The BROGUE - Belhaven University

the BROGUE
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2008
VOLUME 8
the BROGUE
The Creative Arts Journal of Belhaven College
Editor
Andrew Hedglin
Associate Editors
Martha Krystaponis
Christina Miles
Art Editor
Adie Smith
Editorial Staff
Jennifer Beard
Ashlee Davidson
Mary Hallberg
Nicole Lewallen
Annabell Plush
Sarah Swenson
Rebecca Yantis
Kaitlin de Graffenried
Faculty Advisor
Dr. Randall Smith
Layout, Design & Printing
Bryant Butler
Harvey Dallas Printing & Graphics
Cover Artwork
The Harvest
(Glass, wood, aluminum)
Lee Cason
2008
Volume 8
THE BROGUE
Brogue
(brog), n.
1.
a marked accent, esp. Irish or Scottish, when speaking English: a sweet lilt of brogue
in her voice.
2.
any strong regional accent.
3.
a rough shoe of untanned leather, formerly worn in parts of Ireland and the Scottish
Highlands.
2
CONTENTS
Contents
From the Editor ....................................................................................................................5
Interview with Howard Bahr ....................................................................................... 81-82
The Brogue Awards for Highschool and Undergraduate ................................................143
Student Awards and Publications ............................................................................ 144-146
Contributor Biographies .......................................................................................... 147-149
Belhaven College Information ........................................................................................150
POETRY
Of Summer Rambles, Sarah Swenson ...................................................................................7
Peace, Tony Peacock ...........................................................................................................13
King’s Ransom, Brandon Whitlock ......................................................................................16
Poems About Everything Have Already Been Written, Stacy Nott ..................................17
Questions Unanswered, Kaelen Zirbel ................................................................................20
Cheap Thrills, Adie Smith ..................................................................................................21
Sour Isn’t Enough, Martha Krystaponis ..............................................................................28
Camaro, an Ode to My Past, Andrew Hedglin ...................................................................31
The Fishwife, Brandon Whitlock .........................................................................................39
Balboa Court, Jessica Bishop ...............................................................................................44
On a Half-pint of Belhaven’s Best, Addie Leak ..................................................................52
My Family Terrorist, Christina Miles ..................................................................................56
Postcard from July, Stacy Nott ............................................................................................57
Hooded, Martha Krystaponis ..............................................................................................65
April 4, New York, NY, Sarah Swenson ....................................................................... 68-69
The Holy Innocents, Howard Bahr ....................................................................................85
Pill Bottle of Memories, Rebecca Yantis..............................................................................86
Mariafel’s Fascination with Hands, Martha Krystaponis ....................................................87
I Heart You, Christina Miles ...............................................................................................90
Edinburgh, Addie Leak .....................................................................................................100
Jacob, Katie Shelt ..............................................................................................................101
Worn, Jessica Bishop .........................................................................................................104
Friendship 7, Andrew Hedglin ..........................................................................................112
Independence, Nicole Lewallen ........................................................................................119
Dear Witch, Christina Miles .............................................................................................120
Sophisticated Nonsense, Kaelen Zirbel.............................................................................126
Doctor/Patient, Lea Schumacher............................................................................... 129-130
Implications for a Silent Waiting Room, Adie Smith.......................................................134
Star Gazing, Christina Miles .............................................................................................137
FICTION
Past Ingénue, Brandon Whitlock ................................................................................... 10-11
Seeing Red, Lea Schumacher ........................................................................................ 23-27
The Valentino Dress, Mary Hallberg ............................................................................ 61-64
The Aviator, Howard Bahr ........................................................................................... 83-84
3
THE BROGUE
The Fisher Variable, Jerry Barlow ................................................................................ 91-98
Where Is Thy Sting? Sarah Swenson ........................................................................ 105-111
A Fife Fishery, Martha Krystaponis ........................................................................... 123-125
NONFICTION
Another African Night, Ashlee Davidson ............................................................................6
Squirrel Chasers, Stacy Nott............................................................................................. 8-9
My High-School Romance, Christina Miles ................................................................. 14-15
The Poor in Spirit, Sarah Swenson ............................................................................... 18-19
His Eye Is on the Sparrow, Brandon Whitlock .............................................................. 29-30
In the Summer When It Sizzles, Addie Leak ................................................................ 32-37
Success and Failure, Lydia Diers ................................................................................... 40-43
Tracing a Root to Lithuania, Martha Krystaponis ........................................................ 45-46
Can’t Keep It in a Camera, Andrew Hedglin ................................................................ 48-51
Ophidiophobia, Lea Schumacher .................................................................................. 53-55
Muscle Memory, Christina Miles .................................................................................. 59-60
Cleaning Closets, Adie Smith ....................................................................................... 66-67
Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season, Andrew Hedglin ......................................... 70-72
An Aphid Infestation, Lea Schumacher ....................................................................... 88-89
Picture Perfection, Christina Miles ........................................................................... 102-103
Birdsong, Addie Leak ................................................................................................ 113-117
A History of Ugly, Stacy Nott .................................................................................. 121-122
Good People, Andrew Hedglin .........................................................................................127
I Talk to Trumpeter Swans, Brandon Whitlock ......................................................... 131-133
Invisibility Cloak, Martha Krystaponis ..................................................................... 135-136
ARTWORK
Viaje Lluvia, Megan Prosper ...............................................................................................12
Aftermath, Danielle Temple ................................................................................................22
Dauphin Island Afternoon, Andrew Hedglin .....................................................................38
There was a boy…, Stephen Delatte ....................................................................................47
Untitled, Frances Faulk ......................................................................................................58
No Face Phase, Mia Ortiz...................................................................................................73
Michael, Tyler Tadlock ........................................................................................................74
The Web, Scott Gaines .......................................................................................................75
Eruption of Ego, Hosik Kim ................................................................................................76
Untitled, Tyler Tadlock .......................................................................................................77
Oak of Antin, Robby Piantanida .........................................................................................78
Going Home #1, Danielle Temple .......................................................................................79
Coffee Much, Scott Gaines .................................................................................................80
Detroit, Danielle Temple .....................................................................................................99
Untitled, Susannah Nelson ...............................................................................................118
Keys, Emily Faust..............................................................................................................128
HIGH-SCHOOL CONTEST WINNERS
Providence? Stephanie Oshrin (Poetry).............................................................................138
Bibu, Stella Nickerson (Fiction) ................................................................................ 139-140
The Jeep, Laney Owings (Nonfiction) ..................................................................... 141-142
4
FROM THE EDITOR
From the Editor
“Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun, it shines everywhere.”
–Feste, Twelfth Night (3.1.33-34), William Shakespeare
I must say, although I will doubtless encounter countless protestations from my
colleagues for saying so, that being a writer and being a fool—not unlike my friend Feste—
are not so different. The classic fools of Shakespearean theater had two purposes: the first
was to entertain. If this was not accomplished, all else would be for naught, as no one would
listen. The second, deeper purpose involved their keen and discerning eyes, commenting
on the world as best they saw it. They were called fools, so that if they revealed unpleasant
truth, their truth could be dismissed as folly. They, in the Shakespearean comedies, were
the keepers of perspective, both self-aware and aware of the folly in all others. A good writer
always seeks the most honest perspective they can find—and then makes it entertaining so
others will want to listen.
Not only in purpose, but also in medium do we writers share our craft with fools.
Feste, just lines before the above quote, had informed Viola that he was not his mistress’s
fool, but her “corrupter of words.” Corrupting, I believe, is a bit harsh for exactly what
writers do, and perhaps something could be lost in either the analogy or the centuries. But
the best writers, and especially poets, never lose their sense of playfulness with language.
They should choose their words carefully, both to express what they mean and express
meaning beyond their own grasp.
I say all this to put the above quote in the desired context. If foolery does “walk
about the orb like the sun,” I suggest that the act of writing does as well. The contributors
come to Belhaven College from every region of the United States—from Vermont to
New Mexico—and create a rich tapestry of backgrounds for us to explore and learn from.
We see the world and draw our observations, creating an awareness, which is the essence
of writing—and visual art, as well. We also acquire the voices of the place we are from
and which we travel to—which is why we call our journal The Brogue. Art is also an act
of communication, with the consumer’s participation as vital as the producers, so I hope
the contributors have vividly constructed for you, the reader, all corners of the globe:
Lithuania, Uganda, France—and our native soil of Mississippi.
I would also like to thank here faculty advisor and sensei Dr. Randy Smith, my two
wonderful and patient associate editors Martha Krystaponis and Christina Miles, the Art
Department in general but Adie Smith in particular, the wise and able Bryant Butler (for
his direction technically and thematically), and the rest of The Brogue’s staff for both fall
and spring semesters. Without any of these people The Brogue as it is would not be possible.
It has been an honor and humbling experience to edit Volume 8 of The Brogue.
Andrew Hedglin
Editor
5
THE BROGUE
Another African Night
Ashlee Davidson
If I could pick one thing that I miss about Uganda, it would be the nights. There are
nights that the sky is so clear it feels as if you can reach up, pull a star gently from her
setting, place her on your tongue, and feel the crackle and popping of her energy—tasting
her freedom and vitality. On those nights the moon is so bright that you can take a book
outside and read it without a lantern. I love the shape Uganda takes at night, the blurred
edges and deep shadows reminding me of paintings in the rococo period, sensual and
secretive.
But there are also nights of darkness so black that you
Hissing, clicking,
cannot see your hand in front of your face. On those nights, I
and buzzing, the
took refuge in my small brick house, a candle my only source
of light.
monster scurried
One dark night I sat writing, hunched over my small
across my desk.
desk. It was a quiet night—odd for the bush, where everything
comes alive after dark.
A sound alerted me, although it was hushed. It was impossible not to hear in the
stillness. I froze, my pen poised above the paper, my head cocked, and ears pricked. The
noise came again, louder this time. It was a buzzing sound, swiftly increasing in volume. I
glanced around the room; large shadows danced and skittered across the walls. My breath
was caught somewhere between my chest and throat, but I was still more curious than
frightened—until something fell from the air with a thud onto my journal.
The pent up air in my lungs released in a shriek, and I tipped my chair, crashing
backwards onto the floor, in my haste to move away. It was red and black, horned and
fierce, looking like it could eat me alive—it was a bug the size of a grown man’s fist. As I
scrambled to my feet, I grabbed not my book on African bugs, but my handy can of BOP:
bug killer extraordinaire.
I stood poised a safe distance away, a huntress waiting for her prey to take one false
step. Hissing, clicking, and buzzing, the monster scurried across my desk. I leapt forward,
squeezing the trigger of my aerosol can. I was unprepared for my prowess at hunting,
though. The gust of insecticide caught the flame of the candle and erupted into a ball of
fire that engulfed my intruder in seconds, leaving only its charred remains. I stood stunned
for several moments. Laughter swiftly followed astonishment, and I continued to erupt
into giggles as I cleaned up the mess.
Lizards in my bed, bats falling on my head, frogs in my basin, and now a monster
bug that I had accidentally barbequed. I shook my head and thanked God once again for
bringing me to this incredible place. It was, after all, just another African night.
6
OF SUMMER RAMBLES
Of Summer Rambles
Sarah Swenson
White feathers drift down rusty
sunbeams, buoyed by thick, dusty
air. They fall from the frightened pigeons
fleeing the yells we loose as we thrust
our heads and skinny shoulders through a rough,
wooden window in the side of this old skeleton
of a silo that we sneak up to: a tall cylinder usually sealed
to exclude air (except the thick, dusty sort) and used
for storing silage (or pigeons, as the case may be).
