Agate 2013 - SUNY Delhi

CONTRIBUTORS
A G ATE 2 0 1 3
John Coleman
Ericka Ericson
Bob Fisher
Ian Gallagher
Marty Greenfield
Hope Hager
James Hammond
Samantha Howard
Ruth Hughes
Hye Jin Hwang
Jesse Ray Jacob
Markida John
Wanda K. Jones-Agans
Jared Loucks
Patricia May
Joseph W. McAnlis
Michael McKenna
Carrie Mellinger
Akira Odani
Kirby Olson
David Reed
Theresa Santaniello
Miriam A. Sharick
Elizabeth Steffen
Meghan Strube
Abby Wallace
Sandra Williams
Laura Ziemba
AGATE
2013
EDITORS
Ian Gallagher
Markida John
Jared Loucks
Michael McKenna
Sharon Ruetenik
John Sandman
Abby Wallace
ON THE COVER
Stairway to Heaven by Michael McKenna
Agate (ág-it): a fine-grained crystalline mineral that forms in cavities in
volcanic rock. Agate is prized for its beautiful patterned colors, and its
hardness makes it ideal for delicate carving.
2013 SUNY DELHI
STUDENT WRITING CONTEST WINNERS
First Place:
The Red Saturn by Abby Wallace
Second Place:
Ocean Waves by Carrie Mellinger
Third Place:
An Awakening of Respect by David Reed
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Special thanks to Vern Linquist, Dean of the Liberal Arts and Sciences
Division, Provost John Nader, and President Candace Vancko for their
continued support of Agate.
DELHI
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
Copyright © 2013
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Piscataway Is Thataway: Misadventures in Driving
Miriam A. Sharick
5
Outspoken
Sandra Williams
10
Finding Home
Jesse Ray Jacob
11
My Own Little Girl: Almost
Samantha Howard
14
Ocean Waves
Carrie Mellinger
17
Castor Bean Sky
Michael McKenna
24
Springing Vascular
Miriam A. Sharick
25
Abandon the Asylum
Laura Ziemba
26
The Unfortunate Tale of Victor Vaughngaurd
Elizabeth Steffen
28
Fire Elemental Wolf
Jamonito
31
Driving America
Kirby Olson
32
Alone
Wanda K. Jones-Agans
33
Untitled
Joseph W. McAnlis
34
The Pear Tree
Hope Hager
39
Tallfish
Bob Fisher
42
An Awakening of Respect
David Reed
43
A Frog in a Deep Well
Akira Odani
46
To Skin a Fox
Laura Ziemba
47
Feelings of Peacefulness
Wanda K. Jones-Agans
51
The Red Saturn
Abby Wallace
52
Message for Kristen
Michael McKenna
59
A Tribute to Gia Marie Carangi
Theresa Santaniello
61
Eagle
Ruth Hughes
62
A Father’s Love
Meghan Strube
63
My Experience as an International Student:
What a Lovely World!
Hye Jin Hwang
70
Skyline
John Coleman
72
Billiards and Beer
Ericka Ericson
73
Cone
Bob Fisher
75
Midnight Math Musings
Patricia May
76
Remembering K.J. James
Marty Greenfield
78
Notes on Contributors
83
Piscataway Is Thataway: Misadventures in Driving
Miriam A. Sharick
One cool August evening, as I was driving home from
Oneonta on Route 23, the new black sedan in front of me abruptly
braked and swerved onto the shoulder. As I slowed down to pass, an
elderly woman tumbled out of the passenger side into the grassy ditch,
clutching her stomach. As I completed my pass, a pudgy elderly man
struggled to emerge from behind the wheel. I didn’t stop or look back;
I’m squeamish. The image has haunted me.
This happened before cell phones were invented. Today, I could have
stopped and called 911, or the driver himself could have. I argued for
having a phone as a form of insurance when cell phones were already
in widespread use. Bill initially didn’t want to pay for it. One summer
night I was driving home from Franklin after a play, when a fawn
bounded into the road and bounced off the side of my car. The fawn
apparently shrugged it off, but I was unnerved. Had I collided with
a mature deer, I might not be writing this. I insisted on and finally
acquired the means to address an emergency. Ironically, that spot
where I encountered the deer has no cell service.
The summer after I received my first cell phone, we used it
for an emergency, though not for ourselves. As Bill and I were driving
to Oneonta to attend a baseball game, we witnessed an accident at the
intersection of Route 23 and Blackberry Street, about a mile and a half
from our front door. As a white SUV was turning left onto Blackberry
Street, a blue motorcycle whizzed around and in front, and the SUV
hit it square on. Three blue objects flew into the air: the motorcycle,
its gas tank, and its driver, dressed helmet to boots in matching blue.
We stopped immediately, and Bill called 911 from my phone. The 911
system was new and imperfect; the call bounced between Delaware
and Schoharie counties, and the dispatcher didn’t know how to ask
questions. But somehow the Stamford Fire Department and the state
police were alerted, and we soon heard their sirens. As an emergency
worker himself, Bill ran to the scene to assess the victim and assist the
arriving personnel. The driver of the SUV and her family, neighbors
going to visit her parents, were very shaken but OK. The cyclist was
badly hurt. Bill warned me not to look as we drove past the scene. We
learned later that the cyclist had been drinking and received multiple
tickets, but he recovered. He came by the DEC office to thank Bill for
getting help so fast. Bill got his own first phone a short time later and
5
has never seriously complained about the cost since.
I’m a decent driver. I obey the speed limit and other traffic
rules and respond politely to other drivers. Sometimes speed limits are
hypothetical. On an interstate where the speed limit is 65, I’ll set cruise
control at about 68, and practically everybody is still passing me.
Actually following the speed limit is more dangerous than speeding.
But there are some drivers, typically elderly, like my mother, who
didn’t grow up with interstates and still think that if 65 is a safe speed,
45 must be even safer. It took me years to convince my mother to stop
driving on interstates.
Never mind my mother’s driving. She is the passenger from
hell. She’s really frightened of speed, so she’s always screaming or
crying at the driver to slow down. She has no depth perception, so
she’s convinced that every passing or oncoming car is going to hit her,
and she screams and flinches at every one. At her worst moments of
screaming panic, she’ll grab the driver’s arm. Imagine that at interstate
speed in heavy traffic. I have inchoate waking nightmares of times my
mother has screamed at my father to slow down and tried to grab his
arm and my father has shouted at her to shut up and tried to push her
away. I still experience tremendous tension whenever I’m in a car with
my parents, whether I’m the driver or a passenger. Unlike my father,
I couldn’t, and still can’t, ever, ever bring myself to tell my mother to
shut up.
The following conversation took place on a November
morning in 2006.
“Officer, did you pull me over because I passed that truck?”
“No, I pulled you over because you were doing 75 passing that
truck.”
“Omigosh! I didn’t realize that! I saw you in the pulloff and
I was trying to finish my pass because I know the road bends sharply
over the hill and I would have to slow down quickly. I should have
passed that truck a quarter mile ago. I don’t know why I couldn’t. If
you think I deserve a ticket I absolutely won’t argue with you.”
“Hmmm. . . . Where are you going this morning?”
“To Delhi College. I work there.”
“What do you do?”
“I teach there.”
“What do you teach?”
“Zoology, Botany, General Biology when they need me to pick
up some lab sections.”
6
“How long have you been teaching there?”
“Steadily, about 10 years.”
“Where do you live?”
“Stamford. For almost 30 years. My husband Bill is a state
wildlife biologist.”
“Hmh. Have you ever been ticketed for speeding?”
“Officer Munson pulled me over many years ago for speeding
near the DEC office, but he didn’t ticket me. I’ve never received a
ticket for a moving violation.”
“I didn’t know Jon Munson. Huh. Okay, you can go. I’m not
giving you a ticket. But don’t do this again.”
“Believe me, Officer, I won’t. Thank you.”
Months later, I realized what must have happened. The truck
driver had played a practical joke on me. He must also have seen the
trooper in the pulloff at the south end of the straightaway section of
Route 10 on the Kortright/Delhi town border, and he deliberately
speeded up so that I would either give up the pass or get caught
speeding. He must have smirked as he roared by where I was pulled
over, almost opposite the pulloff. Well, Mr. Schmuck Driver, I’ve
mentally consigned you to the fifth circle of Dante’s inferno. I’ll bet the
trooper recognized the prank right away. But I’ve never driven that fast
in that spot again.
Officer, I goofed. I had been ticketed once for a moving
violation, and it had slipped my mind. In November of 1986, Bill and
I were leaving a conference with Michael’s first grade teacher. Bill
had to go to work, and I had a graduate class at SUNY Oneonta. I was
supposed to pick up Michael and Sara from the classroom where some
volunteers were minding the children of conferencing parents, but I
asked a question that prolonged the conference and made Bill angry. I
became so flustered when he told me off that I left the school and drove
all the way to Oneonta before I realized I’d forgotten to pick up my
kids. I turned right around and finally collected them. They didn’t mind
that I was late, but I was hysterical. I dropped them off at day care,
still crying. I drove all the way back to Oneonta, still crying. I missed
my class. Still crying, I left campus to go home. I never saw that the
traffic light at the corner of Elm and Center streets had turned red. I
sailed right through the intersection, and the oncoming car T-boned
me. I felt as though I was flying. I somehow avoided a utility pole and
a tree, crashed through a chain-link fence, and came to rest in the side
yard of a corner house. My door was smashed in, and I was somewhat
7
hurt, but at least I had stopped crying. I clambered over the shift and
out the passenger side as a city police officer arrived. The other driver,
a SUCO student, was very upset but not injured. She may have been
speeding, and she certainly wasn’t looking, but I told the police officer
I would take full responsibility for the accident, and he issued me a
ticket for running the light. I think the city cop was Ricky Parisian.
The owner of the house, a retired bachelor SUCO prof,
grudgingly let me into his appallingly messy kitchen to call Scavo’s
for a tow truck. I could have used some water, both to drink and to
wipe off my cuts, but he didn’t offer me any. (Never mind where I’ve
consigned him.) I needed wheels: to get to the emergency room, to pick
up the kids from day care, to go home. The Golden Retriever tow truck
driver dropped me off at Country Club Chevrolet, where he knew I
could rent a car quickly and cheaply. The Country Club salesmen took
one collective look at me and showered me with kindness: showed me
to the ladies’ room, got me a cup of coffee and two donuts (lunch was
a long-lost cause), and fixed me up with a generous deal on a Chevette.
Now I could go get checked out at the Fox emergency room. I really
was OK: nothing broken, no concussion, cuts and bruises weren’t bad.
I had taken the kids’ car seats from my vehicle and installed them in
the little Chevette, and I could finally go get the kids. Their discomfort
in the unfamiliar car was a mild reaction compared to Bill’s.
“What happened to your car?” he grumbled at me. “And what
about supper?”
I said wearily that I was in no shape to cook and would he
please go get a pizza. And then I realized that I hadn’t heard, “What
happened to your car?” not to mention, “Are you all right?” or, “I’m so
sorry.” “What happened to your car?” I countered. Well, Bill had hit a
deer by the DEC office. So his car was also bashed up and in the shop,
and he had come home in his work truck. It took a while to straighten
out the insurance claims.
I’ve had several accidents that could have been much more
serious than they turned out: that spring evening in suburban Pittsburgh
in 1973, when I stopped for a red light, but the guy behind me didn’t;
that snowy December morning in 1981, when a student at Delhi
skidded into me down the hill as I was driving up; that September
afternoon in 2009, when a semi loaded with construction material for
the Clark Sports Center at the top of campus creased the whole left
side of my car as the driver turned into D lot and came that close to
taking me out too, but never even stopped and then tried to deny it (and
8
thanks to Officer Manny, he didn’t get away with it); and three months
later, Christmas week in suburban Buffalo, when a van rear-ended
me and pushed me into the car in front. Each accident leaves me with
stress symptoms that take longer and longer to go away. Each time I
recover, I go on driving; I can’t not drive. I can’t ever be careless, but
I can’t be so overcautious that I become slow and fearful and panicky.
Then I’ll turn into my mother.
This past September, as I was driving south on I-287 in New
Jersey near the Piscataway exit, I caught up with heavy traffic that
slowed to walking speed for miles. There had been an accident ahead.
A few cars in front of me, a rusty silver sedan pulled onto the shoulder,
and the scruffy young driver nipped out and began looking under each
wheel. Left front, right front, right rear: there it was, a large dangling
chunk of metal. “Oh, no!” he kept exclaiming. “Oh, no! Oh, no!” I
couldn’t stop. I hope he had a phone.
9
Outspoken
Sandra Williams
When I speak softly
no one hears
when I yell
no one pays attention
when I try my hardest
no one answers
when I take center stage
everyone looks
but then I have nothing
to say
10
Finding Home
Jesse Ray Jacob
You walk up the steps of your house, past the familiar lion
statues that you’ve hated since your parents bought them last year.
You walk through the door and into a house of well-endowed splendor.
Everything from the hardwood floor to the drapes exacts the childhood
dreams of your mother. She grew up poor, you grew up poor too; until
she married him and was handed a wealth she didn’t know what to do
with. You often dream of that simpler time, but you know that time is
long gone.
You ascend the spiral staircase: dark oak with marble trim,
just like your mother wanted. The cool, wet feeling of the railing tells
you that your cleaning lady has been there that morning. Your pace
quickens as you approach your room—the only place you feel safe in
this God-forsaken home. Closing the door, your spirit calms as you
see your tiered princess bed with purple quilt, a welcoming sight. Your
room is something out of a designer homes catalog; but even then you
force a smile, knowing he will be home soon.
The back yard is perhaps your favorite part of the house. The
3½-acre plot, quite big for being within city limits, gives you enough
space to run away to behind the oak tree once he is finished with you.
The old-fashioned swing set which your mother thought was just “too
cute” has a chain-link swing, the chains a soft red-brown from overuse.
You are too old to still be using a swing set, but sometimes you sit on
that swing and pump your legs as hard as you can in hopes that you
will take flight and fly away from this wretched place.
You hear your mother in the kitchen pretending to be a good
housewife. You know you will be eating whatever he wants, but you
can’t help but hope for mac-and-cheese. Even at sixteen it’s your
favorite dish. Your mother considers your obsession with mac-andcheese a product of “arrested development”; you know, it’s because
it reminds you of that little apartment on Liberty Street you used to
live in before he showed up. You can hear your brother and sister
complaining about what cut of steak they want for dinner. “Selfish
brats,” you think. They weren’t alive when it was just you and
Mom. When all you could afford was rice and a bag of frozen mixed
vegetables. Sometimes you miss mixed vegetables; but then again, you
never really were a fan of lima beans.
At dinner, you sit there stiffly, eating as quick as you possibly
11
can, but then your worst fear happens. He reaches across the table,
grabs your plate and throws it against the wall. He calls you fat as he
gets out of his seat. He calls you worthless, pathetic. He pushes you
out of your chair so hard it knocks the wind out of you; you don’t cry,
you don’t give him that satisfaction. Anger builds up inside you. You
stand up and he punches you, hard, in the stomach. Your fists clench,
your vision goes dark; all you can feel is your knuckles connect with
his nose just like the old men at the gym taught you to do. Your vision
comes back, you see him holding his nose and staring at you; your
mother is rubbing his shoulders, apologizing for how horrible of a
child you are. “I’m moving out,” you say.
