotten, the tree in the dead old tree. And whats at issue is knowing. There is something I have forgotten, something here in the skin of my skin. I fear that all untrees have forgotten it. 39 PLAYGROUND PURSUIT STEPHANIE MORRIS When I was in either second or third grade, a family of four moved into my neighborhood. The family had two sons. The eldest was named Jeff. He was older than me and was one of the most beautiful boys I had ever laid eyes on. He was the color of sundown: golden hair, tanned skin, dark eyes, darker eyelashes, and a smile that made me weak. But Jeff was not nice. He could be charminggrown ups liked him, and he once caught a gopher that had been excavating our front yard, which saved my parents the expense of bringing in an exterminator. But when Jeff wasnt sucking up to adults, he was a monsterfull of himself and taunting me and my friends. His teasing made me cry more than once. But I was also infatuated with him, enough that a part of me was grateful for his taunts. They at least meant that he noticed me. But he noticed me for another reason, quite separate from the first: I could run. Fast. I terrorized my playmates at chase and hide-and-seek. At school, team leaders fought one another to have me on their teams. Running fast was simply something that I did; it made me proud, but I never thought much about my ability. Running was fun, and running won me friends and allies. And running won me Jeff s attention. It happened suddenly, one day: my friend Jamie and I were playing, at the same time that Jeff was outside with his friends. Jeff came over to bother us. He teased us, knocked us around, tried to scare us into running, but we refused. You couldnt even catch her anyway, Jamie said. Shed be faster than you. Jeff looked at me, and my stomach, which had fluttered at the sight of him looming over our play, began to twist itself into intricate sculptures. He smiled. She cant outrun me, he said. 40 This statement caught me up short. What do you mean? I said. I can. I began to grow hot and itchy with excitement, with the thrill of having dared to address Jeffto challenge a bigger kidoutright. You cant, he said. Come on. He started walking toward the curb, which was two houses down from where Jamie and I were playing. I followed, almost skipping, graceless with glee. Well race to that van, Jeff said, when we had reached the curb. He pointed back in the direction we had come from, toward the champagne-colored van that belong to Jamies parents. Whoever touches it first wins. Sure. My voice was weak. We faced the van. Jamie and all of Jeff s friends watched us. One of Jeff s friends counted out a ready, set, go! I burst forward, arms pumping, feet pounding the sidewalk hard enough to make them ache. The glory of it was the most familiar feeling in the world. But my ecstasy lasted for only a moment. Because there was Jeff, right beside me, face tight with concentration, and then there was Jeff ahead of me, pulling farther and farther away. I turned cold. I pushed myself, so hard that I nearly fell. But Jeff reached the van first. He smacked against it, and the the sound of kid on metal echoed through the neighborhood. I ran into the van a moment later. He was laughing, when I had regained my balance; he smiled and said, Told you. For once, I did not register his smile; I only felt my loss burning through me, making the world unsteady and unreal. I could not quite believe I had lost. I must have done something wrong. I opened my mouth to demand a rematch and Jeff said, still grinning, still breathless, Want to try again? We raced each other so many times that day that I finally lost count. Jeff s friends drifted back home as the sun sank and streetlamps flickered on. Jamie went inside, after a while, to eat dinner. She never came back out. And still Jeff and I raced, again and again and again, the slap of our bodies colliding with the van ringing through the neighborhood and always it was the samehe always reached it first. By the time my mother called me inside, I was shaking and wheezing, my chest hot and 41 ragged with exhaustion. Jeff was still smiling. He said good-bye to my mother and sauntered off home, and I watched him and hated him. The picture of Jeff s golden beauty had disintegrated; all I saw now was a boy who always reached the van first, even if it was just by a second. I burned with humiliation. My head throbbed with the unfairness of it all. And as I trudged inside the house, a thought broke through my confusion and shame. I had to beat him. Somehow, someway, I had to beat Jeff. And to do that, there was nothing to do but run. I began a track and field program. Every morning, I would wake up before my parents and sister, go into the backyard, and run around the orange tree, which was basically all the backyard that we had. I ran until I was dizzy, until I couldnt breathe, until every centimeter of my skin was as hot as concrete in an Arizona afternoon. I had no idea if I was doing things right. I had no idea how to measure my progress. I just ran. I found myself wondering how I would approach Jeff, when I felt confident enough to try and race him. I tried to imagine it: me walking up to him, trying to hide how jumpy I was, saying, Want to race? He would sneer at me or maybe he would smile, and we would go to the curb, get in position, and someone would shout GO! I imagined those first few steps would be like being launched into outer space. But the thought of approaching him so openly made me sick to the stomach. Another, more probable, scenario that occurred to me was that Jeff himself would ask me to race. The idea made me feel even more nervous; I began to dread going outside. When I did, I shied away from Jeff. He never asked me to race him again. I guess he felt that he had made his point. I saw him at school one day. The sight of him surprised me: because he was older than me, he took a different bus to school and had class in another building. But there he was, squatting on the ground in the midmorning sunshine, surrounded by friends, laughing. I stared at him, as I walked past. And as if he felt my eyes on him, he looked up. And smiled. It was such a beautiful smile. It was loose and surprised, as if I were a friend he had not expected to see. His eyebrows rose. He said, Hi. I never quite caught that; I only remember him saying that in retrospect. Because the instant our eyes met, I felt a sudden, irrational feeling of ecstasy fill up my stomach, like there was a balloon between my ribs. I knew, suddenly, what I wanted to do. I turned toward him. Began to walk faster. Let my backpack slide off my shoulders and thud onto the ground. 42 Prep Peas ~ Jane Freeman What are you doing here? he said. Catch me, I said, and I smacked him across the face. There was a moment, a breath, between the smack and my takeoff, that I watched Jeff change. His face shut down. His body became steel. I fled. But unable to help myself, I looked back. And saw Jeff, running as hard as when wed first raced, his face tight, his arms pumping. I had never seen anyone look so angry as Jeff did. And for a moment, my insides deserted me. I felt as if I were running on air. I imagined him reaching me. What would he do? Shake me? Hit me back? But even as the thoughts occurred to me, they slid free of my brain, unable to catch hold. Because I was running and Jeff was running and this was what I had worked for all those mornings in the backyard. Running was all that mattered. I closed my mind to my anxious thoughts, opened it to the great, wet field around me, and ran. My ears were full of the wet slap of my sneakers in the mud, the wheeze of my breathing, as I tumbled down the hill that led to the jungle gym. The playground had gone quiet around me; maybe it was because I was running too hard to hear the sounds of the other kids and maybe it was because everyone was watching us. In the moment just after I had hit Jeff, I thought I had caught a glimpse of his friends sudden attention, their confusion. I imagined them lining the sidewalk, staring after us, shouting to Jeff what happened? and get her! A surge of giddy terror swelled through me. The playground, outside the circle of sand where the swings and monkey bars stood, was a dirt field, dotted with crabgrass and littered with canals. The recent rain had turned it into a sludgy soup, and my feet slid sideways, awkward as a calf on its first legs. Mud speckled my arms, face, and tongue, crunched between my teeth. I glanced back at Jeff, saw his jeans turning black with mud, saw him eating up ground. I turned forwarda second before I hit the mud ocean. There was a particular part of the field that grew especially swampy after heavy rain. I was well acquainted with this spot: popular girls had goaded me into leaping over it time and time again, and time and time again, I missed the dry ground and ended up so muddy that the school would have to call my mother and have her bring me a change of clothes. These incidentsthe way the girls abandoned me, laughing, the way my mothers face looked when she caught sight of me cowering in the nurses officeburned through my mind. But it was too late to avoid the ocean. I did the only thing I could. I jumped. It was an ugly jump. My foot slipped through the mud, and I landed on my hands and knees inches from dry ground. But there was no time to dwell on my failureJeff s ragged grunt sounded behind me, so close that for a moment, I could almost feel his hands close around me. I skittered to my feet, heart in my stomach, and splashed onto dry ground. I dared a glance behind me, as I pounded toward the monkey bars. Jeff slogged through the mud ocean, holding out his arms and frog-stepping like some kind of grotesque ballerina, his steely face suddenly human with disgust. He caught my eye and he became all steel again. He waded free and was once again a thing of speed. But the sight of him in the mud had broken down whatever remained of my terror. I started to laugh. 44 The monkey bars loomed before me. Beyond them, there was only the chain link fence that encircled the field. I had a vivid image of slamming into it, bouncing off, into Jeff s muddy hands and vengeful bellow. Unless I leaped among the monkey bars, I was lost; my flight would end in that fence, and the whole playground would watch me pay for hitting Jeff. But I simply did not care. I would try for the monkey bars, I decided; I would dodge them and make a dash for the hill. I would outrun Jeff, whatever it took. I flung myself toward the monkey bars and dared them to give me all they had. And thenthe bell rang. I was saved. I celebrated by smashing into the fence, as if it was the champagne-colored van Jeff and I had used for a goal, all those days ago. I split my lip on the metal. And when I turned around, I saw Jeff crouched in the field, glaring, arms taut and bracing his shaking body. I laughed, shouted wordlessly, waved; Jeff staggered to his feet and stalked back toward the school buildings. I wanted to say something, something wonderful, deliver some kind of verbal final blow to Jeff s stiff backbut there was nothing for me to say. I grinned all the way back to class. The teacher sent me to the nurses office. My mother had to bring me a fresh change of clothes. * When I saw Jeff again, back in the neighborhood, among his big boy friends, he ignored me. But I knew he saw me, knew he heard the saucy little taunts I flung in his direction. For a long time afterward, I waited for him to ask me to race him from the curb to the van. I wanted him to ask me. I wanted to feel the weightless ecstasy of beating him, of holding his attention in the palm of my hand. But he never did ask. I guess he felt that I had made my point. 45 Untitled ~ Cameron Tanous PERSEPHONE DREAMS OF GOLD STEPHANIE MORRIS Kiss my mouth, the pomegranate stains I cannot wash from my lips. Wake me with the smell of brimstone, the scent of gold in your blood. I dreamed of my mother wailing in the wet sunlight. I dreamed of pears rotten on the bough of cattle still and cold in the black grain. I dreamed of Andromeda, crucified. I cut off her face and danced at a masquerade wearing her blue lips, her white face. I crave her golden hair. For gold of my own. Mine the gold from my wormy womb pile it among the coins you raked from the eyes of corpses. Do not tempt me. I am already sold, for six bloodied seeds. 47 THE PERFORMER TOM STEVENS Not a single moment of the day had been wasted on anything expendable. Jessup had spent the morning in a trance: mechanically eating and not tasting, bathing without a chance of relaxation, and meticulously grooming himself to the point of obsession. His clothes had been picked, sorted, edited, and handled with regal care. He had even taken his car to be serviced the previous week. The slickest brass on Wall Street would nod their approval had they followed Jessup about on the day of the performance. He arrived at the concert hall with hours to spare, having demanded of the organizers that the doors be unlocked all morning in anticipation. A tired, pitiable janitor glanced at him and then carried on with his duty, not caring for all the world whether the stuffy-looking man might be the most well-dressed serial killer in recent history. If Jessup noticed the cleaner at all, it was brieflyand purely instinctual. He was fast at work. After checking once again the spare, minimal stage set, he lumbered back and forth from the specially designated chamber in the sub-basement up to the stage with his equipment. He set it all up lovingly as he had so many times before. In the end, it was an admirable computer system. Besides the sleek tower, monitor, and keyboard, there was a substantial-looking case with an array of wires coming out of the back. These would be hooked into the theatres A/V system. Once Jessup had coddled the mass of cables and electronics to his satisfaction, he hustled to the control booth and began throwing switches and turning knobs. Ten minutes passed from the time Aronsen entered the theatre until he spoke. He moved quietly to the control booth door. If it had been anyone but Jessup, Aronsen would have marveled that a man so out of shape could conduct himself with such vigor. Ive cued it all up, Jessup said suddenly. Aronsen was surprised that Jessup offered a whole sentence so generously. He wondered how long Jessup had known he was there. Probably the whole time. I figured. Wheres Lydia? Havent seen her, said Jessup. His narrow eyes never once looked up from the flatscreen monitor, dark with glowing text that varied from yellow to green to blue. I had her working the promo materials, and they were on my desk last night. 48 You havent called her? Should I have? There it wasthe old, familiar peevishness that nearly every soul who braved Jessups company was subjected to. Im only concerned about her, is all. She seems depressed. Yes, its been a damn nuisance. Soon as she comes in the lab, its a like a funeral. Im firing her. Im not gonna put up with it. This is too damn important. You know, Jessup No! Ive had it with you, too. Now he shot a white-hot stare at Aronsen. Im sick. And tired. Of your Complaining. Of yourdo you not even appreciate, SEVEN YEARS, of my life for this moment. And you STILL are trying to be my conscience. Theres no reason to! Its nothing moral or immoral. Its not the end of the world. Well, it is the end of OUR world. Our current history. This, he now pointed to the computer onstage, will shake the earth. It will PROVE, CONCLUSIVELY, that there is nothing special, nothing sacred, about humans. Nothing. Really? Because it can make music? Jessup put on such a show. As he ranted, his arms whipped out every which way like water spurting from a fountain. He pulled his square, frameless glasses from their perch on his nose and gripped them precariously between thumb and forefinger as he flailed. You dont understand you are just like everyone else, arent you? I thought another scientist might know better, might appreciate all of it, but no. Its not just that it makes music. It COMPOSES. Twelve studies, and not one group could tell Senza from a human composer. He came quite near Aronsen. What is it, then, that makes humanity unique? It isnt language or building or inventing. Animals have those skills. And now, Ive proven, it isnt even art. You are prepared, arent you? All ready to bask in the applause and the press tours and everything else. I know you. And whats more isyoure wrong. I may not be as eloquent as you. . . Get out. Jessup pushed past Aronsen and exited the control booth. No longer would he tolerate these idiots. No longer would he be treated with less than absolute seriousness. This was his moment, and he would never again experience one like it. 49 Jessup checked his watch and determined that there was little time left. None really. He found his dressing room for the first time and paced about, fretting. He began roaming the backstage, looking for something. He was almost frantic. His face was dripping was sweat, and he pulled at his clothes feverishly. Finally he found ita long strip of metal lying on the floor near the stage left wing. It was dull but thin enough. He positioned one end carefully where the wall met the floor, and then, with great force, hurled forward with every last ounce of strength and impaled himself. He slumped to the floor, his mass pushing the metal against the floor with a screech. As he lay there, he gazed, still lovingly, at the mighty system onstage. He offered it praise and thanksgiving, and then he died without a sound. Soon Lydia was found. Her landlady had noticed the lights were on constantly and went to investigate. After some effort to open the bedroom door, she discovered Lydias body slumped against it. One end of a leather belt was around the knob, the other around her neck. The authorities determined that there was no foul play; Lydia died by her own hand. In subsequent years, Jessups research was carried on. He had willed Senza to a professor in Switzerland who had contacted him years earlier with great interest. The almighty composing software, a true work of genius, was studied extensively once again. However, work was discontinued abruptly after the professor leapt from a tall bridge into a shallow river. Later the bodies of two of his graduate students, both assistants in his research, were found separately, both suicides. It was puzzling. None of the three had shown any tendency toward self-harm in the past. Family and associates did recall, though, a sort of distance growing between each of the three and the rest of the world. And although it was deemed superstition, no one else would have anything to do with the exemplary software. 50 Back Line ~ Bridget Moriarty THE FERAL FLY NICKOLAS URPI The morning was stamped with a sallow seal of weary melancholia. People wandered about in a state of direct purpose stimulated by a predetermined location or action which had the satisfaction of being atop their cranial to-do lists. Once these series of actions were executed to contentment, the huddled persons receded back into a lounge chair stuffed with desire, upon which they leaned back and sleptall the weight of their dreams tightly packed beneath a leather or cotton sheet, and crushed beneath a heavy body filled with want. What was wanted and what was acquired were two entirely foreign entities, their only relation being a common body which felt both (and one more keenly than the other, though which one is difficult say). They seemed a flooded mass, like too many olives in a can, with only one red-bell-peppered eye-pupil staring out the sides of the jar from the murky oil-water in which they drenched themselves. Some were lucky enough to have a front-row view, and some were squeezed into the middle like commuters on a subway train. The coffee shop was thus crowded, the line stretching so far back the menu could not be read halfway through the stretch of bodies. Peopple had to wait to read it till they arrived at the counter to place their order, unless they already knew what they wanted. The man in the suit and overcoat silently swam in his own narcotic musings, fluctuating between the past, present, future, and most important of all, what might have been. Everything from what people must do when they arrive at the office to what one could have done twenty years ago when he was still in college and had a chance to take a trip to Norway with the history professor investigating the Vikings treasured remains to what was on the menu for tomorrow for dinner was 52 compressed into a minute of deliberation. His thoughts would swirl downwards like a vast and docile vacuum at the bottom of the sink, where all the aqueous content drained away leaving behind the damp remnants of what used to be an ocean. A fly landed on the man in front of him. It scurried around on the gentlemans thick black overcoat. Slyly and imperceptibly did he explore the gentlemans back, scuttling thus. The blackness of the coat seemed to fascinate the miniature black colossus. It groped around, observing and studying every strand of cloth, every pattern, every mystery concealed in the cloak adorning the man waiting in line in front of him. He turned his head, the flys obsessions entertaining him for less than a mouses minute, and stared at a board to his right. The board was advertising a new drink: a chili pepper mocha, artistically labeled, The Montezuma. The line moved on and the board slipped out of sight. As quickly as it was noticed, it was forgotten, as bodies, content with hot caffeinated drinks in their hands, formed a curtain behind which the Aztec civilization perished, them following the ancient example and exiting the shop. He stared at the long thin line of heads that lead like stairs straight up to the cashier. It seemed infinite for a whileso long and futilealmost purposeless. There were blonde heads, and red heads, and black heads, and brunette heads, and auburn heads, and mixed hairs of all sorts, with a variety of hats more numerous than the variety of insects flourishing in the Amazon. Nevertheless, all this variety that stood between him and the cashier seemed to blur slowly into one black line, like a thin film or screen placed in front of him, separating him from his final decision. He began to think of their other qualities, something to distinguish them. Some requested a new type of coffee every day, in quest of a peculiar element of spontaneity that set fire to the repetitious medium of life in which they lived, whilst some remained fervent in their order, favoring the stable comfort in a familiar taste and smell, day by day, as though they could turn off time and perpetuate their lives without finding the release of death. Some decided beforehand what they wanted, sure of themselves, proud that they were able to determine in that instant what it was that they desired in that one singular moment of the capitalistic freedom of choice. It was as though their entire lives were built upon uncertaintylike little particles of clay that melted away at will and left a void wider than a canyon in its place. This was the one place they were able to firmly resolve themselves. Or perhaps others were truly as ordered and preemptive as they were in the coffee shop. Maybe their lives coincided with the predetermined drink. Life was principally a practical plan initiated by its proprietor to puncture chaos and perpetuate a pleasurable palace of permanence in what was otherwise an anarchic universe. Others still would have a firm resolution, carrying it like a cross on their backs, and then suddenly, take a different direction, as though their GPS changed routes midway between the beginning of the road and the end destination. Then there were those who could not decide, even if they could have read the menu from the back of the line. They wait until the moment is at hand and then cannot find a solution to the dilemma at hand. They panic. The cashier delicately balances their emotion between polite and exasperatedas though they were a fork on a telephone wire, waiting for a gust of wind to disrupt the fragile balance. Meanwhile, the indecisive customer reads the menu so rapidly that none of its contents takes firm roots in their mind, and thus the need to repeat the action ensues, all this indecision propagating into new indecisions and confusions. An uncultivated impatience begins to spread across the room like ripples in a pool, until the entire population of the coffee shop is irritated with this administrator of vacillation. Then, finally, there are those whom do not know what they wantthey simply ask for something because they have nothing upon which to decide He was like this, the man who was watching the fly. All his musings led back to himself, as though he were the circular center of the universe of his thoughts. He knew then why the coffee shop put up boards around the shop advertising specific drinks, like The Montezuma. He had known it beforebut each time he thought about it, it seemed like fresh new knowledgesomething preconceived, a simple part of the machinations of the daily routine, otherwise referred to as life. The rest of the coffee shop seemed to swell up into an ocean of grey water particles evaporating into an intangible purple sky. He did not know what it was he wanted. He did not know if he even wanted coffee. And yet it seemed as though his existencehis clock ticking backwards towards zeroonly consisted of time spent in this coffee shop, as if he were simply the nameless protagonist in a dreary short fiction. His life seemed composed of decisions forced by the circumstances of a universal dogma. He did not know if he wanted coffee or not, he did not know when he stopped wanting it, or if he ever wanted it, or if he still wanted it. He did not know, even if he wanted a coffee, which coffee he should select as his choice for that day, whichever day it was. It seemed as necessary to him as breathing, and so relevantas he did both without thinking. He felt shame and discouragement take him apart piece by piece, as though he were a pile of sand, or a clump of seaweed on the oceanfront, waiting to be dismantled by flies. Flies, like that fly on the mans coatwhich had long disappeared to other ventureswere slaves to instinct as he was slave to indecision. He wondered how living creatures could be so free and yet so thickly covered with chains, that they cannot see the light of the sun. He wondered if he should leave the shop, and not come back. He wondered