7
THE BROGUE
Squirrel Chasers
Stacy Nott
In Mississippi, the Eastern Gray Squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis, exists superfluously, a
peripheral scampering on any given day. Most people simply accept it as inevitable, going
through life oblivious to the squirrelish scuttlings up oaks that herald all passers-by. The
squirrel seems to get most attention from restless dogs and cats – and from similarly restless
people.
These people are always on the look-out for something to break the monotony of
their days. One moment they are lazily sprawled on a chair or engaged in enlightened
conversation. The next, a gray tail flirts from some tree or lawn, and they grow tense and
silent. They are the squirrel chasers.
The squirrel chasers I have encountered are boys in their late teens, college students
who require physical activity to balance and enhance their mental busyness. Their
squirrel-chasing propensity first manifested itself in a feline attentiveness to motions in the
trees; soon they were hurling apple cores and dinner rolls at the arboreal rodents, seldom
hitting—though usually successfully startling—the creatures. Startling from a distance
quickly lost its glamour; the boys’ fingers itched to feel fur, and mischievous minds ran rife
with the potential of live squirrels deposited indoors – in the cafeteria for instance.
*
*
*
Twirling his keys on a lanyard nearly as long and narrow as he is, squirrel chaser
Jonathan Eastman, a freshman at Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi, explained
the rationale behind squirrel chasing: “Well, it’s about tapping into our hunter-gatherer
roots.” The boys once tried using walkie-talkies to aid in the chase, but Jonathan said, “It
definitely didn’t work. We need to get back to our savage instincts.” He paused to reflect,
then nodded, affirming his own statement.
Curious to know how these “savage instincts” manifest themselves, I joined Jonathan
and his fellow chaser and Belhaven freshman Will McNeese on one of their hunts.
*
*
*
We walked to the park in the early afternoon, though Jonathan had told me before
that “morning is the best time for squirrels.” Still, I saw no lack of bushy tails as we
approached. Will led with a purposeful step, shoulders squared and thumbs hooked in the
straps of his backpack, which was adorned with a piece of duct tape and a name-tag sticker
beneath the embroidered “Achieving Compliance Together” logo. (I questioned whether
“compliance” is really the proper word for what we were achieving.) We deposited our bags
on a round concrete table in the scattered shade of a lichened live oak. Jonathan rolled up
his corduroy pants and removed his flip-flops. Will was already moving stealthily away from
the table, clutching his cell phone in one freckled hand. Several squirrels rooted busily on
the lawn, which stretched smooth and green under more massive oaks and pines.
I was left under Jonathan’s direction. Clapping his flip-flops together, he watched
Will attentively. Nods and hand motions passed between them—as Will said, “Constant
communication is vital in squirrel chasing.” They singled out a squirrel isolated from other
squirrels and at a distance from most of the trees. According to Will, “Squirrels work
together, so you have to catch the squirrel by itself.”
8
SQUIRREL CHASERS
In a mumbled sort of whisper, Jonathan directed me to stand behind the nearest oak
tree, while he skirted around to a tree on the far side of the squirrel. Will, his face firm with
determination, skulked behind a pine tree opposite me. The boys agreed his New Balance
shoes were best for their work “in acorn-infested ground.” As Jonathan walked away, he
gave me parting instructions: “When I get over there, you just start walking forward. Don’t
come out until I get there.” I waited obediently.
*
*
*
Will later explained, “The most important part of squirrel chasing is the set-up.” He
emphasized his point with a downward slice of his hand. “You have to outwit the squirrel
and cover every option. The more people you have the better.”
“That depends,” Jonathan interjected slowly. “They have to be smart people.”
“No stupid people,” Will nodded. “And you have to work together.”
“We’re cutting off options.” Jonathan paused, open-mouthed, to gaze fixedly at
nothing. “Cutting off options is the main thrust of our attack.”
*
*
*
“Cutting off options” means blocking all the trees the squirrel is likely to try to climb,
because as Will said, “You can never run as fast as a squirrel can climb.” So we positioned
ourselves at strategic trees around the squirrel. When Jonathan reached his position, he
stepped out from behind his tree, I stepped from behind mine, and Will stepped from
behind his. With deliberate steps, we advanced on the unsuspecting Sciurus carolinensis. It
was not unsuspecting for long: its nervous eye caught motion from Jonathan’s direction,
and it scurried towards my tree, only to discover me in its path. Desperately, it turned
toward Will’s tree, but was blocked that way too. It paused.
*
*
*
In Will’s words, “The great thing is when you can see the fear in the squirrel.”
Jonathan expounded, “When the squirrel stops, you know you’ve got him.”
Our squirrel did not stop for long, but began a frenzied dash for safety. Will and
Jonathan raced toward it. Will hurled a piece of brick, driving the rodent to Jonathan who
dove, narrowly missed squirrel, and ended up sitting on the ground. The squirrel retreated
up a pine behind him.
“That was awesome!” Jonathan grinned. “I almost had him, but my lanyard was
wrapped around my hand.”
*
*
*
As yet the boys have never actually caught a squirrel, but they are not discouraged.
“It’s about the thrill of the chase,” Jonathan stated.
“Yeah,” Will joined in, gazing profoundly into the distance, “the rationality of squirrels
is similar to the rationality of women; so chasing squirrels is like chasing women. Only less
dangerous.”
“When you chase squirrels, you might lose a couple of fingers,” Jonathan explained,
twirling his lanyard again, with all his fingers intact. “But when you chase women, you lose
your heart. And you have ten fingers, but only one heart.”
*
*
*
If their women-chasing methods are similar to those they employ in squirrel-chasing,
the boys are likely to lose their hearts.
9
THE BROGUE
Past Ingénue
Brandon Whitlock
The door unlocked and swung open as Phil escorted Marietta Marie
Swann into her apartment. He shut the door and fumbled for the
whirled at
light switch.
“Don’t worry about it; I’ll get a lamp,” Marietta said, feeling her him, sending
way beyond her coffee table. She flicked on a lamp and turned to
drops of
him. “Satisfied?” she asked, not smiling.
“Careful, Marie. Bitterness is the first step to playing the nurse,” red wine
Phil said, easing her down into an armchair. She stiffened and slipped
from his arms, stalking over to a hanging mirror, preening as Phil flying from
came up behind her.
the glass.
“Well, I think I have plenty reason to be bitter. Look at me. I’m
an old hag. I’m practically the nurse already.”
“You’re not a hag, Marie.” He gazed at her reflection. The black dress flattered her,
and she hid her wrinkles remarkably well, even though Phil knew where to look. Although
her age was progressing and her looks were gradually fading despite her frantic efforts to
maintain them, he could still see the beautiful young actress who stole the show as Cecily
so many years ago. “You’re beautiful.”
“Nice try, Phil, but unconvincing,” she said, turning away from the mirror and
retreating toward the minibar. “I am a hag. Did you know that I dye my hair now?”
“Yes.”
“I never dyed my hair. But anything is better than gray! A few more years, and I’ll be
checked into a nursing home for ancient actors.”
“You’re not ancient, Marie.”
“I am for an actress. If I were a man, I could play King Lear. Instead, all I can play is
Amanda Wingfield and Lady Bracknell!”
“There’s nothing wrong with Amanda Wingfield.”
“All right, I’ll grant you that. But to be stuck with Lady Bracknell after I’ve played
Cecily is pathetic.” She poured herself a glass of red wine. “You want anything?”
“No,” Phil said, settling onto the arm of her couch. “You’re just drinking wine in self
pity. If you wanted to toast your excellent performance…” Marie whirled at him, sending
drops of red wine flying from the glass.
“Excellent? My excellent performance? My performance was terrible! This is my
second time to play Beatrice, and she’s exactly the same as the first! It’s the same production
I did ten years ago, only now I have to put on five more pounds of makeup to fill in the
wrinkles. This is a rut, Phil.”
“Yes, but no one’s ever made a rut look so good,” Phil said, smiling. Marietta scowled
at him and turned away. “Honestly, Marie… nothing is as bleak as it seems. Soon you’ll
have a small red headed child show up and sing you an encouraging song.”
“I thought you said things wouldn’t be bleak.”
“They won’t be.”
“They will be if some brat sings me that song.”
“You can pretend all you want, Marie, but I know that deep inside, you’re just dying to
10
PA S T I N G É N U E
be cheered up.” Phil rose and started toward the door. “Have fun stewing in your bitterness,
dear.”
“Phil…” she said. He stopped and turned around. Marietta stood, leaning against the
couch, wine glass resting lightly on her fingers, intently locking her eyes on Phil’s. “Why
do you always leave?”
“Marietta, please don’t.”
“Stay, Phil. Stay here,” she said, stepping forward and letting her hand slide along the
couch, the ends of her lips curved up. “What have you got to rush off to?”
“Work,” he replied, unmoving. She stood in front of him, and he could feel her breath,
her warmth.
“I’m sure it can all wait until tomorrow. Stay here. I’ll pour you a glass.” She raised one
eyebrow.
Phil grabbed her shoulders and set her down in an armchair, then took her glass.
Marietta folded her arms, crossed her legs, turned away, and frowned. Ignoring her, Phil
returned the wine glass to the minibar and faced her again, hands in his pockets.
“I’m sorry, Marie. Not tonight.”
“Why? Am I that unappealing?”
“You know you’re not.”
“Is it still her?” She stared at him. He said nothing. “Someday, Phil… someday you
have to forget and move on. I just hope for your sake it isn’t too late.”
“If you’re so worried, maybe you should move on.”
“I’m worried about it being too late for you.” She rose, smoothing out her skirt. “Do
you want to stay and talk? Play cards?”
“I have work to do, Marie.”
“I know,” she said, adjusting a ring, “you always do.” Phil walked toward the door and
opened it as Marietta strode back to her wine glass. Halfway through the doorway, Phil
stopped and looked back.
“I’ll… I’ll see you at the theater tomorrow?”
“Possibly. If I go. But you never know. Anything could happen,” she said, smiling over
her shoulder at him.
Phil’s eyes stayed fixed on Marietta after she had turned away. His mouth opened,
then shut again, and he ran his fingers through the graying temples of his hair.
“You’ll be great in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Marie.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“Goodbye.” Phil shut the door behind him. After a few seconds, he made his way back
out of the building to his car, and then drove off to his own apartment, where he stared at
the papers from his briefcase until he gave up and played solitaire.
11
THE BROGUE
Viaje Lluvia (pencil drawing)
Megan Prosper
12
PEACE
Peace
Tony Peacock
I.
As though Atlas had been given the sun as well
A boy of six dreams deeply,
Tuckered out from all the fuss and
Still in the suit from his aunt’s wedding.
He naps away, a feather on his cheek
Like that of a guardian angel,
The child’s slumber unwavering.
II.
His mother, leaving the party,
Searches for her little boy
Long absent from the festivities.
She finds him in the sitting room
Making slumber, the afternoon sun
Bathing the room in orange.
Satisfied, she leaves the door ajar
And returns to the party.
III.
A small black puppy
In its first year
Noses its way toward the open door,
Behind which his master lies.
Although tiny and fat,
The pup leaps upon the sofa
And soon finds a comfortable spot,
Happy to join in his master’s dozing.
They dream quite apart from the world.