Your aunt welcomes you with loving arms and a box of tissues,
but you don’t need them. In your heart you know you made the right
decision. It’s late when you finally get your last bag from the car. She
hands you a blanket and pillow and points you to the couch—your new
bed. You listen for your six cousins around the house; you find comfort
in knowing that even though they are sleeping, they still love you
unconditionally.
You’re in college now; you picked Delhi because they offered
you scholarships. People ask where you’re from, and it’s always hard
to explain. No one understands why you would move from a city
to a small town like Walton. “It’s love,” you tell them, but they just
laugh. They think they know you, they think you’re not serious. You
laugh and let them think what they want. College has a few perks, one
being that you get your own bed. There are some nights where you get
homesick for your couch, but that doesn’t make you any less grateful
for the bed you now have.
Your aunt is an angel; there isn’t anyone or anything that could
make you think otherwise. She is a waitress who somehow stretches
her $20,000 a year salary to support a ten-person house. Things get
tight at times, but she is a woman who would rather go without eating
than have one of her kids go without. Her ability to stretch a dollar
amazes you.
What amazes you more is how happy you are. Living on close
to nothing has made you happier than you have ever been. When you
lived with your mom, you could have had anything you wanted; money
meant nothing. But you were also quick to learn that money cannot buy
anyone happiness; that the horrors you lived through when you were
rich were because of greed, and a constant need for power. But that’s
12
all over now.
Most people define “home” by where your parents are.
Some people are given a home; some people build a home from the
foundation up. Other people have to find their homes. There is an old
cliché that says, “Home is where the heart is.” I firmly believe this
statement. I believe home is wherever you find happiness. A place
where love is not forced, where the only pain felt is the pain in your
ribs from laughing so hard, a place where the only thing that hits you
is a loving remark and a smile. I’m so blessed to live with my aunt. I
have never felt so at home, or so loved, as I do now.
13
My Own Little Girl: Almost
Samantha Howard
We were in the church office. Christina, my best friend, and I
were attempting to print off song lyrics on an overhead projector sheet.
Winter had just set in. We were seniors in high school, and we were
laughing and gossiping before youth group started. We were playing
around with the settings on the copier when a pink-and-purple blur
shifted across my peripheral vision. I quickly moved to peer around
the big office desk. Standing at the base of a large gray filing cabinet
stood a little girl. Her bright blonde hair stuck out in tufts from beneath
a pink fleece hat. She looked about two times larger than her actual size
because of the poufy, pink-and-purple winter coat she was wearing. I
had only seen her a few times before this chance encounter, much less
spoken with her. She was a year old. She stood at the base of the filing
cabinet—staring up. What was she looking at?
I didn’t have the chance to find out because as soon as she
noticed I was there she reached her arms up towards me, silently
pleading with me to pick her up. It was a shock. Why would this little
girl want me to hold her in my arms? Without hesitation I crouched
down and held my arms apart, as if I was expecting her to give me
a hug. She ran over and I hoisted her onto my hip. I stood there, an
unfamiliar child in my arms. One of her hands was clutching at the
fabric on the back of my coat. With the other hand she reached toward
the filing cabinet, leaning precariously away from my torso. I realized
she wanted the magnet that had been just out of her reach as she
stood at the filing cabinet’s base. She grabbed the magnet and began
turning it over in her hands. I turned my head quickly to glance over at
Christina to gauge her reaction. She hadn’t noticed. After retrieving the
magnet from the little girl’s hands I returned it to its original position
and exited the church office in search of the little girl’s mother, Amy.
I found her standing just outside of the office. She was holding
a conversation with one of the leaders of our youth group. As I left the
office, Amy looked up and noticed that her little girl was in my arms, a
startling surprise. I quickly strode over and, as I was passing the little
girl back, sputtered out bits and pieces of the events leading to this
child being in my arms. I did not know Amy very well at the time, and
I did not know how she would react to a stranger holding her baby.
Amy listened intently as I described the situation. Her response was
simple: “I am just amazed that she didn’t run away. She doesn’t usually
14
like strangers, only me.”
I waved a quick goodbye and headed back into the office to
see how Christina was coming along with the overhead projector sheet.
She was just finishing as I entered the office. Just like Amy, she was
also shocked that the little girl had wanted me to pick her up. So she
had noticed. She began to gush about how she was always trying to
play with the little girl and hold her, but the girl never wanted anyone
but her mother.
I left the church that night feeling proud. Somehow, in spite of
my tough exterior, this little girl had seen right through me. She had
seen my compassion for children, which I had long ago hidden away. I
thought of the little girl who had stolen my heart that night. Her name
was Tuscany.
§
It is Sunday morning. I arrive at the church ahead of schedule.
I have ten minutes until Sunday school starts. I am in my first semester
at college. I live at home and I have been asked to be an assistant
teacher in the toddler Sunday school class. I park my car and gather my
Bible and car keys before climbing out. I make my way quietly across
the gravel parking lot towards the church in the morning sunshine. I
pull open one of the glass doors, hear the loud protesting squeak of the
hinges, and step across the threshold. My eyes begin to adjust to the
dim building as I detect the soft thudding of little feet.
“NAMMY!!”
I look up to see Tuscany dancing in excitement at the top of
the stairs leading to the sanctuary. I drop everything in my hands and
run towards her. I kneel on the last step and gather her up in a giant
bear hug. She will be two in a couple months. It is hard to imagine that
less than a year ago we were total strangers, yet now we are almost
inseparable and I love her almost as much as if she were my own little
girl.
§
I hold my breath as I quietly open the wooden door to the
nursery. The only sound I hear is the soft purr of the fan as I peer into
the darkness and watch as the infant’s chest and stomach slowly rise
and fall in a reassuring rhythm. I silently close the door and retreat
back towards the living room. As I tiptoe along the dim hallway, I
suddenly hear soft rustling in the room to my left. I stop to listen at the
closed door. It is quiet for a moment. Just as I am convincing myself
that I am hearing things, I make out the sharp rattle of two pieces of
15
plastic striking each other. I turn the doorknob with quick precision and
thrust open the door to the bedroom. Tuscany is half in and half out of
her bed. I quickly scan the room and find the source of the loud noise:
a toy phone lying upside down on the pink blankets of Tuscany’s bed.
“Tuscany,” I say in a stern voice. Yet in my mind all I can think
of is how many nights I spent as a child rummaging through my boxes
of toys and playing with the stuffed animals on my bed. A fleeting
smile crosses my face and I move to retrieve the phone and return it
to its place on the nightstand. Then I pick her up and set her back in
the bed. I kneel down next her, whispering that it is time to go to bed,
not to play. She whimpers quietly. I lean over and tuck her into her
blankets. As she settles in I say a little prayer, asking God to help her to
fall asleep and to watch over her always.
16
Ocean Waves
Carrie Mellinger
I just want to go home. Who was the idiot who came up with
the idea that vacation equals relaxation? Oh yes, let’s throw ourselves
out into the great unknown, with lots of other strange people, and
muddle through as we try to reshape the routine of life. That sounds
relaxing. That sounds like a vacation. I don’t understand why people
think the beach is a good place to get rest. The wind has made my face
raw (or maybe that’s just sunburn). There is a large, hairy, half-naked
man to my left, and a family of Asians to my right talking who knows
what, and Jessica is crying because she has sand in her ears. I use the
towel to clean them out, but it’s not working. The towel is just as sandy
as her ears.
“It would be easier if you would get in the water, sweetie.”
“No!” she wails. “The jellyfish!”
Her older brother Ryan has been telling her horror stories of all
the crazy creatures that live in the sea.
“What has he been telling you now?”
“Jellyfish live in the curves of the waves with feeler-long-leg
things that can reach out of the water and pull children into the sea
and eat them! And since, and since jellyfish are see-through, they are
invisible, and you can’t see them till…it’s too late!”
It’s just like an eleven-year-old boy to take pleasure in
striking fear into his little sister’s mind. And Jessica doesn’t need help
in precaution. She is a very timid and paranoid five year old. Ryan
torments Jessica to calm his own fears, I guess. He thinks he’s all
tough, but he’s easily frightened as well. He can never be left alone,
not because he needs supervision, but because he has anxieties of being
lost. I have never had trouble keeping track of him. He has always
voluntarily stayed by my side. But now that he’s getting older I wish
he would start being more independent. I don’t have the time to give
him all my attention every second of the day. He nags at me to play in
the water, or build castles in the sand, or find seashells. I can’t do it all!
He’s old enough to start doing things on his own. Have I spoiled him?
I mean, he can’t even get his own sandwich out of the cooler when he’s
hungry! I do it! I do everything for him and he’s not a baby anymore.
“Mommy?” Ryan comes up to me moping and dragging his
feet in the sand.
“Yes, Ryan?”
17
“There’s nothing to do here.”
“There is, you just have to find it.”
Ryan has done nothing but complain about how bored he is.
He started his moping directly after arriving at the rental house. There
was a peaceful little pond nearby, so I gave him some stale hamburger
rolls to feed the ducks. He rolled his eyes and told me he wanted to do
something fun and exciting. So the next day we went to a water park,
but when we got there he said everything was lame.
“Why did you bring us here? It’s no fun.” He looks at the
ground as he digs his heel deep in the sand. “If Dad were here…”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“I don’t want one more word about that, you hear? There’s
plenty to do. You could get in the water.”
“It’s too cold.”
“You want something to eat?”
“Mom. Look at my hands. Does it look like I can eat with
these hands without making everything full of sand?”
“Don’t use that smart tone with me, young man…”
“But I don’t like it here!”
“Hey! Enough! I’m doing the best I can here! I’ve had enough
of your complaining, Ryan!”
My head hurts like a stretched balloon about to pop. I take a
deep breath and deflate my head. The air pressure releases through my
ears, nose, and fingertips till my whole body shrivels up and leaves
me weary. I’m so tired. Nothing is going the way I thought it would.
I put so much effort into this, and it’s become a big waste of money.
The many small things that have gone wrong are cascading into one
big failure. Jessica forgot her toothbrush, I lost the car keys, and the
grocery store didn’t have Nutela. Ryan won’t eat bagels without Nutela
so I’m feeding him Kraft Mac and Cheese for breakfast because it’s the
only thing he’ll eat. I’d probably be ranked in the lowest percentile in
those parenting magazines, but I’m just too weary to be a supermom
anymore. I can’t keep up.
It isn’t like Jake would be much of a help, even if he were
here. I’d be making his sandwiches as well as the kids’. I’ve been
wiping his ass for too long now. It was about time his mooching mouth
and loafing body got off the couch and found a job. I did the right
thing, right? I didn’t divorce him. I just kicked him out. All I wanted
was for him to get a job. Anything. I didn’t care if it was McDonald’s!
18
But he didn’t do anything. He didn’t help me with anything.
As I kneel there in the stand, I forget that Ryan is still standing
making circles with his big toe. He’s still waiting for me to fix his
boredom problem. At least Jake would have been good for that. He
was always good at playing with the kids. He is a kid himself. I can see
him right now helping Jessica build castles in the sand. She looks so
much like him. The shape of her eyes and dirty blond curls matches his
perfectly. There’s no denying she’s his little girl, and loves her. I just
don’t understand why he can’t pull his shit together if he loves her so
much.
I watch Jessica as she pats sand into a dome. Suddenly she
gets up and admires her work. She rubs her hands down her one-piece
bathing suit, looks at her hands and shakes them in front of her. She
walks over to me.
“Can I have something to drink, Mommy?”
I give her a water bottle out of the cooler, which she
immediately pours all over her sandy hands.
“Jessie, what are you doing!?”
“Cleaning my hands.”
“That’s drinking water, Jessie! You wash your hands in the
ocean!”
“But the waves will suck me out to sea with the jellyfish!”
I turn to Ryan, “Look what you’ve done.”
Ryan just shrugs his shoulders and continues to dig his heel
deeper into the sand with his head down.
“You need to go look for shells,” I say.
His head shoots up with wide eyes. “I can’t go alone.”
He is acting like I am asking him to drive the car or make a
public speech to a thousand people.
“Ryan! You’re eleven years old! You can go look for shells by
yourself? Can’t you see that I have my hands full with Jessica right
now?! You have to start being more independent! I can’t treat you like
a baby anymore!”
“If Dad were here, I wouldn’t have to go alone,” he shouts,
“and Dad would never ask me to go alone because he cares about me
more than you.”
“Cares more? Is that what he told you? He cares more? Let’s
look at the score chart on who takes care of you more. Who dresses
you, feeds you, checks if you have a fever when you’re sick, bought
you that guitar for your birthday? Who keeps a roof over your head,
19
Ryan? It’s not your Dad.”
“Mom. Stop it.”
“The only thing your Dad does is turns you against me. Make
me out to be the bad guy. The big, bad mother because I make you take
out the trash once in a while, and insist on you practicing that guitar.
I’m the mean parent. Is that what he told you? That I’m the bad guy?”
I know from his face that he is hurt, but he hides it quickly. He
turns his back to me and stomps away. I have a pit in my stomach. I’m
not one to yell at my children. I watch him walk down to the surf. I
debating whether to run down to him, but Jessica starts to cry.
“I want to go home,” she whimpers.
“We’ll be heading back shortly.”
“No! I don’t want to go back to that stupid house! I want to go
home! I want Daddy.”
Those words sting me. I am on my knees in front of her and
bring her in close.
“I know, Jessie…I know.”
Jessica is a sweet child, and it hurts me that she was
complaining. Maybe I am the bad guy. My plan to have a fun week
at the beach was to show them that I could be the fun parent. I am a
bribing monster, and not only that, I have failed at being fun. All they
want is Jake.
When Jessica realizes she is holding me, she takes over the
motherly role by patting my back tenderly.
“It’s alright, Mommy…it’s alright,” she says in her best
grown-up voice.
Why am I so blessed with such an understanding five year old?
My mind flashes back to all the times Jessica has supported me like
this. She takes care of me just as much as I take care of her. Maybe it’s
good for children to see their mother weak, because it shows them how
much they are needed. I wonder if it’s wrong that this responsibility is
forced on her or whether it’s good for her to feel needed. Either way,
her tiny arms give me more strength than my own. I would pull myself
together for Jessica.
Feeling renewed, I get up. I lay my hand over Jessie’s rat
nest of curly blond hair and look toward the water. Ryan isn’t there. I
walk down to the surf and look side to side. My panic begins to rise.
There are many people. I could just be overlooking him. I shouldn’t
panic yet. I know the shape of his tan, scrawny body. I know how his
hair was pasted back on his head because of the salt water, the way he
20
held his arms tight to his side because the water made him cold. I call
out his name and try to keep calm, but the undertones of panic seep
through my voice. The sound of it makes my chest tighten.
I mustn’t worry. I mustn’t think the worst. I’m over-reacting.
I know I am. It hasn’t been long. He couldn’t have gone far. I ask a
few lazy sunbathers if they have seen a young boy in blue swimming
trunks. They apparently don’t have children because their response to
me isn’t very considerate to a panicked mother.
“Every boy has blue trunks on.”
Are they trying to be funny? This is not the time to lighten the
situation. Then I remember I left Jessica alone at the umbrella! How
could I be so negligent! I run back to the umbrella.