if he should sit for a while and think about what he wanted, instead of follow a pattern carved by the footsteps of other sheep. He contemplated whether he should look at the menu, perhaps, and decide if there was anything there he 54 truly desiredand whether he should act on that desireas a feral fly acts on its desiresor temper himself and leave. All those lives he had spent within this coffee shop felt spenthis hardearned money flung like leaves into the windblown away with a few sips of the hot liquid, oftentimes finished before he had arrived at work. His thoughts were roughchopped up like cow in a butchers shop. Even the purpose of a daily cup of coffee seemed as vain as wanting to eat the clouds, or looking for gold in a stack of paper clips. All his decisions were decided by a billboard at the front of a coffee shopthere was no need for any rational exertion on his part. He felt water clutching at his eyes. He wanted to weep in front of all the people in the coffee shop. He wanted to leave the shop in a hurry, make straight for his car, and drive until he found a reason for living the way he had for so many years. There was a reason; he knew that, but he had never taken the time to find it. It was as though it were behind a door he never saw, and never opened, but one that he passed every time he entered the coffee shop. He did not know if he could even call his thoughts his own perhaps he couldnt until now. A tornado formulated in his stomach as The line had vaporized as though it was a mist that came and went with Natures absolute command. With it went his rebellious thoughts, just as frail and transparentdispersed with the wind. He did not feel his sheepish nonage re-colonize him, nor the miniscule foundations of a wakeful sunshine wash away like tears. What would you like, sir? the cashier asked. He did his best to smile, his somnolent reveries having carved a placid, grey fjord into his face, and said, A Montezuma, please. Will that be all? she asked. Yesthats all. 55 7/20/1969 TODD BURKS People say 7/20 changed everything. In some ways, I suppose they were right. I opened the Outpost early that Sunday. The tavern had been busier than usual since the Apollo 11 liftoff in Florida on Wednesday, and I knew wed have a big crowd on hand when Neil and Buzz landed on the Moon. Id ordered extra cases of beer and more burgers for the grill. Our location right outside the Johnson Space Center meant we got thirsty engineers and astronauts coming off shift, plus all the guys grabbing a bite before work. Christa came in early, too, figuring thered be good tips with happy folks celebrating. As it turned out, you need alcohol for wakes, too. Its gonna be a good day, Dave, Christa said as she put on her apron. I was getting the register ready with change. I hope so, I said. Id worked for NASA before buying the bar. Id been part of the team that recovered the bodies from the smoldering crew compartment after the Apollo 1 launch pad fire. Gus, Ed and Roger had been friends of mine. I loved NASA, but I couldnt face losing anyone that way again. Owning the Outpost gave me a way to keep in touch without being too close. Itll be okay today.Youll see, she said. She gave me a peck on the cheek, then went to check on the bar supplies. Artie, our cook, slouched in, looking like hed just rolled out of bed at noon. Good morning! I greeted him loudly. Ow, Dave. Man, dont. I cant take that cheerfulness first thing, he said. Well, Christa thinks theres going to be a lot more cheeriness today.You might want to be ready for it. 56 Right, he mumbled, then started warming up the grill behind the bar. There were guys already waiting outside when I unlocked the door. Clean-cut, MIT-type NASA engineers in short sleeves and ties, but still young men all the same. This group had just come from Mission Control. Rotating shifts of technicians monitored each mission around the clock. The team overseeing the Moon landing was at work now over in Building 30. These guys were tired and thirsty and looked a little rumpled. Dave! About time! Weve got appointments! Come on in, fellas. Mr. Budweiser is waiting for you, I said. They filed in, laughing and talking. While they waited for Christa, they got the jukebox going. Glen Campbell started singing something about Galveston. I was more of a Bob Wills kind of guy, myself, but if they were putting in the quarters, they got to pick. The place began to fill up. It was a mixed crowd of men and women. Some secretaries usually stopped by, but even more were there that day. One scruffy fellow came in after the rest. He kinda looked like a hitchhiker. This close to the highway, we got a few. He sat at the end of the bar and ordered a beer. I could see him looking at all the autographed astronaut photos on the walls. We got pretty busy serving drinks and lunch platters and before I knew it the clock was reading three in the afternoon. Somebody called out for me to get the television going. We only had a little black and white above the bar, but it wasnt a big room, so everybody could see it. We watched any mission that the networks would cover. Walter Cronkite was on hand at CBS to walk us all through the landing. Astronaut Wally Schirra and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke helped with commentary. A lot of the guys knew Wally, of course, so good-natured comments about his TV makeup and fancy Hollywood life flew around the room. Cronkite and his crew kept up a steady stream of information and trivia about NASA, the astronauts, and the mission. People all over the world had gathered to watch the landing on television. As the screen showed crowds in Red Square and Times Square, we could hear Mike, Neil and Buzz work through their Lunar Module separation checklist. When everything was ready, Eagle parted from Columbia, the Command Module, leaving Mike to orbit the Moon alone until the upper part of the lander returned. They were on their way to the surface. There was no live TV transmission from Eagle, since Neil and Buzz were too busy flying their spidery-looking ship, but the network whiz kids had put together animated sequences to show the audience what was happening. The audio feed from NASA supplied the soundtrack. The group horsing around at the pool tables quieted down and arranged at the back of the room to watch the broadcast. 57 Somebody called out, Dave! Dont forget the box! Id been so busy, Id forgotten to dig out the squawk box, a special radio that allowed monitoring of restricted NASA transmissions. Astronaut wives and other VIPs had them installed in their homes, but Id been able to get ahold of one when Id worked at Cape Kennedy. Listening to the astronaut chatter and the flight controllers working made me feel like I was still part of the action. I got it set up and turned it on and turned down the TV speaker. We could hear Charlie Duke talking to Buzz, confirming some guidance computer numbers. Each mission had dozens of people that monitored the spacecraft, but in order to keep things from getting confused, only one person talked to the astronauts. The capsule communicator, or CapCom, was always another astronaut and today was Charlies turn. His gentle country voice belied his cool intelligence and made this incredibly complex technical operation seem like a walk down to the fishing hole. Hey, Dave, did you hear about the Russians? Pat Geisler called out from over by the dart board. I heard theyve got an automated sample return mission planned, thats all, I said. Its up there right now! Luna 15. Word is, theyre trying to get a sample off the surface before Neil and Buzz lift off, so they can claim first Moon rock, Pat said, Crazy Russians, I said. The crowd settled in for the descent to the surface, everybody pitching in with details or comments on the work going on a quarter of a million miles away. We were moving a lot of beer and I noticed that the hitchhiker had been putting away quite a few. Havent seen you before. Are you from around here? I asked. No, man. Just passing through, he replied. His hair was longer than we usually saw in Texas, with bushy long sideburns. His scuffed leather jacket had a peace symbol button on the lapel. Where you headed? Upstate New York. Big music festival next month, he said. Sounds like a good time, I said. He nodded. You guys all seem pretty excited about that, he looked at the TV, his words slurred a bit by the beer. Well, thats the industry around here.Youre pretty much surrounded by NASA folks, I said. Isnt it all a big waste? I mean, with a war going on, and all? Seems like a buncha bull to me, he said. 58 Id heard that kind of thing before. Well, pardner, I suppose it could be, but you might want to keep your opinion to yourself while youre in here. Yeah, maybe so, he said, and went back to his beer. I decided to slow down his refills. Dave! Getting close! a voice called out from the watching crowd. It looked like the little cartoon Eagle was getting close to the surface. I turned up the squawk box. Avoiding a big crater, came Neils voice. Buzz called out the distance to the surface and movement from side to side, Two hundred feet, ten forward. One-fifty, five forward. Thirty seconds, said Charlie, giving a time on remaining fuel. That was cutting it kinda close. One hundred, ten forward. Neils voice, Rocks there. Still looking for a good spot. Ninety. Three forward, came Buzzs voice. Eighty-five. Eighty. Five forward. Neil said, Still looking. Too many boulders. Buzz again, Seventy-five feet, five forward. Static in the signal grew louder for a second. There was a metallic bang, an exclamation. Then, a long silence. Eagle, this is Houston. Do you read? Charlie Dukes voice. Eagle, this is Houston. What is your status?, Charlie tried again. Nothing. Just a crackle of static. Charlie kept trying, over and over, his voice wavering, Eagle, this is Houston. Do you read? A full minute passed. Everybody in the Outpost was frozen in place. 59 Then, finally, Neil Armstrong spoke, sounding a little out of breath, Houston, the Eagle is down. The, uh, thrusters shut off at approximately, uh, 75 feet and we came down, uh, pretty hard. We have sustained damage and are assessing. Repeat. The LM is damaged. We are assessing. Stand by. Roger, Eagle. Standing by, said Charlie. We could hear them talking to each other, going over checklists to make sure theyd shut off important systems. Now we could hear Buzz, Houston, we are venting something. Crew compartment appears to be intact. We think at least one of the landing legs is broken. Were heeled over at a pretty good angle. Let me go over the readings were seeing. Charlie Duke responded, Eagle, this is Houston. Flight controllers standing by for readouts. He and Buzz started comparing the damage reports from the lunar surface and the readings as seen by the engineers in Mission Control. Silence in the Outpost. Nobody moved. Then five or six guys bolted outside, the bright afternoon sunlight flashing like a strobe as they each slammed through the doors to the parking lot. On the silent TV, the network animation of the lander froze on the screen, then the picture went blank, then cut back to the studio. Cronkite took off his glasses, stunned by the news from the Moon. Wally Schirra left the set, probably to talk privately with NASA officials. As the next minutes passed, a picture began to emerge of a badly damaged Lunar Module. Two landing legs were broken. Fuel was leaking. Neil and Buzz were safe inside their suits, but oxygen was limited. Theyd have enough for the planned surface mission, but that would be running out in about 36 hours. If they couldnt get back to the Command Module in orbit around the Moon, theyd be staying on the surface. For good. The bar stayed quiet. Nobody started the jukebox again. Anybody that could make the excuse to go back over to the NASA complex did so, but you pretty much had to be on shift to get into the buildings. As people came off shift, though, they came to the Outpost and gave us what news they could. We all just sat or stood and listened to the squawk box. After it appeared that Neil and Buzz were safe for the moment and that Mission Control would need time to explore options, they asked for permission to go on the EVA. Theyd planned to set up some experiments and collect rocks from the surface to be brought back to Earth for study. There was no reason for Mission Control to disagree, even if the rocks might not be coming home. It would keep the astronauts busy, and maybe some good news would turn up in the meantime. At about 2 a.m., Neil made his historic step onto the Moon. The TV camera that was sup- 60 Strange Bedfellow ~ Garland Caldwell posed to broadcast the images was damaged, so we could only listen. Buzz followed a few minutes later and they completed their assigned tasks. They set up the American flag on the surface, then climbed back aboard the damaged Eagle. The Russians had been monitoring everything, of course, and Brezhnev called Nixon to offer support. That surprised everybody. We heard later that Yuri Gagarins widow pressed him to call. The Luna 15 lander was still in orbit around the Moon and could have been instructed to land near Eagle in the Sea of Tranquility. Flight controllers looked at the specs for the Soviet craft, but it turned out that the fuel was incompatible and there was no way to transfer it to Eagle, anyway. Another crazy idea was to have Neil and Buzz hitch a ride back to lunar orbit on the Soviet lander, but it was too underpowered. The whole idea was bold, but, in the end, not practical. There was no good news when Mission Control called Eagle after the EVA. All of the flight controllers and their backroom teams had been over every number six ways from Sunday, but there was no way to make them add up right. After two hours of discussion with Neil, Buzz, and Mike, there was a long final silence. Gene Kranz, the Flight Director, took over for Charlie Duke as CapCom. Charlie had been on duty for 20 hours. Eagle, this is Houston, Gene said. Weve been over this again and again, fellas. Weve run every simulation we can think of. Ill have to be blunt. We have a negative launch assessment. With the readings we have and your corroboration, its a no-go for ascent from the surface. Fuel is too low. Damage to systems too great. Finally, Neil spoke, Roger, Houston, thats our assessment as well. Long pause. Houston, can you get our wives on the line? said Buzz. Genes voice broke, Roger, Eagle, theyre on their way. I looked out into the room. From behind the bar, I could see all the faces turned to the TV screen, mouths either set in a grim line, or open in disbelief. Correspondents around the globe were standing in front of somber crowds. Somebody was sobbing in the back of the room. Christa came over. Im so sorry, Dave. Its okay, Christa. Theyre doing exactly what they wanted to do, I said. She hugged me. After a long silence, the hitchhiker decided he had to put in his two-cents-worth. 62 Whats the big deal? Guys are dying in Vietnam every day.Vietnamese women and children are massacred over there. I dont see you crying over that. Murmurs from the room. I could see some guys edging toward him. I turned and tapped Artie on the shoulder. Easy Rider has worn out his welcome. Im taking him out back, I said. Right, said Artie. He wiped his hands on his apron and moved to intercept the crowd. You might want to shut up, pardner, I said to the hitchhiker. Two guys! Its bullshit, man, he said. I could see this wasnt going anywhere good. I grabbed him by the jacket and yanked him toward the back door. I shoved him out into the night and followed as I heard Artie calming the guys inside. Youd best be moving on, I said. Thats bullshit, man. Why do you care about those guys up there? he said, as he stumbled into a trash can. The air was warm and the little light on the back of the building lit up a small circle. Beyond was darkness and I could smell Galveston Bay in the distance. Those men are friends of mine. No, I take that back. Theyre family. Even if you cant understand why theyre doing what theyre doing, you need to understand that Im losing family. And theyre family to everybody else in there. So you can see why none of us are real excited to hear your opinion on the war and what is and isnt bullshit. I dont get it, man. You dont have to. Just leave. I went back inside. Preparations at Mission Control were being made to let Neil and Buzz say goodbye to their wives and children. After that, theyd shut down communications and their oxygen would eventually run out. Ive heard rumors that they had cyanide with them for just this situation, but it wasnt true. They faced the end with their eyes open. Neil and Buzz each took a couple of minutes to say a few final words. They talked about the honor to be chosen for Apollo 11, and the work of those that helped them get to the Moon. They both took responsibility for any mistakes that led to their situation. Neil had one last statement, When we planned this trip we wanted to honor those who lost 63 their lives in this great endeavor. He cleared his throat. So we brought some small mementos: An Apollo 1 patch for Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, and two Soviet medals, one for Yuri Gagarin and one for Vladimir Komarov. They made our journey possible, and like us, theyre not coming home. Were proud to be in their company. Gene let them know that their wives had arrived and that theyd be able to speak privately. I turned off the box. Somebody who was there in Mission Control said later that Jan Armstrong and Joan Aldrin hugged Pat Collins for a long, long time. We didnt close, but kept a vigil, joining millions on Earth that night. Drinks were on the house. I turned up the TV when Nixon gave his Forever Mankind speech. I had never really liked him, but his words acknowledging Neil and Buzzs sacrifice made me see him a little differently. When there was no longer any doubt, Mike Collins came home alone. He was in constant contact with Mission Control, of course, and Pat got to talk to him more than shed usually have been allowed, but he had lots of time. Too much time. His splashdown was perfect and there was no need for the isolation chamber that had been prepared to check for contamination from the lunar surface. There were no parades, no interviews, no medals. I saw Mike a few years later, and he said he felt like a marked man. Nobody would talk to him about what had happened, but his book about the mission sold millions of copies. Apollo 12 picked up the fallen banner and that mission went flawlessly, partly because of improvements made after Apollo 11, according to the guys at the bar. NASA moved on from success to success. Jim Lovells perfect landing at Fra Mauro with Fred Haise was only one example. Congress and the nation reaffirmed support for the space program, and with the approval of missions through Apollo 20, Mike Collins finally walked on the Moon in 1972 as the Commander of Apollo 17. His elegy for Neil and Buzz from the lunar surface to dedicate Tranquility Memorial Park had us all wiping our eyes. The Soviet offer of help during the crisis set the stage for Nixons later trip to Moscow and further cooperation in space. The Apollo-Soyuz missions led to the construction of Mir One and Two, Armstrong Base on the Moon, and Aldrin Station in lunar orbit. A manned Mars mission is coming together, though people say were only doing it to get there before the Chinese. In the end, though, the space program has been the only bright spot in the last forty years. Nixon finished his second term with high approval ratings, due to his tireless efforts to put an honorable end to the Vietnam War, but the Manchurian Conflict has dragged on and on. Reagans impeachment and Clintons assassination left the country struggling to recover. I sold the bar to Artie and Christa and went back to work for NASA, though in a different capacity than before. Being close was better than being too far away, I guess. I retired from the Johnson Space Center commissary where I got to know most of the astronauts and support what 64 they did in my own way. Every year on July 20th, there are memorial services for Neil and Buzz. Around here, everybody heads for the Outpost. We all raise a glass, and if the Moons up, we give them a wink. Ive had a good life, but I sometimes think how much better everything would be if Neil and Buzz had made it home. Face ~ Anonymous SUNDAY RYAN HARRIS Generally, I am isochronal, a tempo but there was a moment of brightness, sudden: a held breath, or an unraveling of skin against touch. I delayed, splayed myself against the stiller dawn, my body a countermelody. There were delphic murmurings against the linens; and you, tidal, thrashing mildly against the morning and me - 66 Untitled ~ Paul Loykedis WHAT I UNDERSTAND ABOUT COMPASSION GALE GIBSON QEP Essay Contest Wi n ner Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, believes, [i]t is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others (OBrien, 2010). No one welcomes misfortune into their lives; however, hardships arise in everyones existence. Instead of cursing and blaming poor fate during adverse times, perhaps one should use the situation for positive personal growth. Our individual hardships create opportunities to understand and to embrace with compassion other people who are undergoing difficulties. The challenge of a compassionate act arises because of the empathy required. Often if one has actually walked in the shoes of the person under duress, one can better understand the feelings of others who are suffering. As a result, the more experienced individual may more effectively lend support to ease the sufferers distress. For example, during 2007, criminals invaded the home of Dr. William Petit and his family in Connecticut. Dr. Petits wife and two daughters were brutally murdered. Dr. Petit survived the ordeal but was understandably grief-stricken by his tremendous loss. In a remarkable act of compassion, Dr. Pettit later used his experience to help others by founding an organization to extend a blanket of comfort for others affected by violence (Petit Family Foundation, 2012). Hardship has touched my life in the past several years as I struggle to cope with my fathers terminal illness. Over the summer, his declining condition made it necessary for him to move out of his home into a senior care facility. Being the oldest of his children and because he appointed me power of attorney, I am assisting him with liquidating his real and personal property in order to pay for the rapidly mounting expenses of his long term health care. As I struggle with this difficult task, I remain very grateful for the many compassionate acts of others but I hold one particular moment close to my heart. Nearly twenty years ago, as he neared retirement, my father acquired a house on the waterfront of Lake Murray in Chapin, South Carolina. The home quickly became a magnet for every- 68 one in the family to gather, especially during the summer months, and the house was often full to bursting because Dads door remained open to anyone at any time. Particularly after his retirement, his lake house overflowed with visiting family members and friends. Nearly every warm day Dad could be found presiding over the festivities in the captains chair of his pontoon boat, listening to music and enjoying a cold beer. Sometimes the boat would remain tied at the dock all day while he watched us fish, ride jet skis, or just float around in his cove on rafts. Other days, we would all pile onto the boat so he could take us to Hurricane Cove, a popular gathering spot for boaters on Lake Murray. In the evenings, my father enjoyed navigating across the lake to a waterfront restaurant followed by a stop at Bomb Island, where we watched the spectacular showing of thousands of purple martins flying in to roost for the night. Later we would motor home, enjoying the beauty of the sunset and laughing about the days adventures. Dads health was excellent then, and it was easy to take all those moments for granted. Thus, it was with a heavy heart that I undertook my first act as power of attorney by selling his pontoon boat. One day in early August, my husband and brother loaded the pontoon boat onto a borrowed trailer, and together the three of us took it to a boatyard in order to sell it on consignment. As the boat was being unloaded from the trailer, I gazed at the vacant captains chair and felt overwhelmed by the magnitude of that emptiness. With so many memories flooding my consciousness and the finality of that moment, a wave of grief that felt the size of a tsunami overtook me. My husband, who lost his father in 2006, was standing by my side. He took my hand and said to me, I understand. It was difficult when I sold my fathers boat, too. I huddled in that blanket of comfort he had provided for me, and my spine felt physically strengthened by the gift of his compassion. A key to compassion lies in the enormous power of two words, I understand. By nature, people band together during times of distress, and the resulting solidarity creates an unbreakable bond of strength. Through their empathetic understanding of the sufferers plight, many times the giver feels a renewed sense of purpose in their own life because of being able to lend comfort to someone in need. In this way, all negative experiences have the potential to end positively through an act of compassion. WORKS CITED Allen, J. E. (2010, November 10). No Closure for Petit Despite Death Sentence Ruling. Retrieved September 18, 2012, from ABC News. OBrien, B. (2010, December 30). About.com. Retrieved September 25, 2012 Petit Family Foundation. (2012). Retrieved September 18, 2012 69 TASTE OF SUMMER STEPHANIE MORRIS Wet, warm nights that smell of living things: sunflowers and broad, blushing roses, fallen pears, new peaches and the chamomile tea we steep at noon and drink by moonlight, tea that tastes of dew, sweetens each dawn we spend waking slowly, drunk on sleep, on summer on the taste of nights that made my skin hungry and my bones ache with need, nights when bright Venus yielded to dreams of clouds. 70 Watch Your Step ~ Emma Terry People of the First Light ~ Sarah Murphy FALL LINE noun 1. T he nat u ra l bou nda r y bet ween a n u pla nd a n d a low l a nd m a r k e d by w at er fa l l s a nd r api d s . 2. A n imag inar y line along the easter n United States between the Piedmont and the Atlantic coastal plain. The Great Falls of the Potomic River  ...