13
THE BROGUE
My High-School Romance
Christina Miles
I went to a very strange youth group, very conservative and very energetic. It originated
at a different church and moved to mine while I was in the fourth or fifth grade. Dating
was discouraged, and for the longest time I thought courting was the only option. Books
like I Kissed Dating Goodbye and Boy Meets Girl were tossed around like candy. It took years
for me to understand that talking to strange boy isn’t necessarily flirting and flirting isn’t a
sin. By the time I reached ninth grade, I became much bolder. Not only would I wear tank
tops and two pieces, but I actually got to know some guys whom I hadn’t always known. In
high school, I got engaged.
*
*
*
His name is Daniel Bueller. He proposed—or I did (I don’t remember which)—in
June of 2004. I was just seventeen and freshly out of the eleventh grade. Daniel and I have
been friends since the sixth grade. We knew each other through those awkward middle
school phases, youth camps, mission trips, and the other normal idiocies of life. He was my
only high-school romance.
Danny and I had an unusual relationship. His older brother, Dave, was engaged to
my older sister, Hope. We had been observing their flourishing romance for five years, and
were not surprised when Dave finally popped the question. The Buellers actually had a
pool going, for a dollar you could bet on which day he would propose. Vicky Ma, Daniel’s
mom, won.
We liked to say that they got engaged because of us. Daniel had been relentlessly
teasing Dave about Hope; I had been mercilessly questioning Hope about Dave. When
Hope started her junior year of college, Danny’s brother Dustin joined the attack. By
December, Dave had had enough, and they actually started courting. After three months
of courting, they were engaged.
Danny and I watched, like poor Dr. Frankenstein, as the monster we had created
began to wreak havoc. They spent long hours cuddling and whispering into each other’s
ears. Hope called Dave ten seconds after he left, missing him already. Dave saved every
flower that she gave him (including weeds, clovers, and the ones from the tree outside his
house). They would put puzzles together and pass each other pieces, pausing meaningfully
when their hands touched. Dave often dragged Danny to our house with him; he and I
were subjected to the annoying nuzzling that ensued. It was cute for the first week; we had,
after all, been egging them into this for months. But very quickly their sweetness escalated
to a horrifying level.
“Mangled. I feel so…mangled…every time they are together.”
“Yeah. They are so chunky-eyed it’s amazing they can still function.”
Chunky-eyed is the way one cartoon character gets when they see another character
they are attracted to. Their eyes get real big (usually taking the shape of a heart) and pop
out of their heads. The Buellers coined this term long before Hope and Dave were “Hope
and Dave.” But I have never met anyone who fit the description better. They mangled us
for a year and were then married.
*
*
*
Danny and I got engaged one month after they did. Our relationship started with
barbeque sauce. In the summer of 2004, our youth group was taking a missions trip to
14
MY HIGH-SCHOOL ROMANCE
Peru. It was my second trip, but Danny’s first. We had missions team meetings twice a
week since January and after the meetings Dave and Danny would come over for food,
movies, or to just hang out. Every other weekend we would all participate in a fundraiser.
One Saturday our scheduled fundraiser was “Walk for Peru.” We got sponsors and walked
around Clearwater Beach wearing matching t-shirts and singing praise and worship songs,
I still can’t figure out why walking around Clearwater was sponsor worthy. Every year the
Peru team did this and every time I got sunburnt. After four hours of walking, we stopped
and went for lunch.
We went for chicken, and the twenty team members scattered to various tables. I
sat at one with Danny, my brother, and our friend Gustin. There was a long-standing
club in our youth group, which Daniel’s sister, Deanna, had started. The entire premise
of the group was based around the idea that Gustin and I would get married in about ten
years. Gustin was, of course, oblivious to its existence, and I was constantly teased about
it. A similar group had developed at his school, but they mainly discussed the number
of children we would have and the time of year of our wedding. Danny, for some reason
unfathomable to me, enjoyed pushing the issue whenever he could. This Saturday was no
different. After we finished our chicken and long before our youth leader was done telling
his tablemates how the “Walk for Peru” seems more like “Walk to Peru,” Danny began
teasing. He hinted, he nudged, he made obscure references, all so that Gustin would be
confused and I would get annoyed. Finally he pushed himself across the table and began
the cycle again, two inches from my face.
Unfortunately for him, he didn’t realize that I had a half-inch plastic tub of barbeque
sauce left over from my chicken nuggets. Almost without considering the consequences, I
shoved it into his nose.
We got engaged later that day, after he used up an entire box of tissues and continually
asked if something smelled weird to me, too. “Do you realize,” I began, “that soon I’ll be
your sister-in-law…sort of?”
“Yeah, that’ll be great. Instead of getting one crazy aunt, my kids will have three. But
it’ll only be sort of.”
“Yeah … hey … if you and I get married, Hope will be my sister-in-law.”
“Yeah, and Robby can be your brother-in-law.”
“Oh, oh, and … in effect, I can be my own sister-in-law, and you can be your brotherin-law.” That was all the convincing he needed. We were engaged. Danny and I had
thought it through thoroughly. The marriage had to take place before December 20th. That
was my birthday, and I would be eighteen. If I turned eighteen first we would have to wait
a year for him to do so also, because I would not be a cradle robber. And if we waited for
that then Hope and Dave would beat us to the altar, and we would be copycats. Neither
scenario was good. “December 20th or bust” is what we said whenever anyone asked if we
were serious.
*
*
*
We went to Peru and continued the farce when school picked up again. He was home
schooled, but taking classes at the local college. One of my friends was in a calculus class
with him, and we made him carry notes back and forth. By December, we had gotten used
to calling each other “my fiancé” and “hunnyface.” My birthday, however, brought my first
break up. He gave me a candy cane and a tub of barbeque sauce taped to a note that said, “I
guess we busted.” There were no hard feelings. I knew, after all, that high-school romances
rarely last.
15
THE BROGUE
King’s Ransom
Brandon Whitlock
I have my daughter sleep under a spell
in hopes that he will vanish, but instead,
he kisses her awake. I make her bed,
blockade her in a dragon-guarded hell
that none would dare go near, but then the fell
behemoth falls to that same fiend I dread.
Armed last with hill of glass that none can tread
upon, I shield the jewel I will not sell.
These stories, though, can never be denied,
regardless of my vain attempts. The pair
now stand before me, sighing side by side,
caressing, holding hands—yet still I glare
resentfully at he who takes as bride
the Galatea I lament to share.
16
P O E M S A B O U T E V E R Y T H I N G H AV E A L R E A D Y B E E N W R I T T E N
Poems about everything have
already been written
And there is nothing new
under the sun which saw
Solomon fail to find
anything fresh.
Yet even he
wrote books to say
what had been said before.
I am not the first
to seal my life in cardboard
and give a loved place
one last look, to never
see it quite that way
again. The queen
of Sheba, even, could not
return to her land
unchanged.
There is no remembrance of former things
except what has been written,
Nor will there be any
remembrance of later things;
yet we write
to be among those who come after.
*Italicized portions from the first chapter of Ecclesiastes.
17
Stacy Nott
THE BROGUE
The Poor in Spirit
Sarah Swenson
When I was little I always thought that running away would be fun, an incredible
adventure. I tried it once. I made it to my neighbor’s yard, but then the fear of the strange
and the unknown overcame me and I went home crying.
There’s an element of hope in running away, hope that somewhere out there something
fantastic is waiting to happen to you. That fascinates me. I think we have this hope built
into us, a hope that things can always change for the best. One October my best friend
Karis and I were stuck in a rut. We were sure that a change of scenery was the solution,
so one Sunday we left without telling anyone and headed down to New Orleans and the
coast. It was an adventure, creeping through the church parking lot after Sunday School
and driving off with the windows down and the music cranked. The sun was shining. It
was gorgeous. We didn’t really know what we were going to do in New Orleans, except
that our first stop would be the Café du Monde to enjoy beignets, café au lait, and some
much-needed conversation.
We found the Café and got a table on an open-air patio. The
That was
beignets were delicious. The coffee was not. Everything—floor,
tables, chairs, napkin dispensers—was covered in a sticky layer of funny, I told
powdered sugar. I wondered vaguely if they simply hosed it all down
myself. We
at night. A jazz band playing on the street corner outside made
conversation difficult. I kept reminding myself jazz was cool, it was were having
cultural, and that I was enjoying it. The three old men sitting at
fun. This was
the small table next to us seemed comfortably like regulars. They
probably met here every Sunday afternoon. They were all holding an adventure.
newspapers and reading bits to each other in rapid French.
“That is so cool!” I whispered to Karis over my coffee cup, nodding to their table.
“What?” she asked, leaning forward.
The jazz band started their song over again. “Listen to them talking,” I said, “it’s so
cool!”
She frowned. “Huh?” I gave up.
We wandered through the French Quarter for a long while, trying to look like we
had some sort of destination but really we were just walking in circles. The sidewalks were
crowded and Karis picked a new, quieter street to explore. On our right were stores with
stylish mannequins or stacks of new books or jeweler’s cases on display in the windows. On
our left was a lush garden-park enclosed by a tall wrought iron fence. Through the trees
and greenery we could see the white roof of an elegant cathedral.
“Look,” she said, “there’s an old church. Let’s walk down there.”
There was plenty to see and we took our time. Artwork hung on the wrought iron
fence, ranging from pretty paintings of flowering balconies overhanging busy streets to
ridiculous caricatures you could have done while you wait. All the while the church before
us grew larger and larger, three white spires springing up behind the park.
The street opened into a spacious square with the church standing tall and solid and
somber at one end, casting its shadow over everything. St. Louis Cathedral, read a sign on
18
THE POOR IN SPIRIT
the large front doors. They were closed. Just in front of them was a small table.
Two women sat there in green folding lawn chairs. They seemed so strange and out
of place. Taped to the back of the chair closest to us was a poorly-made cardboard sign. It
said, “Miss Rosie’s Tarot Readings, Best Mystic in New Orleans!” Miss Rosie was pouring
over the cards, laying them out and muttering to herself. Another woman sat and watched
the process intently. Her face was hollow and gaunt. She was twisting the scraggly ends of
her long bright red hair in her thin fingers. There was a baby in a stroller next to her. The
baby was fussy. I was the only one who seemed to notice.
I wanted to speak, to tell them that they were trusting in an empty lie; but I was afraid.
The words burned in my stomach. I suddenly realized that I was walking too slowly. I hung
my head and hurried past and tried to think of other things. Everyone back at school was
oblivious of our escape. That was funny, I told myself. We were having fun. This was an
adventure.
It didn’t feel like an adventure to me. It felt too much like real life, as though in
escaping our own rut we had stumbled into someone else’s. I glanced back to see the card
table one more time, see the wailing baby and its mother. Her shoulders were hunched. St.
Louis’ towered over her.
More tarot readers were set up in the square. They were all women, facing the church
and shuffling cards and staring people down as they passed. Karis was walking so fast. I
could barely keep up.
“Sit down, girls,” said a small dark-haired woman sitting on a stool. She shuffled
her brightly colored deck. She couldn’t be much older than we were. “Want to see your
cards?”
All I wanted was to run away.
19
THE BROGUE
Questions Unanswered
Hollow-eyed maiden, walking alone,
where have you wandered;
what things have you done?
What sights have you seen that have made you so weary?
She silently passed and left me to stand—
unheeding, unwilling to answer my query.
20
Kaelen Zirbel
CHEAP THRILLS
Cheap Thrills
Adie Smith
A red mausoleum to addictions
sequestered in a desert lot
boasts: “Cigarettes & Tobacco: Cheapest in Town!!”
The blister-shod waitress,
seeking a filtered fix,
chooses her poison behind:
plastic, cardboard, foil, skeletal papers.