“Hey, Jessie, have you seen Ryan? Did he come back to the
umbrella?”
My tone doesn’t match my nonchalant word choice, but
thankfully she doesn’t notice.
“No,” she says simply. “Why?”
“He must have gone for a walk. Let’s go for a walk too.”
I take her hand and start walking very fast. Jessica can sense
something is wrong. We only get two umbrellas down before she starts
crying hysterically.
“Where’s Ryan! You don’t know where he is, do you?! I want
Ryan! I want Ryan!”
This isn’t helping me stay in control of my own emotions.
All I want is to see him running towards me. I need to find him now!
I pick up Jessica and turn in circles, calling his name. I can see people
around me getting uncomfortable. They are looking at me like I am an
unleashed dog, but I don’t care. I have no regard for making a scene.
How much time has passed? It feels like hours since I last saw
his face. I keep scanning the water. My mind starts playing tricks on
me. I imagine seeing his lifeless body bobbing in the water. The waves
mock me as they rise into wicked smiles and crash down in violence.
They grow louder than usual to drown out my cries. They have taken
my son! They have swallowed him up!
This is my fault. I shouldn’t have yelled at him. He wouldn’t
have run away if I hadn’t snapped at him like that. The picture of his
face is clear in my mind. He is such a sensitive boy, and he was trying
to be tough. I made him feel guilty about defending his dad. Why did I
do such a thing?
“Oh, Ryan, you have good reason to love your father more
21
than me,” I think to myself. “I’m sorry! So sorry! Please forgive me.
Please come back to me.”
I need to find him to tell him that I’m sorry! My wall of
control is now transparent, and Jessica can see my horror clearly. She
starts to hiccup as she cries.
“Will—we ever see him—again, Mommy?”
“Yes, don’t be silly.”
“Did the jellyfish—pull him—out to sea?”
“Stop it! Giant jellyfish don’t live in the waves. Don’t you see?
It’s just a story. It’s just a lie.”
I was trying to convince myself rather than her. Fear grips
me so tightly that I am paralyzed and useless in my attempt to find
him. I need help. I switch Jessica to my other hip and run towards the
lifeguard stand.
Then I hear it. I know every inflection of his voice. He is
shouting for me. The direction of the wind makes me first think I am
imagining it. But I turn and there he is running towards me shouting
in excitement. His hair is highlighted on the top of his head where it
dried faster than the tips. Since the dry parts are no longer constricted
by the plaster of the salt water, there are wisps of hair sticking straight
up. It looks like someone just rubbed a balloon on his head. His smile
is so big I can see his teeth, white against his tan. He is diving under
umbrellas and dodging around sunbathers. I am frozen, and the noose
around my neck tightens even more rather than releasing. I am in a
movie. I am waiting for my cue to run to him and sweep him into my
arms, but I just watch instead, paralyzed by my emotion. I am only
watching. I’m not a part of this movie. It is Jessica who makes the first
move.
“Ryan!” She bounds free from my grip and pads across the
sand so fast her little feet are a blur.
“We thought the jellyfish got you! We thought you were dead!”
When she reaches him, she wraps her arms around him so tight he has
trouble wrenching her off.
“Stop it Jessie! Git off me! Wha’s got in to you?!” He pushes
her away, but her smile never fades.
“We thought you were dead! Mom was yelling for you, and we
asked people where you were, and we ran down the water and we ran
up! Up and down up down up and down!”
She is laughing, and tells the story with so much excitement
that Ryan can’t help but smile back. I still stand at a distance and don’t
22
intercede. I am watching them through a screen. I have never stood
back to watch them like this. I get pulled back into reality when Ryan
turns to me with a giant smile.
“Mom! Come over here and look at this!” He is holding
something in his hand and showing it to Jessica. I walk over as if
everything is normal and I hadn’t just experienced the greatest panic of
my life. I look down into his hand and there is a small conch shell.
“What is it?”
“It’s a hermit crab home, Jessie.”
“Then you should put it back because now a hermit crab is
homeless!”
Ryan laughs. He is being so gentle with his sister now. “Don’t
be silly, Jessie. The hermit crab moved out of this shell because he
grew out of it and found a bigger home. He’s not homeless. Look,
Mom. I never found one before that wasn’t broken. This one doesn’t
even have a crack!”
“Yes, that’s impressive. Whole seashells are a rare thing.” My
voice is so calm I hardly recognize it.
“Here, Mom. Keep it for me. I’m gonna look for more.”
“Can I come, too?” Jessie looks back and forth from Ryan to
me like she is unsure who she is asking permission.
“I don’t mind if she comes, Mom.”
“Alright…you can go.” They start to run down to the water. I
yell after them over the wind and waves. “Keep an eye on her, Ryan!
Don’t let her get too close to the water! Keep her tied to your side at all
times!”
He turns backwards to give me a single thumbs-up without
breaking stride. And there I stand by the dunes watching them run to
the water with the too-small conch shell rolling between my hands.
They have gone to find a larger one.
23
Castor Bean Sky
Michael McKenna
24
Springing Vascular
Miriam A. Sharick
“Out of our way!” bleat flocks of deciduous leaves,
Bursting through their bud scales,
Waggling their pilose petioles, stretching their marginal meristems,
Straining towards the sun.
“Out of our way!” shout legions of sharp-edged grass blades,
Thrusting through old matted thatch,
Flexing their jointed shoots, bulging their bulliform cells,
Aiming for the sun.
“Out of our way!” giggle the gadding girls of the garden,
Fluttering their petal petticoats, wafting their perfume,
Gossiping with the bees, nodding to their neighbors,
Flirting with the sun.
“Out of our way!” snarl the mower, the trimmer, the chain saw.
“You’re sneaking over our sidewalks and blotting out our sun!”
“No, you must get out of ours,” relentlessly murmur the green
constituencies.
“We own the sun.”
25
Abandon the Asylum
Laura Ziemba
Abandon the Asylum
Push through
Push through the broken gate
The tangled weeds
A justified trespasser
The sanctity of art
Holds you unaccountable
A project of photography
At the Women’s sanatorium
A brief history Googled
Tells you this is where
Women of “frail sensibilities” were sent.
Push through.
Push through the broken door
Screaming off its hinges.
Into the foyer
Broken down
Broken down and chipped
Tiled walls grinning at you
Grinning with a desperate
Horrible truth.
Push through
Push through the debris
Scattered through the hallway
Closing in on the photographer
Who will never take a shot
The light’s not right
The knowing
The knowing is not right
Women were put here
For hysteria
26
Deemed mad
More likely angry
Push through
Push through the thoughts of what you might have seen
Had you been able to see
A tenant
A patient
A prisoner here at the turn of the century
Wonder at what
What you may have seen
Behind the eyes of those women
Were they mad
Or just angry
Demented
Or defiant
Were they terrorized by imagined demons
Or worse
Real ones
Push through
Push through the horror
The horror they must have felt
The abandonment
By family
By lovers
By friends
The screams
The screams that silence the heart
Abandon the asylum
With no photograph
No photograph
Only a picture
A clear defiant picture
Of what will never happen again
27
The Unfortunate Tale of Victor Vaughngaurd
Elizabeth Steffen
Victor Vaughngaurd is a curious boy who lives in a curious
home. Eccentric in the utmost ways, he spends most of his time in a
cemetery that resides nearby. There he visits his only friend, who goes
by the name of Edgar. Edgar is one of the best friends any young boy
could have, besides the fact that he is, of course, invisible.
The Vaughngaurd home is an old, worn-down cottage that
was built entirely of straw and a handful of cobblestones. The inside
reeks of mold and the peculiar smell of medicine, not unlike that of
an abandoned hospital. Around the wide fields that were once fertile
and lively sits a large iron fence—black and menacing, with a gate
too rusty to close. The roof has many small holes, just large enough to
let in a considerable draft and make the wooden floor quite damp in
places.
Victor’s parents are just as strange as he. His father is Ivan
Vaughngaurd, known for his chronic alcoholism that has resulted in
him having a very short temper. Ivan enjoys very little in life, aside
from his addiction, as his farm will grow nothing besides a few crab
apples and thorn bushes. He is not a very good family man either; his
belt is used more often to thrash at Victor than to hold up the man’s one
good pair of trousers. He repeatedly curses out his only son, telling him
that he never wanted him in the first place. Victor’s birth—as he puts
it—was a grotesque mistake.
This brings light to the odd day in which, about eleven
years ago, Victor Vaughngaurd was born. His mother was formerly a
beautiful woman by the name of Elise. Gifted with long auburn hair
and silver eyes, many thought Ivan was too unsightly to be paired
with such a delicate face. But as it was, they were married, and little
Victor was born. He came out with the thinning hair of an old man
and a rather strange feature—an extra toe. Short and malformed as the
toe was, there was no way to remove it, and to this day Victor must
still wear one shoe a size larger than the other. Though the new baby
was healthy and active, dear Elise suffered a terrible infection during
the birth. As the infection spread, her legs succumbed to paralysis
while her mind was slowly deformed. She now lives in the attic of the
Vaughngaurd home, strapped to a bed, usually humming or talking in
a nonsensical manner. Her beauty has vanished, along with her sanity,
and the family rarely goes up to see her other than during meal times.
28
Not that she would recognize them, anyhow.
And so the family dwells, on their small farm, each of them
alone to explore their own fancies. The nearest house is too far away
for any ordinary man to walk to, and the town shunned them as soon as
Elise went mad. With no way to get to school and therefore no friends
to make, young Victor has been forced to make do with his invisible
friend Edgar—the cemetery being their one and only playground.
Often times they play hide and go seek—a game that Edgar naturally
wins—well into the night. Victor has even been known to spend all
night in the cemetery, propping his head against a decaying tombstone
and sleeping as heavily as the dead that lay beneath him.
Then one foggy night, Victor was instructed to bring his
mother her supper. He inched through the crawl space leading to the
attic, all while holding a hot bowl of pickled cabbage soup. When he
arrived by his mother’s bedside, he heard her chanting a rhyme over
and over again. At first, he merely ignored this as his mother often
talked to herself in this way, but when he actually heard the rhyme it
caught his interest. It went like this:
Deep in the graveyard
To the wicked tree you must go
And begin to dig my dear boy
To find secrets buried ages ago
Once he was done feeding her, Victor began to think about this rhyme
his mother had been so insistent on repeating. Knowing that his
father was out drinking and would probably be back late, angry, and
intoxicated as ever, he decided to follow his mother’s instructions
almost as if it was a treasure map of some grim sort.
Upon arriving at the cemetery, with only a small candle to
light the way, he easily found the tree his mother spoke of. It was the
tallest tree there, the color as black as ink, with its trunk and branches
twisting in insane directions. The tree had no leaves; it had probably
never had any and most certainly never would, and its terrible roots
spread out like the fingers of some menacing beast, ready to snatch up
anyone who got too close. Seeing no grave, and surely no X, Victor
wondered where he must dig. Suddenly, the moon seemed to shine
very brightly upon a small pile of rocks that were surrounded by thorn
bushes. Acting upon instinct, Victor removed the rocks and dug at the
soft earthy flesh beneath. Beneath the dirt he saw a rock plate, modest
29
in size with the name “Edgar Vaughngaurd” etched into its stony face.
Memories flooded into Victor’s mind, overwhelming him with
a sickening feeling. He was very young back then—two or three years
old perhaps—when he watched the scene unfold. He remembered
hiding behind a tombstone, watching in horror as his father committed
the vile deed. His father murdered his brother, Edgar, there in the
cemetery and buried him deep in the ground. Upon seeing the murder,
Victor drowned out the memory and hid it deep inside himself. The
invisible friend he had been playing with all these years was in fact
his older brother who had come back to try and reveal the truth. Victor
knew that he had to go back to confront his father. Just as he turned
around to run back, he stopped in shock, staring at his home as it stood
engulfed in flames.
Ivan had murdered Edgar because he felt he could not care
for two children on his own. Since the murder, he’d begun drinking
himself into a depression—having a wife whom he could not speak
to, a farm on which nothing would grow, and for killing his own flesh
and blood, which hung heavily on his conscience. When he came back
intoxicated on this night, he decided the only way to escape the misery
was to burn the house down with Elise, Victor, and himself inside, not
knowing that Victor had left earlier in the night.
Victor could only watch in terrible awe as his home burned to
the ground, knowing that not only did he live too far away from town
to call for help, but also that his parents could not escape on their own.
His father was assuredly too drunk, and his mother was left strapped
to her burning bed, dying alone with all of her secrets: how she knew
what had happened to Edgar, and that on this night Victor had to leave
the house. And as Victor sat there alone, propped against the monstrous
tree, he thought to himself that if it weren’t so tragic, the fire would
almost be beautiful.
30
Fire Elemental Wolf
Jamonito
31
Driving America
Kirby Olson
(The following poem is based on one by a poet named H. L. Van Brunt
that I heard in high school when Van Brunt was a visiting poet in 1974.
Basically Van Brunt suggested that we drive right through roadkill to
help with decomposition. I don’t really do this as I think it’s too much
of a sacrifice on tires and wheel wells, not to mention the psychological
horror, but the poem has stuck in my mind all these years. I have tried
to find the poem many times, but Van Brunt is now dead, and the poem
doesn’t exist in any of his fifteen published books. H. L. Van Brunt was
a Native American orphan from Oklahoma City. He wore fancy clothes
and had a goatee in 1974. He died around 2011 in Philadelphia after
several years of illness. Was the poem too disgusting for Van Brunt to
publish? Is this basically the same poem, or did that early poem even
exist?)
I drive
Along the
Road and
Crush dead
Skunks, deer
Clogging the
Arterial with
Their cadavers.
Smashing skulls
Breaking spines
As eco-warrior
Buddhist saint,
I cleanse,
I revitalize,
I beautify,
I process.
32
Alone
Wanda K. Jones-Agans
33
Untitled
Joseph W. McAnlis
“I still hang out with my best friend Dave/ I’ve known him
since we were kids at school/ Last night he had a few shots/
got in a tight spot/ hustling a game of pool/ With a couple of
redneck boys/ one great big, bad, biker man/ I heard David yell
across the room/ hey buddy how about a helping hand!”
—Toby Keith (“As Good As I Once Was)
Trees spin into a blur, 20-foot bonfire still glowing. I’m
soaked in a flash of light, and then darkness. Who knew that a small
Christmas party in the backwoods would turn into a life-threatening
event? I certainly didn’t, but as sure as a tumbling Ford will knock you
unconscious, seeing your best friend nearly drown in the cab of his
own truck will certainly kick the alcohol out of your system. This isn’t
a story about losing my best friend; this is a story about two young
boys growing up in a split second.
Joe McLaren is my best friend and always will be. Seventh
grade gym class was where I first met Joe; the year before I had
attended St. Joseph’s Catholic School. When I switched to the public
school, Baily Middle School, I hadn’t many friends; maybe Joe didn’t
either, but whether he did or not, he came up to me, introduced himself,
and we were best friends from then on. We had so much in common:
we both raced bikes. He raced BMX, and I raced mountain bikes. We
would get together after school and on weekends and go out to the
woods and build jump tracks; I can still feel the searing pain of dirt in
my eyes.