... the 2012 the Piedmont Virginia Community College ~ Volume IV 1 ~ 2012 fall line (n.) ~ a natural border between the coastal plains and the mountainous region that spans Virginia The Fall Line, Spring 2012, is the fourth volume selected, edited, and produced by the PVCC Creative Writing Club. Stephanie Morris, President Jenny Koster, Advisor Editors: Alexander Urpi James McDonough Kyla Crowley Layout and Design, Bridget Moriarty Special thanks to Danielle Johnson for printing The Fall Line and to Rob Tarbell and his Communication Design 2 class for designing this edition. This year, in addition to our submissions, The Fall Line is publishing the three winning essays from the colleges QEP [Quality Enhancement Plan] Essay Contest. Megan Chada was awarded first place, Alexandra Peterson was awarded second, and Jane Harlow was awarded third place. 2 Contents Sound ~ A poem by Crista Norfrey 4 Art by Lali Stams 5 Rat Boy ~ A poem by Lindsay Bell 6 Photograph by James Hilton 7 Answer Only to the Morning ~ An essay by Alexandra Peterson (QEP Essay Contest Winner) 8 Expectations ~ A poem by Crista Norfrey Art by Shamir Brown 10 11 Child Whom I Have Loved ~ A story by Stephanie Morris Art by Caleb Gritsko 14 Smoking in the Barn ~ A poem by Elliot Jennings 15 The Ants Throat ~ A story by Nickolas Xavier Urp 16 No In Flight Movie? ~ An essay by Clint Birckhead 18 Art by Ryan Compton 12 19 The Art of the Messy Bun ~ An essay by Jane Harlow (QEP Essay Contest Winner) 20 Photograph by Elaine Waksmunski 22 The Aloe Plant ~ A poem by Andrew Neil Maternick 23 Photographs by Kim Powers 24 Photographs by Marshall Camden 25 A Story by Guy de Maupassant ~ A story by Alexander Urp Art by Jessica Ritenour 26 32 Lost Souls ~ A poem by Aerial Perkins-Goode 33 Rulers of Tajikistan ~ An essay by Stephen Goodell 34 Art by Ji Min Sun 37 inanimate objects ~ A poem by Kyla Crowley 38 Photograph by Elaine Waksmunski 39 Planting Footprints ~ An essay by Meghan Chada (QEP Essay Contest Winner) Photograph by Garrett McGowan 42 Photograph by Stephen Quinn 43 40 Second Time (Before the Ban) ~ A poem by Edwin Oak 44 Photograph by Marshall Camden Art by Robert Merkel 45 46 saudade (n.) ~ Saudade describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. It often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never return. 3 Sound Crista Norfrey The piano sleeps, its keys yearning for conversation with the palms of my hands, the music rack tired of solitude, wanting to be joined by the great works of Chopin, Schubert, Faure, Debussy, the pedals desiring to hear the shadows of the music, deep undertones bright wisps of light and the ever present middle C, satisfied with its home in the spotlight. The alarm sounds. Oh, to wake up this dormant piano. 4 Lali Stams 5 Rat Boy Lindsay Bell I want to take you back to Baldwin road We will dig up the graves of all your loved ones We will turn over the loose rock and find our homes obituary The creek will be filled with fire crackers and GI Joes The trees will be stashed with 1980s Playboys and cigarette packs The dogwoods will have grown so high They are our fortress My girls will romp through the ivy and collect tadpoles at the creek They will awe over the graffiti at the bridge and wonder why they cant draw on the walls We will snack on Doritos on the back deck, all the while peeling off the paint Then well climb through my window and retrieve our past It is a heavy load And as dusk creeps in, the magnolia tree you fell from will open its arms and cradle us to sleep And you will remember being loved 6 James Hilton 7 Answer Only to the Morning Alexandra Peterson QEP Essay Contest Winner When I am old I will answer only to the morning. I will no longer wake to the sounds of screaming children, city noises, or a lover snoring. When I am old, no alarm clock will shake me into the day and no obligations will make me miss the sunrise. I shall rise on my own time, to birds or perhaps the silence of snow in the winter. Ill touch my feet to the cool hardwood floor and shake out my long gray hair as if shaking the night from my body. Silence will be a welcome companion and empty hours ahead of me will be like friends I havent seen in a very long while. In the kitchen Ill glance at the empty ashtray. It will have been empty for quite some time and Ill think of finally just throwing it away. When I was younger, I probably would have turned the radio on and started breakfast before acknowledging the gentle hours of a young day. When I am old, I will sit on the porch for a while, swinging back and forth on the rickety porch swing. Now, I find myself frightened of being alone, as if solitude is a crushing enemy. I dont want to be forgotten. When I am old, solitude will be the quiet partner Id always overlooked. I will no longer be afraid of being forgotten, but rather embrace the actions in my previous years by which I always hoped Id be remembered and take solace in the idea that perhaps they really were worth being remembered. Pictures 8 from my childhood and adulthood will line the walls and Ill greet each one of them in reverence before taking a cup of hot tea; my only drug being that early morning haze of caffeine. Gone are the empty glass bottles, the clinking of wine glasses, the thick scent of smoke, and the cloud of raucous laughter. Mornings after shall no longer exist, just mornings. Some days these days, I sleep until far past noon, when Ive missed the world waking up and starting again. When I am old, all I may have is just the morning. I will have moved beyond the precariousness of joy and the turbulence of grief. I will be content to allow my scars to stare at me in the cracked mirror. I will not be numb, but content. Mornings have no room for dwelling on the past and that is how I will want to be. Like the morning. These days, Im much like the night. Tired or alive or both at the exact same time. An up and down of sleep or no sleep, quiet tears or ecstasy that comes with the deliriousness of the evening. Ill shake my head when I remember the days Id wake up just in time to go to work and rush out the door, forgetting that the day had begged me for recognition. When I am old, nights will hold nothing for me. They are the end, and when I grow old endings only become repetitive. Isnt it strange how near the end, all Ill want is just another beginning? Mornings will call me with purring cats or thundering rain clouds, leaking ceilings and the ring of the telephone. Ill remind myself today, today, todayand maybe Ill glance at the clocks. Theyll all be stuck on times they ran out of batteries. When I am old, I wont take the time to replace the batteries in my clocks. Time is too sweet to keep watching it. I can only hope that when Im old I wont count what I do not have, I will only count the lady bugs crawling on the screen door. I wont sit around hoping for something to happen, Ill only be glad that nothing is happening. Turbulence will no longer have a place in my life. Nowadays I find myself passing the days between tears, drinks, or other people. In the mornings, there are people on my couch or on the floor, in my bed or in the bathtub. And I want them all to disappear. I want to wake up in the morning alone for once, and be okay with it. Ive forgotten gentle sounds and how good running water feels drifting over skin. Ive forgotten dates, lunch appointments, and interviews. All Ill want is to be able to remember the things Ive forgotten. When I am old, I will answer only to the morning. 9 Expectations Crista Norfrey Feeling nothing but obligation to feel. To go through the motions of emotion without sincerity. Invent an expression, create a reaction, accept consolation without needing. Forgetting what was never there long enough to remember. Remembering what was already forgotten. 10 Shamir Brown 11 Child Whom I Have Loved Stephanie Morris Its raining when we reach the air- smelled of rosemary and spring grass, port. Theres a woman in tailored slacks who combed my hair as I told her stories. watching my friend Pauls weathered -pickup from beneath her umbrella. She used to say, Tell me about when That her? Paul asks. you and Daddy ran into that cottonmouth in the drainage ditch. I say, Oh my sweet Jesus. Paul grunts, That girls gotten tall. My first thought is that I dont know my niece Felicity anymore. She isnt a girl. Shes over six feet in her pumps and she smells like cinnamon, grownup. She stoops to hug me and says, Hello, Aunt Winnie, in a smooth, heavy voice. Shes all made up of slender muscle and faintly-perfumed clothes; the strength of her embrace feels strange. She fends off Pauls hug with a handshake. When he says, Welcome home, girl! she retorts, I live in D.C., Mr. Gilbert. She has to squeeze into the truck between us with her knees spread around the stick shift and her travel bag in her lap. Her umbrella drips rainwater onto my dress. She shuts her eyes on the drive back home, says shes gotten so used to driving these days that riding makes her nauseous. I want to hug her. But I cant reconcile the woman beside me with the impish smile and chubby face of the little girl Id been expecting. The cinnamon scent of her skin is drowning out my little Felicity, who 12 Pauls truck lumbers past the Collins Family Farm. The stink of rotting peaches, the sight of that listing fence, with its chicken wire bent shapeless by neglect and its backdrop of an orchard run to seed, makes me think of how Mama used to take my brother Sterling and me peach picking when we were small. It was always hot enough to turn the well water sweet, hot enough to make me and Sterling and the seven Collins kids gasp in rivers of our own sweat as we dashed barefoot through the orchard, our baskets rubbing bruises into our forearms. The oldest Collins boy was a hero, once. -And she also used to say, I want peppermints like the ones you and Daddy used to eat. Her daddySterlingnever ate the peppermints our daddy would buy us from the gas station, though. He preferred the orange slices, crystallized in white sugar, heaped up in a paper bag. But I loved the peppermints. They filled my mouth with spice and flame and Id suck each stick until my tongue was scarlet and my lips were sticky. I remember looking at myself in Mamas compact, once, not quite ready to wipe the stain off my mouth, thinking the red smear made me look grown-up. Beautiful. I have a bag of peppermints in my purse. Theyre too sweet these days. I say to her now, chuckling, They just taste like sugar but thats beYou remember that story bout the cause Im getting older and nothing cottonmouth? tastes like it did. I remember the spice and flame and the memory makes up Mmhmm. Her face twists. You for the sugar flavor just fine. I offer said one of the kids beat it to death. her a stick now. She says, No thanks. Sure did. The eldest Collins boy. He I think, shes getting old too. was -Sick. She shudders. I dont know who could do that to an animal. Thats Its the weed-choked remains of the just cruel. Church of Jesus Christ the Saviour that tells me were nearly home. Theyve built Were past the farm now, back among a new church across the street, with a big the woods and their sunken shadows, parking lot and a separate building for their ghosts. the Sunday school. But its that blistered shell that holds my gaze. Its been there so long that I dont remember anything of the building it used to be. Just the way it burned, one night during a drought. The old church roof is caved in. Summers crawled in and spills out through the broken windows: tongues of ivy, stunted trees strangled in the shade. Theres a graveyard. I strain in search of a row of seven white crosses. The crosses are where they buried the Collins kids after they all died in a car crash on their way for Christmas shopping. The oldest boy was eighteen, back from his first year of college. Hed been driving. Id been in love with him, I think, the way he used to smile as slyly as sin and wear his hat crooked and had once whistled when he saw me walking down the road, skirt knotted at my hip and legs bare in the sunshine. How grown-up Id felt, as Id tugged the knot out of my skirt and turned, blushing, from his grin, his wink, how beautiful. child. Lay downIll tell you stories. Theyre all caught in my mouth, these storiescottonmouths in drainage ditches, candy made of spice and flame, Andrew Collins whistling at my legs. Jesus Christ the Saviour burning up. I cant get these stories out. We used to sit on my porch when she was small. Shed comb and oil my hair and say, Tell me about when you and Daddy were little. I need her to ask me that again. Because Im grown-up and only my memories are beautiful these days. I am riding down into the roots of my memory, roots that have gone sour with silence. My mouth aches with not speaking. Were gonna have a real nice service this Sunday, Paul tells Felicity. Youll be able to say hello to everyone, catch up. Folks miss you and your Daddy round here. Felicity snorts. I dont think anyonell remember me down here, is all she says. And again I want to put my arms around her shoulders, to tell her, Rest your head on my shoulder, 13 Caleb Gritsko 14 Smoking in the Barn Elliott Jennings The metronomic din, as he swings; Salty rivulets running down his face. Over the anvil crooked, it rings; As he makes his hammer chase. Blackbody, crimson radiation; The shoe is ready, the shape made. Steady curls of the hooves cremation; The rafters creamy with a putrid shade. Stories of horses brave and grand, no more; They are playthings of the rich. The steed, pressured pushed and sore, Until loss of performance lands it in a ditch. Repetitions of that metronomic din; Skills of antiquity are scarred within. 15 The Ants Throat Nickolas Xavier Urp Everything that surrounded him was a thick blackness that pained him to look at. He could not tell whether his eyes were open or closed. Everything was the same to him anyhow, and in that respect, it mattered not, though perhaps he would have preferred to know. Nevertheless, it was too late for him. He could feel a thin layer of cataracts settling on his eyes, as though it were snowing, daintily, the white crystals like dust, creating that thin film that only slightly injured him. Pain was more potent when he was younger. He could feel pain as though it were an avoidable entity which chose to plague him on several occasions, usually when he made some error that that resulted in his acquiring that ticklish but unpleasant sensation. It used to send chills up his spine to think of pain, and yet he would brave it with the constancy of a valiant conqueror, fancying himself to be, to that effect, a hero. If he were ever to feel his body express agony, hed subdue his outward countenance to that of indifference. It increased his self-confidence and sensations of dignity. Pride would intensify in him, exceeding the swelling of any of his bodys recently acquired detriments. But he felt old and weary. The enigmatic desire for pride wilted within him, a flower that knew its winter had come, and had sulked with melancholy, a flower who knew its last summer had passed, and its bud would bloom no more. So much time spent in this blackness, the blackness that seemed cold and yet warmed him now that he had dwelt so many years in it. He wondered what it would have been like to 16 have been outside the blacknesshe could not remember. He did reminisce that he had hated the perpetual blacknessoncewhen he would count numbers and rabbits and partake in all sorts of pathetic excursions of the mind to remove his thoughts from his current predicamenthis imprisonment. He would pace the room and memorize how many steps it took to cross ita fruitless task, a vain attempt to secure his hopes that he would be free yet again. The walls were black too, simply because he could not see them. In his youth, this disturbed him. Those yearsthose eternal years before himwhen he first was put in the seemingly wall-less roomhe felt tortured by the cemented blocks that invisibly surrounded him. Yet now, they gave him a sense of comfort, that the black was finite. He did not feel trapped by the energy of the universes expanse, only freed by the closing of a small area, which he had grown old getting used to. It was as though the infinite blackness around him were the throat of an ant, and he was slipping forever into its stomach. He was ready for the fall to terminate. His bones were weak and thin. His skin was thin as wellsallowso he believed. He could pull at it more easily than he could in his youth; it showed no effort to resist pulling and tugging. His breathing whimpered wheezily in his weary state, his lungs moist with the dew he had inhaled those long years. He almost choked on the air. He touched his face, trying to imagine what it had been like once. He could not. But he felt the wrinkles and drags that had formulated over the course of the years. All those eternal years haunted his memory. His memory was as dark as that immortal ants throat, and its silvery-black flesh. There were red ants, and yellow ants, but he could not picture colors like he used to. Colorshe had seen them oncea very long while ago, when he was young, young and freenot trapped in a prison that had become his home, sans furniture, sans warmth, except the warmth of the unchanging which old men in particular prefer to hold dear. Men, especially of his age, prefer life not to change, though it may be unpleasant. If one thing may change, the pains in his back, the dampness of the air, the infinite blackness that surrounded him, what else could change? Everything and perhaps nothing. Yet it was an unanswerable question which did not do justice to his comfort. There was warmth in the familiar and that which one has settled into, which one found comfort in, over a certain period of existence. He once poked at his eyes because he did not know that they were open. That was many years agosince then he had not attempted to feel his eye lids. He felt around his body, plucking at the remaining hairs on his legs and thighs and arms. He could neither imagine nor remember a sense other than the sense of touch. He could hardly hear himselfhis hearing had worn out like the rags that elegantly adorned his invisible body. His ears had fallen asleeptheir vigilance waned with the lack of noise in the blackness. He felt no heroic power at his invisibility, but rather a sad desire that he should be something rather than nothing. He wondered if anyoneanythingremembered him, except the walls. He could remember nothing as far back as those vast and limitless years which stretched on into the night skystars glittering in the distance. But he could not remember the starshe knew they were bright, but brightness itself had lost its luster after such an extensive period of lingering in the extended nothing that enclosed him. He felt the walls sometimes, to assure himself that they were there, still blacklike the infinitely black throat of an ant. He sighed with self-pity, and because there was naught else to do. He ceased to engage in activities that would occupy his mind and body they were futile. Counting, thinking, imaginingthe imaginative element of his soul had waned away in the wilderness with the life of spring, into the death of winter; he felt invisible. His memoryhis thoughtshis mindhe himselfwere as black as the walls that surrounded him. There was no light. It was dark. Time continued indefinitely. Suddenly there was a crack of something that pained his head. His head throbbed with drums and thunderstorms that crashed in his fleshly brainthough he remembered neither the sound nor excitement of drums or storms. When he finally realized his eyes were open and had settled slowly to the blinding crack that gradually opened into the cell, he remembered light. A sudden thrill swept over him and washed his weak and fragile consistency with the new energy of an enlightened man. A frail and pathetic figure, he approached the door. There was another man, with a tartar hat and black beard staring at him with murky eyes, as endless as the ant that had swallowed him in his dreams a dream he dreamed once, a very long eternity ago, when tunnels were long and trees were taller than the clouds, though he remembered not that eitherHe delighted in the light, a white blaring beam that liberated his soul and his spirit. He was free from that cell and truehis mind was weeping with the thought. Those countless years became a single second, a solitary day of memory. He became a single grain of sand in the vast, infinite desert of the guards hourglass. How long have you been there? asked the guard with the tartar hat and beard, indifferently. An infinite number of years, he replied. So longthat my bones have grown infirm and feeble, and can hardly hold my flesh to them. I have aged beyond the years of my father and my fathers father. Cataracts have taken root in my eyes. The disease hinders my sight. I can hardly perceive that which lies around me. My fingernails do not grow. My hair is thin, as I am. I can feel my bones through my brittle fleshand my brain is tired of thinking and living, my heart tired of beating. It has been a very long time. You lie, said the guard with the tartar hat and beard, indifferently. The sun has only completed one revolution since you have been here. The truth froze the prisoner in the winters of trauma. Those sudden revelations that were both impossible 17 No in Flight Movie? Clint Birckhead Somewhere over foreign soil, in the dead of night, I was onboard an airplane getting ready to jump into the unknown. As I was yet again sitting there waiting for the green light signaling the go ahead, fear raced through my head and my body trembled, until I pulled out my challenge coin, which helps me overcome my fear of heights. I can remember the first time I jumped out, actually, was pushed out of an airplane. That whole experience was terrifying, and truthfully, I did not want to have to do it ever again. Nevertheless, to be expected to pass training we jumped repeatedly. Finally, after getting pushed out repeatedly, I was finally pulled aside by one of my instructors. He told me that he too was afraid of heights when he first joined, but over time, he got over the fear when his instructor taught him a method to overcome it. My instructor said that it is not the height I was scared of but the fear of letting go of any kind of control. It was not the impact you fear; it is the falling without control. extended his hand. He stated that what he was giving me was a challenge coin, and he was challenging me to push myself to do the very best, push through any challenge that I may encounter. However, in exchange I had to pass the coin on to the next person that I saw struggling that has a lot more to offer. The sound of the alarm echoing through the cargo bay pulled me back to the task. It was time to go to work, and instead of having the feeling of fear and dread, I had the feeling of anticipation and excitement flowing throughout my body. Instead of hesitating as I once did, I ran to the opened ramp and leaped into the unknown darkness, feeling the joy of the ride. Looking back now, I often laugh at myself for not only having to get pushed out an airplane, but also having to get pushed out more than once. We try to control where we are going in life and forget to sit back and enjoy the ride. I know now that the truth is the ride is the easy part; the hard part is After he told me of his experiences, trying to convince yourself to take the he pulled out his wallet and started to ride in the first place, and when you do, rummage through it when he seemed its not as bad as you thought it was. to find what he was looking for. He 18 Ryan Compton 19 The Art of the Messy Bun Jane Harlow QEP Essay Contest Winner When I am old, I will wear my hair in a messy bun. My hair is naturally wild. My mother, descendent of Medusa, has coarse hair that is as beautiful as it is impossible to tame. It flows around her head like a lions mane, refusing to be corralled by any hair product known to man, or more aptly, known to woman. My father, though balding now, has straight hair that sits upon his head like a crown. My locks are a combination of the two. The savage and the civilized have merged upon my head to create straight hair that flies around me like a Broadway curtain proudly being opened. bun. Anatomy Midterm? The messy bun. I break out the black elastic hairtie and put my hair up when I need to work. I know that with the messy bun, I wont be worried about anything but getting the job done. I push myself to be the best I can be in all areas of my life. I serve as FCCLA Vice President, BETA Treasurer, volunteer at the Greene County Historical Society, and design homes for clients in my drafting class. With all this going on, I dont need my hair to get in the way. This is why, every day like clockwork, I come home, slam my books on my desk and pull my hair atop my head, twirling I wear my hair in a messy bun for pieces here and there until its contained many reasons. The number one reason and Im ready to start my homework. being I lack the skill to pull my hair into a chic chignon or a detailed French After graduating from William braid. Ive never been able to pull off an Monroe High School, I plan to attend updo or luscious curls. Fishtail braids, a four year university, where I wish to top-knots, ballerina buns, sophisticated major in Art History. From a career pony-tail? Not a chance. I was left to find standpoint, my dream is to work in this an easier solution. Thus, the messy bun field, giving knowledge about the subwas born. I was rocking this style be- ject I love to others. I want to share my fore it became cool and I can already tell adoration of the use of color in Henri I will be rocking it in a rocking chair. Matisses Harmony in Red or comment of the psychological intrigue of Whats the solution to five pages of Kay Sages The Passage. To do this I AP Calculus AB homework? The messy need, wait for it, the messy bun. I need bun. Painting after school? The messy 20 this simple, Kindergartener-can-do-it hairstyle to accomplish my goal. I will need it when Im staying up until three in the morning cramming for a midterm on all artists since the Renaissance. I will need it when Im the curator, in charge of organizing exhibits or the educator, in charge of planning next weeks exciting lessons. Because of the messy bun, I know Ill be able to make it through whatever the art world throws at me. and skip stones. The messy bun will let me dodge whatever my own messes, literally and figuratively, throw at me. I will wear my hair in a messy bun when I am old, because I dont plan to ever stop living. I dont plan to ever stop working to achieve my goals, or give up, becoming resigned to a life without meaning. That way of life is not me. That way of life is not the messy bun. I also know, because of my dear friend the messy bun, that whatever cards the world in general deals me will also be handled with the utmost grace and ease. My dreams, from a personal standpoint, are simple. I want to move to Maine with my best friend and the love of my life. Eventually I want to raise children, and teach them to appreciate both their beauty and the beauty of the earth around them. I want my children to know what love is, to be able to recognize constellations, to grow up believing in the good in people. By wearing my hair in a messy bun, Ill be able to chase after my kids when they, invariably, paint all over the wall as their mother did in her youth. I wont have to worry about my hair stopping me as we traverse Disney World 21 Elaine Waksmunski 22 The Aloe Plant Andrew Neil Maternick Seeing sharp green swords With shark like teeth Though the inside affords Healing relief 23 Kim Powers 24 Marshall Camden 25 A Story by Guy de Maupassant Alexander Urp When the nurses first informed Dr. Lewis of the patients desire to be called only by the name of Carmichael, the doctor was convinced that this piece of information would impart to him some means of determining the source of the patients condition. As the weeks wore on, however, he came to the horrific conclusion that this was not the case. It was not so much that Carmichaela scrawny man with wide-rimmed glasses and a razor-thin mustachewas not suffering; the man had a most terrible delusion that he insisted upon confiding to everyone who would lend him their ears. No, it was rather the difficulty of countering the delusion and determining just how and why Carmichael was insane that ruined Dr. Lewis. The sanitarium at Happy Vale was especially suited to those poor souls who had suffered from nervous breakdowns, and Dr. Lewis usual treatments were simple rearrangements of lifestyle and confidence talks designed to prove to young spinsters, rejected siblings and the sort that they were, despite all evidence to the contrary, invaluable to society. This was debatable psychiatric work, but it was easy psychiatric work, and it was paying psychiatric work; thus, it hardly concerned Dr. Lewis whether there was any irony in such talented 26 men as Dr. Bradford and himself resigning themselves to this type of work. The patient, Carmichael, however, was obsessed with irony. He managed to see irony everywhere, in every action, reaction, object, coincidence and chance. He pointed out the irony of the situation when he was served a French meal, when he spotted a piece of string on the floor, or when a female nurse mentioned a necklace. When he entered Dr. Lewis office after several weeks and saw that Lewis was reading a book of tales by the French author Guy de Maupassant, he gasped and whispered, I knew it. Knew what, Carmichael? asked Lewis, attempting once more to glean some speck of dust from the patients well-polished brain. Try as he had, Lewis had heretofore been unable to reach the bottom of Carmichaels illness. Most patients, when their delusions were challenged, became testy or went into fits, outrageously attempting to disprove reality; Carmichael, however, would only smile and then logically his rationality was startling, actually, in its clevernessset about proving his points. He seemed to be engaging in a mind game with Lewis, attempting to convince the doctor that he was correct and that the rest of the world was not. Carmichael seated himself comfortably on a chair and asked for a cigarette as if he were in a black-and-white picture, which his doctor categorically denied him without the grace of a movie star. With his hooked nose and whitish hair, it is doubtful Lewis could have acted the part if he had tried, but his refusal to attempt it seemed to displease Carmichael, who gave him a disappointed look. Oh, Doctor, the patient said, putting the tips of his fingers together. Must we go into this again? I have told you countless times that I am not insane, nor is this some silly delusion. Do you not find it ironic that you are reading a book of tales by Guy de Maupassant? ordinary, without mystery or trauma in it, and in the probing sessions, Carmichael made no effort to hide any skeletons in his closet. He was candid and open about his feelings, his perceptions, his history, and so forth. When challenged, he responded rationally; when debated, he was calm. When Lewis, lost, suggested to Carmichael a myriad of psychological problems he might havean obsession for his mother, a hatred of his fatherthe patient had only laughed and said that he had read enough of Freud to know that he was a fraud. Carmichael had returned once more to his sticking point, the assertion that had dominated his thoughts since his arrival at the sanitarium and that had plagued Dr. Lewis since that same day. The doctor could remember quite clearly how