Marlboro Reds turn her cowboy,
her fantasies wrapped in paper:
bushwhacking redskins and
shooting-up tumbleweed towns.
Cinders leak from beneath the broken spine,
her ignis fatuus extinguished and
curled in a shallow grave of asphalt.
21
THE BROGUE
Aftermath (photography)
Danielle Temple
22
SEEING RED
Seeing Red
Lea Schumacher
The Holiday Inn was thirty miles east of San Antonio. It was three stories tall with a
whirlpool, an outdoor pool, laundry facilities, and a continental breakfast. It was affordable,
but predictable. No cockroaches in the coffee or any unpleasantness like that. It was just
a place to stay.
The girl at the front desk looked blankly at Baldwin
It was affordable,
and directed him to the elevator through the door on his
but predictable.
right. Room 325. She chewed her fingernail as he crossed
the lobby.
No cockroaches in
Baldwin was pleased with the hotel room. It was clean,
the coffee or any
comfortable, spacious. It had a balcony that overlooked
the pool. It had a large TV and an unstained carpet. Little
unpleasantness
things, but those were the things that mattered most. He
like that. It was just
carefully placed his black suitcase on the floor in front of
a place to stay.
the queen-sized bed.
“This is it?” Patricia stood in the doorway, her
eyebrows wrinkled. “I thought you were getting something a little nicer. More luxurious.”
Something tightened in his stomach. “What’s wrong with it?”
She dropped her suitcase where she stood, just inside the door. “I didn’t say that
anything’s wrong with it. I just thought it was going to be nicer.”
“Put it here, Patsy.” She always threw her things everywhere, not noticing how it
annoyed him.
“Oh god, don’t call me that. I told you – “
He apologized hastily and moved her suitcase next to his. She walked to the window
and looked out. “God, that pool is huge. Let’s go swimming!” She walked onto the balcony.
Her red dress clung to her in the wind, her hair streamed back. “Joseph!”
“What is it?” He was already fiddling with the coffee maker. His hands were trembling
– caffeine withdrawal, he was sure. He knew he shouldn’t drink coffee so late after dinner,
but he hated when his hands shook.
“Joseph, come here! I see the cutest dog!”
He glanced out the window at the little dachshund cavorting around the edge of the
pool, cleverly eluding its frustrated owner.
“That’s the kind of dog I want, you know,” she called. “But you will never let me have
it.”
“You know I’m allergic. Especially to dogs.”
“You are not allergic.” She came and stood behind him. “Remember when we went
to Grace’s and she had that shaggy little dog? I think it was…what was it? A Pekinese?
Anyway, it left hair all over the couch and you didn’t sneeze at all.”
“I am allergic.” He took a whiff of the packaged coffee. Terrible. “They make my eyes
water. I hated that little dog, yapping everywhere.”
“Oh, you are so frustrating!”
He looked at her.
23
THE BROGUE
“Sometimes,” and she pulled at her bottom lip, “I wonder why I am with this old man.
This old man who doesn’t understand me, who doesn’t even care about things that matter
to me, this terrible old man.” Her eyes fluttered down, then back up at him.
“Don’t start.” He grabbed her shoulders and held her, feeling the force of iron in his
hands. His tongue tasted bitterness like bile. “I don’t want to talk about this.” Her eyes
were wide and empty, and she struggled against him.
“Your nails are hurting me!”
He let go. She flounced to the other side of the room and flicked on the television.
“Aren’t you tired?” he asked. “I know I am.”
She didn’t look at him, but she slipped out of her dress and let it flop around her shoes.
“Then go to bed. I’m not tired yet.”
“Patricia, be reasonable. We’ve been driving all day.”
She shook her head. “Joseph, leave me alone.”
He shrugged and went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. He wondered if she cared
that she had angered him. He often held himself tightly in her presence, but sometimes
he could feel his control slipping. He watched himself in the mirror as he sloshed water
around his mouth. His mouth was heavy at the corners, pulled like a sagging pouch. His
eyes were dimmed and watery. Years of poring over finances in a dingy office would do that
to anyone’s eyes. He was bored, and his eyes bothered him, so he took constant vacation
trips. At first he went alone, but then she started to come along. He spat. She was probably
waiting for him, waiting to say she was sorry, waiting to fold her body into his arms.
When he came out of the bathroom, she was in her slip, rubbing lotion on her face. “I
guess I’ll go to bed if you really are.” There were dark smudges under her eyes, and her lips
were pale. She climbed in with him and let him stroke her hair. It was tangled and dark,
almost black, startling in contrast to her pale, freckled face. But it was soft, and sometimes
it curled around her forehead. He could feel her body relax. He lay with his hand behind
his head, watching her sleep.
They met three years ago, at Hallee’s Pub. She was twenty-four, he had just turned
fifty. He remembered the night she first brought him to her apartment. She cooked linguine
with a salmon cream sauce and served champagne. A frivolous touch, one that he did not
forget for many nights after, even the nights she lay in his arms and slept. Tonight she
did not lie in his arms. Her mouth was slightly open, and she smelled like coconut face
cream. Her peach satin robe was rumpled and thrown at the foot of the bed. He could
not remember a night she hadn’t worn it. Even when she was sick, she wrapped that robe
around herself and shivered.
But she was too slippery, too hard to hold between his hands. He didn’t find things
like her way of laughing when he poured his cereal into a bowl of milk amusing. He
explained to her how much he hated soggy cheerios, how much he hated the soft grit
between his teeth, how he only ate a small amount to keep it from getting soggy; explained
it quite seriously because it was important to him. She still laughed. Her way of smiling at
every man who looked her direction. A smile that wandered slowly across her face until it
suddenly lit the depths of her painfully blue eyes. A smile that made his heart clog in the
back of his throat. When she directed it at him, anyway. And the thinness of her wrists,
fragile, bird bones encased in smooth, pale skin. He wondered sometimes at the fragility of
her bones. It would be so easy to smash her, to snap those bones in half.
Her profile was rigid against the ribbon of moonlight that came from the window.
24
SEEING RED
The moon had wiped away the freckles from her face. It was smooth and pale. He kissed
her cheek and closed his eyes. He felt a flickering in his chest, almost a throbbing. He
counted his pulse for several minutes and breathed deeply until exhaustion overtook him.
When he rolled to his side, she sat up. “Joseph?”
He grunted.
“What time is it?”
“Late.”
“I want to swim.”
“Patricia, what are you talking about?”
“I’m going for a swim.”
She flicked on the light, and he blinked in its ferocity as she rummaged for her bathing
suit. He could hear her breathing, panting, and every now and then she sucked a breath in
quickly, like a slight gasp. She finally found her suit, garish with red hibiscus on a crimson
background. She pulled it on. “I’ll be back.” She didn’t look at him.
He glanced at the clock. 12:07. His head pounded, and he switched out the light
again. He tossed around on his bed. He could see a shape forming in the back of his mind:
gray, bestial, fuming flames, howling in the darkness. He felt as if thick chains had bound
his wrists to the bed, and the shape towered over him and lunged and screamed at his
helplessness. He started awake, got up and found his pack of cigarettes in his pants pocket.
The night air was warm through the open window.
Baldwin stood on the balcony and lit a cigarette. The lights of the city were a bright
smear to his left. The balcony was in a shadow, hidden in the glow of the pool lights below
him. He could see Patricia’s body floating on the surface of the water. Every now and then
she moved her arms slowly above her head, as if she was trying to fly. In the deceiving
shadows of artificial light, her crimson bathing suit lost all pretenses of a pattern. She was
merely smooth and red.
He looked up. A single star was visible in the hazy sky. It hovered between the roofs
of nearby buildings. The roofs met at points like a triangle above his head. Far off, over the
city, the moon hung like an orange Chinese lantern. Purple clouds obscured one corner.
He wondered if she could see the star suspended above her red, floating body. To him,
the star was waiting to fall into the warmth of the water; waiting to meet its reflection face
to face. She was floating on her back. Perhaps she, too, was waiting for it to fall into her
open, limp arms.
He flicked ashes over the edge of the balcony. The ashes danced for a few seconds
as they fell, little sparks of orange in the darkness. The air hung heavily and smelled like
smoke and chlorine, with hints of moist leaves mixed in. When he was young, he loved
the smell of chlorine. He would sit for hours next to the neighborhood pool, reading and
watching everyone swim. He never swam himself. He was afraid of deep water since he
was eight, wading alone in a lake in Minnesota, watching the little fish float by, slim and
shimmering. When he lost his footing and fell, no one even saw that he was gone. He
struggled and felt his lungs burn and scream until his blessed eruption to the surface. To
him, fear tasted like water.
His body ached. Alone in the room again, he paced in front of the bed, still smoking.
What was taking her so long? The rumpled white sheets looked like peaks of meringue
in the stark moonlight. She would wonder why he didn’t turn on a light; why he was not
asleep yet. She would ask when she came in.
25
THE BROGUE
The night was long and heavy. He hated the night,
Her profile was
hated the sounds and smells, the false peace. He was so
rigid against
tired. He sat in the armchair and held his throbbing head.
He should have had some coffee. Or a beer.
the ribbon of
Suddenly he could hear her fumbling on the other side
moonlight that
of the door with her key card. She could never make it work
properly, and he always ended up opening the door for her.
came from the
He started over to the door when she burst in, wrapped in a
window. The
white hotel towel. Her hair was plastered against her back.
She stood in front of the full-length mirror and wrung her
moon had wiped
hair out, letting the water stream onto the floor.
away the freckles
“Patricia. You’ll leave a wet spot.”
from her face.
She did not answer him. It was too dark to see the
expression on her face. The moon through the window
made her skin seem even paler, erasing the constellations of freckles from her back. “I’m
hungry.”
“Because you ate nothing at dinner. Didn’t I tell you–”
Suddenly she threw the towel violently onto the floor and followed it, just as violently,
with her bathing suit. “Get me something. Get me…” She stood, contemplating. Naked,
and in the dark, she seemed even smaller, like a white round animal. There was something
feral in the way she stood, her shoulders hunched, her head tilted to the side. Her eyes
were black holes in her white skin. “Get me a chicken sub.”
“No, Patricia, I’m going to bed.”
But her voice continued on, ignoring him. “The one with the onion sauce. Spicy, I
want it really spicy. Make sure they put extra onions on it, too. Last time I went to Subway
they didn’t put onions on it and it just isn’t real without onions.” She flopped suddenly on
the carpet, rubbing her eyes. “Oh God, I am so tired.”
“Patricia…”
She looked up at him and smiled, a wide black grin in the darkness.
He looked back at her, clenched his fists and breathed to ease the knot in his stomach.
Then he fumbled in his pocket for his keys and left her sprawled on the floor.
The front desk girl gave him the same blank stare as he walked into the lobby. He could
imagine her gossiping to her friends, imagine her laughing at his scuffed shoes, perhaps. At
his hang-dog look. He tried to straighten his shoulders and smooth his thinning threads
of hair across his forehead. He gave her what felt like a ghastly smile. She smirked and
twisted her hair, then jumped when the phone rang. He left.
In his ’92 Ford Taurus, he fiddled with the radio and tried to keep his hands from
shaking. This was like her. She would be sitting up there, now, watching a crime show,
wearing the peach satin robe. She would be alone in the night breeze, tired after her
midnight swim. And here he was, taking the back roads to Subway. For this woman. For
someone he hardly knew. For Patricia. The thought of her sitting there, frozen in time,
frozen in her own mind, almost made him choke. Years of being wrapped in her had
brought him to this, driving through Texas at 1:00 a.m. Spinning through time, through
exhaustion, for her.