Joe and I went to a public high school, Kingston Senior High
School. It was a city school, so Joe and I, coming from two backwoods
towns, were just a couple of redneck boys; we didn’t fit in that well.
But we had the time of our lives. We would get on the quads and tear
up the farm land at my house or I would ride out to his house, cross
the creek, and we’d go down to the quarry to ride all day. One day we
found an old canoe in the quarry with holes in it; we dragged it to the
top and like the foolish kids we were, we tossed it 80 feet to its demise.
We would go to the same quarry and shoot tadpoles out of
the water with his Savage .17 and my daddy’s old Remington .22, the
gun he had handed down to me. One day I snuck out with my pop’s
20-gauge shotgun and we unloaded it into a tree a couple times until
34
it fell. On our way, Mr. Slatery, the owner of the quarry land, stopped
us with a .45 hand gun and gave us a good talking to. Afterward he
seemed okay with us being there, so long as we were safe while on his
property.
As we got older Joe and I began experimenting more and more
with alcohol. We grew tired of the house parties the city kids threw, so
we would drive our trucks down to the sand pit (Mr. Slatery’s land).
We would pick up pallets from behind Lowe’s and The Home Depot.
This particular night was very different; we had gathered wood from an
abandoned warehouse in the city, and when the party started there was
an unusually large amount of people at the fire. Joe’s always been the
life of the party, and the more people who came, the crazier everyone
got!
Joe was a bottle of Captain Morgan deep, which is also very
unusual as we usually drank beer. I was waist deep in a bunch of beers
when it started to rain; earlier I had put my phone in Joe’s Ford so it
wouldn’t get wet and break. After I got into his truck to text, I heard the
driver’s door open. With both Joe and I being a little out of character
at the moment, and excited to burn some tires in the mud, we took off
through the boot-deep mud! We weren’t but thirty yards from the fire
when the trees became a green blur, and the fire drifted from sight as
we tumbled forty feet to what I thought would be our sure death.
But what we found at the bottom of that cliff of recently
discarded granite wasn’t death, but rather a hip-deep creek. Two days
before Christmas and here Joe and I are unconscious, upside down
in a creek, water pouring in through the windshield like a water gate.
I can still feel the water rising on my face, and its smell as I breathe
in through my nose. “Two days before Christmas, what would my
mother do if this had killed me?” I thought later. I still can’t get the
picture of the water against the windshield shining in the glow of the
headlights out of my head. And the sight of my best friend face down
in the rising water as the cab light blinked on and off irregularly under
the water, and then the truly bone-chilling feeling of the light suddenly
disappearing under the freezing cold water. My eyes have never
opened so fast; I’ve never sobered up so fast. I had landed on top of
Joe, and he would remain unconscious for another five minutes or so.
When I walk I sometimes can still feel myself kicking the
driver’s side door open. Thirteen kicks, thirteen kicks with both feet.
It took thirteen two-footed kicks to open that damn door. The freezing
December mountain runoff water engulfed my legs, soaking my boots.
35
My boots still squeak from marinating in that cold creek water. I had
never felt so strong before in my life as I did when I dragged Joe out
of that truck, through the freezing water and onto the embankment. I
yelled for help, but everyone was already behind me up on the cliff.
Joe came to momentarily after I laid him on the muddy ground. I had
never thought so clearly before in my life, never acted so quickly. I
assessed Joe’s injuries and threw him over my shoulder and walked
around the cliff to the higher ground.
Time was moving so fast. Joe weighs approximately 145
pounds, but that night when I carried him he felt more like fifty
pounds. By the time we got to the top people were going crazy. I didn’t
realize how much time had passed while I was unconscious. When our
friend Evan saw me drag Joe out of the truck he took off up the hill and
got his truck. When I reached the summit of the cliff, I placed Joe on
the bed of our friend Evan’s truck then went down the cliff and pulled
the keys out of the ignition and ripped the fuses that run the truck’s
electronics out of their locks. I charged back up the hill and Joe and I
rode on the bed of Evan’s truck to Joe’s house, where his mother was
waiting on the front porch. “Oh boy,” I said.
While I was laying Joe on his couch I explained the whole
ordeal to his mother. After a long while of lecturing and yelling and
scolding that Joe certainly does not remember, I sat up the entire night
watching over him while he vomited the night away. As I tended to Joe
I thought about my mother, and what would’ve happened if I had lost
my life. What would she say? What would she do? “Kick my ass,” I
thought. Occasionally Joe’s father would come downstairs to check on
his son to find me sitting on the floor in the bathroom doorway, feeding
Joe glasses of water. The next morning I was still sitting there. Joe had
passed out around 6:30, 7:00 a.m., and I had been awake the entire
night when his father came downstairs at eight.
At around ten in the morning, while Joe was still asleep, his
father and I took his truck down to see the scene of the event. The
whole way there Mr. McLaren hadn’t a clue of the gravity of the
situation. Neither did I. As we drove in through the woods, I felt sick
to my stomach at the thought of seeing what the damage was. The fire
pit was still smoldering. Walking toward the cliff, I saw the tire tracks;
I stopped and stared at them for the longest time. Then looking up I
saw Mr. McLaren crouching at the edge of the cliff; he would never let
me see it, but I swear that man was crying. He was one of the toughest
men I’ve ever known, but the enormity of danger that we put ourselves
36
through was enough to make that man cry. I would never tell Joe about
what I saw that day as I stood there watching his father looking over
the cliff down at the truck. “C’mere, boy,” he said. Those words still
haunt me. I didn’t want to see, so I took my time getting to his side.
After what seemed like the longest walk of my life, I reached
the cliff side and stood there in awe, a tear running down my face. I
broke down; I lost all control. I’ve never been one to cry, but when I
saw the truck lying at the bottom of that cliff, practically engulfed in
freezing cold water, it was too much to bear. Pink granite rocks and
boulders the size of the cab of Joe’s truck lined the path we took down
that cliff. The sight of glass, pieces of truck, and quarter-panels lying
yards away from the truck caused me to almost lose my mind.
“I hope you learn from this; I hope you know how lucky
you both are,” Mr. McLaren said. I thought about my family, I
thought about my father and mother, I thought about my sister the
Thanksgiving before. “Thank God my mother doesn’t have to see this,”
I thought. “I need to see my mother,” I said to him. He looked me in
the eye and said, “Yeah, you do.”
When I got home that day, I went straight up to my mother
and held her for what seemed like the longest hug in the world. I told
her everything that happened, and punishment came for sure, that
goes without saying. But knowing what I put my mother through, and
knowing that Joe and I both should’ve been as dead as that truck, that
the next morning we could’ve been still stuck in that cab, waterlogged,
lifeless, and dead, haunts me to this very day, and it always will.
That event should have killed us both, but it didn’t. I thank
God every day since then for having mercy on me, for not taking me
away from my mother, for not taking Joe, for sparing us both. I relive
that night every time I think about it. The day of the party I woke
up just a regular kid, but I left that place a young man, experiencing
something no one should ever have to experience. That night brought
on a whole new appreciation of life for me, and how every day we
all take it for granted. But all it takes is a split second and one wrong
move and it can all be taken away from you: your family, your legacy,
all you’ve ever fought for and done in your life. There are two things
that are a sure thing in life, and one of those is death. There’s no way to
tell when death will come, but that night I learned that death is attached
to us.
As sure as the sun rises, death lurks over your shoulder, like
a vulture tracking a wounded animal. I live life now with a newfound
37
appreciation for being alive and for my family. My mother to this
day still cries when we talk about it, knowing that two days before
Christmas, a time for family and fun, she could’ve lost her son. I still
cry when I think about it. What if I had lived and Joe had died? What if
I had died and Joe had lived? What if we both had died? God showed
mercy on us and opened our eyes. He gave us the greatest gift of
all—life. I can’t say that I haven’t touched a beer since, but I can say
that I’ve learned moderation with alcohol, and I’ve learned a whole
new, heartfelt appreciation for life and family.
Blurred trees, the sight of a twenty-foot fire disappearing
behind a wall of rock, the blackout eternity I felt reaching the bottom
of the cliff, and the first thing I thought of after waking up in that creek
water was my mother and family. May God have mercy on my soul.
38
The Pear Tree
Hope Hager
There’s a place on a back-country road, miles away from any
town, where a pear tree stands like an old war veteran. It has its scars
and rough patches but it still salutes to the sky.
When my Papa (Julian) and Mimi (Iris) bought the farm almost
fifty years ago, the pear tree was small, just like the farm. There were
no grandchildren yet, running around chasing kittens or climbing up
the tree to harvest its fruit.
My father, Henry, was in his twenties when he married my
mother, Ellen, and began the family. My dad’s brother, Harry, and his
wife, Linda, began their family as well. Now at the small farm there
was the sound of children’s laughter, or the sound of a child crying
because Mimi said no ice cream before dinner. Cody, Adam, Ryan,
and Trevor were the first grandchildren on the farm. A few years later
Casey and I came along only two months apart.
The farm has grown from a small-herd farm to about a 400head farm. The pear tree has grown too. We didn’t know it at the time,
but the pear tree had begun to weave into our lives.
§
On a sunny day at the end of summer, I am playing with Casey
and the kittens, which are now big enough to play without their mother.
The older boys, Cody, Adam, Ryan, and Trevor, said it was almost time
for dinner. Casey and I are about three years old and we follow the
older boys like we are baby ducks. We go to the pear tree. Casey and
I are not big enough to climb the tree yet, but the older boys climb so
high it looks like they are 100 feet in the air. Pears fall to the ground
and Casey and I collect them in our t-shirts to bring to everyone else.
We bring Mimi her pears because it is her favorite tree, and pears are
some of her favorite fruit.
She thanks us and kisses our foreheads. We say we love her
and head home for dinner. We do this almost every day until there are
no more pears left and until the older boys begin school. I wonder what
school is like, but for now all I care about is having fun. While the
older boys are at school, Casey and I go to the farm and do the dishes
for Mimi. Then we go to the pear tree.
The older boys aren’t around to say we are too small to climb
the pear tree, so we try everything possible to get up that tree. We fail.
They are right: we are too small. Someday, though, we will be able to
39
climb this stupid tree. It’s late afternoon now, and the older boys show
up and attempt to see if they can get the last batch of pears that are at
the tippy top of the tree. They can’t reach them. We go tell Mimi we
can’t reach her pears, and she reassures us that she’s not upset. She’s
in her bed, not her chair, and tells us she isn’t feeling well enough for
pears anyway.
A few days go by and an ambulance shows up at the farm.
None of us are allowed to see what is going on, and I see my dad
crying. My dad doesn’t cry; he’s a boy. Uncle Harry is crying too; it
makes me feel uncomfortable. My mom and Aunt Linda come in a
couple of hours later and tell all of us the news. Mimi passed away.
§
After the older boys get home from school, we don’t go right
to the pear tree anymore. There aren’t any pears left, and we don’t want
to anyway.
Casey and I are playing in the creek because it’s hot outside.
The sky is really dark all of a sudden. I hear a rumble of thunder and
want to go home. I hate thunderstorms, especially because it’s not
unusual for the farm to get struck by lightning, and that afternoon the
pear tree is struck. Only a few branches are sacrificed, but it makes it
easier for Casey and me to climb. I can’t wait for the pears to come
back next summer.
Kindergarten is just around the corner, and the pears are still
a little sour. Casey and I can climb and pick our own pears. The older
boys are interested in new and “better” things. My younger sister is a
newborn and I want to bring her first pear to her. My mom giggles as
I walk into the room. She says they are not ripe yet, and I reply, “She
can’t eat it anyway!”
§
Elementary school goes by really fast, and middle school is
new and exciting. Papa remarries a lady named Doris, and my parents
add two more kids to the family, Lily and Evan, who are adopted from
Russia. Nora, Lily, and Evan call Doris “Grandma” because they never
knew Mimi. I debate if I should call her Grandma just to make her
happy. Soon after I begin considering the idea, the pear tree is again
struck by lightning. Coincidence? I’m not sure, but I’ve stuck to calling
Doris “Doris.”
The pear tree is now only half of the great tree it used to be.
We don’t go there after school anymore to pick pears. I go to soccer
practice, then get home and talk to boys or my girlfriends. Casey and I
40
don’t hang out anymore either. He works at the farm. Tractors surround
the pear tree, and my parents built a shop near it as well.
We all pass by the pear tree without even thinking twice about
it, but it still stands there. You would think it would just give up and
fall over. Not this tree. It’s a stubborn tree, like an old man who refuses
to use a cane.
§
My high school career is coming to an end, and scholarship
essays begin to unearth some old memories about my childhood: how
Casey and I would climb as high as we could to fill our bellies with the
pear tree’s sweet fruit.
College begins and is going smoothly. Casey and Ryan have
decided to join the Marine Corps. I text him to find out where he is so
I can give him a damn hug before he leaves. He texts back and says
he is at the farm. I find him outside the shop and say my goodbyes. As
I’m hugging him I look over and see the pear tree. It’s scrawny now
because of its battles with mother nature, but it still looks proud. Its
buds are small, and only the skinny twigs have green tips.
I think about the memories Casey and I won’t forget because
of that tree, which will stand until it surrenders to the hardships of
nature. Like a soldier it wears its scars proudly, but still produces fruit.
Just a few, but they’re some of the sweetest pears.
Although the pear tree is weak, the third generation of the farm
has been born. My nephews now run around and chase kittens. I hope
that the tree stands long enough for them to make memories there just
like I did as a kid. And maybe they can bring my mom, a.k.a. Mami,
some pears too.
41
Tallfish
Bob Fisher
42
An Awakening of Respect
David Reed
Fishing has always been a favorite sport of mine, although
some would not call it a sport. In my opinion there is nothing more
challenging than pitting yourself against nature. Fishing is also an
excellent way to fill your fridge with healthy, good-tasting food.
Growing up in my early teens I was assaulted by a 30-year-old
man, named Clint Peterson, at my brother’s first Holy Communion.
This caused me to have a brain aneurism, which is an abnormal
widening or ballooning of a portion of an artery due to weakness in the
wall of the blood vessel. In my case this caused a bleed in my brain,
resulting in severe migraines that were often crippling and debilitating.
After being hospitalized for a week, they found a medication that
would help heal my condition. However, as a result my activities were
severely limited and I was unable to play a lot of school sports.
My dad being an avid outdoorsman, we decided to start fishing
more. We had always liked fishing together, but our trips became
more frequent and began to shape who I was, building patience and
perseverance. This is one example of how this activity has impacted
my life.
On July 2, 2009, the trip started like any other. I meticulously
prepared my fishing gear. Starting with my reels, I would check for
malfunctions and anything that needed to be oiled, then I checked the
lines for rough spots or frays. After inspections were done I prepared
my rigs and packed my gear, making sure to include my tape measure
and the other necessities.
Once everything was packed and ready I proceeded to tell my
father we were all ready to go. This was not the first trip that began
like this; every time we would go out fishing, I was responsible for
preparing everything. When he was ready we loaded the truck and
started the 14-mile drive to our boat. Every time we would drive to
our location I would quiz my dad with different questions relating to
fishing, hoping to pick up tips to improve my approach. He would
never get short or annoyed, even if I asked the same series of questions
I had asked before.