Carmichael, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, had said to him at their first meeting, Doctor, I will be frank with you. We are the both of us characters in a story by Guy de Maupassant. Their banter had gone on for weeks, but so powerful was Carmichaels reasoning and his intellect, so open his mind, that Dr. Lewis could no longer fight what had been his initial impression: Carmichael was not mad. His delusion was not a delusion, at least not in the sense that Dr. Lewis had previously encountered the mental disease. How, then, was he to deal with a man whose faculties had convinced him of a universal theory that could not be possible? The doctor had turned to logic to satisfy this questionhe had intended to reason Carmichael out of his impression. The idea was preposterous, as clear a delusion as Lewis had ever confronted in his practice, and yet Carmichael would not be rid of it. The patients past was Their strategy sessions, however, usually went awry. Dr. Lewis was not a philosopher, nor was he a logician, whereas Carmichael seemed to be both, 27 twisting Lewis every conception like Socrates, and then thrusting at him a myriad of meaningless A and B phrases likewell, Lewis did not know any logicians, so he could not have named one. He had abandoned many weeks before any idea of suggesting to Carmichael the impossibility of his claim because the patient chided him for making that assertion without evidence. Yet what evidence was necessary? The world he knew no more than a story by some dead French writer? It was absurd. Yet the more he thought on it, the less Dr. Lewis believed he could prove that it was absurd. In reality, it was not impossibleit was no more impossible than believing that the world was created by a primary cause, God or some nameless entity. If he believed that, why could Carmichael not substitute the name of Guy for that of God? Who was to say thatbut no, it was ridiculous. If only it had been ridiculous enough to prevent the sleepless nights that accompanied the doctors muddled musings. Then, of course, there was The Irony. Carmichael had suggested it would arrive eventually: a moment of truth in which Dr. Lewis would experience an event so ironic that it would convince him that only Guy de Maupassant could have thought it up. Lewis had adamantly denied the possibility of this event and had even reprimanded Carmichael for 28 stooping to that childish literary technique of capitalizing the first letter of each word in the phrase to suggest that there was some mystical quality to it. Yet The Irony had arrived, and it had arrived, oddly enough, in a brown paper package tied up with a simple piece of string. Inside the package was a book of stories by Guy de Maupassant. Lewis had heard of this Guy de Maupassant, a writer of such tales as The Necklace and The Piece of String, stories ripe with irony, but he had never read anything by him. Still, the arrival of this book, sent by an old friend even as Carmichaels insinuations dug into his mind like the malevolent mole that molested the sanitarium grounds was too much for Dr. Lewis. He knew that his resolve was breaking. Carmichael must have seen this in his own perverted way, for upon his arrival in the office that day, he leaned over and placed a parcel on the doctors desk. Lewis glared at it and frowned. That is the manuscript of a short story I have written, said Carmichael. I need you to drive to the postal office in town, Doctor, and mail it to a friend of mine who has agreed to have it published. Congratulations, Carmichael, Lewis said benevolently. Then the severity of what Carmichael had said struck him and he continued, But why must I mail this at the office in town? You can send parcels from Happy Vale. Now Carmichaels small eyes narrowed, and he seemed to glance upwards as if someone were watching them from a nonexistent skylight. When his gaze returned to his doctor, he said, That is exactly what he wants me to do. If I mail it from here, by some irony it will never arrive. If I have myself driven to the postal office, by some tragic irony I will never arrive. No, Doctor, you do not believe what I have told you, so he will never suspect you. You must do this. Carmichael, said Dr. Lewis, rubbing his forehead as the premonition of his future headache began to induce in him a headache of its own, please tell me this has nothing to do with that absurd theory of yours. Perhaps you would like to know the plot of my story, said the patient quickly. It tells a day in the life of Guy de Maupassant, from a pleasant beginning to a most unpleasant end. You see, Guy de Maupassant dies in a carriage accident. What a morbid tale, Dr. Lewis commented, attempting not to appear overly concerned with the dramatic turn for the worse that his patients condition had taken. It is the only way to free us, Doctor, the patient pleaded, and for the first time in their interviews, he began to appear distraught. I have worked on this tirelessly, perfecting every word so that I am as much a writer as that malevolent Frenchman. You must mail this so that the cycle will be completeI have written that Maupassant dies, and when published, that will cause his death, and we will be free of his tyranny. Let us presume for a moment this were true, said Dr. Lewis, a glimmer of hope burgeoning forth as he imagined an opportunity to break at last his patients obstinacy. If you kill off the writer of this story, you would cease to exist. How do you explain that away? last time. That may be, that may be, said Carmichael, but it is a risk we must take. I refuse to live any longer in this morbid universe. If it were any other author, perhaps I could endure it, but not the dirty Frenchman, not Maupassantno, not he. You have read his worksyou have seen the monstrous fates he assigns to his characters, the horrific irony he employs. I could walk across the street, trip on a childs skateboard and be hit by a bus filled with old hags, and that would not begin to compare with the terrible fates that Maupassant could dream up for me! No, Doctor, you must do thisplease. When he lifted his head, he found that he was in Dr. Bradfords office, Carmichael to his right and his fellow doctor seated at the edge of a desk. Bradford began asking him a great deal of questions, few of which made sense, and finally Dr. Lewis decided he had no choice but to tell his young friend the truth. Therefore, he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper and said, Listen to me, Bradford. I know this sounds absurd, but we are nothing more than characters in a story by Guy de Maupassant. I most certainly will not do this, Dr. Lewis answered, rising to his feet. Look, Carmichael, surely you must see the absurdity of what you claim? You are not a madman; of that, I am convinced. Listen to what you are saying, man! Tell me that it is impossible, Doctor, said the patient. Dont be Tell me that it is impossible, the patient repeated, his beady eyes unexcited. I refuse to be handled in this manner, Dr. Lewis said, shaking. I am the doctor here. Then tell your patient that his delusion is impossible, Carmichael said one Dr. Lewis fell back onto his chair, a stricken look flashing onto his face. I cant, he whispered oddly, and then he buried his face in his hands. When the nurses had informed Dr. Bradford that his fellow doctor had suffered a nervous breakdown, the young man could hardly believe his ears. He immediately set about to treat his onetime mentor, to reach the root of the nervous breakdown and return the good Dr. Lewis to a happy life, even if he could never administer psychiatric advice again. The task had soon proved itself absurdly difficult. It was terrible enough that Lewis was convinced that he was living in a story by some Frenchman, but Dr. Bradford soon came to the recognition that Dr. Lewis believed in the existence of an imaginary patient by the name of Carmichael. A quick check in the records showed that no patient by that name had ever been admitted to Happy Vale. Even stranger was the fact that, with the exception of these two delusions, Dr. Lewis appeared normal in all other respects. His faculties were strong, he was as logical and scientific as ever, and he remembered every event and conversation he and Bradford had shared. There also existed two physical pieces of evidence that Bradford could not ignore. The first was a book of stories by this same author, Guy de Maupassant, which Dr. Lewis had received, and which he called The Irony. The second was a parcel that Dr. Lewis insisted Bradford had to take down to the postal office in town and mail to a certain publisher. Bradford, for the sake of the case, had opened the parcel and found inside the manuscript of a story that purposefully killed off Guy de Maupassant as a character. The name of the author was that of Lewis imaginary patient: Carmichael. Dr. Bradford pondered on these ironiesno, coincidencesfor weeks on end, but he could develop no rational explanation for them. His meandering musings produced only sleepless nights. He began to read one of Maupassants stories in Dr. Lewis book, something about a woman who lost a necklace and suffered gravely for it. This would have had no effect on Bradford had it not been for The Irony. His own young wife called him one morning to say that she had lost a priceless pearl necklace belonging to a 29 friend. After that, of course, poor Dr. Bradford had nothing left with which to fight his former mentor. Determined to mail the parcel and thus be rid of the possibility that tortured his mind and Lewis, he dressed himself and set out for the sanitarium entrance. He did not make it far, as one of the nurses had noted his strange behavior and had immediately summoned the head doctor. Dr. Bradford, shaking at the knees, motioned for the head doctor to lean down, and when the latter did, he said in a conspiratorial whisper, Sir, what would you say if I told you that we were only characters in a story by Guy de Maupassant? Not you! the head doctor exclaimed. Is this some joke, Bradford? The young doctor, pale, only shook The head doctor was a large, mid- his head. I felt as you did, Sir, but then dle-aged man with a full brown beard I started to ask myself why it was imand a pleasant but stern face. He ac- possible, and, well, I couldnt think of a costed Bradford in one of the white- reason why. It is monstrous, I know, but walled hallways of Happy Vale, com- what could I do? plete with sunny pictures of flowers and The head doctor sighed and pressed rainbows with pots of gold at the end, his large hand to his forehead. Bradford, and he puffed up his chest so that Dr. there is absolutely no reason to believe Bradford could not step around him. that some Frenchman has written this, so why even entertain the notion? I have to mail this, Sir, said Dr. Bradford. I have to do it immediately. Perhaps, if there is something the matter, we can discuss it over lunch? Bradford, said the head doctor, stretching to his full height, a good four inches over his subordinate, what in Gods name is the meaning of this? You have been seen walking the halls at night and uttering strange, meaningless phrases. Now you have completely forgotten your duties for today, and I find you with a parcel in your hand. What is it? 30 Well, you believe in God, dont you? asked Bradford. If God is everywhere and everything, who is to say we arent characters in a story by God? All right, then, so God is writing the world, the head doctor repeated, exasperated. All I can say, then, is that he has a poor sense of humor. What does that have to do with anything? Well, said Bradford, and he seemed to grow some sense of confidence, for he lifted his head and tried to stand taller, well, then, Thomas Aquinas talked about the primary cause, and who is to say God is really the primary cause? What if someone is writing about God? This argument has gone on forever, said the head doctor. So someone is writing about Godor perhaps no one is writing about anyone. Theyre all as likely as the other. Who is to say it isnt God at all? asked Bradford, fidgeting, but with a stronger tone in his voice. For all we know, some irksome college kid is typing everything we are saying on a laptop, or reading it aloud to a gathering of his obnoxious peers. Somehow, said the head doctor in a sarcastic tone, I doubt some random person would have the brains to think up this very ironic He stopped himself short and one of his large eyes focused intently on Bradford. The young subordinate doctor might have said nothing, but he could no longer help himself, and he whispered in a frightened voice: What if someone is telling the kid what to writeyou know what I mean, Sir. He looked down at the parcel in his hand and held it out. You know what this is, Doctor. I have to mail it, if only to prove to ourselves that it isnt necessary. Give me that! the head doctor said in a voice like a lions roar, and he snatched the parcel from Bradfords hands. Now, Bradford, you are going to get back to your duties, save that you will do no advising today. I want to hear no more of this folly. Then the head doctor turned away in a brusque motion and began to march his way back down the hall. suppose it is that very irony which made it impossible for me to take the chance that, by some longwinded and ridiculous reasoning, we are no more than characters in a story by Guy de Maupassant. What about my parcel, Sir? asked Bradford, calling after his superior. Ill mail it myself. The head doctor traveled into town and parked his car across the street from the postal office. As he stepped towards the curb to cross the street, he tripped on a childs skateboard, stumbled into the street, and was run over by a bus. It had to be done, you see. There really was no choice. Of course the idea was absurd, but if there were the slightest possibility that Carmichael could have murdered Guy de Maupassant by killing him off in a storyIf only it were more impossible, then perhaps I might have ignored it, but it was not impossible enough to ignore. I couldnt let the head doctor mail the parcel, so I jotted down the first thought that came into my head, and it killed off the poor soul. I suppose I am no more of a murderer than any other writer, and while it is ironic to think of a writer as a murderer, I 31 Jessica Ritenour 32 Lost Souls Aerial Perkins-Goode Could we ever be more than locked locks and broken keys more than scraped knees and black eyes is there any room for compassion is there a way that love could be put behind us no more broken heart tears no more courage over fear sometimes its ok to be afraid and we never dared to look one another in the eye because beauty doesnt lie there and were never so sure we know what we are looking for but just remember you saw me first yet anything and everything goes you were the first to go and the last to be gone I didnt say anything When my soul was never your bible and my mind was always hanging noose style from a broken tree limb I guess some things dont last forever We inhale lonely nights when not even the moon is around to comfort our silent souls Darkness became my lover Passion became my enemy Everything became silent 33 The hustle and bustle of busy streets was evident as Amir and I walked the wintered and crowded sidewalks of Dushanbe, Tajikistan. It was the beginning of spring semester where Id be studying the Persian language. My mind was fresh and ready to embark on the study abroad experience. My new friend Amir, who was from Florida, had just spent his month long winter break with no classmates. Alone in Dushanbe with no English speaking friends had to be rough, and I could understand his excitement as students were finally returning from the long break. Amir had much to say and introduced himself to me as if I were his favorite celebrity. I appreciated his enthusiasm, and we quickly became friends. A sea of people on the sidewalks moved from every direction. People hurried to cross the streets so they wouldnt get clipped by cars speeding by. In this part of the world, cars definitely had the right of way. Tajiks were going along with their everyday lives the same as we would back home. With Amir doing most of the talking, I casually noticed a little neuroticism in his voice. After he tried to convince 34 me that his teeth were falling out due to the drinking water and that his hair was taking the shape of a horses mane, I felt that I had judged him correctly. Amir quickly pointed to a distant dog prowling the sidewalk. The dog was small in stature with stubby legs and a roundish body. It was sidestepping everyone in its path as its nose tracked the icy sidewalk with a frantic pace. You see that dog, you see that dog? Amir said with a panic. Watch that dog. Its coming for me. I couldnt help but think that Amir was going a little crazy and had been away from home a little too long. I humored him and watched as fear drifted into the dogs path, the kind of fear that only a dog could sense. Sure enough, the dog spotted Amir from far across the busy streets and sidewalks. Its nose slowly lifted from the icy sidewalk among the crowd. Amirs fearful scent immediately deterred the dog from whatever it was tracking, and it looked straight towards him. A slow walk quickly became an all-out run. The strides were quite impressive for a stubby legged dog. of cars and the clutter of people. Stress and fear poured out of my new friend as the aggressor approached. I was stunned by how the dog relentlessly tormented my new friend, but more so that Amirs prediction was right. Apparently he had been dealing with this bully for months now. Maybe his teeth were falling out. Maybe his hair was taking a different shape. Was there something I needed to know about this place? Out of all the people walking through this busy part of town, how in the world could this dog pick out my new friend and know that it could unleash its hounding fury on him with no consequence? I summed up in one word what I had just witnessed: fear. All Tajik households have dogs. They are not pets, nor are they loved, kissed, or even petted. These dogs serve one purpose and that is to defend. These arent your stereotypical American mean dogs. No Rottweilers or shepherds. No pit bulls or Dobermans. These dogs were from the streets of Dushanbe. Living outside through sweltering summers and subfreezing winters, these dogs were tough. The dogs played a factor in the neighFrom across the street, the dog borhood where I lived. My host fambobbed and weaved through the traffic ilys house sat at the end of a rectangular Rulers of Tajikistan Stephen Goodell shaped neighborhood. The two longer roads made it easy to find my way into town. It was a typical neighborhood in the city. The rows of houses along and in-between the streets were lined with trees. As directed by teachers and fellow students, I was only to take one of these roads when returning home, especially at night. Not due to crime or random people, but because of the dogs, they all explained. Only take the road to the right, especially at night. I didnt pay much attention, but was sure to stay to the right. Needless to say, my sense of adventure got the best of me. I started thinking about that left road. Weeks had passed as I became more comfortable walking freely around town. I was getting better at the balancing act of walking on ice-filled sidewalks; I would only fall occasionally. A routine was somewhat in place. As I walked home one evening I randomly thought about what happened to Amir, and how his fear gave that mangy street dog every reason to torment him. I gathered my thoughts to make a final decision as to which road to take; yes, the old fork in the road. Take the same mundane route, or go left into the unknown? In honor of showThere are no dogs out, I said ing my friend that he could face his fears to myself. One by one they came with a single dog, I decided to take on charging. It was the moment they this challenge not with one, but many. lived for. I could only see them out of the corner of my eye as they It was time. The less traveled poor- merged onto the street from each ly lit street had a length of approxi- and every house. What began mately one hundred and fifty yards. as a quiet walk home soon beThe recent snowfall caused the side- came a heavy metal band of dogs walks and street to form a layer of ice making snarls, barks and growls thick enough to skate on. This made in ways I had never heard beany route home sketchy, as one wrong fore. I was simply outnumbered move would have you on your backside and in their territory. Walk struggling to get up. I had learned this tall, I said to myself. Show from experience. My last thought be- no fear, I repeated in my head. fore walking into the unknown was to stay in the neutral zone. Dead center More and more dogs rushed in the middle of the street farthest away up behind me as the band befrom either row of houses was my strat- came louder and louder. Steady egy. OK, steady pace, not too fast, I pace, I thought as I focused on said to myself as I let out a deep breath. taking the right steps through the icy street. More dogs floodAll was quiet along the road as I en- ed the street behind me. The tered. It was the kind of silence that only sound of my boots cracked over a recent snowfall could make. The rows the ice as I was overcome by the of houses were all made of concrete, a packs alarm. Every balanced constant reminder of Russian influence step had to be negotiated preduring the Soviet Union. Surrounding cisely onto the ice to keep from each house was a fifteen foot wall falling into the jaws of the pack. with a gate protecting the courtyard, or what we would call the front yard. Confidence, I yelled in my head. Show no fear. 35 It must have been the Alpha I felt taking a quick nip at my boot to remind me they were there. I was being tested. Dont look back, I said to myself. Show them nothing. see a pack of dogs so big that I couldnt see the street below their feet. The defensive alliance was extraordinary. The dogs disbanded and returned to their kingdoms. As soon as it began, it was over. My natural instincts told me to run but I knew that if I showed the slightest I entered the courtyard of my host sign of fear, Id be finished. Dont run, family where I was greeted by an old I thought. guard dog too battered to get involved I kept my head straight, staring at with the dog gangs of Dushanbe. He the end of the road, which seemed for- greeted me with a quick sniff and a lick ever away. How much longer would to identify me, simple guard dog proI have to endure the thought of being tocol. He returned to his slumber on a ripped to shreds by these wild beasts? concrete slab of a throne coated with ice. My hands were shaking in my pock- I too went to my room and jumped in my ets, only I wasnt cold. Show no fear, bed to reflect on my honorable accomI reminded myself as sweat filled my plishment. I couldnt sleep that night. palms. It was hard to walk on the ice I was too busy going over what I had with my hands in my pockets, but this just experienced. My head continued to kept my limbs protected from the dogs. swell with pride as I had conquered my self-proclaimed walk of fame. It wasnt The sound of the pack became even until my mind settled into autopilot that louder as I steadied my pace in a robotic the word best used to describe my evefashion. Closer with every step, I was ning walk crept into my head: stupidity. almost to the end. I had crossed a line which activated the neighborhood alarm system of dogs and steadily approached the line to deactivate it. As I neared the turn all became silent. Scattered barks throughout the pack sounded out, warning me not to come back. As I turned the corner, I looked back with poise to 36 Ji Min Sun 37 inanimate objects Kyla Crowley you could have me if i did not contain so much human frailty. if i were that twig outside, for instance, you could use me to stir your coffee and tea. if you broke me in half i would multiply and get to lead two lives in your presence. things wouldnt be complicated if i were a burnt red autumn leaf you laminated and stuck in the book you are reading to mark your place. you know that i would hold all of time for you if i had the strength. and perfection could be found if i were your bathroom mirror, reflecting your truth, beauty, and lies. and if it ever got to be too much you could stomp on me and hide all those pieces of your soul. but instead of being inanimate, i am far too animated in your presence and too alive to be of any practical use. i show up and whisper about the cuts, and i remember when you told me i could do better. i know, but i was losing my mind. sometimes-sometimes i do still go a bit sideways when i realize that i am not, in fact, living between the strings of the cello in the song that saved my life. thats been my purpose, all this time, to live in between the strings of that instrument instead of being the girl who sits in her room, kvetching, and writing poetry for everyone who breathes. i could do better, yes, if i were inanimate. here and now, i cannot multiply, hold your place, reflect truth, or crawl behind your ear and make you tingle at the melody. rather, i set my watch by how much i try to love yet fail to assemble the pieces correctly. for being human is exhausting, and so is loving without cure. 38 Elaine Waksmunski 39 Planting Footprints Meghan Chada QEP Essay Contest Winner When I am old, I will still drink tea-not-coffee, and still love the smell of freshly-baked bread more than any other smell in this world. I will still love country music and not care if people stare when I dance in public. I will know when to walk away from heartache and when to triumph over it. I will have longer fingernails, hearing aids, false teeth, laugh lines and scars that ache in winter. One of my bad habits is that I am always biting my nails. Maybe theyll be longer when I have false teeth and can no longer bite them. I am always dancing until my feet ache, iPod turned as high as it will go, blasting my eardrums, so I know I will need those hearing aids down the road, but the rush of the music and dancing drowning out every worry and care seems worth it to me right now. Scars that ache now will ache even more as I age, signaling the longer winters ahead of me. I will still be the same independent spirit who loves to laugh and questions everything. I expect to have lost some friends and gained others. I hope I will have fallen in love, because that would be a terrible thing to live life without knowing. Perhaps I will have soft, folded skin and long, pure white hairmy head has already gifted me with a few warning strands to prove itbut I plan to earn each wrinkle and white hair in my life by surmounting my fears and going after my dreams. I will have photos of my trips to every country in Europe and to both 40 the North and South Poles. I will have the pet cat Stelli I cant have now because of Mommas allergies. I will have phone calls and visits and mountains of letters from my siblings, children, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, greatgrandchildren, and great, great-grandchildren. After all, I wont consider myself old until I have a member of each of the next four generations sitting on my living room couch waiting for the chocolate chip banana bread to come out of the oven. When I am old, I will intimately understand both what it means to have nothing and what it means to have all my needs met. When I am old, I will have published my poems, novels, and short stories, in spite of every inner fear. Everyone will know I am a writer among dreamers, from my most avid fans to my most obdurate critics. All my personal words and worlds will become a book, read by and shared with the world. I will live in a cottage up in the lovely mountains, next door to my best friend Jenn. Our children will have grown up together, and maybe have fallen in love. Wouldnt that be romantic? We will meet each morning by the clothesline, and sit side by side as we write for hours, just sharing our loving silence. I will have attended all of her clarinet concerts, and we will have been the second most devoted fan at each others book signings (no one tops Momma), cheering enthusiastically for the book we collaborated on as it was born. My husband and I will walk by the river on our beloved mountain and tell each other stories, some true and others less so, as we gather moss and stones for my garden. He will brush my hair as I knit his socks, and I will write of him as he holds me. We will smile at each other and kiss every morning and each night. He will be the friend I cannot wait to talk to first thing in the morning and right before I go to sleep. We will tell our children and grandchildren and their children and grandchildren of the day we met, and of our courtship. He will tell them how I told him he had to be willing to serve seven years for me, and I will tell them how he did. When I have spent enough time on this earth to have planted my footprints in three centuries, I will talk about all I have seen, from sitting in the orthodontists chair during the September 11th attacks, and times when Pluto was a planet, to the discovery of time travel, and the elimination of all genocides. I will have lived a life I can look back on with pride, and I will be able to honestly say that I have lived well enough to have chased my dreams, instead of waiting for them to have fallen into my lap. 41 Garrett McGowan 42 Stephen Quinn 43 Second Time (Before the Ban) Edwin Oak Down on 29, past Rio Rd. In Waffle House again, 4 am, hash browns. Theyre going to ban smoking Soon. We wont have any place To have breakfast and smoke in peace. I light my last cigarette, menthol, while overhearing two men next to me talk about getting away with avoiding state inspection. The man behind the counter shakes his head as he fries tomatoes and eggs for the two men who will only pay $2.99 each, without tipping because its 4 am Im drunk, or hungover, and I cant remember how I got here. But Im with friends and we decided it was a good idea to go to Waffle House at four oclock in the morning. The only place to be, when youre hungry, and you have nothing else to do, but to eat and feel like youre getting your moneys 44 worth while having conversations that youll forget by the morning when you go to work and fry someone elses food for them as you make 8 dollars an hour, less than what you need but just enough to go to Waffle House when youre hungry and tired and your friends are trying to forget the day and move on and talk about the good life while we listen to music we choose playing from the jukebox. Eagles. Sure. No Doubt. Why not. This is the second time this week. Wont be the last time I spread my sticky sugary syrup Because its not real syrup You never get real syrup And I squeeze the plastic bottle All over my pancakes and Sausages and then soak them with margarine and swallow the cup full of milky watered coffee that keeps getting refilled about every five to ten minutes what do they get paid to do that? I wouldnt do it if I were them But I dont work for tips Im up there with the Sears guys Getting paid to sell things and sometimes get a commission if Im lucky Ill be in the home appliances or tools section Fuck I got to get out of here. Talk with my mouth full Dont even know what Im saying, its half-chewed over in my mind before swallowing barely will have time to digest it. Where are my menthols? Thanks. Maybe Ill get one of those e-cigs. Nah, Ill just quit. Or maybe not. We usually come here Every other week because you can still smoke indoors but not for long and then where will we go, where will we be at 4 am on a weekday? Marshall Camden 45 Robert Merkel 46  ...