Suddenly he felt thick and hot all over, as if an explosion had gone off in the back of
his head. He could not stop his palms from sweating. They were sticking to the steering
26
SEEING RED
wheel as he floored the car through red lights and desolate intersections. He turned the
dial on the radio as far he could to the right, blasting sports news into his ear. He wanted
to vomit.
He was driving in a blur, past broken, abandoned buildings, garbage, the refuse of a
city. He passed a cross standing crookedly in a clump of grass, a forgotten tribute from an
unknown time. Something ran under his wheels. He didn’t see it, but he felt the bump. As
if he had run over a log. And a scream, but it could have been the squealing of the brakes.
In his rear-view mirror, he saw the still, dark lump on the pavement, two eyes reflecting in
his backlights. He slowed. No one was around; no street lights shone. He pulled over.
There was a flashlight under the passenger seat. Patricia had left it there one night
after a camping trip. He flicked it on, testing it. The light was dim and yellow. He hesitated,
then tentatively opened the car door. He couldn’t see the thing from where he stood. It
was several paces behind him. Coarse grass grew in patches along the pavement, thick
and sharp. Broken glass and pebbles were strewn near his feet. Above him, the stars were
scattered in clumps across the night sky, mixed with swaths of clouds. He didn’t turn the
flashlight on at first, just stood and looked at the sky. The moon was hidden now. The
city lights were still visible, still blinking and flashing frantically, desperately calling for
attention.
He walked furtively on the side of the road, watching for any sign of life. He was
ashamed of the goose bumps on his arms, reminded of the time when, as a boy, he sneaked
out of a gas station with a stolen chocolate bar. But this was no petty theft. He just wanted
to look at what he had done.
The yellow flashlight reflected iridescently into the open, staring eyes. The mouth
was open: snarling, or maybe crying; he couldn’t tell. Black lips curled back. It was a
coyote, the biggest one he had ever seen. Its neck was twisted, almost dismembered from
its body. And there was blood, black in the darkness, crimson in the yellow light, matted
into the coarse gray fur. A raw hole was punched into its side. He was fascinated by the
blood, rich and thick and still warm to his curious fingers. He half-expected the coyote to
jump up and lunge its bared fangs into his hand. The coyote’s paws were still, halted midrun, resting limply on the black pavement. Baldwin crouched low, staring at the wound; at
the pathetic, distorted neck; at the angry, dead eyes.
Dead. How ridiculous. Funny, almost. Without knowing why, he began to laugh. It
started low, almost in his stomach, and then he could feel laughter mixing with the shivers
that ran all up his arms. He just crouched there and laughed, wiping tears from his eyes at
last. He still had blood on his fingers. It had dried now, and in the yellow light, it looked
almost like rust. The coyote did not move. He kicked it a few times, just to make sure it
wouldn’t move again. Then he walked back to his car.
27
THE BROGUE
Sour Isn’t Enough
Martha Krystaponis
My teeth pierce the fuzzed skin
of a sour Mexican plum. The juice
drips from the corner of my lips – quick, catch
on the back of your hand. The saleswoman
watches, head bobs, and she thrusts
another pungent plum into my hand.
I pry a Jersey clam from its silvery shell,
pouring vinegary cocktail sauce to cover
the boiled creature. My mouth is filled
with the taste of sea, the tang of lemon
and Tabasco blending—as if I was some
mermaid chef under white-capped waves.
Crimson Scottish wine sloshes in the glass
that my palm bowls beneath.
My nostrils inhale the sharp smell
as it burns an acidic path
down my throat. A century of fermentation
has made it sour—but smooth.
My great-grandma’s arthritic fingers cut through
a lemon icebox pie one winter day,
the hollow meringue crisped. The sour hurt
my jaw, but I took another bite. She never
left her southern states or tasted spinach
until she was eighty years old.
28
H I S E Y E I S O N T H E S PA R R OW
His Eye Is on the Sparrow
Brandon Whitlock
Preoccupation with work and plain forgetfulness caused me to
The funny
miss Sunday night supper once again. Personally, I attribute it more
to the fact that the dining hall closes at 6:00 on the weekends than
thing about
any oversight of my own. So, out of hunger and a lack of resources,
sparrows
I was forced to leave the sanctuary of my dorm room, venture off
is their
campus, and buy a meal.
Eating alone always puts me in a contemplative mood.
complete
Understandably, since there’s nothing to distract my mind from
lack of
wandering aimlessly across hitherto uncharted territory. And I
typically remain in the mood until something abrasive jerks me into
anything
the dull, distracting real world and my mind has to trudge along the
special.
well worn pathways of habit, anxiety, future, to-do lists, and the
things that make up real life.
Not only was I eating alone, but I was eating out alone. And eating out alone has an
added bonus that doesn’t really make sense. But I’m not one to look gift bonuses in the b,
so I take it when I get it. When I eat out alone, I always feel closer to God. Nothing like a
combo meal at Wendy’s for some divine inspiration. But I think it’s something to do with
the date mentality. My sister once interned at a church in Colorado, and she told me of a
night where she and the girls of the youth group all got dressed up, went out to eat and to
a movie, and called it a date with God.
It stuck. The idea that we are the bride of Christ and that we can go on dates with
Him really appealed to me. So from then on, every time I went out alone, I called it a date
with God and tried to focus on Him. This was a date. A spur of the moment, impulsive,
quick date to Wendy’s. I know, God deserves better…but He’s dating a college student,
and He understands.
This wasn’t one of our happiest dates. I was somewhat melancholy, as several friends
were all going through difficult times that I couldn’t help with, which caused a difficult
time for me that was entirely my fault. And I couldn’t seem to help with mine, either,
which only made it worse. And I was mentally and spiritually venting to God, and He
listened with the same rapt attention He always gives me.
I drove back to campus after I finished, primarily because it’s not socially acceptable
to hang around in fast food restaurants too long after your meal is done, and I feared I had
already pushed society enough by having an invisible companion. Since I was in no hurry
to return, though, I took some extra turns and milled about in the historical district that
surrounds campus. Finally, I spouted off my ID number to the security guard and drove
around to my parking lot. I saw a spot that looked decent, so I drove up to it and was about
to pull in. Then I saw it.
A sparrow, recently returned from its winter lodgings. It hopped about in the middle
of the spot, pecking away at things I couldn’t see, bobbing away at its toil, for all the world
like a little feathered housewife sweeping away at the kitchen because company’s coming.
The feathers were brown all over, and it was absolutely nothing special.
29
THE BROGUE
I hesitated. Not because I thought I’d kill it, since I knew perfectly well that it would
fly away when my car approached. Unlike humans and other higher life forms, birds are
intelligent enough to try not to get too close to cars. So I would’ve parked there, but it
looked so happy. There it was, hopping around, fulfilling a very basic function. The search
for food, or possibly material for a nest, or whatever else sparrows do. I couldn’t hear it. I
didn’t meet its eye. I just watched from behind glass as it lived its life.
And I couldn’t bring myself to disrupt its happy search. True, it wouldn’t be offended,
sue me, or send an angry e-mail full of strong language, exclamation points, and capital
letters. It wouldn’t nurse years of bitterness and resentment and have to go to therapy
sessions every Thursday until it’s 45. The sparrow would merely go on with its life,
continue its search somewhere else, and probably not dwell on the incident at all. As it
is, it probably never even noticed I was there. Jesus said that God took care of the birds
of the air in order to show people that God would provide for them. The other way that
metaphor works is because the birds never worry.
The funny thing about sparrows is their complete lack of anything special. They’re
just these tiny, plain, brown birds that there are entire flocks of, kind of like the parts of
Lucky Charms that aren’t the marshmallows. No one eats Lucky Charms for the parts that
aren’t marshmallows. Surely no one would miss just one tiny sparrow. Surely it doesn’t
affect the grand scheme of things if one is disturbed. There were other, bigger, brighter
birds nearby. Why focus on this one tiny, insignificant sparrow?
I didn’t park there. I drove a few yards further and parked in a different, less convenient
spot. The sparrow was free to jump and peck as it liked, and my car didn’t even ruffle its
feathers as I drove by. And I knew that it would probably fly away as soon as I turned my
back, and all my avoidance and care would be for naught. But that didn’t matter.
All that mattered was that I hadn’t disturbed the sparrow at all. I spend so much time,
like most people do, both consciously and unknowingly making things difficult for other
people. I fight. I argue. I forget. I ignore. I resent. I intrude. I do a lot of other simple verbs
with unpleasant connotations. And people and sparrows have to suffer for it. And I have
to suffer for it.
So why should I make things difficult or inconvenient for this poor sparrow? It doesn’t
even know what a parking spot is, let alone what it’s for. God listened to me patiently,
indulged me, and provided me with…not an answer, but a reminder. We don’t get to
choose how we can help people, nor do we choose who we can help. So help people
wherever you can, even—no, especially—when it’s small, plain, and insignificant… like a
sparrow.
30
C A M A R O , A N O D E T O M Y PA S T
Camaro, an Ode to My Past
Before this car was my carriage, it was my cradle.
Before
its loud engine and my leather jacket,
my fuzzy dice and its horsepower,
the bravado, the triumph of leaving school
at seven-hundred RPM’s, the windows down
and the winds good for journey,
its backseat bunched my legs, enfolding me.
But bumps weren’t bumps back then,
rather a kinetic joy like a supermarket bucking-horse.
I used to nestle my ear into the silk-covered radio
as Robinson and Croce sang to me my childhood anthems.
Before
the arrival of my Honda—the safe modern foreign car
with proper headlights and the sensitive footbrake,
spelling banishment for my old cherry-red ponycar
to the dying weeds of the backyard
and pollen lacquer of neglect and despair,
I sat trapped in a windowless seat,
only able to gaze forward, to see where we—
the boy, the brother, the mother, the car—
were speeding to piano lessons, dentist appointments
the skyline coming into view by leaps and billboards.
Back then
I gazed forward, but did not, could not see
the passing-by of boyhood, or the abandonment of abandon;
ultimately, the trading-in of the wild hope of youth
for the spacious interior of independence,
the adieu to my Camaro childhood.
31
Andrew Hedglin
THE BROGUE
In the Summer When It Sizzles
Addie Leak
I stopped for the second time that morning to look at shoes. My arches were killing
me. I had been wearing my blue metallic Old Navy flats for the past day and was beginning
to realize at long last that looking French was still not worth the effort when it came to
all-day and all-night explorations of Paris. Not that I’d meant to be out all night again in
a fairly strange city. The night before had been Bastille Day with fireworks at the Eiffel
Tower until late, and I’d forgotten about the metro closing until the guards ushered us back
up into the crisp night in a part of town that I’d never visited.
This was why it was a plus to have a big guy like Joey with
What I thought
me, no matter how obviously foreign he was with his limp (also
I’d heard was:
a result of inadequate footwear), his camera, and his openmouthed and wide-eyed gaze. We had discovered at the very
Do you want to
beginning of our London study abroad that, despite our longcome with me
standing friendship, our travel styles were too different to be
easily reconciled, and now, on a weekend jaunt to Paris, it had
to Tunisia?
become even more painfully clear. We sat at a taxi stop near
the metro station for close to an hour, watching full cabs whisk past us; our hostel on the
hill of Montmartre, at the northern extremity of the city, would lock its doors at two,
and we watched the minutes tick closer. I held Joey’s elbow to keep him from leaping in
when an empty taxi appeared. A high-heeled Parisienne, slightly frantic to get home, had
immediately begun to tell him off in rapid-fire French for breaking the queue, and I tried
to placate her. Oui, bien sûr. Smile and nod. You were here first—of course. She calmed
when she realized that I understood and then disappeared into the taxi, which rounded a
bend and left us alone.