I would ask, “How do you think we will do tonight?” or “You
think we will catch anything?” He would make some sort of challenge
as to how many fish we would each catch. As to whether we would
43
catch anything, he would say with a smile, “If I didn’t think we would
catch anything I wouldn’t bother going out at all.”
Something about the drive to our location was always
suspenseful; my feelings ranged from anticipation to sheer excitement.
It was something about the mystery of it all, I think, the mystery of
what could happen, of what could be lurking in such a large lake.
Soon I was afflicted with anticipation brought on by thoughts of
giants lurking deep in the water, giants that are rarely if ever caught.
Little did I know that I was about to have my first encounter with the
embodiment of such reveries that night.
Once we arrived at the boat we filled it with our gear and set
out for our secret location. By the time we arrived it was just before
dark and we had our lanterns on, casting an eerie light that seemed to
grow as darkness descended upon us. We were catching a large amount
of catfish that night, ranging from 5 to 13 pounds. I was sure that our
luck would only get better as the night dragged on, but soon things
started slowing down. Where the air was once filled with the sound of
fish flopping in the boat and reels spinning, it was now replaced with
small talk and fishermen’s tales.
The light from the lantern reflected off the water, creating
metamorphosing shapes on the shore with every rock of the boat. I
could smell familiar smells that can only be produced by water, sweet
and pungently marshy. I could taste it on the back of my throat as I
inhaled. The frogs were croaking, and the insects on the shoreline were
an uninterrupted chorus of chirps and clicks, until I heard the bail of
my Uglystick start to spiel, slowly at first, then building speed.
Jumping with excitement, I reacted instinctually and with an
awesome calm coming from years of experience. I opened the bail and
tightened it to the right amount of torque; in a fluid motion I flipped it
back and set the hook. In that instant I could feel the weight of the fish
on my line and realized it might be the biggest of the night.
Once the fight commenced I was lost, lost in a trance of sorts,
automatically reacting according to the behavior of the fish. Time
seemed to drag. I was in a flow of perpetual energy; for every foot I
gained, the fish gained two. I thought that the fight would never end.
As fatigue set in, thoughts of the possible outcomes filled my head. I
came to the realization that the line could snap or the hook could slip,
or even that my bail could run out of line, but as soon as my thoughts
started to wander, the fight started to end in my favor.
I was gaining ground and the fish seemed to tire. I almost had
44
the fish shallow enough to see it. To an inexperienced fisherman the
fight would have seemed at an end. From my experience, though, I
knew that once the fish could see the boat it would have one last run,
so I adjusted my reel to a lighter tension, enough so that the line would
not snap.
Sure enough, all of a sudden the fish made a final run. It was
amazing how much strength the animal possessed, and I was sure
that the line would fail. I managed to slow the fish’s run and tire him
enough to get him back to the boat. I had my father prepare the net,
and just as he was readying for capture, the fish came into view. It was
amazing, really; I had never seen a fish that size come out of the water
here.
Awestruck, we managed to maneuver the fish in the net and get
him boated. With a head the width of a basketball, a mouth that could
swallow a full-sized chicken, and whiskers as long as my arm from
fingertip to elbow, the fish was massive. Over thirty inches long and at
least nineteen pounds, we examined the fish in awe and then put it in
the cooler. The rest of the trip is a blur in comparison.
I spent the next day recalling tales of the night to just about
everyone, including the two local fishing shops, Al’s Sport Store in
Downsville, New York, and The Tremperskill Store in Andes. The fish
measured 33 inches long and weighed just short of twenty pounds. But
once the adrenaline wore off and things settled down, I realized that the
happiness was short lived. Regrets started to come as I began gaining
a newfound respect for the animal. This catfish must have lived in the
waters for a very long time, avoiding being caught and just simply
surviving. I began to realize that I wished I would have let the fish go.
We take and yet we do not give back, and if we are not willing to let
some of the fish go that we catch, even the magnificent fish that I had
caught, there would be no fish left to catch.
I had an inner awakening that all the praise and congratulations
were not worth the feeling that I felt about that night, and I decided
from then on to always have that same respect every time I went
fishing, only keeping fish that I would eat and being responsible about
the number of fish I keep. I was changed forever and would strive to
create a balance of give and take. We have to learn to respect the things
we often take for granted, such as the food we eat, the water we drink.
If we do not, what is stopping them from becoming depleted?
45
A Frog in a Deep Well
Akira Odani
Into the subway platform, I walk down the stairs at least
three hundred meters below the surface, moving my feet carefully
forward and downward on wet and slippery tiled floors;
The passageway lit brightly with rows of fluorescent lamps,
lined with a series of neon-lit windows showcasing recent fashions of
Europe and the highest return on bank investments;
Wind from the tunnel below blows past my face, hair
flying upward, mixed with ashy dust and musty smell
of urban dwellers in a Tokyo landfill.
The sharp metallic squeak of steel cars grinding against
the tracks pierces through the dull din of the underground rush hour.
Constant flow of faces, anger, tension and boredom of unending
routine, runs through the kaleidoscope of my peripheral vision. This is
the landscape I left some 40 years ago.
And then, my blood freezes and bones shiver as if I was cast into a life
of a prisoner,
chained to a cell block in a dungeon,
at the thought that I could well have been stuck here
without ever having seen the sky of the West.
46
To Skin a Fox
Laura Ziemba
Every Monday through Friday he walked in, his mere presence filling
the space. Looming over the barstool he motioned to the bartender. His
left hand holding up two fingers and his right only one. The bartender
would bring the order of two shots and one draft in the same silence it
was given.
He was a hulk of a man, towering over most at six foot six inches,
broad sturdy back and hands so large they encompassed the beer mug.
The shot glass didn’t stand a chance and was virtually nonexistent in
his grip.
He loomed, not in an intimidating manner, but more an unapproachable
one. It was clear to all the patrons that he didn’t wish for their
company, nor did he long to lament his workday with them or the
bartender.
He was a creature of habit whose habit of the past fifteen years had
been dramatically altered.
His Friday stop was always the same length as his Monday-throughThursday stop. Only he knew how much it had changed.
She is gone.
There was no one to go home to. And in his mind there was no valid
reason why.
He could not grasp why his Friday stop no longer included pleasant
thoughts of dinner and then a night of love making with his wife. She
would fiercely engulf him and he would gently take her. For more than
fifteen years this had been his Friday.
She is gone.
He knew on some level years ago when he found her he had already
lost her. He just didn’t know when it would happen.
47
For all his silence, she was vocal. For all his stoicism, she was
emotional. For all his discipline, she was free spirited.
She took half his pension; he had to buy back half of the home he had
made for them. She took half of everything and left him with all of
nothing.
It didn’t anger him as much as it bewildered him. Why if she had to be
gone from him did she need to take so much from him?
His days and nights were spent in thoughts of whys and what-ifs. And
he always came to the same conclusion. He did all he was taught to do.
He did all that he thought to do.
She is gone.
One shot, half the draft. Second shot, the rest of the draft. Then
standing to his full height he pushed away from the bar, gave a nod to
the bartender and stepped out into the dreary evening.
Through the fog he drove. Heading back to his half of a home that left
him with all of nothing.
At the edge of his vision he saw a flash of red brown. He quickly
steered right, hit the brakes, swerved, was certain he missed it and then
heard a light thump.
He pulled off the road, grabbed a flashlight and walked back toward to
the little red-brown lump in the road.
Shining the flashlight through the fog and then downward, he saw what
it was. A fox. One fine swirling bit of blood coming from its mouth and
not an ounce of life left to it.
He knelt down and was taken by its beauty. He couldn’t just leave such
a beautiful creature in the road to be picked apart by carrion. He would
keep its beauty intact.
Gently he lifted the little creature up and put it in the bed of his truck.
He felt sadness at the loss of life. He also felt a sense of satisfaction at
how he could preserve the skin and in some way honor its beauty.
48
He pulled into his garage just as a gentle rain began.
Leaning over he lifted the tiny red-brown body up, his large hands
placed firmly under the head and rump. With a gentle reverence he laid
the fox on his work bench.
He stood over the fox, noticing that it was a female. His thoughts were
caught in the beauty of her and endless unanswerable questions.
Where was she going before she fatefully crossed his path? Was she
running to something or from it?
Did she have time, a moment even, of knowing that she would die? It
didn’t matter whether she was running to or running from. Her running
days were done now.
He stood over the lifeless red-brown body. Buck knife in his right
hand, ready to make the first cut. To skin her. To keep her.
Thoughts of his wife swirled through his head like so many swirling
leaves. He remembered her. Or what he thought of as her. He
remembered her coming into his life and he remembered her leaving.
He remembered the night they sat on the edge of the bed and she told
him he just wasn’t enough. No matter what he did before, no matter
what he would try to do, he just wasn’t enough.
The courtroom, the lawyers, the legal wrestling of who gets what. He
sat through it all stoically. No emotion. No tears. No anger. Nothing.
He noticed he had put the buck knife down, his right hand lying on
the fox’s back. He couldn’t. He couldn’t mar that beauty to keep as his
own. She belonged to the earth.
He picked up the fox, walked to the side of his garage, grabbed a tarp
and a shovel.
He steps into the night, into the rain, and walks towards his home.
Laying the tarp out where the garden was he then places the fox in one
corner and rolls it over her.
He begins to dig. The rain is falling harder now; the sound of dirt and
49
rock scrape against the edge of the shovel.
She is gone.
He digs through the soil that is now mud. He digs. And he screams. He
screams and he shouts with every slamming crunch of the shovel. He
digs, face soaked with rain. Face soaked with tears . . . he digs and he
shouts and he screams and he sobs great wailing sobs.
He curses her; he curses love. He curses God for taunting him with
love. And he digs.
Covered now with mud, with sweat, with his own soul-deep salty tears,
he stops.
He bends down, picking up the tarp. Very gently and with a resolve
that is finally tainted with acceptance, he rolls the little red-brown body
into the ground.
He looks one last time. Looks at the beauty that was never his to keep.
As he begins to place the soil over her, to return her to the earth, he
feels the warmth of the rising sun.
She is gone.
50
Feelings of Peacefulness
Wanda K. Jones-Agans
51
The Red Saturn
Abby Wallace
You are on your sister’s laptop, while she is out with her
friends. You are lounging on your living room sofa, with your head
leaning against the arm of your brown leather couch. Your sun-streaked
golden hair is sprayed out beneath you; you close your eyes, grateful
for lazy summer days. You can feel the sun beaming through the
window as it heats up the leather underneath your skin; you twirl a
strand of your hair around your finger, wrapping it around over and
over again. A smile lifts the corners of your mouth as you chat with
your boyfriend on AIM, crossing your fingers with the hope that your
sister won’t return home soon; you want to talk with him longer.
He is messaging you about the new car his uncle is selling him
at a discount. He’s so excited about the great price. You have recently
both gotten your permits and are ecstatic about the idea of eventually
getting your licenses, and your own cars, and the freedom that brings
with it. He talks about how he’s going to drive you everywhere, and
you can’t help but feel excited about being able to spend time with
him without the shadow of your parents over you. You close your eyes
and wish that parents didn’t exist for a day. You don’t understand how
your father won’t let you see him; you resent the fact that even though
you are dating the best person you have ever known, he will never be
good enough. He doesn’t go to church enough, he doesn’t know his
family enough, you are not old enough . . . The picture he sends you is
of an older, 2000 version of a Saturn Vue, still a vibrant red. You give
yourself a blissful minute of pretending your parents will let him take
you places unsupervised. You imagine him picking you up, taking you
to dinner, then to the movies, kissing you goodnight . . .
§
It is in the middle of your junior year in high school. You no
longer talk. You don’t understand how you still miss him every second
of every day. You have never felt the need to have a boyfriend, and
don’t imagine you ever will. You are not the type of girl who searches
for relationships or feels incomplete without one. In the beginning you
even told him it wasn’t a good idea. You knew it would end badly. You
knew, but you ignored that premonition because you couldn’t help
but try. You loved him because being with him finally made you feel
like you had made your way “home.” You wake up every day unable
to fight the feeling that you found the perfect person, and he slipped
52
away by means you couldn’t control. Because of the family views and
prejudices, you hate yourself for being cursed to be associated with.
You are sitting with your girlfriends on the old, rotting picnic table
outside of the entrance of school, smiling weakly at the story your
friend is telling as your fingertips slowly run across the grooves in the
worn wood. Your lunch still lies untouched in front of you, like most
of them have during the past few months. You close your eyes and pull
your jacket tighter around you as a chilly breeze numbs your earlobes.
You look up just before the bell rings, seeing the red Saturn he’s kept
spotless since the day he bought it pulling into the student parking lot.
§
It is the summer before your senior year. You are working at
the same public swimming pool, at the same job you had during the
summer you were with him. Your voice is hoarse from yelling at an
impossible boy who never listens during his swimming lessons. The
summer is almost over; the other kids are doing laps and diving like
pros, while he hasn’t learned a damn thing. Usually, you love kids, and
they return the feeling. You are starting to believe that some kids, like
him, are just born unmanageable, or maybe the blame belongs to their
parents. Either way, at this moment you do not care. Frustrated, you
throw your clipboard on the unmovable, burning cement and wiggle
your fingers through your damp hair. You want more than anything for
this day to just be over. A knot begins to form, like a wadded-up rag in
your throat as you lean against the pool railing. You recall the way he
used to throw his arms around you when you started feeling stressed,
saying something that sent you into a five-minute-long laughing fit.
God, this job seemed so much fun with him by your side; how easily
he got even the worst kids to listen.
You are trying to dry off your water-splashed clipboard when
a little girl in your group comes up to you and starts tugging on your
arm. She is jumping up and down excitedly, pointing towards the
entrance of the pool. You hear yourself sigh, trying to decipher her
words, and then you realize, she is saying his name. She remembers
him from the summer before, and asks you often where he disappeared
to. You don’t reveal to her that you’ve been asking yourself the same
thing. You can’t help but smile when you see him; you don’t care
if you haven’t talked to him in what seems like centuries. You start
towards him ready to tell him how miserable this stupid job is without
him, and how much the children seem to miss him. You are halfway
to him when you see her. You stop, frozen in your tracks. You never
53
thought it was true, never let yourself believe the rumors. But isn’t
this proof that it is? She is laughing as she splashes water on him; you
take in the sight. A married woman, in her late 20s, complete in her
too-small bikini, going swimming alone with a teenage boy, only 17.
The same woman who works with him every night at the restaurant
he chose to work at over the pool. The same woman who has hopes of
becoming a teacher. You wonder how this boy who used to shine so
bright in your mind could have faded so quickly and so easily.
It is almost 2:30 in the afternoon and the children are lined up
on the lawn. They all have their backpacks and towels and are changed
into their street clothes, after you reminded them that, no, they cannot
wear their bathing suits on the bus. The bus driver is walking her slow
waddle to the bus at the end of the parking lot; her shorts are riding up
her wide thighs as she shifts her weight from side-to-side with each
step. You relax with the knowledge that you will be leaving soon. The
driver starts the bus, the same bus he used to pull you behind to steal
kisses at the end of the day, when you hear his voice. He is walking
towards where you are leaning against a tree, your gaze still fixed
heavily on the slow-moving blur of yellow-and-black lines. You blink
away the forming tears, hating yourself for being as weak as you are.