... Piedmont Virginia Community College The Fall Line Volume III Spring 2011 The Fall Line: a fall line is a natural border between the coastal plains and the mountainous region that spans Virginia. The Fall Line, Spring 2011, is the third volume selected, edited, and produced by the PVCC Creative Writing Club. Stephanie Morris, President Jenny Koster, Advisor Alexander Urpi, poetry and prose editor Bonnie van der Linde, poetry and prose editor Patience Lanier, poetry and prose editor Malina Dowling, cover art Richard Morris III and Stephanie Morris, layout Special thanks to Danielle Johnson for publishing The Fall Line The definitions and synonyms on the title pages were provided by Dictionary.com. This year, in addition to our submissions, The Fall Line is publishing three essays provided by the colleges QEP [Quality Enhancement Plan] Essay Contest. Deborah Poulins The Toothpaste Incident was the winner of the QEP Essay Contest. Kelly Shotts The First Bite was the runner-up in the contest. Doreen Roberts Blending into the Background was the second runner-up in the contest. 2 Table of Contents - - Permutatio To Live Well | a poem by Patience L. Ray 5 A Sunny Afternoon | an essay by Stephen Canty 6 Strait from the Vine | a story by Brandy Vest 9 This Train | a poem by Bonnie van der Linde 15 A Stroll Along the Beach | a poem by Lee Stone 16 Une Eternit | a story by Alexander Urp 17 He Sat with His Thoughts in His Hands | a poem by Ashlie Vandebrooke 23 Bereft Missing Rain | a poem by Aerial Perkins-Goode 25 The Toothpaste Incident | a QEP essay by Deborah Poulin 26 H.I.M | a story by Victoria Proffitt 28 Something You Miss | a poem by Kyla Crowley 30 Better Left Unsaid | an essay by Hillary Fox 32 Before You Were Young | a story by Ezra J. Miller 34 Blending Into the Background| a QEP essay by Doreen Roberts 35 Renascence Black Canvas | a poem by Kyla Crowley 38 The Problem With Being Dead | a story by Patience L. Ray 39 Journey to Vinestone | an essay by Sarah Catherine Washburn 43 Like A Good Piece of Land | a poem by Patience L. Ray 46 Love, Italian Style | a story by Anthony S. Prato 47 The First Bite | a QEP essay by Kelly Shott 54 A Long Time Coming | a poem by Kenneth N. Moore 56 3 _ _ _ Permutatio Definition: (Latin) Thorough-going change Synonyms: alteration, anomaly, change, deviant, deviation, evolution, innovation, metamorphosis, modification, mutant, novelty, permutation, transfiguration, transformation , variation, vicissitude 4 To Live Well Patience L. Ray We were born cracking, called from the womb egg brittle, bloody limbed, the place we knew gone, awaking to breaking, hard hands and light. Nothing remains. We only hear the gorgeous choke as the merry-go-round starts, musical engine serenading; we rise, fall, turn too fast to see the surrounding moment, a blurred rim. To forget is good. We move on, closing doors, windows, sweeping the path, any proof we passed that way or scraped our black heels across the tiled floor. There is no shame in killing. At times memory, home, knowing, are too strangled to live well inside the brittle shell of skull; we must pull them out with pliers, hold this or that instant between forefinger and thumbthe rest will bury themselves. 5 A Sunny Afternoon Stephen Canty Today Tully and I were trying to build shade with a tarp to keep the afternoon sun from baking the small dirt room, formerly a shop, that we lived in. It was one of many abandoned shops in Marjah, Afghanistan in what used to be a small market. The buildings of the market clustered along two narrow, dirt roads separated by a canal and joined by a bridge. Across the street, two Afghan Police talked to a group of kids. Three shots, semi-automatic, well aimed, kicked up dust at their feet. A little boy in white, maybe six fell face first into the dust. The police ran, pushing the other three boys toward a corner of a building nearby. Three more shots, a policeman stumbled, hopped twice, and fell down. His friends dragged him to cover. Tully and I stood in front of our room watching all this. The violence was sudden; the whole thing lasted only a few seconds. Tully said, Oh shit! and we both dashed inside, grabbing our gear and readying our weapons. Roberts sprinted by shouting, One of those fucking dudes got shot! I grabbed my SAW (a light machine gun with a 200-round drum), and, for the first time, my first-aid bag. I stepped out into the blaze of the Afghan sun and paired up with Roberts behind the corner of a building on our street as he peered out, poised to run. Wed go together across the two open streets with a bridge connecting them, a 30 meter distance. There was a lull in the firefight and Roberts seized the opportunity. He turned his head and said to me calmly over his shoulder, Im going before putting everything he had into crossing that distance. I tried to stay close as its better to move in pairs in case one of us got shot. Once we crossed the bridge and reached cover behind a building, Roberts and I briefly caught our breath. He looked annoyed as he said, This shit is getting old, dude. I walked towards the room where the policeman lay. Blood pooled outside in the dirt and inside on the floor. The remaining kids from earlier were there, young, no older than ten, sitting against the wall, their eyes wide with fear. It was easy to tell one was the brother of the boy in the street. He wept silently and repeated his brothers name quietly. The other boy appeared to be in shock and stared at the wall with empty eyes. Nearby the policeman lay on a cot, moaning and bleeding. The smell of blood and sweat was overpowering. Ive always hated blood. I paused to take this all in before remembering the first aid kit in my hand. I was 6 A Sunny Afternoon | Stephen Canty the one with the tourniquets and bandages. Every Marine at our outpost was a combat life saver--they could all keep him alive until the helicopters came, but I had gone to a week long course for this. I had the bag; I had to do something. I dropped my weapon and bag and knelt down to unzip it. I briefly tried putting on latex gloves but the heat had melted them together. Fuck those gloves! I tore open a tourniquet and turned to the guy writhing on the cot. Blood covered his pants and foamed through a shemagh (Afghan scarf) that had been wrapped around the wound by another Afghan policeman. I leaned in slowly, the smell of his body odor and blood overpowering as I clasped the tourniquet to his upper thigh and cinched it tight. I cranked the bar, tightening it until he gasped out in pain and continued well past that. I remembered being told a properly tightened tourniquet should always hurt more than the gunshot wound itself. Until now that had only been a joke among Marines as they practiced a little too realistically with their friends in medical classes. I couldnt see the blood flow because of the crude bandage covering the hole. The guy writhed and moaned and tried to roll over on the cot. I encouraged him to pray and began for him in broken Arabic. He nodded but even that seemed to hurt. The room darkened as a figure stood in the doorway, blocking the light. Smith stepped in and offered another tourniquet. A CASEVAC had been called in, he said. We needed to move the casualty to the landing zone in a nearby poppy field back on our side of the street. I tried to communicate to another policeman nearby that he needed to talk to him to keep him from going into shock. Sweat beaded on the wounded cops face and he looked pale. He begged for water and someone produced it. Outside, the sounds of gunfire still from both Marines and Police. With the casualtys bleeding stopped, I turned to the kids still huddled in the far end of the room. A third boy was now with them, no older than three or four. I guess he had been separated from the other boys during the fighting. I tried to calm them down and say a few words of encouragement. I asked a policeman to get water and handed one of the children a string of prayer beads I kept in my pocket. I smiled a tired smile. I left the room and stepped into the din of the firefight outside. In the next five minutes, the wounded cop on the cot would be carried by other policemen across the open area of the two streets and bridge, while Marines and other Afghan police opened up to suppress whoever was shooting at us. I fired bursts into anything that seemed appropriate, like ominous doorways and bushes hopefully making the shooter 7 A Sunny Afternoon | Stephen Canty find cover. When they crossed, I leaned my SAW against a police Ranger and fished for cigarettes. Only one in the pack and it was broken. I smoked it anyways. Khan, an Afghan policeman, reminded me of the kid still laying face down in the street. I had assumed he was dead but Khan said, Hes breathing. Peering out into the street from around a corner, I saw the boy in a pool of blood, his face caked in mud next to a string of dull grey barbed wire. Khan told me he saw him breathing, but I cant see it. The boy is so still. Khan insisted he was alive and agreed to run and grab him. More shots as we covered him. He lifted the limp child and carried him back to the safety of the building. The boy was shot through the back of the head, his eye blown out. His face was so dirty and bloody. I checked his radial pulse, the hole in his head not registering. His pulse was weak, and for some reason I thought he might have a chance. I pointed across the street and Khan picked up the child. I yelled over for Gilbert to cover us as I crossed the street with Khan carrying the boy behind me. When we got to the Marines side of the road, Gilbert looked down from his spot on the roof and pronounced, That kid is dead, man. I still asked where the landing zone was because in my mind there was a chance we could save the child. Khan laid the boy down nearby, convinced he was dead. Near the Marines post a van was still stopped in the street, its driver and passengers seeking cover in a nearby building. Khan had laid the boy at the drivers feet. The driver, an old man dressed in white, began sobbing when he recognized the mangled face of his son. I knelt and found a weak pulse in the boys neck. For some reason, I thought this kid with a hole where his eye should be would live. I insisted on taking him to the landing zone but by the time we got there he was dead. The helicopters came and went, taking the wounded policeman with them. The firefight was over as dusk settled in. The father left in the golden haze of the late afternoon, collecting both of his sons: one living, one dead. I remember collapsing beside Roberts on an old wooden bed he had sitting outside his room that we used as a bench. I took off my helmet and ran a hand through my matted, sweaty hair. Someone gave me a cigarette. We were mostly quiet, the comedown from the adrenaline hitting us and exhaustion setting in. We had seen truly innocent people, even kids, get hurt before, but it is a hard callous to form. I still remember the smell of that stale tobacco and the coppery, almost metallic, tang of blood. 8 Strait from the Vine Brandy Vest Looking back, hourglass isnt exactly the word he would have used to describe her. Sure, she was curvy, but not enough to warrant a lingering gaze. She was more like a bunch of grapes, but because of her large shoulders, not her chest. Thats not something he would say aloud either: Youre as curvy as a bunch of grapes - you have mens shoulders and small tits. Wide at the top and small at the bottom - she walked with her feet close together, which, if her hips had been wider, would have given her the sway of a model on the catwalk. Which would have countered out the wide shoulders. As it were, it looked like shed grown up in the 50s. That was the reason hed fallen for her quirks in the first place - she was far too intense and grab-life-by-the-ballsy for that spinster gait. Hed seen her around the office a few times: the new girl, supposedly from the South but without a trace of accent, who had spilt her entire 32 ounces of Coke onto the boss within two hours of her first day. As if she werent getting enough looks already for having fast food in the office when every other peon skipped breakfast and stared menacingly at his or her salad and protein shake when it came time for lunch. From his vantage point in his corner office, hed chalked her clumsiness up to being an out-of-towner. She had moved from Virginia with her family when she was 19, old enough to have gone off on her own, but young enough to still believe in the romance of starting over someplace new. Two years later, she still lived with her parents, but there was nobody to judge her for it - he certainly wasnt - and it kept life simple. Thats what shed told him, at least. Going on his first impression, she was pretty damn cute. She wore her hair almost short enough that it could have been one of those no-nonsense pixie cuts if it were straighter. As it were, her curls made her look like she had a never-ending supply of optimism, the way they bounced with every step. And the constant smile - small, like an Ive-just-done-a-good-deed smile - only made her prettier. Thered been research on that; guys were naturally attracted to women that smiled and looked happy, so he felt slightly less guilty about checking out the new girl. The last female to join the firm had been a 40-something year-old with proportions that, quite frankly, belonged in a before picture. Hed already noted that the new girl wasnt exactly bodacious either, 9 Strait from the Vine | Brandy Vest but she was young and cute. And he was handsome and successful. A match made for a real estate commercial. 2.5 kids, white picket fence, labrador in the backyard. Yeah. Right. ***** When hed first asked her on a date, she hadnt understood. Would you want to have dinner sometime? hed said. Oh, you mean the company dinner on Friday? Yeah, Mr. Cryer already said I was welcome to attend, shed replied. Hed made sure to keep a seat next to him open, which shed taken, but between the four courses and Cryers speech, he hadnt gotten a chance to turn their conversation from Ive been an ad exec for seven years to Im good at what I do, if you know what I mean. She probably wouldnt have gotten the hint anyway. After dinner, she had grabbed her purse and made to leave, apparently uncomfortable with making small talk with anyone other than him. It did wonders for his morale and his plan of getting an actual dinner with her, so hed played dumb and kept her there, chatting idly with her and blatantly ignoring her glances toward the door and her attempts to cut their talk short. In retrospect, probably not the best way to get her to warm up to him, but at least hed kept her laughing. So the night hadnt been a complete failure. ***** Your grapes taste funny up here. She was standing next to the window overlooking the city with a bag on the sill, plucking grapes from it one at a time and showing no signs of awkwardness at being in his condo for the first time. No, shed taken a few analytical glances around while hed continued their conversation about the misogyny of beer advertisements (he agreed with her - they were - but seeing as beer was a male-dominated product, both in consumers and producers, it had to be done), then opened and scoured his fridge and made herself comfortable. How so? he asked, handing her a beer and opening his own after returning her raised-eyebrow smirk. I guess its just cause Im not used to eating them from a bag. Or cold. 10 Strait from the Vine | Brandy Vest I keep forgetting youre a Southerner. What is it with you and the fact that Im from the South? You think everyone down there strolls through orchards plucking fruit and grinning gaily all day? Hey, blame Lorraine Peterson. A pause. Am I supposed to know who that is? He chuckled, both at her and at his attempt at making an advertising joke. The original Sun-Maid girl. She was real, you know. She scoffed. Then yeah, I blame her. He set his beer down next to the bag of grapes and glanced over at her. She was wearing her pinstripe pants again, that hung a little loose around her thighs - a downside of being fit. On her top was a maroon shirt he hadnt seen before. It fit her perfectly, the sleeves going just over her shoulders with a tie-string at the end, and the same string at the bottom of the V, which was the perfect length for a necklace without dropping low enough to show him anything if she leaned forward. With her whiterimmed sunglasses pushing up her curls, she looked adorable. Could have been on a poster for sunscreen, if shed wear shorts and grow her hair out a little. It gets cold early up here, she said, stealing a grape and leaning forward on the windowsill. Somehow, her constant analysis of New England never got old. Used to the sun and sand? She rolled her eyes. Virginia, not Florida. And dont start joking about never seeing snow before. He shrugged, turning around to lean his elbows on the sill. It starts earlier then youre used to. Christmas? Sometimes. Ive never had snow on Christmas. And only in a few Decembers. He took a grape. He never really liked green grapes. He preferred the ones the same color as her shirt, with the seeds still inside. More natural. Grapes and beer was a strange combination anyway. You think youll go back eventually? Eventually, yeah. She bit a grape in half, sucking the extra juice off her thumb, 11 Strait from the Vine | Brandy Vest and he smirked at himself for the way he was watching her. But I like it here, too. You have a good job, he pointed out. Exactly. And I like the people there. Lifes pretty good right now. He gave her a sideways look, one he knew she could see, but she kept staring out the window, smiling softly. Why do you have your sunglasses on? Theyre not on. She kept smiling and not turning to him. She did that a lot. Like, I know youre watching me. Im just playing with you. Keep on looking. So he did. Her face, reflected just slightly in the window, was so familiar now, but still as pretty, as attention-grabbing as hed first thought it to be. She had a way of letting her small, knowing smile play into her eyes that made him not want to look away. It was the kind of spark necessary for cosmetics models; makeup commercials were rife with girls who knew how to catch your attention, so all the company had to do was make sure they had enough strategic placings of their name in those thirty seconds to get it through to the viewer. Mostly it was all up to the girl. He nearly laughed to himself when he realized that she was probably watching him watch her because they were both reflected just slightly in the window. When it got colder, in another week or two, hed be able to see her breath on the glass, and a mental video of her drawing faces on it came easily to mind. It was exactly the kind of thing shed do. He leaned over to kiss her and she finally turned to face him, as per usual. ***** So sell me, she said, standing up. She had her hands gripping her hips, staring him down with that simple defiance, smile threatening him. She looked like she did that first week, when he knew her as the awkward girl, new to the office and eager to make an impression, but not necessarily to please. What could she sell? What would make her sell? What was she selling? She was wearing her pink camisole, which hung low with the yellow lacey bit at the top, and his underwear. An odd combination, but she was an odd girl. There was that picture, still there in the back of his mind, of her with the grapes 12 Strait from the Vine | Brandy Vest and the red shirt. She knew grapes, or at least compared to everyone in Boston. Compared to them, she could have made $300 wine. She had a nice enough face; she could sell that. He studied her again. She didnt move as he stared her down. She just watched him, her eyes still maintaining the smile that had faded. She was...innocent. Her posture said tough and feisty, but one look at her normal gait and the faade fell apart. She could try, and sometimes managed, to be a spitfire. She could definitely tell someone what she thought of them with just a flash of her eyes, even if her mouth spewed nothing but niceties. She was just too afraid to get on someones bad side. Even now, if he told her she could sell kitchen appliances because shed make a lovely housewife, she would only be disappointed, not angry. Her face would loosen and her eyes, before she looked away, would lose their spark and go back to being brown. Yucky, plain brown. Not a mesmerizing shade of dark tan. He sat up slowly, her glinting eyes still following him. He took her wrists and pulled her hands off her waist, letting her shoulders fall a little. He put her left arm on her right side, hugging herself, and he pulled her right arm toward him, palm outstretched, where he placed his own hand. Stability. That was it. Even as ditzy and fiery and everything else that she was, she wasnt going to be the one to end anything. She was constant. Could he really see himself with her? Hed had nothing but fun with her as of yet. She was so agreeable, and kind, and cute. Hed never seen himself as the type to settle down. Hed never really wanted a stable life. Or, at least, he hadnt placed insurance very high on his list of importance. So what was it that made her so appealing? She exuded comfort and homeliness, even while she talked about abortion laws and living on the road for a year. It gave off the effect of what hed imagine having a wife would be like. Somebody that you loved, who always wanted to try new things, and you were always right there with her because she offered enough stability for you to grab hold and never want to let go. And even if you did let go, shed probably grab your wrist at the last moment and pull you back up to her. She was pretty strong. Put her in a breast cancer commercial, shed do great. 13 Strait from the Vine | Brandy Vest So maybe...maybe he could afford to take a chance on her. He had a lot in the bank, but hed never before spent it on love. If it was all Hallmark made it out to be, it was certainly worth a shot. Come back, he said softly. He placed a hand on her waist and pulled her into his lap, where she kissed him like hed been talking out loud. ***** Looking ahead, he has no idea whats waiting for him. Was this what motivational posters meant when they talked about a leap of faith? Hey, can we stop in D.C.? He turns to look at her. She has her arm hanging out of the window, maroon shirt blowing a little, looking like she makes the drive all the time. We already lost the moving van when we stopped in that ghost town. Just because its smaller than Boston does not make it a ghost town. And it was Vitisburg. And they have a key. He scoffs, but its hiding a chuckle. Fine. But youre paying for the hotel. He turns back to watch the cars she passes, smiling and waving to the people on their cell phones who glare at them like anybody going faster than they are must be a complete ass. Hotel? We can drive all night! Wheres your sense of adventure? Adventure? Where, exactly...maybe hed left it in Boston with his Common Sense and Logic. And his Job. Then again, maybe a Sense of Adventure is really the only thing he has left. They pass a billboard proclaiming that Maryland is happy to welcome them. He smiles to himself, rolling the window down and deciding he needs to let his hair grow out. Virginia has hippies, right? If not, oh well. The Boston boy is all grown up; he can wear his hair any damn way he pleases. He looks over at her. The highway is packed, theyll need gas soon, and its far too hot to have the windows down, but she turns the radio up and smiles. He smiles back and starts watching the scenery again, keeping an eye out for grapevines. 14 This Train Bonnie van der Linde This train of thoughts travels faster than the flood of tears that turns my cheeks to rust. How fast I go until I run off the tracks and I dont think I dont know if I can be free like the heron if I can be truth like the data if I can feel his pain in my chest. Meanwhile I carry his heart around in my purse. 