Joey didn’t speak French, so I explained for his benefit. “She was here before we
were—sorry. It’s the same queue system they’re so obsessed with in England. She’d been
waiting longer than we had.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize.” He looked a bit mutinous. I probably wasn’t as worried about it
as I should’ve been.
Even though the initial thrill had worn off, I was still fairly intoxicated with being
able to communicate in French. I was in France—and thus thinking in French—and I
kept wanting to speak to Joey in it and getting almost irritated, unreasonably, when all I
got for my efforts was a blank stare. He’d enjoyed the fireworks, though, and the sparkling
of the Eiffel Tower afterwards as we’d walked down the Champs des Mars. He’d caught
most of it on videotape.
My map was a useless plasticky thing, but we could tell nonetheless that it would be
a long walk back to Montmartre. We sat against the plexiglass of the shelter at the stop
and brainstormed for another thirty minutes before a second empty taxi appeared. I had
the driver take us to the Rue Coquillières, where I remembered the 24-hour café that
my friend Gabriel had taken me to the summer before. Au Pied de Cochon. The metro
would open again at 5:30 or so, so we were seated and ordered escargot since Joey had
promised me in London that he’d try it. Now was as good a time as ever. It tasted every
32
IN THE SUMMER WHEN IT SIZZLES
bit as wonderful as I remembered, and I was surprised as I watched Joey stretch out his six
escargot for two hours. He held his fork clenched in one fist, and stared at his meal as if it
might speak to him, first licking, then nibbling it, waving his laden fork around in his fist
to emphasize his points when we talked. He reminded me of my little brother.
“Just eat the whole thing at once!” I said, exasperated.
“I can’t. I’ll gag. I’m acclimatizing myself to the taste.” We were getting stares.
“Joey!” I glanced around in agony, glad at least that it was the middle of the night and
that not too many people were around. “I understand now why the Normans thought the
Anglo-Saxons were barbarians,” I said.
“Oh, do you?”
I nodded and looked determinedly out into the night. We’d been placed on the same
patio on which I’d eaten with Gabriel the summer before, but the night didn’t seem as
fragrant or as soft this time around. I was finished with my escargot, and conversation
lagged. I looked back over to see Joey sinking his teeth into a large slice of bread from our
bread basket, his snail-laden fork still clutched in his other hand. My mouth opened again
in spite of itself: “You know that in France they tend to pull off bite-sized chunks of their
bread and then eat it, instead of just ripping into it with their teeth.” It was supposed to
come out like a little Discovery Channel lesson in culture. It didn’t.
“You,” he said, “are nagging.” I shut up, painfully embarrassed and sad. So much for
blending in. With Joey, even silence wouldn’t save me.
We made our way to the nearest metro when we left; I walked purposefully and
quickly, operating on the principle that if I looked like I knew where I was going, I’d be less
likely targeted as a tourist. I kept losing Joey. He meandered along behind me, looking up
at the architecture and down at the concrete, and I wondered for a minute if he’d notice
if someone drove off with me on a Vespa. As protective as he could be of me (since I was
practically a little sister), I felt almost like I needed to keep an eye on him here.
We took the metro to Montmartre and turned immediately to walk up the steep stairs
behind the exit, down a street or two, and up further sets of stairs—racing the sunrise to
the top of the hill. I glimpsed it down random alleyways, muted but brilliant, flooding
the city below with light and making the chilliness of the morning seem suddenly warm
and fresh. The doors to the Caulaincourt hostel wouldn’t open until seven. I came out
to the left side of the basilica of the Sacré-Coeur facing the city and paused to wait for
Joey, abandoning the idea of photographs; Monet could paint these colors, but my camera
wouldn’t do them justice.
“But I just got here!” he said, still panting, when I turned to dash off again as he
caught up.
“I know! I’m sorry! I promise there’s more—better—on the other side.”
There was. We sat together on the steps before the Sacré-Coeur and watched the
sun finish rising over Paris. The light in the basilica glinted gold off of the tiles behind
the altar, and quiet filled the spacious interior, so much so that I felt it necessary to tiptoe
when I glanced in at the service times. Only one or two early-morning pilgrims knelt near
the front of the church, sending up their prayers to float in the vast expanse of the dome.
When we had looked our fill, we returned to the hostel for showers, and, for Joey, a
short nap. He was soon snoring peacefully; the guy in the bunk above his, clad only in
boxer-briefs, kept leaning out of his bed to see what was making that ghastly noise, and I
stifled laughter while I put on my makeup. After our breakfast, we parted ways; Joey was
33
THE BROGUE
going to Germany, I was staying in Paris, and we were both ready to be alone. We’d meet
up again later in order to fly back to London. I transferred my things to a different hostel,
this time in the Latin Quarter, and promptly began reading my map backwards as I set out
to explore the city by day. It was shortly after realizing that I had yet again gone in the
wrong direction that I found myself looking at shoes on the sidewalk of the Boulevard
Sebastopol.
I was admiring a pair of bright sneakers when I felt someone looking at me. I glanced
up to see a middle-aged Arabic man hovering at the edge of the shoe display. He walked
past me once or twice, muttering something. I thought I heard “belle”—beautiful—but
I ignored him as best I could, first thinking that it was directed at someone else, then
assuming that he was talking about the shoes, and finally, when I was pretty sure I’d heard
him murmur “T’es belle.”—You’re beautiful.—I left. I crossed the street to the square
containing the metro stop and spun on my heel to get my bearings, almost colliding with
the same man, who had followed me across the street.
I suddenly missed Joey.
I must’ve raised an eyebrow at the man because he immediately began to explain. He
just wanted to walk with me and talk to me. Please. I stumbled a little over my response,
prompting him to inquire as to whether I was not French. Did I speak English better?
“Oui,” I said, “mais je préfère pratiquer mon français.” I didn’t want to speak any more
English than I had to while in France.
He nodded. “Vous êtes belle,” he said, repeating his earlier compliment. Let me walk with
you.
“Non.” I paused. “Pourquoi?” Why?
He sort of shrugged and continued smiling what he obviously considered a dashing
smile. Because you are beautiful… and I like beautiful girls, he told me. Why not?
“Je ne vous connais pas.” I don’t know you. “Non.”
Against my better judgment, though, I felt myself weakening as I considered the
fact that he might be the only Parisian that deigned to talk to me for more than a few
moments. I was curious to find out if I could have a normal conversation in French. And
surely I was safe; there were people everywhere. We sat down on a bench in a little garden
off of the boulevard. I kept my purse on my other side.
His name was Ali, he said, and he was from Tunisia. He claimed to teach philosophy
and literature at the Cité Universitaire. But what about you? he asked.
I’m American, I told him, and I explained about studying British children’s lit in
London for the month. I’m just in Paris for the weekend, I told him.
Which year of college are you in?
I looked at him rather pointedly. The second. I am very young—“très jeune.”
He raised his eyebrows in surprise at this revelation, but his smile only wavered for a
second. “Très jeune et très belle.”
I was getting tired of looking flattered and saying thank you and rather wished we
could talk about something else.
I looked around and smiled at the sunshine. It was getting hot; it was really a beautiful
day. “C’est un bel jour!” I said, not totally sure that was grammatically correct.
“Oui,” he said, smiling indulgently. I decided it hadn’t been. His eyes never flickered
from my face. “Un bel jour et une belle fille.”
There was a pause in which I continued to look around the garden, and when he spoke
34
IN THE SUMMER WHEN IT SIZZLES
again, I realized that at some point he had dropped the formal form of “you”—vous—and
was now using tu instead. The intimate form of the word.
“Veux-tu venir avec moi en Tunisie?”
What? My brow furrowed as I wondered if I’d heard that correctly. Surely not. What
I thought I’d heard was: Do you want to come with me to Tunisia? He looked at me, amused,
and repeated the question twice before I was able to unstick my tongue from the roof of
my mouth to answer.
No, I’m terribly sorry, but I can’t.
I could make you happy, though, he said. Would you really break my heart?
Oh, but your heart isn’t actually broken, I told him, and there are lots of beautiful girls
out there…
But only one you! I was slightly amused by this and thought that he had, perhaps,
seen one too many chick flicks. Why not? he asked me again.
Well, first of all, I was in the middle of a class and going back to London tomorrow.
Second, it would make my parents sad.
He had the nerve to disagree with me on the second point and kept inching closer.
He put his arm on the back of the bench we were sitting on and tried to take my hand. I
sat on it.
Think about it, he said. I’ll meet you here tomorrow for your answer.
I can’t, I said. I’m going to the museums tomorrow with a friend. (A masculine
friend—for all intensive purposes, Joey got to still be here.) I’m actually going to meet
him later on, too, I told him, not batting an eyelash. Why do you want me to go with you,
anyway?
Because you are beautiful, sophisticated, he said. “Pleine de vie.”
Pleine de vie. Full of life. He scooted closer; I scooted away.
We could live together there. I would make you so happy, and… He trailed off,
seeming slightly less sure about this point: We could get married.
Uhhhhm. “Non.”
“Pourquoi pas?”
I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before. I have a boyfriend, I told him. “Un petit
ami”—literally translating to “a little friend.”
“Petit?” He raised an eyebrow and let that sink in for a moment before he resumed his
arguments about how he would be better for me.
I took that opportunity to tell him all about my boyfriend, who, I discovered, slowly
evolved into my friend Gabriel—the friend I had visited in Paris the year before. He was a
pretty impressive character, I thought, and I liked him well enough to make my regard for
him seem authentic. “Il parle français, aussi,” I said. He speaks French, too.
“Oui?” And what nationality was this boyfriend?
He’s French and American both, I told him.
He nodded and began to look slightly less sure of himself. I gave him a big smile. He
lives in Boston, I said. Do you know where that is?
He looked even less certain. Sort of. There was a longer pause. Are you engaged to
him? he asked me.
Not exactly—not yet. But soon. We’re going to wait to marry for a couple of years—
until I’m out of school.
You love him a lot, then? “Tu l’aimes beaucoup?”
35
THE BROGUE
“Oui. Beaucoup.” I fixed the stars in my eyes and
I stopped at a little
stared off into the bushes.
fruit stand on my
He immediately began to discuss his heartbreak.
If you’ll only give me a chance to get to know you,
way back to the
he said. Just think about it. I could think it over in
metro and bought a
his apartment, he said; we could discuss it some more
there.
nectarine, forgetting
Uh. Non, merci. Somewhere bells – probably
to ask the boy that
across the river at Notre Dame – began to clang the
hour. Do you have the time? I asked him. He gave it
sold it to me what it
to me, and I wrinkled my forehead in worry, informing
was called in French.
him that I had to meet my friend... It was nice to meet
you, I said. “Je dois partir maintenant. Au revoir.” I
have to go now. Goodbye.
“Tu vas me laisser come ça?” he said. You’re going to leave me like this?
“Oui.” Sorry.
He followed me as I tripped out of the garden. “Je dois partir. Je dois prendre le métro.
Au revoir.”
“Un bisou,” he said, patting his cheek, “un bisou.” At least give me a kiss before you
go.