Forced to turn as he says your name, you look at him; children
are hanging off his arm and grabbing him around the ankles, whining
and shouting that he can’t leave. You are about to say something before
your eye catches her walking out of the locker room. Her dry brown
hair falls over her red polka-dotted sunglasses as she swings her bag
over her shoulder as carefree as the devil. A vision comes to your mind
of you smashing those stupid red glasses into the ground; smashing her
face along with it. Right into those broken red pieces that match his
awful red car. You turn away and tell the kids the bus is coming. They
are still making their way onto the bus as the Saturn pulls away with
the stereo booming, windows down, her hair flying crazy in the breeze.
She is sitting in the seat that was promised to be reserved for you.
§
It seems that you are unable to determine if you are still
singing or if you are laughing. It’s probably a mixture of both. You are
sitting in that seat; the seat next to him. The bass from his stereo so
loud your chest hurts from the vibration of it. He is driving with both
of his hands off the wheel and dancing with his hands in the air like
only a “white boy” can dance. Your hear your best friend’s laughter
from the back seat so strong you wonder how she’s still in one piece.
54
Hell, you wonder how you are still in one piece. You have gotten used
to this constant, loud beat, the way laughter dies down and starts up
within seconds in every car ride you take, how the warm seats feel
rough as your arms slide against them, and the one rule he reminds
his passengers of every time they enter his affectionately named
“Thumping Thundercat”: “Keep your dirty shoes on the mats!” You
have become part of the car you had been watching from a distance for
so long. You no longer wonder what it is like to be in it with him. You
are well acquainted with how the wheel makes squeaky noises around
sharp turns; you know how the passenger’s side door won’t open from
the inside. Soon you will be graduating and going off to college. Both
of you wonder why it took you so long to become friends again. For
now, all that seems to matter to you are these car rides. You are always
going to new, random places that only a group of teenagers could find
excitement and purpose in ending up at. You tell your father you are
out with your girlfriends for the night. You tell your mother the truth.
She tells you she thinks you will end up together one day. You laugh
her off while secretly wishing it is the truth.
§
Senior year means having to say goodbye, something you
and none of your friends are quite ready to do. This is one of the last
memories you will all have together. You mumble an apology to one
of the boys as your fishing line gets caught with his. He makes fun
of you as he shows you how to cast the line and slowly reel it back
in. You have never fished before. You used to beg your father every
summer to take you, but he never did. You remember the yellow- andwhite fishing pole your grandmother bought you for Christmas. It still
lies untouched in the dusty corner of your bedroom closet. Your face
is getting hot as he puts his arms around yours and directs your hands.
You keep on failing to cast the line right because you want him to stand
there longer. You see your friend winking at you a few feet away, a
Bud Lite freshly opened in her hands. He lowers his voice so no one
else can hear and starts to bring up a topic you don’t want to talk about.
“Is us spending time together causing you problems with your family
at home?” He barely whispers the sentence.
Your body turns rigid as you tell him to stop. You are having
fun. You tell him it doesn’t matter. He insists he needs to know, he
can’t deal with being the source of family drama. Finally, you tell him
you are fine, you are 18 years old, capable of handling yourself, and
he shouldn’t worry about it. You blush at the embarrassment of the
55
memory of a couple weeks earlier. You lied to your father about going
for a walk alone, insisting that you weren’t meeting up with any boys.
As soon as you got out of the house you basically run down the street
to see him. He opens the door of the Saturn and you wait for him to get
out. He tells you that he told his mother he had to go into work early,
so that he could see you. He brings the woman at the pool up without
you even mentioning it. You listen in silence as he tells you nothing
happened. He says how the accusations and rumors almost destroyed
him inside. You don’t understand why he needs you to believe this, but
you trust his words. Neither of you realize how much time has passed
as you head for the car again, thinking how strangely fast time went
just talking with him. You are in sight of the red Saturn, still bright in
the fading light, when you hear your father angrily yell your name. He
is stomping down the street towards you; you want to rewind time and
take a different path home. You don’t want this moment ruined. Why
can’t you undo fate and be a different person?! You are not affected by
his wrath; you are used to his raised voice and lectures by now. You
only care what he thinks. You don’t want this to push him away from
you again. You remember drowning out your father yelling, “Why are
you with him? You are better than that! This is bullshit! I never raised a
liar!” You whisper for him to go, you are so sorry. You beg him just to
get into that Saturn and leave. He listens. When you see him again he
tells you he hates himself for leaving, that he should have stayed, that
he should have talked to your father. He knows he is a coward.
You are tired of your failed attempts at fishing, and he
convinces you to brave the water, even though your classmates warn
you of leeches. Both of you run back to the Saturn for your bathing
suits. He is laughing and makes you promise that you won’t sneak a
peek at him while he is changing behind the red car door. You never
make it into the water. He leads you down a muddy trail and you
both decide just to sit down by the stream instead of going in. Two
salamanders are hidden on the mossy rocks in front of you. You watch
them staring at you and you feel self-conscious because of the silence
that has fallen over him, a very rare thing. Searching your mind for
something clever to say about the stupid salamanders, you stop when
he puts his arm around you and pulls you close. Somehow, without you
realizing, he is holding your hand. You make him promise he is not
drunk, even though you know that he is not. Your pulse is pounding in
your ears so loud it almost drowns out what he is saying. He tells you
he needs you to know something; he’s trying to make you understand.
56
He tells you he won’t mess it up with you again. He isn’t ready for a
relationship; he doesn’t want to go to college and have anyone mad
at him because he couldn’t keep hastily made promises. You aren’t
really listening while he tells you that he still cares about you. You are
wondering why he’s talking at all.
The boy you have foolishly loved for almost three years
finally decides to kiss you again. You shiver as rain seeps into your
hair and tank top. The flat rock beneath you feels smooth and damp as
you fall into it. He’s kissing you and you are thinking how for some
reason, instead of time going by fast like it usually does, right now
he’s making it stop. When the kiss is over, you rejoin your friends. You
don’t know how to act. He’s acting like everything is normal, while
inside, your heart is screaming that you don’t understand. You wonder
how someone can say they don’t want to be with you, and then kiss
you that way in the same breath. He finds you again before the night is
over. You are huddling around a big fire with your classmates, the hot
summer afternoon turning into a wet, chilly night. He surprises you by
kissing you in front of them all; his breath is a mixture of warm beer
and grape-flavored cigars.
It is early morning when you make your way back to the
Saturn with him and another classmate. You climb into the back seat
while he falls into the front. He leans over, giving you a blanket and
making sure you are comfortable before kissing you one last time. You
wonder at how he can fall asleep so quickly. His sleeping face looks
younger, the way it did when you first knew him, when he was sweet
and unaffected by the world. Before you let yourself drift off you
memorize the inside of the car. You take in the half-smoked cigar in the
ash tray in the front seat (a habit he was trying to quit), you memorize
the dotted pattern of the fabric stretching over the seats, and you
remember the driver just as he is in this moment: sleeping peacefully,
18 and perfect. You know that with the light of day comes the everlooming date of graduation. You know that pretty soon this red Saturn
that you have grown to love so much will be the one who will take him
far away from you.
§
Now you lie collapsed on the bed in your college dorm room.
You are exhausted from a long day of work, classes, and studying. You
keep yourself busy so that you don’t have time to remember that red
Saturn. You won’t admit to yourself that every time you go down to the
local grocery store your heart skips a beat at the sight of the identical
57
car that is always parked there. Somehow you think that maybe, just
maybe, it is the same one. That it has finally brought its driver back to
you again. You turn off your desk light as the sound of a booming car
stereo passes by your window. You close your eyes and remember the
song that was playing the last time you saw that car. You picture those
matching red-rimmed tires as they pulled out onto the road, and out of
your life.
58
Message for Kristen
Michael McKenna
The chirp from the phone in my jacket pocket
alerts me to an incoming text, probably from
one of my kids making plans for our weekly
dinner. But I don’t recognize the number,
and instead of the usual “c u 2nite,” I read,
“Kristen I hope u
got ur key. Dont
ever look at those
ppl who live
across from us. We
are Not friends
with them. Thats the
one that robbed
me. The ugly kid
with the long hair.”
Confused, I read the message again, and
ponder my obligations. Should I text back the
sender so they know their message wasn’t
received? What if Kristen didn’t get her key and
she’s locked out of her house or apartment?
“Woman Dies of Exposure” is not a headline I’d
care to read in tomorrow morning’s paper. Or
maybe she needs the key to her car, and if she
doesn’t get it she can’t get to work, and her boss is
going to fire her ass. And what if, not having been
warned, she has already looked at the ppl who
live across from “us” (whoever “us” might be),
setting in motion a chain of events that ends with her
face down in a pool of her own blood, bludgeoned
by the ugly kid, the one with the long hair, who was
lurking in the shadows waiting for someone else to rob?
(Another headline I’d rather not read.)
I wonder what the kid might have stolen: Grandma’s
silver? October’s rent? a bottle of Oxy? a bag of weed?
There’s also the chance that maybe they’ve got the neighbors—and the kid—all wrong, that he isn’t
a thief, or ugly, just a falsely maligned teen in need of
59
a haircut and some Neutrogena. Maybe if given half a
chance these ppl could even be friends. I need more
information—about the ppl, the kid, the whole bunch,
especially Kristen. Are you worth my time and effort?
If only I knew more about you. It might even stop me from doing what I knew all along I would do: press
Options: Delete Message: Are You Sure? (Yes.)
Problem solved.
All Messages Deleted.
60
A Tribute to Gia Marie Carangi
Theresa Santaniello
Her life was a chaotic whirlpool
A mother left her, the one she truly desired
She was the lion and the world was her prey.
Breaking away from her cage, she began to spit fire
Along the hard road, she got lost and she strayed
Misunderstood rebel, she dyed her hair red
Her story uncertain as was common ‘mong stars
She brought a young woman into her bed
Essence now trapped, she lived in a jar…
Her addiction left her crippled
Couldn’t run away
She was never superficial
Never would obey
The world left her dying
So she left it while crying
61
Eagle
Ruth Hughes
62
A Father’s Love
Meghan Strube
Captain Abe Jacobs led his troops from their base along the
hot desert path that would bring them to the site of their objective. Abe
went through the plan one more time in his head despite the fact that he
had been up all night perfecting it. His son Zac, in spite of his young
age of 20, was by far the most talented soldier in the unit and had been
chosen to complete the task of blowing up a nearby bridge.
So after we arrive at the bridge Zac will make his way across
with three men covering him while he sets up the explosives on his way
back to the remaining troops. Abe stopped there and suppressed the
emotions he started to feel at the thought of his son being in danger. He
shook his head vigorously as if to fling the ugly thought from his mind.
This mission isn’t nearly as dangerous as I’ve been making it
out to be, Abe reminded himself. The nearest enemy base is over 20
miles away, and according to our inside source, the attack we’ve been
anticipating isn’t going to take place until three days from now. This
whole operation is meant to be a preemptive strike to keep the enemy
from being able to cross over the bridge and into our territory once
they finally attack. If all goes as planned today, there’s no reason a
single shot should be fired.
Though Abe started to feel better after his internal
encouragement, an uneasy feeling still lingered deep in his stomach.
They arrived at the bridge right in time and prepared for the
mission. Zac gathered up the explosives and met with the three other
soldiers who had been ordered to protect him as he prepared for the
detonation. Abe and the remaining troops were to retreat to an area of
dense brush about a hundred yards away, but he found that he couldn’t
take his eyes off of his son. Zac sensed that he was being watched and
turned to face his father.
“Is everything alright, Captain?” Zac’s voice didn’t falter, but
Abe caught a flicker of fear in his son’s eyes that only lasted a second
and was soon replaced by a look of powerful determination; this was
the moment Zac had been waiting for since boot camp.
Abe’s mind was swirling with things he wanted to say but
he promptly reminded himself that there’s no place for sentimental
moments in the army, so the father gave his son a curt nod and they
turned to take up their posts.
Once Abe and his comrades had reached their stations he gave
63
Zac and his protectors the signal to make their way across the bridge.
The group was forced to weave between gaping potholes and giant
rocks that were strewn about the road.
If we wait long enough this bridge might just collapse on its
own, Abe thought.
He instantly regretted this immature thought as he remembered
how essential this mission was in keeping the enemy out of their
territory. The double agent stationed at their adversaries’ nearby base,
Private Davidson, had informed Abe of the massive amount of tanks
and heavy machinery that was being stored there which, if the bridge
was destroyed, would have no way of getting within shooting range of
Abe and his troops. If the mission were to fail, however, it would take
no more than a few hours for the enemy to destroy Abe’s entire camp.
“Sir, they have made it to the other side.”
Abe snapped back to reality at the sound of the soldier’s voice
and saw that Zac and his group had made it safely to the opposite side
of the bridge. Now Zac was to make his way back while depositing and
arming the five explosives in the designated areas.
Abe realized that he had been holding his breath since the
mission began and he quickly composed himself. He was ashamed
at how much this operation had been affecting him, and he began to
wonder if it was such a good idea for him to have taken on the job
of commanding the unit of soldiers that his son was a part of. Many
people questioned his decision, but he defiantly retorted that it would
not affect his performance as a captain in any way. Deep down Abe
knew this was a lie and that his real objective was to be able to protect
Zac, though he would never admit it to himself or anybody else. It
seemed that Zac was the only person who really understood his dad’s
intentions, and Abe wondered if that was the reason his son so readily
volunteered for the mission, to prove to himself and everybody else
that he didn’t always need his father to shelter him.
This notion troubled Abe and he had a sudden urge to abort the
mission and call his son back to safety. As soon as this thought passed
through Abe’s mind, he heard a faint voice coming from his radio.
“Captain…they’re…”
“Hello? Private Davidson?” Abe frantically tried to fix the
connection but all he could hear was static.
Abe knew something must be seriously wrong because
Davidson would never radio him in the middle of such an important
mission. Just as he went to give the signal to retreat, four loud shots
64
rang out across the desert, and Zac and his companions fell to the
ground.
“Steady, troops. Hold your fire!” Abe tried to control his
faltering voice
Abe’s hands trembled uncontrollably as he frantically searched
for his binoculars. He vaguely noticed the anxious looks his troops
were giving one another as they held their weapons at the ready; all
that mattered to him at that moment was whether or not his son was
still alive.
Abe ripped the binoculars out of his pack and shoved them to
his face, nearly pushing his eyeballs back into his head in a desperate
attempt to see the bridge more clearly. Once he focused his vision
enough to make out the scene, it took all of his strength not to tear the
binoculars away from his eyes. What Abe saw was a living nightmare;
the three young soldiers sent to protect Zac lay dead on the ground
with bullets in their heads. He anxiously scanned the bridge to find
Zac, and his throat tightened when he saw him slouched against a
nearby boulder. Abe had a terrible feeling that it was too late for Zac as
well, and he lunged forward only to remember where he was and that
he needed to keep his cool.
A wave of relief washed over the father as he saw Zac gingerly
prop himself up against the rock; he seemed to be injured but he was
alive. But this relief quickly turned to guilt as he thought of how the
fathers of the three soldiers would feel when they received the letter all
parents pray they will never have to read.