15 A Stroll Along the Beach Lee Stone Sometimes it is better to leap into the sea whose steady, frigid waves a fiery passion quickly quench, then to dwell here in your tepid bath, waiting for the water to warm. 16 Une Eternit Alexander Urp At last, after many a decade of long and painful work, the hour of elation had arrived. His novel was very nearly complete. Five hundred pages lay before him, each page composed of paragraphs, each paragraph of sentences, each sentence of words, each word of thoughts, and each thought of infinite contemplations. In terms of space and time as society knew them, it had taken Duchamp twenty-five years to reach this point. Twenty-five years of explaining that his plot was difficult to pin down in one sentence. Twenty-five years of enduring the stinging insinuations that there was no book, that he had simply fabricated tales of writing such a book. Twenty-five years of being told by professors that his aims were the fancy of an overeager student, and then, when he himself joined their ranks, of being told by his peers that he was not talented enough to write what they termed a good book. Twenty-five years! Perhaps to them it had been only twenty-five years; to Duchamp it had been an eternity. Every waking momentand some sleepingof every day he had spent consumed in his myriad contemplations and imaginations. He could not even hope to remember the infinite glimpses and ideas that had contributed to his masterpiece. Perhaps it would not be a literary icon or the great French novel, but he had to admit that there was some greatness in it. That greatness had been written into it during that eternity spanning twenty-five yearsor perhaps it was twenty-five years spanning an eternity. Duchamp leaned forward and dipped his quill pen into the black ink of his well. He had written two words of the final line of his novel when, to his surprise, his arm stopped writing. He knew better than to continue with the task, for some part of his subconscious had urged him not to finish it. He leaned back in the plain wooden chair and searched his subconscious thoughts. He came upon it rather quickly. Fresh air. He had cooped himself up in this circular study in his cottage for far too long, had made himself a prisoner of his determination and of his thoughts. He could not finish the book before taking a breath of fresh air. There were no windows in his study, so he would have to return by the dark hallway and leave his little cottage if he were to breathe calmly and freely again. Perhaps he might even find a better way to write the final sentence, as if it mattered what he said there. He did not bring the solitary lantern with him, so he returned through his hallway 17 Une Eternit | Alexander Urp in complete darkness; he had gone to and fro in complete darkness for many years now. He did not know why. Perhaps it was because someone he met at a caf in Paris once had said that thoughts surfaced better in total darkness. He could not remember the someone at the cafhe might have been beardedbut then it hardly mattered now, now that he had finished his lifes work. Finished his lifes work. The idea was somewhat disappointing, anticlimactic. What was he to do now that he had finished? He could not write anything elsethis was the best work he had written in his lifetime, and he could not imagine surpassing it. He might go into teaching, but then, what could he possibly teach students that they could not learn simply by reading his novel? Besides, he found writing much more entertaining than teaching; oh, he had envisioned being a professor in his dayhe had spent some years trying to be onebut now that seemed a different life, one that he ought not to enter into. He was a writer now, as much a writer as Dumas or Verne, perhaps even a better one. They had written of such petty subjects as adventure and chivalry his novel, with its many themes, was much more interesting. In a way, he decided, he was even a better writer than his favorite author, Chekhov. The world would see that, soon enough, when they read his published work, the work it had taken him forever to write. He could compare himself to Chekhov, yes, for his book was quite impressive, literarily speaking. There were metaphors in it, and similes and personification and all those little gratuitous details and tendencies that made great authors great. He had told parables in the book, crafted chapters with such eloquence that he might have published them as short stories. Yet that, of course, would never do. Alone, they were short stories comparable to Chekhov; as part of his book, they were works of genius and far surpassed anything the Russian author could have imagined, let alone written down with such illustriousness as he. He opened the door of his little French cottage and stepped outside. It was a beautiful day, marvelous. He should spend the whole day outside in this bright sunlight, with this blue sky and cobblestone pavement and green grass and rainbow-colored flowers. They had said it should be windy, but it wasnt; in fact, the breeze was more than welcome. The temperature was just right, he thought. Nothing could possibly go wrong on this fine day. Indeed, nothing did go wrong. Duchamp spent the whole day walking the little streets of his tiny village, lying under trees in the park and sitting peacefully on benches. He did not return to his cottage, and in fact, the mossy walls of the abode, the 18 Une Eternit | Alexander Urp dark hallway, the circular room, his book on the desknot one of them so much as crossed his mind. Here he was, spending the whole day in blissfulblissful what? He wasnt doing anything, absolutely nothing. Perhaps he should call it nothingness. Yes, nothingness. He was spending the day in blissful nothingness, while his fellow Frenchmen waddled about their daily business like mallard ducks crossing the road down by the river. He had spent twenty-five years, an eternity, with nothing but the book on his mind, and now he found he was able to forget it completely. It was an exhilarating feeling, and that night he went to bed in his beautiful cottagehe found it beautiful nowand slept a sound and dreamless sleep. The next morning, he returned to his study, although he wasnt sure why he was doing itperhaps out of habitby passing through the dark hallway. He opened the door to the circular room, which he noticed for the first time was strangely curved, sat down at the desk, and dipped the quill pen into the black ink. Again, however, his own arm stopped him before he could finish that final line. Why should he finish it now? There was no rush, after all. Finishing the book would seem so dull, so dreary. He didnt want to be finished with it, didnt want to be done with the work of twenty-five years, an eternity. Perhaps he could wait just another day, and then finish it tomorrow. He could spend today as he had spent yesterday, lounging about in the sunshine and the breeze, lying on the soft grass instead of sitting on this hard chair. Yes, yes, he would do that. He would enjoy himself. Indeed, he did enjoy himself, not just that day but many days afterwards until he lost count. He would walk into his study every morning and decide not to finish the book that day; eventually, he stopped entering his study altogether and simply waltzed around his village. He visited the baker and chatted about how he managed to make his bread so wonderfully warm and soft on the inside, yet crispy on the outside. He talked with the gossipy old women who lived in cottages like his, on the same road, and asked them how they went about tending their gardens. He paid a visit to the church house and had lunch with the vicar because the bishop was away; they talked about God the entire afternoon, and when the vicar asked if he had finished his book, he said he was almost done with it. On the way home, he stopped and had words with some fine, respectable ladies, and they complimented the near-completion of his little book. He was not a slave to his subconscious, and over time he realized why he had taken to leaving that final line unfinished and pondering on it instead of writing it. He 19 Une Eternit | Alexander Urp simply couldnt finish the book, not now, in any case. He had spent his whole life writing it, and if he stopped now, he would experience that terrible sinking sensation that he always used to feel when he finished writing stories. No, he was much happier this way, always with the knowledge that he could finish his book at any time. In fact, he reasoned with himself, he could start to improve the book without finishing it. He began to cut his days in half, the morning spent reading over and revising his manuscript in his parlor, where there were windows, instead of in that dreary study. In the afternoon, he would enjoy himself, visiting his friends and acquaintances in the quaint little town. He even fancied that he might search for a wife, since all the gossipy old women claimed it was high time he found one. He very much enjoyed revising his unfinished book because it allowed him to feel as if he were re-writing it instead of changing something he had finished writing. Removing lines was no longer a pain for him. After all, he wasnt destroying his sentences; it was more as if he had never written them in the first place. Had the book been finished, he felt sure, it would have been much more difficult to improve. Some afternoons, he gardened and found that he enjoyed it very much. The rainbow-colored flowers responded well to his touch, and he rather fancied that he had a bit of a green thumb. He took better care of the moss and vines that curled around his stone cottage, and, before a year had passed, his garden was the envy of the town. Whenever he finished working in his garden, he felt so elated that he visited the chapel and thanked his late father profusely for his inheritance, without which he could not have enjoyed so fruitful and happy a life. His gratitude, over time, extended to the entire town, and he began to fund book clubs and social gatherings and charitable events. Through all this, he felt that his book improved exponentially. His experiences, these new feelings of gratitude and peace, had helped him elevate his novel to such heights that it now seemed to him the greatest work ever written. Certainly, Dumas and Verne, even Chekhov, no longer compared, but now he imagined that not one of the worlds greatest authors could ever surpass him. He no longer questioned whether his might be the great French novelhe knew with a kind of visionary assurance that it would be. He talked with some professors and literary critics in the town about what they believed would constitute the finest novel ever written, and their answers only proved decisively that his was that novel. His life passed in this way for five years, years that passed so quickly, years in which he truly considered himself a writer in all 20 Une Eternit | Alexander Urp connotations of the word. One fine spring day at the end of these five years, he was walking along the main street and whistling to himself. He meandered and stared up into the branches of every tree he passed, and sometimes he stopped in the middle of the sidewalk simply to take in the warm rays of the sweet, bright sun. What a change this was from that dark corridor which led to his study! The corridor. The circular room. The desk. The book. The quill pen. The black ink. He had not thought of these things in years; he had revised and re-revised his book for one-fifth the time it took him to write it, although this was not particularly egregious. Only recently had he begun to think of them again, but he had deliberately ignored those thoughts until today. There was, he knew, a reason he had thought of these things lately. The revisions were finished, and there was nothing more to be gained by waiting. His subconsciousno, his talks with the vicar had convinced him it was his soulwas now telling him to finish that book. He knew at once what the final line should be like, and then tomorrow he would ship the book off to the publisher and see what he said. Somehow, the idea of finishing the book was no longer anticlimactic, nor was it depressing. He knew, somehow, that it was time, that it had been time for a little while. He had waited too long, but now he would listen to his soul and finish the book. Then all his good friendshe did not care what the critics saidwould see how fine a writer he was. He began to skip joyfully on his way home, a home that now seemed so far away, as if it might take him an eternity to get there. Duchamps novel was published a year later and achieved great renown in France. Critics and regular folk alike agreed that a novel like it had not been seen in many years. The words were so precise as to be perfect, the tone so smooth as to be eloquent. Similes, metaphors, and other figurative language abounded so that one might have considered it poetry instead of prosesome critics called it a work of prosetry, so melodic was its rhyme and meter, all within prose form. The novel sold well into the hundreds of thousands, which in that day and age was unheard-of. It was translated from French into English, and from there it traveled to America and to all corners of the British Empire. In India, it was read in Hindi by Brahmin priests; when it reached China, it became mandatory reading for the mandarins. It appealed to all ethnicities, philosophies, and religions; everyone from the Christian to the Muslim to the Buddhist to the Confucian saw value in its fine plot and skillful composition. Around the world, 21 Une Eternit | Alexander Urp it was generally considered a fine novel. Admittedly, the myriad of themes meant that critics rarely concurred on how to interpret it. There was, however, one point on which they all agreed. The novel suffered in only one aspect, which, had it been remedied, would have elevated the masterpiece to such heights that it would indeed have been not only the great French novel, but the greatest world novel of all time. As it were, it could not compare, literarily speaking, to the work of Verne, Dumas, or, as was often cited, Chekhov. All critics expressed their wish that the author had not been hit and killed in a carriage accident before being able to complete the book, which lacked the sense of resolution that the unfinished line might have added. 22 He Sat With His Thoughts In His Hands Ashlie Vandebrooke Get deep into your thoughts and walk around; Get out and find a way to feel the ground. Its a funny human trick we try to play. We get tangled in the words we do not say. 23 Bereft Definition: Deprived Synonyms: lovelorn, unbeloved, bereaved, grief-stricken, grieving 24 Missing Rain Aerial Perkins-Goode he called me puddles when it rained on days where the sun decides to play hide and seek with the clouds when raindrops fall I would think about how fragile each single drops was dwindling from what seems to be an endless abyss why do you jump in the puddles he asked me with a slight grin because they want me to free them from their structure with the soles of my willingness and rain boots doesnt exist to me water stained pants legs remind me of my childhood the good times where doubts fly like the breathing wind I remember him saying well just roll your pants legs up before you jump advice well taken 25 The Toothpaste Incident Deborah Poulin winner of the QEP Essay Contest On a nondescript autumn morning in my sixteenth year of life, I licked the soft pad of my thumb and through a haze of lingering sleepiness, reached up to the mouth of the new boy in drama class and wiped free toothpaste remnants that without his knowledge clung to the hinge of his smile. To this day, I cant muster any reasonable explanation for what caused me to commit this random act of intrusiveness. I do remember however, precisely how we drew apart from each other wearing identical expressions of alarm. The simultaneous startle wasnt because of the spit I smeared across his unexpecting mouth; instead it was the lightning bolt of familiarity we shared. I was destined to bathe his mouth in my saliva; we had been anticipating each others arrival our whole lives. When I close my eyes and succeed in quieting my interjecting mind, that blank canvas of a memory is sought out and I reconfigure him; paint him again, every finite detail of the seconds immediately following the toothpaste incident. If told I could retain only one memory of him for all of eternity, it would be just that one. The expression he wore, the light in his eyes, that split second of purity, the one right before we fell in love and replaced our youthful innocence with experience. In our time, we frequented Harvard Square, together chatting up every invisible homeless person who littered the pristine streets of Cambridge. To him, these forgotten anonymous werent eyesores, but rather grand story tellers eager to share their epic tales. As I witnessed this mere boy encompass the gravity of love with his enraptured attention to these folks, I learned the life lesson ultimately responsible for my carefully constructed conduct as a human being. He taught me that everyone deserves to feel like someone. The unfathomable warmth that emanated from him was palpable; he literally glowed with genuineness from his insides out, bathing everyone in his beautiful radiance. Until him and since him, I have never seen a light quite so luminous. He was my first for everything; my first true best friend, first love, first lover, and with the end of his life, my first experience with death. As a grown woman, I now understand his pervasive impact on me to be like a stone skipped hard into a quiet still pond. He landed heavy in my heart creating enough of a splash to ripple endlessly, sustaining me through the span of a lifetime. The love that we shared twenty-four years ago is a blink of an eye when put in 26 The Toothpaste Incident | Deborah Poulin context to the years following. I have grown from girl to woman, a lost woman to one found. I have married and given birth to four children, and yet, that brief love affair has had a lasting impact on me far surpassing the other relationships Ive had, even those of colossal caliber. In the dusk of a beautiful May evening of my eighteenth spring, he was killed in a car accident, drowned by the waters of our beloved Charles River. The shock reverberated with hollowness leaving a life of substance to feel a then forever foreign concept. It took me a long time to see kindness in any form in a world lacking his presence, especially my own. Thankfully, the auto pilot gear I was stuck in finally shifted to neutrality; with a deep breath I paced myself through stages of grief. I wrote unrelentingly in journals numbers enough to fill the shelves of a library. Occasionally, when a butterfly would tease me with a flirtatious game of hide and seek, I imagined it was him, and laughed freely, hoping the breeze would carry my love for him wherever it was he flew away to. I lived linked to him this way for years. Then, one day while brushing my teeth, I stopped; mouth full of minty foam; overcome with his disapproval of my anguished spirit. In my ears his voice, everyone deserves to feel like someone including you my love, so get to work. Every day since, while inspecting the corners of my mouth for lingering Aquafresh, I see his face that very first morning, morphed with my own present reflection, we are smiling reciprocally. In the glass, in our smiles, I discover he not only he lives on in every kind act I commit, but that we are eternally bonded by our mutual appreciation he passed no mirrors himself that day. 27 H. I. M Victoria Proffitt I wonder, sometimes, if the moment we met he felt it too. That tinge of seeing something we ought not to have seen. It was the middle of a dry summer and my patience for men and love was running thin as ever. I was rapidly becoming enveloped in the idea of being asexual and isolated. I was standing outside the door of my friends apartment when he came around the corner and my life changed instantly. I was a depressant liberal who raged for pro-choice and liked to chain smoke while chatting about North Korea. He was the boy who was too worried with his future. He was the boy with a head on his shoulders, but a heart hidden under sheets and sheets of chemistry work. He would never see the way I watched him, the way his every movement contradicted my attention from one minute to the next. I salivated on every word he said, and I was the rebel he tamed most severely and unknowingly. If I had known from the first cigarette that he would consume me so, I would have given up smoking years ago. But from one end comes forth another. And at the end of that cigarette, I smashed the butt of it against the concrete, feeling more apart than I had in a while. How unfair it was the way his eyes cradled my heart from the first blink. How grotesque his smile left me, when I realized my cheeks flared red every time I saw his mouth move upward in that most familiar movement. It happened so fast that my mind had to sprint to keep up with my mouth when recalling those first few moments I met him. I never dreamed I would know his name or plans for the future, never knew he would engulf me with his rhetoric. I never thought he would know my name, but he proved me wrong, became a fixture of my life, like a lamp next to the bed or a coffee table. Most convenient, but nondescript as they come. I cant say I love him, but I wish I could. I could love him so much more than I could ever love myself. He makes me feel alive. The way he stands next to me, Im surprised he cant feel it too. The way my chest feels like it might explode from the electricity of our near touches. The way I wish I could touch his skin, and feel the creases of his inner hand. How all of this makes me feel even lonelier, writing it out for the world to take in and turn it into savage lust and obsession. Its so much more than that. I could leave him, forget his name and the way he smells, but it would do me no good. I could remember to forget him in conscious thought, but my dreams would be limitless. He would be the celebrity behind my eyelids almost immediately. The way he 28 H. I. M. | Victoria Proffitt makes my tongue twist and tie to try to put him to paper makes me feel for him even more. I want to have our mouths inches apart, but never kiss. Maybe then, he would understand how his very presence affects me. I build my world around him now. Please dont crucify me. I only ever wanted to be honest with him and my heart at the same time. He consumed me so effortlessly. I use to be the girl who walked around whole, believing I was complete within myself. He changed that, most dramatically. Now I walk around feeling slightly departed and a tad dingy. I walk around feeling ragged and smeared. I use to be better put together, but I suppose I fell in love, and nobody has come to fix the pieces his rejection left me in. I know it is said that it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all, but I believe that is utter rubbish. If I had never loved him, he would not still linger in every song on the radio and collect dust on the pages of notes I meant to send him but never did. I feel like I lost a piece of me that I never really owned to begin with. If this is love, I never want to be burdened with it again. That might sound childish, but I never wanted to grow up anyways. We never dated. We never kissed. He slid through my grasp like dust in the rays of the evening sun and departed to bigger and better things. I became his friend, nothing more. That was the first time in my life I had experienced something so painful I pleaded with death to bargain with me, to surrender myself over, to end the torment. You may know him as a man, a student, a blurred detail, but to me, he is the reason I pop my little Zoloft every day. He was the first thing to break me and now I walk around uncertain from one thing to the next. 29 Something You Miss Kyla Crowley my heart hangs defeated on my bones tomorrow sets me down on a plane bound for home ill speak now of things i never told you the big, long thoughts i left alone i will miss you more than any person should i will wonder if my sex was really any good i hope i was beautiful on the outside, for once i hope that my insides werent crazy, too much i want to see you again someday i want to mean something to you more than just a big mouth i dont know what to make of anything youve said or done though i analyze it every hour on the hour i wanted more than we had or could possibly devour i wanted to be seen as someone other than i am who do i tell when all my dreams come true? 30 Something You Miss | Kyla Crowley when these bright and shiny new ones were laid in front of me by you? im only twentysomething, oh what did you expect -ive never had a lover i didnt have to regret ive never had a secret that was able to stay ive never had a desire and then walked away ive never had a word i thought before i spoke ive never been someone thats easy to love they always drop their hands, when push comes to shove ive never had a hurt quite like this i dont know how to be something you miss 31 Better Left Unsaid Hillary Fox I went out into the night expecting nothing spectacular to come my way. It was an ordinary gathering of friends which had been the routine in the past several months. It had taken on a sameness that I appreciated but became monotonous after a while. I did not expect the evening to hold any surprises for me, but that was about to change. I pulled up to my usual parking spot, around the block from the yellow house, and right away I gazed upon the massive puke green Plymouth Satellite. My heart swelled. Moffitt was here. Instantly I was nervous and frantically examined my face in the car mirror. Hoping to see a new one in the old ones place, and disappointed with the lack of change, I pulled it together and exited the car. I couldnt wait to see him. It had been months. He had taken a semester off from college and moved from Winchester to Manassas to work. I had been lost without him around. He was one of my closest friends, and I was madly in love with him. It was a strange predicament, but we worked around that fact. I entered the house and prayed that my face was not the same shade of red as the hydrant out front. Brian was the first one I saw, and he greeted me warmly. He asked if I needed a beer. I took one out of obligation and started to scan the room for Moffitt. At 66 with long, dark curly hair, and a deep hearty laugh, he was never hard to find. Hill! I heard it and my heart sped up. I turned too earnestly towards the sound, but then he walked up to me and embraced me tightly. It was just the fix I needed after those months apart. We made small inquires about each others summer activities and then he asked if I wanted to join him on the porch for a cigarette. Two hours passed as we spoke to each other effortlessly. Our long talks were what really made me fall in love with him. We had so much in common, and our humor was wicked. I could never get enough. Then he admitted to me privately that he was under the influence of some mushrooms. He wanted to go for a walk just to clear his head and wanted me to keep him company. Would I go? Of course I would. I would have followed him anywhere. It turned out to be the best stroll Ive ever taken. We chose to ignore the sidewalks and take full advantage of the empty city streets. No cars passed us, and it truly felt like we were the last two people on Earth. There was a delight in taking up that much 32 Better Left Unsaid | Hillary Fox space. Our conversation flowed, and his intoxication didnt seem to dampen any of his musings. There was a strong summer wind blowing through the tops of the trees, and I will always remember that rustling noise. We walked every street we could in downtown Winchester. Eventually he asked if we could make our way to the potential house he was going to rent for his return to college in the fall. He began to point out the elements he enjoyed, but I couldnt even concentrate on what he was saying because I was so elated. He was coming back. Maybe not back to me, but he was going to be near me and that was enough. Soon, I realized it was incredibly late, and to my dismay, I needed to head back to my car. I had to work in the morning, and I was scared of oversleeping. He escorted me back to my vehicle and then we continued to talk. At first, we stood, but then he hopped upon