“Non.” Sorry. I escaped across the busy intersection just as the light changed, narrowly
missing getting run over by the bloodthirsty Parisian drivers. He didn’t follow me. I glanced
back and saw him walking up Sebastopol as I disappeared into the metro, and I breathed
a sigh of relief. I took the train to the Île de la Cité, where I emerged blinking into the
sunlight and spent twenty minutes or so walking around the Marché aux Fleurs—the
flower market—looking at orchids and jumping at small noises. It wasn’t long before I
made my way down to Notre Dame with feverish thoughts of sanctuary. I slipped inside
its hushed, dark interior and sat back against the cold stone of the wall, oblivious to the
tourists milling around me.
That afternoon, I made my way back up to Montmartre to retrieve my sunglasses,
which I had managed to leave at the hostel. It was too bright to walk around without
them, and I could already feel my arms and neck getting sunburned in the hottest weather
the European continent had seen for decades. I stopped at a little fruit stand on my way
back to the metro and bought a nectarine, forgetting to ask the boy that sold it to me what
it was called in French. It was the best I’d ever eaten, and I sat in a patch of shade on the
steps by the metro, sunglasses on, looking out across the city and joyfully biting into my
squelching, dripping fruit. The juice ran down my fingers. I successfully navigated my way
into the bathroom of the seedy little general store next to the metro stop, where I washed
my hands. The half bottle of Vittel that I bought there tasted better than any water I’d
ever had, too.
The next morning I spent at the Musée d’Orsay, and when I left, I discovered that I
was again being followed, this time by a man that I’d seen in the museum. Of course. The
icing on the cake.
“Bonjour.” He seemed to want to talk, and I unwillingly allowed him to catch up
with me. He was older, overweight, and scruffy – and obviously not French, though he
addressed me in that language. I remarked on the beauty of the day and talked for a minute
36
IN THE SUMMER WHEN IT SIZZLES
about how much I loved Paris, gritting my teeth a little as I did so, since I was beginning
to think that this was no longer an established fact.
Where are you going? he asked me.
I’m just walking, I said. Where are you going?
He shrugged and looked at me with an expression that was getting familiar. “Je vous
accompagne.” I’m accompanying you.
I told him about London and about my study abroad; he was Turkish, he said, and just
visiting. But he loved the city as well.
There was a pause. Can I have your phone number? he asked me.
“Non.” I wondered if he was hard of hearing, as I had just told him that I was flying
back to England that afternoon, and I began to talk rather determinedly and with awful
grammar about nothing at all. After a few minutes of my trying to explain about the two
famous cafés that I was looking for—the cafés of Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Sartre and
Bouvoir—he was merely looking at me quizzically.
He left me at the next metro stop, but not before asking for my number for the second
time. “Vous êtes très belle,” he said.
“Non.” Yes, I’m quite sure that I won’t give it to you. Sorry.
He nodded, and, before I realized what was happening, he caught my hand and pulled
me into him, planting two kisses on either side of my face. His scruff scratched my cheeks. I
forced a smile and walked fast away, found a niche on the bridge near the Invalides, where
I seated myself and began journaling furiously. I wondered what I would do if anyone new
approached me where I sat. On the tip of my tongue was the declaration: “Je ne suis pas
belle, et je déteste les hommes!” (I am not beautiful, and I hate men!) It had been waiting
for two days to escape, and chances were good that I’d end up accidentally screaming it at
some poor tourist who approached me for directions.
I almost missed the plane back to London that afternoon. Joey, just back from
Germany, was pacing inside the terminal at Charles de Gaulle when I dashed toward it on
my still-sore feet (I never did buy comfortable shoes). I almost knocked him over with a
hug. “I was worried you wouldn’t make it,” he said. “I kept asking the lady if an Addie Leak
had checked in yet, but she couldn’t tell me for sure.”
I groaned and collapsed into an uncomfortable airport seat. I let my backpack drop
beside me, slumping so far down in my chair that I almost fell off and closing my eyes for
a minute as I caught my breath. He watched me with concern. “How was the rest of your
weekend?”
I looked up at him and felt the frown wrinkles start to ease out of my forehead. He
had nice eyes. And he really did seem worried. I thought, too, tiredly but with a note of
triumph, that there was at least one good man left in the world, even if he made a horrible
French person. I supposed that there was more to life, after all.
“Um…Paris isn’t necessarily my favorite at the moment…and I’m starting to think
that people might have a point when they say that women shouldn’t travel alone. You’re
going to kill me. But, Joey—” I shook my head. “You have no idea how glad I am to see
you.”
37
THE BROGUE
Dauphin Island Afternoon (photography)
Andrew Hedglin
38
THE FISHWIFE
The Fishwife
Brandon Whitlock
She hauls the brimming basketfuls of fish
and screeches to the customers she finds,
“Here’s all the vulgar critters you could wish!
If you’ve a hankering, we have all kinds!”
She holds aloft a snide and slimy head
and screeches to the customers she finds.
“They’re guaranteed to be completely dead!”
As customers evade her with a glare,
she holds aloft a snide and slimy head,
tossing salmon and trout into the air.
Her phrases end with “–you!” or start with “Bull–”
as customers evade her with a glare.
Observing, at the end, her baskets full
of all the wretched refuse that remains,
her phrases end with “–you!” or start with “Bull–”
and, knowing they’ll be scrapped but taking pains,
she hauls the brimming basketfuls of fish.
Of all the wretched refuse that remains,
here’s all the vulgar critters you could wish.
39
THE BROGUE
Success and Failure
Lydia Diers
My feet instinctively test out the flooring through
Two weeks of
my canvas ballet shoes as I step onto the black stage in
exhaustion, sore
the tiny auditorium. The Marley flooring is just the right
combination of slippery and sticky, which is surprising for a
joints, and bruised
rolled-on floor. Portable mirrors line the back of the stage,
shoulders. Two
and they catch my reflection. I look nervous.
This is my first day of classes at a summer dance
weeks of constant
intensive in Walla Walla, Washington. I have willingly—
pressure to be
yes, even excitedly—subjected myself to two weeks of
critical eyes observing every line and curve of my body. Two
more than I have
weeks of exhaustion, sore joints, and bruised shoulders. Two
ever been before.
weeks of constant pressure to be more than I have ever been
before. Two weeks of training my body and brain to absorb
choreography and corrections by watching the ephemeral movements of the instructors.
I straighten my posture, lifting my head and pulling my bony shoulders back. With
false confidence portrayed through the language everyone in the room understands best—
body language—I walk up to one of the metal barres on the stage. Three other girls are
already sitting there and stretching. I immediately assess their level of ability.
Height, weight, and muscle tone are all similar to mine, but as a dancer, I’m looking
for something else. There is an indefinable way a great dancer carries her body, moves her
hands or feet and turns her head. Some people call it grace, but it’s not. Non-dancers often
have grace, and dancers are sometimes the clumsiest people on the planet. Noticing the
girls’ nuances of movement, I smile. Only one of them might be better than me. I feel their
eyes examining me, too. We haven’t even stood up yet.
*
*
*
This year is going to be different. I’ve grown a lot, changed a lot. Mentally. I don’t have to
be held back. I don’t have to fear myself.
These thoughts whiz through my head over and over—methodically, mindlessly, like
the liturgy I know by heart and say every Sunday at my home church. I’m frantically
running around my room, multitasking despite the looming tick-tick of my clock. I jump
into a pink skirt and munching on some peanuts. I skip to my dresser while flipping my
head up and down to wring out the water from my three-minute shower.
It has been seven years since my first day of dance camp. I’m a junior in college and, at
the moment, preparing for an interview to be a resident assistant in my dormitory. Today
the question isn’t, “Am I a good dancer?” No, it’s much harder.
Why am I a leader?
While hanging my head upside-down, I scrunch my hair with gel and encourage it
to form crimpy curls. There is something so enticing about the idea of being an RA.
I’ve always wanted to be considered a leader, someone others want to emulate: a real
role-model. But, it always seems too difficult to communicate why I should be considered
40
SUCCESS AND FAILURE
worthy of such a responsibility.
It’s going to be better this year.
I slap lotion on my face, then run to my closet to dig for my brown flip-flops. I
remember last year all too well.
I cried.
Yes, I cried at the interview. I know, pathetic.
I do that, though. Being sensitive is the bane of my life. Not only that, it’s my sad fate
to react to stress of any kind by crying. It’s out of my control, and I hate it. I’ve asked God
about it before: why couldn’t I deal with stress by fainting, blushing, vomiting—anything
else. No one understands crying.
*
*
*
“Preparation front, allongé back. Don’t forget your épaulement: head over hand. Four
rond de jambe en dehors, two with plié. Reverse. Use your brains, dancers.”
I watch the teacher carefully, capturing every minute change in movement. Picking
up combination is not my forte, but I have to try anyway. As my mind memorizes the
words, my body marks the steps.
Mr. Krauter gives the combination once, then queues the pianist. The music begins.
This is the real test of a dancer. It’s all fine and good to have the body, the mind, and the
will to be a dancer—but can all that come together to allow me to actually dance? To
perform? I have to be able to mimic the style of the instructor and channel every ounce of
passion for dance into a presentation of perfection. Can I do that?
Mr. Krauter is tall and very much a Texan.
“Y’all suck,” he says.
But I know he doesn’t really mean it. It’s kinda like child psychology: tell a 4-year-old
he can’t ride a bike, and he will try as hard as he can until he succeeds. It’s the same with
ballet.
*
*
*
I don’t want to be late. That would be awful. Class over at 2:30, meeting at 3:00,
interview at 3:30. I’ve already had to ask to leave the meeting half an hour early. Stupid
me, I forgot I even had it the day I signed up for my interview.
I grab my khaki bag and stuff it with textbooks and a notebook for homework. Maybe
I’ll have some spare time in the day to get it done. Chapstick, blue pens, cell phone, and
keys make their way into the pockets of my bag. I trip over my towel, strewn on the floor
after my shower and forgotten about, as I hurry to the mirror.
Interviews make me nervous. Really nervous. I open my foundation and begin to
slather it gently but quickly over my cheeks and forehead. I glance at the clock: 2:50. I’m
going to have to run. Hurry, Lydia.
“I am a woman, I am beautiful, and I don’t need anyone to appreciate me,” I chant to
myself. It’s a little phrase my friends and I came up with to boost self-esteem.
I’m not sure when my self-image got so bad. I used to think I was the greatest thing
to walk the earth; everyone should want to be me. But that was years ago, when being
little and blond was all it took to be appreciated. Now there is so much more to live up to:
perfect body, perfect grades, perfect boyfriend, perfect manners. Sure, like any of that is
going to happen.
The blush I’ve spread across my cheeks makes them glow a cheerful pink, and I smile
41
THE BROGUE
at my reflection. Almost pretty, I think. Then my adrenaline-induced ego kicks in: beautiful.
I can be beautiful.
*
*
*
Yesterday in pas-de-deux class, Mr. Krauter used me for an example.
“First arabesque,” he commanded.
My body responds, shifting my weight forward, lifting arms
“I am a
and one leg, adjusting my head. My supporting foot wobbles on the
woman, I
rock-hard shank of my pointe shoe.
“Now this, men, is how you lift them,” he says.
am beautiful,
He places one hand just below my ribs and the other below the
and I don’t
thigh of my working leg.
“Plié and jump,” he says to me.
need
In seconds I feel pain stab my ribs as my weight rests on Mr.
anyone to
Krauter’s hands. I try not to picture what the bruises will look like
after class. The floor seems to be miles below me.
appreciate
“No, Lydia, don’t look down. Where’s your head?”
me,” I chant
I raise my chin and inhale while trying not to move my ribcage.