Abe watched Zac more closely and noticed he was attempting
to stop the heavy flow of blood coming from his thigh. Any sense
of relief Abe had felt earlier changed to dread as he concluded that
the bullet must have hit the femoral artery in his son’s leg, giving
Zac no more than five minutes to construct a tourniquet before he
bled to death. Abe was on the verge of assembling a team of men to
retrieve Zac when he heard the low rumble of tanks approaching the
bridge from the opposite side. His heart sank as he realized there was
no chance of getting to his son in time. The tanks emerged from the
nearby trees and made their way towards the bridge along with a large
group of heavily armed soldiers; the enemy was attacking early.
Abe surveyed the bridge again and saw that Zac had succeeded
in preparing the first explosive at the side of the bridge closest to the
enemy before he was forced to retreat another ten yards to the safety
of the boulder that served as the only barrier between himself and
65
the oncoming attack. Abe noticed that Zac managed to haul the four
remaining explosives behind the rock with him; no matter what might
happen, his son knew he would finish his mission.
The tanks made it to the mouth of the bridge, and Abe could
feel his pulse pounding in his head; in only a few seconds the enemy
would reach Zac’s position.
Even though the father was too far away to actually see his
son’s eyes, Abe could feel Zac looking at him as they both realized
what needed to be done. As if on cue, Zac grabbed the four remaining
explosives and ran around the side of the boulder straight into the
enemy attack. Abe pressed the detonator, sending the bridge into a fiery
explosion.
It was a beautiful Sunday morning in late August when
Abe awoke to the sun spilling in through his bedroom window. He
rolled over to give his wife a kiss good morning only to find that her
side of the bed was empty. He was confused for a moment until he
remembered that she had left early that morning, along with their
two daughters, for a day trip to the outlets as their last shopping trip
together for the summer. This left Abe and his then ten-year-old son
Zac to a day of male bonding.
Just as Abe started to go through the list of all the activities
they could do that day he heard footsteps racing down the hall, and
before he had the chance to roll over he got a face full of shaggy brown
hair. His only defense was to tickle his giggling son until he fell into a
fit of laughter at the end of the bed.
“Come on, Dad, get up! What are we doing today?” Zac
managed to squeak out despite his father’s attack.
“I don’t know, Buddy. It’s up to you,” Abe replied with a huge
grin in response to his son’s excitement. “We could go fishing, hiking,
mini golfing—whatever you want.”
Zac went deep into thought, and the smile temporarily left his
face as he weighed his options.
“I don’t know, Dad, we do those things all the time. I kinda
want to try something new today.”
Abe could tell that his son was still thinking so he didn’t break
the silence in the room.
“Hey, Dad, what did you used to do with Grandpa on Sundays
when you were a kid?” Zac asked with the excitement returning to his
voice.
66
The question surprised Abe but he answered truthfully, “Well,
Zac, when I was your age Grandpa and I used to go to church together
every Sunday.”
Abe thought this would be a big turnoff for his son, but Zac
seemed genuinely interested; he was always up for trying something
new and different.
“That sounds kinda fun! Why don’t we ever go to church
together, Dad?” Zac asked earnestly.
Abe felt a wave of guilt wash over him when he saw the
sincere look in his son’s innocent eyes.
Abe realized that he hadn’t even set foot in a church since
his wedding day, which was nearly 15 years ago, and he couldn’t
remember the last time he attended an actual service.
“Well, Bud, once I went off to college I got sort of busy and
could never really find the time to get to church.” Abe knew that
though this wasn’t exactly a lie, it wasn’t entirely truthful either. The
truth was that Abe had slowly grown apart from his church and, once
he started pursuing his career in the army, had simply stopped going.
He had never actually lost his faith, he had merely neglected it.
Zac didn’t seem too satisfied with his dad’s answer.
“You’re not busy today, Dad,” he pointed out with a clever
smile on his face.
Abe smiled broadly and playfully ruffled his son’s hair.
“Well, we better hurry up if we want to make it to the service
on time,” he replied with enthusiasm.
“Yes!” Zac exclaimed in triumph as he raced from the room to
get ready.
I never thought my ten-year-old son would be so excited to go
to church, Abe thought to himself, completely perplexed.
The father and son arrived at the church late so they slipped
silently into the last row of chairs as the pastor started to speak.
“Before I start,” he began, “I would like everyone to take a
moment to greet one another.”
This was new to Abe and he felt uncomfortable at first until
numerous people filed over to introduce themselves. Zac was loving
all of the attention, and he went around animatedly shaking his
new friends’ hands. After about five minutes of this the pastor good
naturedly ushered the congregation back to their seats.
The whole atmosphere of the church was so different from
what Abe had grown up knowing that he didn’t quite know how to
67
respond at first. He looked over at Zac to see what he was thinking
about this new experience to find his son with a huge smile on his face
as he hung on the pastor’s every word.
A strange feeling suddenly washed over Abe, and he felt like
the rest of the world was slipping away as a voice that seemed to come
from deep inside of him whispered, This is where you belong.
Abe’s world came back into focus as he sat there in awe. He
had no question in his mind about whether or not what just happened
was real; he could actually feel the words resonate within him.
Abe realized that nobody else in the congregation, including
Zac, had seemed to notice what he had just experienced, so he quietly
composed himself and gave his attention to the pastor.
“Since today is communion Sunday I’m going to keep this
message short,” he was saying. “I just want to give you something to
think about for the rest of the week.”
He stopped there at the good-natured murmuring of the
congregation at the mention of a short sermon.
“So I want to get you all thinking about just how much God
loves us, or better yet, how much He loves you.”
Right away Abe could tell that this was going to be different
from any mass he had ever attended as a kid; his old church seemed to
focus more on God’s wrath than His love.
“We all know that God sent His only son to die for us so that
we may someday join Him in Heaven and have eternal life,” the pastor
continued, “but did you ever actually take the time to think about what
that really means?”
He paused and looked around the congregation to emphasize
the importance of what he was saying.
“Did you ever actually think about how much God must love
you if He let His son die so you could live? All the parents out there
take a moment and look around this church right now. Now look at
your children; would you willingly let them die so the rest of this
congregation could live?”
There was complete silence in the sanctuary as everyone
contemplated what was just said.
Abe felt tears well up in his eyes at the thought of losing Zac,
but for some reason, instead of being filled with sorrow, he had an
unexplainable feeling of pure joy. The realization of just how much
God loved him had suddenly given him a whole new outlook on life.
Just knowing that there’s someone out there who will love him no
68
matter what he does left Abe speechless. One look at Zac showed that
he was feeling the same way. He turned to his father with a look of
amazement on his face.
“I never knew God loved me so much,” Zac said in awe.
“It’s pretty awesome, isn’t it?” Abe asked as he put his arm
around his son’s shoulders.
“Yeah,” Zac replied in a distant voice as if he was lost in a
deep and wonderful thought.
“We should come back here every Sunday, Dad!” Zac
exclaimed as he came back to reality. “And we should get Mom and
Leah and Rachel to come next week, too!” he added with excitement.
“Sounds good to me,” Abe replied with a broad smile. The
thought of his whole family happily attending church together gave
him a warm feeling deep in his chest.
There was a short moment of silence as father and son seemed
to get lost in their own separate thoughts.
Zac finally broke the silence as he asked in a tentative voice,
“Dad, do you think God’s a good father?”
His son’s question touched Abe’s heart; it was all he could do
to keep from crying at Zac’s display of pure innocence.
“The best there is,” he choked out.
“Well, I can’t wait to meet Him,” Zac replied as Abe hugged
him close like he planned on never letting go.
The memory slowly faded as Abe regained consciousness. He
was confused when he realized he was lying in the desert sand with a
group of soldiers crowded around him. He propped himself up on his
elbow and surveyed the area; he and his troops were gathered in a cluster
of bushes. That’s when Abe caught a glimpse of what was left of the
bridge in the distance and he suddenly remembered everything; he felt a
pang of sorrow and his chest tightened as he fought back the tears.
“Captain, Zac took out the enemy’s entire company. Without
him, we’d all be dead,” the soldier spoke with sincerity in his voice and
eyes as he tried to comfort the grieving father.
My son’s a hero, Abe thought, feeling the sorrow slowly lift from
his heart and become replaced by that same unexplainable feeling of
pure joy he had felt while reliving that moment with Zac ten years ago.
He silently thanked God for the memory as he laid his head back down
on the ground with a gentle smile on his face and a warm feeling in his
heart. Zac had finally gotten his wish.
69
My Experience as an International Student: What a Lovely World!
Hye Jin Hwang
Who ever said to a Korean student it is easy to get a college
degree? Nobody! It has been a difficult journey for me to study in
the USA, especially with what for me is a foreign language, English.
However, I cannot stop or give up my desire to fulfill my goal. I have
known for quite some time that my genuine passion lies in restaurant
management; you might even say it is my calling. While I have a
bachelor’s degree in Nutrition from Dong-Eui University in Korea, I
believe it is important for me to obtain a similar degree in the United
States since I hope to live and raise my son in this country.
This first semester, I have experienced a very busy time. I
haven’t been able to sleep more than four hours a night because studies
and activities occur one after the other. My living pattern as a college
student is quite different from that of an American student.
First, I cannot totally understand the lectures in my courses,
so I have to review after each class using my electronic dictionary/
translator. I need more time to follow the contents than my American
classmates. One day, I took a pop quiz and I handed back a blank
paper. The questions involved measuring units. Koreans use the metric
system, so I couldn’t answer even one question. This experience made
me realize how difficult my path would be. Now, I can answer these
kinds of questions confidently as I spent a lot of time memorizing these
measuring equivalents that are essential to communicating with an
American kitchen staff.
Secondly, I have a part-time job as a cleaner in the library on the
night shift. In addition, I volunteer as an assistant teacher for a cooking
class for middle school students at South Kortright Central School. I
am also a member of the Multi-Cultural Club. Most American students
join several clubs or have a part-time job on campus. The difference is
that they also find time to enjoy watching movies, playing sports, and
socializing. As for me, never ever! Even though I am only joining one
activity at a time, I am very busy. I have the responsibility and the joy of
caring for my ten-year-old son and my lovely Shih Tzu, Lucy. However,
don’t feel sorry for me. I am happy, and I will explain later.
Finally, my life is different from American students as I am
older and I live off campus in a family situation. Some people have
commented to me that I must be lonely not living with students of my
nationality as I did in Manhattan. The closest to another Korean student
70
on campus is a young man who was born in America but has Koreanborn parents. He too is a Multi-Cultural Club member, but the only
Korean he knows is the phrase, “I cannot speak Korean.” But I do not
have time to feel lonely, even though I participate in only a few social
situations. Can you imagine how time consuming it would be if I had to
look at a dictionary to understand a joke made by one of my classmates
or co-workers? However, as my English improves, I can participate more
and more.
Now I will explain the reason that I am happy. Luckily, I have
met many kind students and other people at Delhi. When I first moved to
Delhi, I slept on the floor with a blanket, hugging my family to feel safe.
However, this lonely lifestyle didn’t continue long after talking with my
international advisor, Sharon. I don’t know how she asked for help from
the college community, but suddenly wonderful things happened just like
Christmas morning. Librarian Pam brought her son’s bed to my house,
Bob from Admissions brought a bunk bed and Custodial Supervisor
Sherry brought a dresser and a couch while her assistant donated clothes
for my son along with two TVs. Barbara from the President’s office sent
a table.
I think my college network became as quickly connected as a
spider weaves her web. My life has become a novel with many minor but
generous characters. Patty, a manager from CADI, and Ruth, my accentreduction coach, offered to fill the gaps in my household with such
items as towels, kitchen utensils, and a mattress cover. Professor Lynne
provided glasses and plates. Now my niece, a SUNY Oneonta student,
loves to come to sleep at my house because it has become a comfortable
and welcoming home. This transformation occurred because of the
concern of others from my college.
I was even welcomed into a faculty member’s home and
treated just like a special guest on a special family occasion. I got a
Thanksgiving Day dinner invitation from an English Composition
professor, Jenny. Satoshi, another international student, went with my
son and me to Jenny’s house. We had a great time with her family. I
don’t doubt that this Christmas will be a nice day in Delhi, and I don’t
need to be afraid of my future journey to achieve my dream. With the
good influence of my surroundings, I will always devote my energy
to ways to benefit other people. Specifically, my efforts will aim to
introduce healthy diet patterns and provide healthy cuisine using locally
grown produce. Living in this nice environment, I am so excited about
my future.
71
Skyline
John Coleman
72
Billiards and Beer
Ericka Ericson
Last weekend I ventured onto the supposed oldest street in the smallest
town. No businesses, no streetlights . . . well, one maybe. It was that
sort of place: the kind you wish you had grown up in, but you knew
that if you had in fact been a youth of this do-nothing village you
would resent it for all it was worth. I walked on cracked sidewalks and
counted lamp poles until I reached twenty and then started back at one.
I probably walked the same block three or four times, just counting
lamp poles. A thirst grew inside of me. A tavern appeared on the
corner: Billiards and Beer.
Sounded like my sort of place, sort of. I took the farthest seat
at the bar. I took the wobbliest stool. I took the dirtiest part of the
counter. I took a couple bucks out of my pocket.
“Hey, Mack!” It was more of a question than it was a call.
“Hey, a beer maybe? Just one.”
He looks me up and down, as if he’s deciding whether or
not they serve “my type” in this bar. It is, after all, a very high-end
place. Or so the look reads on the bartender’s face. And I, after all,
am just a rosy-cheeked, frosty-cool patron asking for a beer. Not even
demanding, simply asking.
“‘Ere ya are,” Mr. Bartender says to me.
Yes, here I am. Looking around I see photos of fallen heroes
who died while serving our country, while fighting a fire or rushing
into the cross-hairs of gunfire. Each photo depicts a straight face, short
hair, gaunt cheeks, and eyes that spell courage. Beside each photo is a
newspaper clipping, an obituary telling who, how, why, and when.
“What do ya think of all them photographs, Miss?” I look to
my left, look to my right. There he is, the man to the voice. Older,
worn-out hands and a hard, mean face. He takes a seat beside me,
teetering on the edge of his stool.
“Well, I guess I don’t think much of them. Is that wrong?” I
say cautiously.
“No. If you want to know the truth about things, I could tell
you, Miss.” The truth about things, he says. There is no such thing as
truth in this day and age. The man, old, musty, and drunk, would be
flattered for me to hear him out.
“Tell me, kind sir. What is the truth?”
Deep breath. Pause. Shifting eyes. He inhales as he starts.
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“The truth is, Miss, that there ain’t no such thing as truth.
Not here in this tiny sham of a town, and not out in the city, not in the
biggest city you could ever think of. No, there ain’t no such thing as
truth, Miss, and that’s the only truth there is. I used to think somewhere
there was a little bit of truth, somewhere in someone’s heart. That
maybe I’d see it one o’ them days. Back when I was younger, back
before. Days was hard then, back before. Maybe there was truth in
Mama’s dinners and when my father used to say, “C’mon, get yourself
hitched. I got somethin’ to show ya.” Maybe there was truth in them
days, but there ain’t none no more. There ain’t been no truth since
Hiroshima, since Nagasaki, since Nixon had his time in the White
House. There ain’t been no truth since years ago. You so young I bet
you ain’t never once been told the truth in your whole damned life,
Miss. And isn’t that a shame?”