the trunk of my car and beckoned me to do the same. We lay back against the cool glass and gazed up at the night sky. I cannot remember what we discussed, but I can see him clearly. He was wearing a dark blue rugby shirt which was unlike anything else hed worn before. I made sure to compliment him because he looked very handsome, and I hoped he would wear it again. He was into flannel and t-shirts adorned with the school plays hed crewed before, so it was a pleasant change. He smelled delicious to me as well. It was a combination of Old Spice and Tide, even though he had been incessantly smoking and walking all night. I still catch that smell sometimes when I least expect it. Unfortunately, I am responsible, and I broke the spell. I stood up to leave, and he followed suit. We looked at each other, and then he embraced me. It was the longest, tightest hug Ive ever experienced from another human being. Then I pulled away. I was feeling awkward. But then he looked into my eyes, and I knew he wanted to kiss me! So, naturally I turned away and bolted for the car door. I often wonder how badly I wounded him that night. My blatant rejection of his quiet advances upsets me still. As I drove home that evening, I cursed myself for being so cowardly. How could I have been so stupid? The next morning at work, I recounted the evening for my friend, and as soon as I finished, Moffitt stepped through the door. The timing was eerie, and in accordance with the night before. He had come to tell me about how he had gone to see the house, and he was going to take it. I was excited for him, but deep down I knew I had been on his mind as much as he had been on mine. It was a simple conversation taking the place of what really should have been said. But for us things were better left unsaid. The truth was too much to bear. 33 Before You Were Young Ezra J. Miller It seems like a thousand autumns have gone since that autumn. Your hair was black then. The autumn before, your hair was the color of Pinot Noir. The autumn before, you were young, vivid, a Renoir painting of freshly flowered maturity. You laughed at everything, at things that werent funny. You told me once you laughed as a way to cope when you didnt know what else to do. But this autumn your hair was black, and brilliantly so. You smothered your delicate baby blue eyes so that they matched. You wore jeans that didnt quite fit, and I strongly suspect you excused yourself from your first block to cry in the bathroom when Jack Evans told you so. That was the last day you rode the bus. After that, you became a specter in the front seat of my car. You didnt like my friends, and they in turn did not understand why you always got shotgun. You didnt like my music either. You used to like my music. You used to sing along to Sting in your stunning little soprano. If you love someone, set them free. You quit the school choir that fall as well. It was stupid. Stupid. I chided you on the limited vocabulary, and you rolled your eyes and told me I was stupid. That was when you were kind. When you were kind, you told me you were just experimenting, trying out new things, new forms, new ways of expressing who you were, as if you knew. You tried out new boys as well, boys with names like Sky or Vid, who played bass guitar in shitty metal core bands that soon dominated your walls with their visages. You smoked cigarettes with them, Marlboro Reds, and I told you I was proud of you. You smoked weed with them, and I told you I didnt care even though I did. When you were kind, youd tell me about them in great detail, elaborating at length about why each one was different from the last, how each one was special, not just another boy who wore the same tiny jeans, t shirts, and high heeled boots you did. Another boy who didnt care about you. When you were unkind, you didnt tell me anything. We went days without speaking, and in the winter, I swear the coldness made the frosted windshield twice as hard to clear. In the autumn before, you had called me crazy, stupid, your dumbass big brother. This autumn you didnt call me anything. You just didnt look at me in public, as if you were ashamed of me, and I never felt smaller or more pathetic. 34 Blending into the Background Doreen Roberts a runner up in the QEP Essay Contest The aroma of burning Tupperware was our first clue that something was amiss. Last Christmas as my sisters and I crowded into Moms kitchen for the holidays, bearing covered dishes and platters full of festive food, Mom warned us that the stovetop no longer worked. Within the hour, we discovered that it did indeed work and that she had turned it on with plastic laying on it. Up to that point, we had noticed little signs here and there but at that moment, the pit in my stomach deepened. I knew we were dealing with the first stages of Alzheimers. I have lived enough decades of life to realize that life is often inequitable. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, the caregiver gets cancer, the poorest country gets the earthquake, the soldier loses a limb, the newborn is diagnosed with AIDS. I have come to almost expect unfairness. Dementia, however, seems the unfairest of them all. Robbing the victim of their very personality, it leaves the rest of us dealing with a mere shadow. Mom was never a shadow, never a blender, never a wallflower! The creative juices were always flowing to help her five active daughters with everything from 4-H projects to Halloween costumes to graduation speeches. None of us could beat her in multi-tasking! She could get five kids on the school bus, buzz around the yard mowing, throw in seven loads of laundry, clean my aging grandparents house, and get beef, mashed potatoes, peas, and homemade rolls on the table by 4:30 p.m. when Dad came home from the chemical plant. She was the type that could be ever so sober about a topic like God, but then get into a pee-your-pants-giggling fit with me in church. Mom had respect for doctors and teachers and those that were doing something for the greater good, yet realized that her role as a mother was equally weighty. She didnt base her actions on what everyone else thought was important. A persons parents make an indelible mark on their offspring, and unfortunately for many, its not a positive thing. I feel blessed to have a mother that inspired me to always be thoughtful and put others first, not to muzzle creativity, and to do the right thing in life. I perceived through her character that motherhood is an aspiration to greatness, too. I was instilled to never be indifferent or uncaring or unsympathetic. Im not sure how a woman gives birth to five daughters, then deals with 35 Blending into the Background | Doreen Roberts stair-stepping toddlers, followed by a period of five teenagers, five weddings, and then be a mother-in-law to five new men, followed by being a grandma to ten grandchildren. It wears me out just thinking about it. But she handled it with aplomb and was greatly loved. What tears my heart out is that she should be able to enjoy the fruits of all her labor. Instead, the dementia has clawed at her brain. When I call her and she can no longer remember my name, I have to remind her, Im the third one. You know ... Doreen? Observing a person muddle through a debilitating disease can also have an immense impact. I cannot express how many times I count my blessings that I have all my faculties for the time being. What a reminder for all of us to latch onto the people in our lives that have a positive impact on us and to appreciate and love them. We simply cannot allow those people to blend into the background until its too late to tell them how important they were in our foreground. How many times did I take my mom for granted over the years? How many times could I have used loving words instead of whiney ones? How many times could I have lightened her load instead of giving her more baggage? How many times could I have just laughed something off instead of being so serious? As I read over what Ive penned, I came to the realization that I have written in the past tense. Its as if she is already gone ... as if she has already blended into my past... 36 Renascence Definition: a revival or rebirth, esp of culture and learning Synonyms: awakening, cheering, consolation, enkindling, freshening, invigoration, quickening, reanimation, recovery, recrudescence, regeneration, rejuvenation, renaissance, renascence , renewal, restoration, resurgence, resurrection, resuscitation, revitalization, revivification, risorgimento 37 Black Canvas Kyla Crowley im a canvas of contradictions ive got a bellyful of lies theres lightning on the water theres a fire in the skies i wanted you to hold me but you saw the red you saw the black you breathed poisoned oxygen slipped your fingers around all that i lack so beat a hasty retreat now do not make me tell you twice im coming out odd on an even-numbered die paint by number my contradictions ive got a bucketful of cries theres a shining on the water Jesus Christ is in disguise 38 The Problem with Being Dead Patience L. Ray The problem with being Dead is, after a few days, you start to stink. Kristen took the perfume bottle from the top of her dresser and gave herself two good sprits of the sweet smelling fragrance. Not that she could smell anything either way, she just wore it as a precaution. The last time she had gone outside without wearing any perfume, an old woman had almost fainted from the stink. It had been quite embarrassing. Kristen looked at herself appraisingly in the mirror hanging over the dressing table. Sure, besides smelling like road kill, the ghostly pallor and dark circles under her eyes were a little bothersome too, but there was nothing a little make-up couldnt fix and she kind of liked the way her skin seemed to glow when light hit it. There were definitely worse things in life than being Dead. She finished applying a bright red shade of lipstick to her full, gray lips and then grabbed her purse. She walked into the kitchen where her mom was standing at the sink up to her elbows in soapsuds. Hey mom. Kristen kissed her moms pink cheek. Hey to you too, her mom said, raising an eyebrow as she took in her daughters appearance. Headed somewhere? The Graveyard, Kristen replied, checking her purse to make sure she had her I.D. Theres this new band called the Headstones who just flew in from Denmark and I hear theyre stone dead cool. I guess a little music wont hurt, her mom said, wiping her hands on a dish towel, but be careful. You know how I feel about you being newly Dead and hanging out at a place like the Graveyard. She slung the towel over her shoulder, a slight frown around her mouth. I just hope Im not letting you jump too quickly into the Dead scene. Dont worry. Kristen put one arm around her mom. Dr. Matthews says being around other people like me will help. She gave her mom an affectionate squeeze. Sometimes its hard when everyone else in the family is packing a pulse. Of course, her mom said, I know its the right thing to do, but I dont want you to forget your old friends either. She looked pointedly at her daughter. Like Liz. She called today and wanted to know if you were . . . feeling alright. 39 The Problem With Being Dead | Patience L. Ray Now she calls? Kristen thought bitterly. Didnt seem like I was alive enough for her two months ago, she said, gazing at the floor. If Liz wanted to talk to her, it would take a lot more than just a phone call. Kristen looked up again at her mom. You told her I wasnt here, right? Yes, just like you asked, her mom replied, shaking her head as she pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and sat down. But I still feel terrible. Liz sounded so sad on the phone, like she feels responsible for what happened to you. I dont blamed her. Kristen tried not to sound hurt, which was pretty easy since being Dead made the whole crying thing impossible. Its not her fault some drunk guy decided to go for a joyride into the side of her carit could have been her in the passenger seat, she just happened to be driving. Her mom reached over and took her hand. You two were so close, just give her another chance to make things right. It will be better for you both. Kristen nodded, waiting till she trusted her voice not to crack. Ill think about it. The chain link gate swung shut behind Kristen, and she turned left, walking briskly along the sidewalk toward the railway. The Graveyard was only fifteen minutes away on foot, right by the abandoned rail yard, so walking on the train tracks would be the shortest and least crowded route to take her where she wanted. Besides, it was nice to be outside. Being stuck in the house all day had been one of the hardest things to get used to, but her dermatologist had been very clear about the damage extended exposure to sunlight would have on her skin, and rotting, gaping holes did not sound pretty. Cost was an issue too. She had just gotten this skin suit a few weeks ago and she had to make it last as long as possible. Neuskin products were expensive, and her moms work didnt provide insurance for deceased dependents. Kristen picked her way over the tracks, careful not to get a heel stuck between the rails. Only a few more minutes and she would be at The Graveyard. She passed a tall, round oak tree, its broad, leafy limbs a black mass in the darkness. Our tree, Kristen thought sadly. She and Liz used to come to that tree at least once a week to smash pennies on the track and watch trains go by, counting the boxcars, but mostly it had been a place to talk. But not anymore, not since the accident. She moved on, trying to keep thoughts of Liz from creeping in, her attempts only making it worse. She should have asked her mom drive her instead of coming this way. With relief, Kristen heard 40 The Problem With Being Dead | Patience L. Ray the steady beat of music just ahead. Maybe now shed be able to forget what her life had been like before. She hurried up the slope toward an old warehouse, a sign with the words Graveyard flashing in red neon above it. After opening a few years ago, the Graveyard had turned into the place for corpses to be and was one of the only joints in town that was strictly for the living dead. The parking lot was packed with cars, and there was a line of people at the door waiting to get in. The old glass panes above the door rattled in their frames as music blasted from the warehouse, and Kristen could almost feel the ground vibrate as she moved toward the end of the line. There was someone already there, waiting anxiously off to the side. Liz walked over to Kristen. Hey. If Kristen had been alive, her heart would have skipped a beat. Hey, she said lamely. What are you doing here? I came to find you, Liz said, your mom told me youd be here. Oh. They were both quiet for a few moments before Liz broke the silence. Im sorry, she said, her voice quavering as she scuffed the toe of her shoe into the gravel, I should have called you sooner, I just felt so. . . Kristen watched a tear roll down her friends cheek. I know, she said quietly, its alright. Liz relaxed her scrunched shoulders. Really? Really. Liz smiled, looking at Kristens face for the first time since shed walked over. You look good. Thanks, but you look . . . Kristen noticed the dark circles under Lizs eyes. Her friends skin was an unhealthy shade of gray and her lips bloodless. Are you feeling alright? Liz leaned closer as two guys walked past them. Yeah, Im fine, she said in a whisper, pulling Kristen a little farther away from the line of people. I just wanted us to be able to hang out like we used to and I heard that the Graveyard only lets in, you know, Dead people. 41 The Problem With Being Dead | Patience L. Ray Kristens mouth dropped. Are you seriously pretending to be Dead, just so we can be together? Something like that, Liz said. Kristen stifled a laugh while looking her friend up and down, a foolish grin on her face. Well, you really look the part. Liz shrugged. The make-up was easy, I read up on it. You can find anything on the web. What about the I.D.? Kristen asked. You have to be registered as deceased to get in. Liz held up a death certificate. I know a guy. Faked it. Kristen giggled. Gosh, I missed you. Yeah, you too, Liz said. They walked together to the end of the line. The couple in front of them moved through the door and Liz and Kristen handed their I.D.s to the guy standing at the entrance. He had what looked like tire tread marks down the right side of his face. He took one look and waved them in. Kristen watched Lizs face for any kind of reaction as they entered the club. Nothing. How was Liz doing it? Liz felt Kristen watching her and raised an eyebrow questioningly. Kristen nodded toward the dancing crowds. A whole room of stinking corpses how are you not gagging right now? Liz smiled proudly. Nose plugs. 42 Journey to Vinestone Sarah Catherine Washburn And there, looming before them, stood the Abbey, the safe hold, the destination: Vinestone. After all they had been through ... the hiding, the fighting, the suffering ... they had made it! We sat leaning intensely over the freshly revised script. Lost in a reverie, it took several seconds before any of us spoke. Its perfect! exclaimed my sister, Ariel, shaking her brown hair in admiration. All of us agreed. It was a work of art. We had put so many long hours into making it perfect. Ooo! Layne sighed, eyeing my pile of supplies. What kind of stuff did you bring? She stood peeping into one of my bags, her blonde, wavy hair pulled back in a long braid. Well, I said, I have the elegant, medieval costumes, the village props, and the fabric. And I have the cameras! Ariel added enthusiastically. She was deeply into allthings-camera, and its a good thing too, or else we wouldnt have had the necessary equipment for movie-making. Great! cried my cousin Morgan, her smiling face framed by her short, dark hair. Now can we try on our costumes? Dressing up was not something average teenagers did, but we were going to have a blast! Thankfully, we would be alone and deep in the woods where no one could see us. Just as we had planned, we changed into our medieval costumes, arranged our hair, and put on our various medallions, knife sheaths, and footwear. Layne was a princess and wore a beautiful white dress made of bed sheets, done up in elegant twists and flowing folds and fastened with two safety pins tucked out of sight. For a crown, she wore a string of white beads around her head. Ariel was a villager. She wore a simple brown dress and an intricate belt made from colorful beads and leather and had two small braids in her hair, tied together in the back. Morgan was the princesss maid and wore a maroon frock and a blue skirt. In her hair was a comb, adorned with beads and trinkets. I was a warrior and wore a long, cream-colored tunic, a straight, shin-length, brown, rawhide-looking skirt, and a medallion around my neck. Feeling foolish in clothing of such oddities, we walked out of the front door and 43 Journey to Vinestone | Sarah Catherine Washburn into the lushly green yard, where the sweet smell of summer flowers and the cheerful chirping of North Carolinian birds greeted us. Tromping down the street to the public walkway, we looked like an anomalous revolution, all dressed up in medieval clothing. We gulped. Now, wethe lost heroes of oldwere fully exposed to the world. The path was relatively quiet, but long and open. Anyone walking could see us on that narrow little lane. We walked along the path until we came to a secret trail where we turned and cut into the woods. The splendor of the forest was overwhelming. It looked like a mystical woodland. Passing moss-covered trees, deep creeks, and fallen logs only added to the magic. Wildlife was everywhere. Birds sang, frogs croaked, and rabbits hopped gleefully around, celebrating the magnificent day. We crossed a wooden bridge, rounded a bend, and looked up. Our eyes met a glorious sightthe Meadow! Layne and I loved that place, and when the sun hit the field just right, the beauty was so vivid you could almost see fairies dancing in the tall grass. It always gave me a deep thrill inside saying, This place is magical. It was the perfect spot to film. We then set everything up and got the camera ready. We did a quick run-through of the scenes, got into our places, and started shooting. Action! I shouted, for I was the cameraman. It was a forest scene, and the princess was running from an enemy camp. Layne was in the spotlight. She had to run through rough terrain, climb up a steep ledge in one giant leap, and duck under various boughs. Finding it to be nearly impossible, it took three takes before Layne got up the ledge. But then, on the fourth take, Ariel and Morgan could be seen in the film when they were supposed to be miles away at a village. So we did one more take, and it was perfect! Then we filmed some scenes of the sky and some of the beautiful meadow and surrounding scenery. After that, we headed back to the bridge to shoot a water scene in the stream. When we arrived at the bridge, everyone got into position, and I was just about to press record when a girl rounded a bend in a pathway and was heading straight towards us! We froze. I turned my head away, and Morgan and Ariel pretended to be talking. But Layne ... Layne had a different idea. Some people are shy, some outgoing, and others follow their spontaneous instincts. That is what Layne did. Excuse me maam, my cousin, all dressed up in a princess gown, said, using a 44 Journey to Vinestone | Sarah Catherine Washburn heavy, exaggerated English accent. My heart stopped. No, no! Dont bring any attention to us! But Layne had no intention of letting a good joke pass by. Could you please tell me where the nearest carriage is? Im afraid Im late for the ball, Layne finished, staring at the girl with a face of perfect innocence. Uhh ... okay? the girl answered in a questioning tone. Her dumbfounded face showed the shock of seeing a rugged band of adventurers from the ancient castle era. Realizing that this girl had no interest in playing our game, Layne quickly apologized. Oh, sorry. I was just... she trailed off, her innocent look melting away to uncover one of sheepish embarrassment. I was trying so hard to keep myself from laughing that when the girl finally disappeared around the corner, an outlandish howl exploded from my mouth as it tried to escape. Did you see her face? cried Morgan, gagging with hilarity. I know! Ariel added. And she was taking out her cell phone to make fun of us with her friends. We are going to be famous! After shooting our water scene, we headed through the woods back to Layne and Morgans house. The forest life seemed even cheerier, as if it understood our laughter. As we strode back, we replayed the best scene of the day about Layne and the girl. It got us all worked up again, and I dont know how we ever stopped laughing, but we did, and that evening we had so much to share at the dinner table. It had been a fun dayone to remember for years to come. Imagine walking down your favorite pathone you used oftenand seeing a bunch of teenagers, about the same age as you, all dressed up like ferocious first graders in costumes of imaginary places. I think the girl was relieved to find out that we were just pretending. But that conclusion probably made her just as uneasy. After all, ordinary teenagers didnt let their imagination and love for adventure get the better of them. But we didnt care. It had been years since we had dressed up, and it was refreshing to feel foolishly young again. Oh, that wonderful princess and her carriage ... the one who not only stars in movies, but who also loves to laugh. 45 Like A Good Piece of Land Patience L. Ray I wish the bed would eat us, tear me limb from limb, pick the flesh from your bones. Maybe then this place would be ours; our sweat, our blood in it like a good piece of land. We would sow all year round with our hands turning the sheets, cloth fields to bury death in, live in, forgetting as we soaked into the cotton, silk, whatever we made it with. There are things only a pillow can carve up, make better, look at with your eyes closed. Like that time you ignored my bound foot pressing against your Sunday shoes under the table. I needed unwrapping from that mediocre dinner party, but you let me add superficial layers for another 92 minutes. I thought it meant something until we returned to ground, shedding false pretenses, became snakes digesting gophers, filling in the musty tunnels and holes in our field. Forgiving is pulling back the coverlet, entering that place between tongue and palate, embracing the cud, this place of ours; our sweat, our blood in the fabric like a good piece of land. 46 Love, Italian Style Anthony S. Prato Canto I. The Knowledge. They know. They all know. All of them. How do they know? Did they learn the Knowledge in the womb? Did they absorb It by osmosis? Was the Knowledge handed down to them via a long chain of female relatives, deceased and living? It doesnt matter. What matters is that they have the Knowledge and you do not. No, my benighted young friend, not only do you not have the Knowledge, but you dont even realize it exists! Here they come now. They look pretty ordinary, dont they? Theyre just another group of Italian-America Roman Catholic teen-aged girls from some big-city workingclass neighborhood. We could be anywhere: New York, Philly, Baltimore, Boston or Frisco. Lets pretend were in New York. Queens, actually. Okay, Long Island City in Queens. Theyre getting closer. Theyre chatting a mile a minute, giggling and grooving to the rock music blasting from somebodys radio. In the middle of this covey of seemingly innocent little doves is a girl well call Vivian. She is dark-haired and attractive. Her name was well chosen: she is vivacious and outgoing. Look at her! Not a care in the world or a brain in her head, right? Thats just what she wants you to believe, chump! These girls seem so oblivious to the world around them. The operative word, of course, is seem. They have long ago mastered the art of seeing without appearing to look, of hearing without appearing to listen. Above all, they have mastered the Black Arts of sensing, intuiting and envisioning, which enable them to look into your very soul. Make no mistake about it. These young ladies are Ninjas, female Italian Ninjas. Assassins! So what is the Knowledge these Italian girls have? When you try to describe or define the Knowledge, you inevitably trivialize it. Its essentially the feminine art and science of winning a mate. The highest manifestation of this art, the Black Belt level, is the ability of a Woman of Knowledge to induce the male to feel that he cannot live 47 Love, Italian Style | Anthony S. Prato without her and that he originated all of the courting and subsequent commitments. Canto II. It All Began Here Here is how it begins. You (well call you Salvatore) are hanging out in one of the rooms of the school attached to the local church, rooms that are used for Friday night socializing by the teen-aged parishioners. Let us call the church St. Ritas Roman Catholic Church. A girl named Vivian looks at you across the room, smiles and murmurs Daddy who? Daddy cool. Daddy who? Daddy Cool. Those are the words of a popular Rock song of the day, but when Vivian gently voices them, they are soothing and hypnotic. Also, listen to the words. Vivian is calling you Daddy, implying that she looks up to you, that she thinks you are wise and strong and knowledgeable in the ways of the world. And, as a bonus, she thinks youre cool! Vivian has taken complete charge of the situation. Salvatore, you are doomed. You ask her out...clumsily. She accepts...graciously. So the next several weeks become a dating fiesta: movies, pizza, inexpensive neighborhood restaurants, walks in the park, and church functions. One soft summer night, graced with a lovely full moon, Vivian says, Why waste your money on movies? Why dont we just go for a walk in the park? She takes your hand, and the both of you disappear into the hidden, shadowy recesses of Rainey Park, hard by the East River. Canto III. Sunday Mass. Sooner or later, Salvatore, either you or Vivian will suggest that you go to church together on Sunday. After all, both of you go to Mass every Sunday. Why not go together? It will probably be Vivian who broaches the subject. You are hopelessly obtuse. So you and Vivian go to Mass together each Sunday. After a short time, you have become a couple. All of your friends have seen you together each Sunday, as have hers. Relatives that live nearby have seen you and Vivian in church. This has been a triumph for Vivian but she is not growing complacent. Remember, Vivian has the Knowledge. She knows how crucial the next step is... and how dangerous. 