“Aren’t you contradicting yourself?”
“Yes, but aren’t you, too?”
I think about what the man has to say and about my neat,
starched blouse. My jeans, my boots, my scarf, my eyes and my ears,
and I think that I am in a hometown bar, as if I belonged. I won’t ever
belong here.
“I am, yes. I suppose I am a walking contradiction, but aren’t
we all? Aren’t you, too? And isn’t everyone in this bar?” I get no reply so I look to my left, look to my right. He is gone,
and I’m not sure what the truth is.
74
Cone
Bob Fisher
75
Midnight Math Musings
Patricia May
The date was August 24th, 2011. After nearly 20 years of
teaching, I still had butterflies in my stomach the night before classes
started. I knew, as always, that once I stood in front of the classroom
and began to teach, I’d be in my element. The butterflies would
vanish, and in their place would come an eager anticipation to impart
mathematical knowledge to my students.
Some people know at a young age “what they want to be
when they grow up.” I wasn’t one of those people. I stressed over and
struggled with an overwhelming number of career choices during my
high school years. Having strong skills in mathematics and science,
in an attempt to emulate my eldest sister, I pursued a mechanical
engineering degree at the University of Connecticut. I earned my
bachelor’s degree with honors, only to realize that engineering was
not my true calling in life. What really sparked my interest throughout
my undergraduate career was the mathematics—the calculus, to be
more precise. As an undergraduate, I worked as a peer tutor in the math
center at UConn and absolutely loved every minute of it. How had I
missed what was staring me right in the face? I was meant to be a math
professor, but it took me several years to discover this.
More than once, at a social gathering, someone will ask me,
“So what do you do for a living?” and I reply vigorously, “I teach
math!” Most people respond with an “I’m sorry” or “Wow, I was
never any good at math.” I often wonder if English teachers or history
teachers get the same reaction. Math carries such a stigma; it is even
associated with its own psychological conditions, such as “math
phobia” and “math anxiety.” A mathematics colleague of mine once
sent me an article in which the author (who obviously had been a math
phobic) tried to argue that algebra should not be required in the school
curriculum. Can you imagine? I was relieved to discover that many of
the readers vehemently opposed his stance.
My family members are of course aware of my love of math.
Several Christmases ago, my sister-in-law gave me a shirt that says
√-1
math. One day, I forgot that I was wearing that particular shirt
and as I took a walk down Main Street, a perfect stranger shouted, “I
love math, too!” It was rather unsettling until I remembered what shirt
I was wearing. Another time when I wore the math shirt (and forgot
I was wearing it), I walked past a group of teenagers sitting on some
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front porch steps. They started talking about radicals and square roots
and I was very happy to know that the adolescents were engaging in
such mathematics-related conversation. Finally, I noticed one of them
staring at my shirt, and was embarrassed to realize the truth of the
matter.
I have encouraged my young daughter in all areas of academe,
but I obviously have a penchant for the mathematics. In kindergarten,
her teacher asked her to count to 30. She proceeded to count to 100
until the teacher said something to the effect of “OK, stop, that’s
enough.” Now, in first grade, I’m teaching my daughter about averages.
When she wants to play for 30 minutes and I think she should play for
20, we “compromise” and choose 25. She has learned that 25 is the
numerical average of the two numbers 20 and 30.
It was the night of December 10, 2011. I settled down to do
some bedtime reading when I found a piece of paper with my calculus
scribblings on it. Call me a geek, but late at night, I sometimes come
up with the best ideas for lecture, test, or project problems. As I looked
at the piece of paper, I smiled and reached for my calculator. Another
evening of midnight math musings had begun.
77
Remembering K.J. James
Marty Greenfield
Sometimes when the telephone rings, you can tell it’s going to
be bad news even before you answer. I’m not sure if the tone of the
ring is slightly different, or if the duration is a fraction of a second off,
but somehow the ring delivers a subtle warning of an ominous message
about to be delivered. Sensing that difference, I nervously picked up
the phone in my office on January 5, 2012.
I’m not sure who I expected to be on the other end, but I was
surprised when a familiar voice said. “Hi, Marty, this is Bob Klages.”
Bob is an agent I have booked many programs with over my years
at SUNY Delhi. Bob handles many higher-end cultural acts, and
hearing his voice on the other end, I assumed he was calling to finalize
arrangements for an event we had spoken about, and dismissed any
premonition of bad news.
“Marty,” he began, “I’m afraid I have some awful news to
share with you. K.J. died last night.” His words echoed in my mind and
bounced around before they began to sink in.
“What happened?” I asked.
“It sounds like it was a heart attack or stroke. He was stricken
at home. Carol was there, she heard him collapse, called 911, they got
him to the hospital, but it was already too late.”
Feeling like I had just been kicked squarely in the stomach, I
began to think about my friend of over 20 years. Kelly “K.J.” James.
If ever, in upstate New York, there lived a true Renaissance
man, his name was Kelly James. Standing 6 feet 6 inches tall, weighing
around 250 very solid pounds, topped off with a totally shaved head
(a look K.J. sported long before Michael Jordan made it cool), to call
K.J. an imposing figure would be a tremendous understatement. To
paraphrase Syracuse entertainment agent David Rezak, “When Kelly
stood in the doorway of my office, suddenly the sun stopped shining
through my window.”
K.J. would put his size and strength to use playing for the New
York Jets for a few years before leaving the uncertainty of professional
sports for a career in law enforcement. He spent the next twenty-five
years with the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Department, retiring as
a patrol supervisor to begin a career in music. Like in his previous
careers in professional football and law enforcement, there was nothing
that K.J. tried to do he would not succeed in.
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K.J. loved the blues. He was a student of Robert Johnson,
Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf, and all the greats.
Music had always been a hobby for him, but after retiring from the
Sheriff’s Department, he was ready to succeed in a new career. He
fronted a local blues band, The Kingsnakes, all the way to a majorlabel recording contract and national tours. But Kelly soon figured
out the constant life on the road was not for him for several reasons.
Primarily because it kept him apart from the family he so loved, but
also because he felt that the real blues were not electric, they were
acoustic, and in the tradition of the legends he so admired, they were
played by one man, not an entire band.
Sometime around the early 1990s K.J. assumed the persona of
Dr. Blue and took his solo acoustic blues show on the road. He found a
welcoming audience on the regional circuit, and soon became a popular
attraction in the college market. It was at a college entertainment
conference that our paths first crossed. K.J. was playing a showcase set
that was a mixture of some of his own stuff and a few Robert Johnson
classics. When the crowd cleared out after his set I went up to say hello
and tell him how much I enjoyed the Robert Johnson material. This not
only led to an extended conversation about the life and times of Robert
Johnson and the history of the blues, but to booking Dr. Blue’s first
appearance at SUNY Delhi. Our conversation continued into the night,
and allowed me to try and establish some personal credibility with this
authentic blues man.
We talked about how so many young white kids, like myself,
were first turned on to the blues by hearing British bands such as the
Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds recycle it in the 1960s. Kelly shared
with me that while many of the old blues masters had little musical
respect for their young English imitators, they were quite dumbfounded
by the new, large paydays that were a bi-product of this blues revival.
I asked him if he’d ever heard the album The London Howlin’ Wolf
Sessions. He said he hadn’t. As this was long before the i-Pod, I went
and got the cassette tape for him to hear. I especially wanted him to
hear the part where an obviously annoyed Howlin’ Wolf abruptly quits
mid-song and sternly lectures both Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood
on the proper way to play slide guitar. Kelly, a big fan of Eric Clapton,
thought that this was just hilarious.
We also spoke about the final years of blues legend—and
Robert Johnson sidekick—Son House, that were spent in Rochester,
New York. K.J. lamented that he had never made the journey to
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Rochester to meet Son House, and it was at this point I was able to
establish some major credibility when I blurted out, “Yeah, well I did!”
I told him about going with a few college buddies to find Son House in
1971 in a rundown housing project on the outskirts of Rochester. The
blues legend was in rough shape, suffering from alcoholism and what I
now understand was Alzheimer’s. I proudly told K.J. how we managed
to arrange a few college shows for Son House and put some muchneeded cash in his pocket, but to say that the legend was long past his
prime was being extremely generous.
K.J. became a regular visitor to SUNY Delhi. He loved to
perform and to talk about the history of the music he so loved and its
influence on contemporary music. He always preferred to play smaller
venues so that he could interact with the audience. He would playfully
taunt a quiet audience by telling them, “Hey, I’m not a movie up here
(later updated to “I’m not a hologram”), it’s OK to talk to me, ask
questions, and make a request or two.” He loved what he was doing,
and he also understood the importance of the tradition he was carrying
on. Watching him perform, it was impossible not to be moved by the
fact that K.J. was truly the genuine article, the real deal.
No two of K.J.’s shows were ever the same. He would always
perform a mixture of the classics and some of his own stuff, which
could range from very soulful and gritty to downright hilarious.
Always a true gentleman, K.J. would offer a disclaimer before he sang
any of the grittier, more sexually oriented blues numbers. One of his
most requested originals was “Breakfast Blues,” a song filled with
unbelievable puns centering around breakfast food and a romance
gone bad. K.J. would frequently invite audience members who he
knew were musicians up on stage to play along with him for a song or
two. There was no telling what the music would move him to do on
stage. One night the audience reaction to K.J.’s closing number was so
strong that when he walked off the stage while still playing guitar, the
entire crowd followed him right out the door, dancing all the way, and
demanding he play an encore for them in the hallway, which of course
he gladly did.
K.J. had offers in recent years to record and tour nationally,
but chose to remain true to his solo acoustic roots and near the family
he loved. In 1999 he did step out in front of an electric band again,
Tom Townsley and the Backsliders, for a short time. He gave a rousing
performance at Woodstock 1999 in Rome, York, and was featured on
the front page of USA Today. Once again the offers to tour and record
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came in, but he still was not interested.
Over the past few years, K.J. began to slow down a bit. A
serious automobile accident while touring Pennsylvania, coupled with
advancing arthritis and a lessening of the blues revival, all contributed
to fewer dates on the road. However, more important than any of
these reasons was the fact the K.J. now had grandchildren whom he
adored and wanted to spend as much time with as he could, including a
grandson who shared his love for the guitar.
When I heard Bob Klages’ voice on the phone that day, I
assumed that he was calling to confirm the February date at SUNY
Delhi for K.J. we had been planning. I was looking forward to seeing
my old friend, watching him work his magic, and getting my Robert
Johnson fix. While the phone call was a cause for great sadness and
more than a few tears, it also made me reflect on the amazing life K.J.
had led. Kelly James was a man who always did things on his own
terms, and seemed to succeed at everything he tried. He touched so
many folks throughout his life, wherever he went and whatever he did,
with his warmth, spirit, and genuine love for people. Like the many
people he touched, I was lucky to have crossed paths with him, and I
am even more fortunate than most to have called him a friend.
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82
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
John Coleman is a Business Management major from New Rochelle,
New York.
Ericka Ericson is currently a sophomore in Teacher Education at
SUNY Delhi. She plans on obtaining a bachelor’s degree in English,
though she is interested in pursuing a career in Corrections.
Bob Fisher is a practicing architect and Delhi faculty member.
Ian Gallagher is a 19 year old from Syracuse, New York who is
currently pursuing an associate’s degree in Computer Information
Systems.
Marty Greenfield survived a childhood on Long Island. In 1970 he
came to Delhi to attend college, and he forgot to leave.
Hope Hager is a Business major from Bloomville, New York.
Jamonito is James Hammond, who is from the Bronx and majors in
Culinary Arts.
Samantha Howard is now a student at Binghamton University
studying Human Development. She would like to thank God and
Tuscany Grace for inspiring her story.
Ruth Hughes lives in Delhi and works in the Career and Business
Development office at SUNY Delhi. “Eagle” was created in a
workshop given by Rhonda Harrow-Engel.
Hye Jin Hwang is a Restaurant and Food Service major from Korea.
Jesse Ray Jacob is from Walton, New York. She is a Construction
Management major, and a cross-country and track-and-field athlete at
SUNY Delhi.
Markida John is a Liberal Arts and Sciences major from Brooklyn,
New York. After graduating from SUNY Delhi, she plans to earn her
bachelor’s degree in Pre-med and then head to medical school. Her
goal is to one day become a doctor and make a difference in the world.
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Wanda K. Jones-Agans is proud to say she has worked for and
contributed to the College Association at Delhi for 34 years. It was
not until just recently that she became obsessively interested in
photography, and now she does not go any place without her camera.
Her greatest interest is nature photography, and she hopes to sharpen
her skills as a photographer so that in retirement she can earn some
ca$h.
Jared Loucks is currently aiming to become an English teacher. He
hopes to encourage his future students to enjoy writing creatively as
much as he does. He’s been writing stories since he was old enough
to form semi-coherent sentences on paper; it’s always been one of his
greatest interests.
Patricia May enjoys being a mathematics professor at SUNY
Delhi. She holds a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction, an M.S. in
Mathematics, and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering.
Joseph W. McAnlis is an Environmental Studies major from Tillson,
New York.
Michael McKenna is an English professor at SUNY Delhi and lives in
Oneonta, New York.
Carrie Mellinger is currently in SUNY Delhi’s Veterinary Technician
program, and in her free time she enjoys writing short prose and poetry.
Akira Odani was born in Tokyo, Japan, is an associate professor in the
Business Department at SUNY Delhi, and lives in Andes, New York.
Kirby Olson is a literature professor at SUNY-Delhi. His poems have
appeared in South Dakota Review, Partisan Review, Poetry East,
Cortland Review, and many other publications.
David Reed is a Parks and Recreation major from Andes, New York.
Theresa Santaniello is a Social Sciences major from Mohegan Lake,
New York.
84
Miriam A. Sharick has been a part-time Biology instructor at SUNY
Delhi for some 17 years. She lives near Stamford with her husband of
35 years, Bill, and they have two grown children and a daughter-inlaw.
Elizabeth Steffen is a Culinary Arts major from Syracuse, New York.
Meghan Strube lives in Troy, New York and is currently studying
Veterinary Science.
Abby Wallace was born and raised in Roxbury, New York, and is
currently studying Liberal Arts. In addition to writing, she likes
painting, hiking, and singing.
Sandra Williams is a Hospitality Bachelor of Business Administration
student from New Windsor, New York.
Laura Ziemba is the Practicum Coordinator for SUNY Delhi’s
Bachelor of Science in Nursing program. She has three adult children
and one Grand Diva, Ms. Riley Jane. Laura lives at home with John,
her husband, Nikki the Dog, Stuart the Turtle, and Gibson the homeless
cat.
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CONTRIBUTORS
A G ATE 2 0 1 3
John Coleman
Ericka Ericson
Bob Fisher
Ian Gallagher
Marty Greenfield
Hope Hager
James Hammond
Samantha Howard
Ruth Hughes
Hye Jin Hwang
Jesse Ray Jacob
Markida John
Wanda K. Jones-Agans
Jared Loucks
Patricia May
Joseph W. McAnlis
Michael McKenna
Carrie Mellinger
Akira Odani
Kirby Olson
David Reed
Theresa Santaniello
Miriam A. Sharick
Elizabeth Steffen
Meghan Strube
Abby Wallace
Sandra Williams
Laura Ziemba