48 Love, Italian Style | Anthony S. Prato Canto IV. Sunday Dinner After Mass. Vivian needs advice from her co-conspirator girlfriends. She meets with them the following Monday at a table in the high school cafeteria. There are many urgent whispers at that table, laughter, and tears. The full gamut of human emotions is given free rein here, with even what sounds like the cackling of Macbeths Witches gathered around the smoking cauldron. What is the problem? The next step is for Vivian to invite Salvatore to her house right after Mass for Sunday dinner. But when? Timing is of crucial importance. If the invitation comes too soon Sal may realize that he is being set up. The moon, the stars, the witches of Macbeth, the shades of wise, ancient, southern Italian crones and Vivians friends all agree that the very next Sunday is auspicious. You and Vivian have just attended Mass. The Mass has ended and you are melding with the crowd leaving the church. You walk Vivian to her home and start to say goodbye. Vivian says, Why dont you come up to my house for dinner? Id love to but my parents are expecting me, you say. Vivian replies, Well, you could call them from my house. You and Viv have now reached a critical juncture. Having everyone together for Sunday dinner after church is very important in most Italian-American families. This is your first step towards becoming part of Vivs family. Viv knows that she must become a part of your family too. That will soon come to pass. Your mother will say that you should reciprocate and invite Viv to your house for Sunday dinner. Vivian will, of course, accept your invitation, cordially but without appearing too eager. Soon this becomes routine: dinner at Vivs one Sunday, dinner at your house the next. Canto V. Shes Good for Him. Your mother has already fallen in love with Viv: What a sweet girl, so warm and friendly. And shes attractive but a little plump, just like me! I think she will keep Salvatore going to Mass every Sunday...and keep him away from those no-good friends of his. Your mom and dad know youre a bright kid who always did well at school. Theyve been praying for years that you will go to college, the first of the extended family to do so. They are scared to death that your friends will tempt you away from the ivy path to college and towards the primrose path to...God knows where. To jail? 49 Love, Italian Style | Anthony S. Prato To a roof top, where the police will find you slumped over with a needle dangling from your lifeless arm? To a hospital emergency ward, your life oozing out of a lung punctured by a razor-sharp knife wielded during some senseless gang fight? I know your crowd, Sal. Your friends arent that bad. Its just that parents worry. They worry most about those scenarios whose horrors far outweigh their likelihood. Thats human nature. Nothing can change it. The important thing is that your mother sees Vivian as a good influence: a lighthouse in a pitch-black night, an unwavering compass pointing the way to safety for callow and inexperienced sailors tossed in a stormy sea of adolescent angst, confusion and vulnerability. Canto VI. Meet the Family. Vivian knows that the next step is crucial. Again, Viv must confer with her girlfriends. When you have a bunch of Italian girls sitting together in a high school cafeteria, talking in urgent, conspiratorial whispers, you know some unsuspecting guy is about to sink a little deeper into the courtship quicksand. The next step for Viv is to invite Sal to a family function: a birthday, a christening, perhaps a major holiday. Again, timing is critical, as is the choice of function. Wakes and funerals are out (too gloomy). Weddings are out. No sense in scaring the unknowing little slaughterhouse piggy...until it is too late. Christmas dinner at Grandmas is as good a time as any. There will be plenty of relatives there who havent seen each other in a while and will be anxious to renew their friendships. Viv knows that Sal wont be the center of attention and will therefore be able to relax and enjoy the festivities. Another advantage for Viv is that one side of her family gets to size Sal up, all in one sitting. This is important. Italian-American couples do not live in a vacuum. They are an integral part of both the husbands family and that of the wife. Actually, the two families will eventually become The Family. It is unthinkable that Sal and Viv could get married if either one did not fit into The Family. After Christmas dinner, Vivs mother will be receiving reports from the field. They will all be favorable. After all, Sal has been in his familys school all his life, the school where one learns how to be an Italian male. He is nice, friendly and modest, and 50 Love, Italian Style | Anthony S. Prato respectful of the older family members. Vivs family will recognize him immediately as one of their own. And so it goes. Viv attends all of Sals family functions and Sal attends all of hers. Now you are officially a couple in the eyes of God and The Family. If Sal goes alone to a family wedding without Viv everyone will converge on him asking, Wheres Vivian? Is she ill? Tell her we said hello. Canto VII. Heart Speaks to Heart. Sal and Vivian have had many long, serious conversations about their future, many of them in the ...hidden, shadowy recesses of Rainey Park, hard by the East River. On one of these occasions, Sal is very quiet. Honey, whats the matter? Youre so quiet, Viv says. Its nothing, Sal replies. Tell me, she demands in a raspy whisper, her beautiful brown eyes wide with concern. Sal asks, Are you dating other guys? Well...NO! Why should I? Do you want to date other girls? Are you thinking that we should break up? Well... Sal says, taken aback by the force of her reply...and cut to the bone by her palpable pain. WELL, WHAT?!! she snaps at him. Well, since were not seeing other people, I thought, and I dont know how you feel about this, but I thought, well, maybe we should... Vivian completes his sentence: Go steady? Weve been doing that for months, you silly! And then she dropsthe bomb: Why should we go steady? Sals innocent question somehow turned the conversation into a chess match. The words check mate are softly, almost inaudibly, reverberating inside his skull. Well, he stammers, I think we should get married someday. Why? she says, archly. Because you love me? Well sure, Viv, because I, well, you know, love you...sort of...and because I dont want to be without you...ever. That wasnt so hard, was it? she asks, trying very hard to keep a note of triumph out of her voice. The moon and the stars look down on the young couple with approval. The Witches of Macbeth, the shades of wise, ancient, Southern Italian crones and the spirits of her girlfriends gather secretly behind a dense copse of nearby shrubbery, silently cheering. Canto VIII. The Perils of Passion. Vivian presses her lips against Sals, cutting off his reply. The kiss, one of the very 51 Love, Italian Style | Anthony S. Prato few that she doled out to him, is long and passionate. After several seconds, when she can feel her heart trying to burst out of her chest, she pushes him away, a little more roughly than was necessary, Sal thinks. Vivian is totally, cold-bloodedly in control of the couples amorous activity. She knows what would happen if she became pregnant and she is prepared to fight with her entire being - tooth and nail, body and soul, to the death if necessary - to avoid that fate. If she became pregnant, she and her parents, and Sal and his parents, would be in Father Russos office for an impromptu, private wedding ceremony. There would be no nuptial Mass, just a perfunctory, uncomfortable rite that everyone, even Father Russo, would want to be over as soon as possible. Vivian wouldnt be able to bear the look of pain and disappointment in her fathers eyes. Nor could Vivian stand seeing her mother struggling for control, trying to think of something reassuring to say, only to break down totally and blurt out: Vivian, bambina mia, my heart, my soul, my blood, why did you do this to me? No, bad boys and girls, and their parents, dont get formal church weddings, in the presence of both families, with the bride dressed all in white, just like she has been dreaming of since she was a little girl. Mothers of bad girls get to cry their eyes out at every family wedding as the bride, all aglow, and stunning in a dazzling white wedding gown, walks slowly down the aisle at her fathers side. Such is the compassion that the Churchs administrators reserve for erring communicants. Canto IX. Plans. Vivian is a very practical young woman. As for the engagement ring proffered with a formal proposal delivered on bended knee, well thats only so much American frippery. Life is serious and has nothing to do with rings. A diamond ring? Thats a refrigerator equivalent! And the bended knee should be reserved for church, where one genuflects to the Living Presence residing at the altar The happy couple eventually decides to get married as soon as it is practically and reasonably possible, which really means in a few years. Yes, Sal, you have now not only resigned yourself to your fate but you are embracing it. Vivian cannot wait 52 Love, Italian Style | Anthony S. Prato for that happy day. You young people are crazy. For years youve been complaining about how old fashioned and irrelevant your parents were, how uncomprehending and clueless, how hopelessly out of date. And yet you are now in a big rush to become your parents! The gods, and parents everywhere, must be laughing Sal is changing his plans to take a pre-law curriculum at Queens College. After all, it takes three years of study after college to get a law degree. It seems more practical to get a Bachelor of Science Degree in Accounting, which is all the education necessary to become a C.P.A. Sal will enroll in night courses at City Colleges Bernard Baruch School of Business Administration while working full time at a stock brokerage house. Vivian will go to work as a secretary for a major insurance company. Sal and Viv will open a joint savings account. Canto X. The End...and the Beginning. Four long years have passed since high school graduation. Sal will make his formal proposal to Vivian in the hidden, shadowy recesses of Rainey Park. Vivian will be a June Bride next year. And yes, Vivian will get her engagement ring. After all, she has to set a good example for the sake of her girlfriends. No one knows if Sal will propose on bended knee...no one except the moon and the stars, which are benignly beaming down on the young couple, and those other benevolent well-wishers: the Witches of Macbeth, the shades of wise, ancient, Southern Italian crones and the spirits of Vivians girlfriends, who hide behind a thick copse of nearby shrubbery. But they arent talking. 53 The First Bite Kelly Shott a runner up in the QEP Essay Contest You know you cant leave until you eat all of it. I took a deep breath and groaned. How had it come to this? I am a grown woman, and besides didnt she know that I couldnt eat this sandwich. The nurse looked at the clock and sighed. I looked down at my plate. Why cant I eat this sandwich? The bread was fresh, the turkey was unspoiled, the cheese was not moldy; there was nothing unusual or offensive about it sitting there in the compartment of the institutional tray. I did the calculations in my head automatically. I had eaten the broccoli first: 10 calories per stalk. Then I ate the apple: 100 calories. I had drunk my milk: 130 calories. I had eaten more in this meal than I had eaten all last week; I just couldnt eat this sandwich. It was my first day of inpatient treatment for Anorexia Nervosa. My struggle with this exhausting disease began at age 12. Eating disorders are primarily anxiety driven and anxiety is something I know well. A hair on my shirt, a dust bunny in the corner, the slightly less than ninety degree tilt of the paper I am writing on, all of these things can throw me into a deep spiral of panic. Some students strive for As and Bs, I demand 100 percent. Overachievement is so common in my family that even the family tree is afraid to fail. I graduated with a 4.0 and numerous acceptance letters. That Fall I started college with the same grueling expectations of myself and the new found freedom to starve myself to death. The pressures of college soon took their toll. Chasing perfection is like trying to fill up a bucket with no bottom. In a world of deadlines and expectations, I thirsted for control. I was dying to control. One of my therapists once said, You have a bad case of the shoulds. You need to control a situation to feel safe and stave off the anxiety but your sense of control is an illusion and you know it. When you cant control anything else, at least you can control what goes into your mouth. I became reclusive and alienated. I quit the rugby and equestrian team; I dropped out of German club. My friends whispered, theorized and finally gave up and stopped calling. My weight dwindled and I found reasons to not come home for holidays. That summer my facade finally fell to pieces. I could no longer pretend that I was not sick and at 98 lbs I was admitted to a voluntary inpatient treatment center located in the 54 The First Bite | Kelly Shott Appalachian Mountains. I thought about all the reasons why I couldnt eat this sandwich. If you eat this sandwich you will get fat, your grades will drop, no one will love you, and your whole world will fall apart... I looked at the nurse. Her hair was out of style, her name tag hung just slightly askew on the lanyard around her neck, her impossibly white shoes squeaked on the sterile tile floor. Then I met her eyes. I saw steel resolve, I saw concern, and I saw compassion. Her eyes seemed to say, I hope you succeed but if you fail, we will try again. Like a mother bird pushing her fledgling out of the nest, she knew I had to fly or hit the ground. She thought I was worth it and she was not going to give up without a fight. I looked back at my plate. This woman had just met me; she didnt know that I had an almost perfect SAT score or that the tassels of my bedroom rug were all perpendicular to the floorboards and she still thought I was worth it. If she thought I deserved to eat this sandwich, deserved not to starve, deserved to be happy, then maybe I did. The prospect of eating that whole meal was the most terrifying thing I had ever done but, for the first time in years, I cleaned my plate. That nurse saved my life. I finished my inpatient therapy under her experienced care. Ninety days later, I went home armed with the tools to defeat the mental illness that had ruled my life for my entire adolescence and had threatened to stalk me into adulthood. I dont remember her name, but I will never forget her. The way her voice sounded as she encouraged me. The way her hands always smelled like antiseptic when she held my head. I will never forget that she never gave up on me, that she insisted that I was worth it. 55 A Long Time Coming Kenneth N. Moore This voyage at sea was more than I imagined it would be. Storms and unknowing frightened me. Only faith held off my growing belief That I might never set foot on land again. But then one morning I awoke to the shouts of the lookout crying, land, land, I see land. I felt the pounding of my heart, as I strained to see out across the sea. And then it appeared a ridge upon the horizon that brought my soul to rest. As our ship sailed closer to this promised, but sometime disbelieved land, memories of stories past spoken merged into reality. Now, sometime past I am aware and grateful It was a long time coming. 56  ...

... Crystal B. Lambert Cousin one summer you skipped the gap and slipped right into thirteen-it fit you like an old pair of jeans. i hold in my mind the hot nights of july, you and i laying under my open window, counting grasshopper chirps and the freckles poised on the bridge of your nose. you spelled out everything 10-year-old me could ever need to know, like what it means to bleed through your hips and the feeling of lips on lips why should you ever want to marry. my arms grew to match yours, and i wished each day that my body would follow suit. i did not want to be older, i just wanted to be you. once you showed me the scar on your leg and you said, dont you ever think they can tell you what to do. i traced it with my finger, from your thigh all the way up in curves to your hipbone, jutting up like a mountain, proclaiming your strength. i imagined myself as you, taking the threat of the knife over his unyielding desire. i wanted you as my sister. Page 31 Cousin | Crystal Lambert then you were absent for three summers, and i started to bleed without you. when i had to tell my mother, my face lit up with shame. i knew she didnt feel it like you did. my legs grew out to match yours, but i couldnt remember their shape. as soon as i forgot the position of the freckles on your face, the phone rang. my father held it to his ear for three silent minutes before letting it drop between the cushions. i thought surely my blood would stop cold, that i would no longer grow, but remain as you would for the rest of my life. sixteen. it made no sense that i could get that far. then 500 miles pass and i am standing over your body. i can see keloid mountain ranges under the thin cloth of your dress, the look on your face when he stopped his car with a lurch, leaned over to you. i put my head down, adjust the hem of my skirt over my legs. and even after that, after they tossed your ashes across Maines frigid coast, i could feel you every day, a quick pang in my thigh. even now, when its 2 a.m. and the air is cold and my sheets are bare i can still sometimes smell you in my hair. Page 32  ...

... Hilary Mathes Page 30  ...

... Granny Smith and My Mamaw| David Ramey That old apple tree and Mamaw are gone now. After Mamaw left us and I grew up and moved on, there was no one left to enjoy the apples. Perhaps the tree had no more purpose and withered away. A gut feeling tells me Mamaw is still baking somewhere and that wonderful tree is her source of Granny Smith apples. For many years it provided us with a bounty of apples, shade in the summer, and conversation. I still can see it standing so gracefully on the hill near the garden, and if I try hard enough I can still see those large, round, somewhat green with a hint of yellowish hue beauties in the top of the tree, still out of reach. That feeling of Mamaws presence is more rewarding than throwing the rock in my right hand. 1-5 by Diane Willson Page 29  ...

... David Ramey Granny Smith and My Mamaw The apple is truly a wonderful fruit. Apples come in many varieties. And each has its own taste, color, size, and use. Some may be too tart for pies, and some are great for just eating out of hand. You can even be the apple of someones eye. You may be doing work on an Apple. The apple I grew to love and have a special relationship with was the Granny Smith. When I was a young boy, I lived mainly with my mamaw (my grandmother) until about age seven. There standing so majestically was a huge apple tree at the upper end of the garden. This tree was not to be climbed or abused in any way. Mamaw made sure we were always aware of her presence, and anyone around the apple tree better have a good excuse. During the summer when the tree was full of lush green foliage, when the apples were appearing on the tree and looking so tasty, I would find a nice round rock to throw up at the tree with the hopes of being rewarded with a nice juicy apple. I could see the larger ones hanging towards the top of the tree, but could not throw my rocks high enough to get the big ones. Sometimes it took several attempts to get the tree to release one of those large, circular, juicy, sweet, and sometimes tart treats. Mamaw sometimes caught me winding up with my rock, and would yell Rabbit!, I would look, drop my rock, and run for the hills. I knew that when I returned she would tell me for the hundredth time, if I wanted an apple, look on the ground under the tree, and get the ones that have fallen. This noncompliance had gotten me into lots of trouble concerning the delicious fruit hanging out of reach. The Granny Smith is a great apple for apple sauce and for pie making. I became aware of the many uses early on. I would sit on the porch with my mamaw, mother, and aunts, peeling apples. You have to peel fast, and the peels better be thinthat way you waste very little apple. We would have a contest to see who could peel an apple without the peel tearing. When you were finished, you would have just one long strip of the apple skin. That was usually accomplished by one of the older folks. Page 27 Granny Smith and My Mamaw| David Ramey I would sit there listening to the women talk about the pies, apple sauce, apple butter and how many of the apples to dry and so on. As everyone would be engaged in gab, I would slowly peel my apple, and, when the timing was right, I would slice a piece off and in my mouth it would go. Then I would turn the fruit over as to hide the sliced area, and continue until I was either caught or the evidence was no more. After all the peeling was done, it was time to cook, dry, and watch the pie making with joy and anticipation. I knew the following morning and possibly at supper, too, there were going to be fried apples on the table. This was one of those mornings I could not lie in bed. The sweet aroma coming from the kitchen was forcing me out of bed before anyone else. I would make a fast dart to the kitchen, and Mamaw would greet me with plate and fork. I would place a large spoon of apples on my plate, add a few homemade biscuits, and I was one happy young man. The fried apples possessed a sweet, sugary stickiness that was to be enjoyed as long as my stomach could accommodate. This was a ritual late summer and fall each year. When old man winter set in, we were still enjoying the apple. There would be strings of this sweet fruit hanging on the wall behind the wood stove, which was always warm. These drying apples were also a problem for me at times. They were somewhat chewy and delicious. You can buy dried apples, and the ones that are packaged are good, but not as good as those that hung on the wall behind the wood stove at Mamaws. I would never attempt to sneak the ones out of the store, but the hanging ones would always tempt me, and that temptation was far too strong. I was often amazed of how these slices would wrinkle up, look unlike an apple slice, and yet be so tasty. My mamaw would again get the opportunity to instruct me about not taking the apples that were hanging. I would always let her know I looked on the floor behind the stove, and there were no apples to be found. She would smile and tell me about what she wanted to use the drying apples for, and it was usually something I liked more than the hanging apples. Page 28 Granny Smith and My Mamaw| David Ramey That old apple tree and Mamaw are gone now. After Mamaw left us and I grew up and moved on, there was no one left to enjoy the apples. Perhaps the tree had no more purpose and withered away. A gut feeling tells me Mamaw is still baking somewhere and that wonderful tree is her source of Granny Smith apples. For many years it provided us with a bounty of apples, shade in the summer, and conversation. I still can see it standing so gracefully on the hill near the garden, and if I try hard enough I can still see those large, round, somewhat green with a hint of yellowish hue beauties in the top of the tree, still out of reach. That feeling of Mamaws presence is more rewarding than throwing the rock in my right hand. 1-5 by Diane Willson Page 29  ...

... Christine Kidd Jessica Drew Kristen Bingler Jake Tuck Page 26  ...