I reposition my collar bone, relax my shoulders, elongate my neck,
to myself.
suck in abs, lengthen arms and legs.
“Beautiful,” I hear Mr. Krauter say. “Nearly perfect.”
I smile. I feel forty or more eyes peering at every line and every angle of my body. I
don’t see anyone, but I sense their presence. I’m the center of attention and so very, very
alive. Nearly perfect. Those are happy words. Beautiful.
*
*
*
I wasn’t late for the interview. I was there ten minutes early, just enough time to
get myself thoroughly nervous again. My chest filled with hot bubbles, and my stomach
tingled tauntingly, as if it were hungry.
The interview went well, over all. I smiled, chatted, and appeared happy. I saw the
interviewers make positive notes on my evaluation paper.
“I’m not naturally outgoing,” I can hear myself saying, “but I love being around people.
I like to make them feel comfortable, to really get to know them. I love being the person
that anyone can come to when there is a problem. I am a good listener.”
But the interview did not end well: I cried again.
Dang it, I say to myself now. What is wrong with me? I wasn’t sad, I wasn’t angry—just
stressed out.
I knew I had lost all hope of getting the job right then. My chances of success were
over the second the first tear decided to creep onto my eyelid and perch there before
diving onto my cheek. I should have just stood up and walked out; maybe that would have
saved me the humiliation of stuttering despite salty liquid drizzling into my lips.
I am a failure.
*
*
*
“Good, Dy-ers,” Mr. Krauter says above the noise of the piano and jumping feet. “Go
back again; this time don’t compromise your extension on the jeté. Really go for it. Ready?
And!”
He runs along me as I try the grand allegro combination again.
42
SUCCESS AND FAILURE
“Saut de chat!” he shouts, clapping his hands. “Good.”
I land the jump—with a slight extra bounce. Inside I wince. The next group is going,
so I try the landing again on the side of the stage. And again. Better.
*
*
*
I don’t remember what the rejection letter said exactly because I threw it in the trash
after scanning it for less than a minute. It was the same generic letter that I had received
last year. Basically, it said: “You suck, so go find something else to do.”
I don’t know why I even bother with stuff like this. Why should I try to break out of
my box and be extroverted when I’m only going to get rejected? Trying to fit in never has
good results for me. Let’s face it, Lydia: you’re never going to be popular.
Not getting the job doesn’t bother me as much as not finishing the interview
successfully. Success for me means without tears. It doesn’t seem like that much to ask for,
but I guess it is. I wonder if I’ll ever overcome this problem. I’ve been told to put it on a list
of long-term goals and work at conquering it a little every day. I’m not sure I’ve made any
progress.
*
*
*
Everyone claps after révérence ends. It’s ballet tradition; I do it without thinking.
We walk up to Mr. Krauter and thank him individually. I’m last, which is awkward. That
usually happens to me; I’m not sure how I manage it.
“Thank you,” I say, with a half curtsey. I turn to walk away, but check his eyes first
to see if he was pleased with my dancing today. All it takes is half a second to know if a
teacher likes your dancing. I see approval in his eyes, but I’m surprised when he actually
talks to me.
“Lydia,” he says, “You have a lot of potential. Great dancing; you could really go
far.”
I smile and nod politely.
“But you need to learn the material faster or you won’t be successful.”
I walk away and take off my shoes. While throwing them into my ballet bag, I reach
up to my hair nervously and push back some escapist bobby-pins.
Is this failure, too?
43
THE BROGUE
Balboa Court
Jessica Bishop
Jasmine lingers in my mouth,
That golden myrrh of summer;
I trace its path to the memory-trove,
Unlocked and growing warmer.
Those were the days heaped end on end,
When fairies roamed the world
In handmade dress-ups that Mom had stitched,
Dancing bejeweled and pearled.
Those were the buttery sunset-eves
That never forgot the sight
Of a man, a girl, and a long green lane,
Her hand clutching his—tight.
Those were the months, now forgotten for years,
Their gold untouched by thought
Until the taste of jasmine in my mouth
Ransoms what Time had bought.
44
TRACING A ROOT TO LITHUANIA
Tracing a Root to Lithuania
Martha Krystaponis
My grandpop, Tony Krystaponis, always tells me that if I just covered my head with a
babushka, I would look like Catherine Krystaponis, his grandmother and my great-greatgrandmother. She was a short woman, rather chubby with rosy cheeks and a smile that
dominated her face whenever she let it out. I never met her.
“Look at you, doll!” Grandpop would say, grabbing me in a tight bear hug within his
over six-foot frame. “You even act like her rather than a whole ‘nother person!”
*
*
Tony doesn’t care
that his cap is gone,
and my babushka now covers
the hungry orphan miles behind.
*
*
*
*
Grandpop is Lithuanian. Lithuania is one of the Baltic states of Eastern Europe,
right above Poland. His grandparents, Ludwig and Catherine Krystaponis, immigrated
in the early 1900s. Lithuania was under the oppressive control of the Soviet Union, and
Catherine and Ludwig were unable to practice their Catholic religion. They were just poor
farmers, and every day was a struggle to survive off the land and evade persecution.
*
*
*
My eyes sting. Sweat trails
down my forehead, through creases –
paths of past worry.
*
*
*
Ludwig traveled alone via steerage to New Jersey to start a new life for his family. He
worked in sweatshops for two years, waiting for them to join him.
Catherine’s immigration was much more treacherous. At about 22 years old, she
walked from Kaunas, Lithuania, to Brenenn, Germany, with their sons: Joe, age 6, Tony,
age 4, and Eddie, age 2. I start to whine after walking for a few hours in the Southern
spring heat and humidity: what must it have been like to experience such fear, exhaustion,
uncertainty, and weakness as she did?
*
*
*
My feet hurt. The rough path
from Kaunas to the German ocean
causes a blister to build
on my heel, encased in brown box shoes.
I clutch my son’s sweaty hand
as his legs try to keep up with mine.
What must his feet feel?
We rest near Castle Trakai.
His eyes close, while mine cannot.
*
*
45
*
THE BROGUE
Once they reached Germany, both Catherine and her sons stowed away on a ship for
the entire trip to Ellis Island, having to hide throughout the tedious boat journey. Once
Catherine and the boys finally reached New Jersey, Ludwig had to claim them at Ellis
Island, lest they be denied entry into America.
*
*
*
I dread the stench of human waste
lying in that far-off ship’s hold, playing
hide and seek
behind families consumed with disease
to escape the ship’s men.
*
*
*
Their immigration records were burned in a fire, so the Krystaponis family became
unknowns in their new home. Catherine and Ludwig never became citizens, but all of
their children did. They bought a small farm in New Jersey right before the Depression and
left the sweatshops of the city behind to return to their farming roots.
*
*
*
Once I smelled like lemon soap,
and the Lithuanian mountains
welcomed me as a flower on their slopes.
But only a stench rises from me now
to my son’s nose.
*
*
*
In 1944, Catherine died from cancer in the abdomen. From what Grandpop can
remember, he said that it sounded like her stomach would inflate and then blow up several
times, and they had to drain it, until one time when it was too late to save her life.
*
*
*
My stomach wrenches, seeing
a shack and a field
where three people dig
for potatoes. Food can be gold.
I help the family dig to fill
Tony’s mouth, but not his stomach.
My nostrils flare with desire
as I watch him eat without washing
the food or his hands.
I can smell it, filling me
yet leaving me emptier.
*
*
*
My grandpop learned how to cook from her. Whenever I see him standing over a
frying pan filled with pasty pierogies and the fragrance of onions and bacon, I think of
the woman I never met. I fried onion and cheddar pierogies over Easter weekend, and I
covered my stomach with a plain blue apron to try to imagine how she once felt. I want
to put a real babushka on my head someday and blend in with the crowds of people in a
Lithuanian market, buying potatoes and seeing pieces of Catherine around and in me.
46
A RT W O R K
There was a boy… (pencil drawing)
Stephen Delatte
47
THE BROGUE
Can’t Keep It in a Camera
Andrew Hedglin
for Christopher J. Hedglin
Looking back at my time at the Academy, most of
“Rock” was a cute
what I remember was not what I spent most of my time
little word that the
doing, which was looking ahead to the future. The future
doesn’t look anything like I thought it be in my postNorth Carolinians
grunge-rock-drenched daydreams. I remember spending
had for what we
hours in Christopher’s (and later my) bedroom looking
at school yearbooks. I wasn’t looking back; I was looking
Mississippians
forward. I could feel the enamel covers, and hear a slap
called a “mountain.”
by turning the thick glossy pages. In 1998, the yearbook’s
cover was green and it had geometric patterns embossed
into it. Class of 1998. I wonder what it’s going to be like when I’m in the class of 1998. I wasn’t,
of course, and never would have been. 1998 was Christopher’s year, not mine. I spent a lot
of time handling his high-school memorabilia and imagining it was actually mine: handdrawn posters from girls who were never his girlfriends, soccer plaques, the blue and white
tassel from his mortarboard, but especially that yearbook.
On the inside covers of the Heritage, the Academy’s yearbook, there is always a black
and white photo of the entire senior class of that year. They used to take the picture in
different places around town, but for a while now they always use the playground in the
park across the street. It’s all made out of wood, except for the hot tin slide, but that faces
the pond and you never see it in the picture. There’s a bridge that sags down, especially
under the weight of ten or so seventeen year-old males. For some reason that probably says
a lot about my gender, the boys are almost always the ones who climb on the playground.
The girls are always firmly on the ground, arms chained around one another. For those on
the right, they’re all floppy on the front cover, and hard as wood on the back. It always
seemed like an interesting proposition to be that kind of flux.
*
*
*
The summer after my eighth grade, I went back to Camp Rockmont with my church
youth group. Our youth pastor, Stan, knew the guy who owned the camp, and he would
always open it up for us a week before all the real campers came. It was sort of a favor to
Stan, and probably a good way to awaken the place for the summer ahead.
My brother Christopher had been going to Rockmont for years. Rockmont is an
overpriced Christian boys’ camp in Black Mountain, North Carolina. I had heard about
this place all my life, but the first time I saw it (and every time I saw it since), it opened
my eyes. Mississippi, my home, is a fairly flat state. So as far as hills go, I’m pretty easy to
please. I was simply overwhelmed at the green, mossy beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Actually, it confused me. I took a look at the mountains, and I thought they must have
gotten the name wrong. These mountains, I knew, are green. Wonderfully, vibrantly verdant.
Everything was different in those mountains. Everything in the cabins smelled like
cedar or something else a suburban kid like me couldn’t identify. The food tasted richer;
48
CAN’T KEEP IT IN A CAMERA
we drank sweet lemonade because soft drinks weren’t allowed. Trees were everywhere, but
it felt like there was more open space than in the Delta. The lodge where our youth group
met felt as much like a church as any sanctuary in which I’ve ever been.
I remember one meeting when Stan asked us what we were going to do that day. I
looked at the little program he had made up for us for that week. You Gotta Serve Somebody,
it said. Apparently, Stan was a Bob Dylan fan. On that day’s agenda was a lot of outdoor
stuff, which had never been my forte. I looked at something that said “Choctaw Rock”
that was led by my brother Christopher. Outdoor stuff was never his forte, either, so I
figured it must have been some arts-and-crafts project. I was puzzled as to why we were to
meet at the beginning of the trail that led to Inspiration Point—and why we were told to
wear good shoes…
*
*
*
I finally learned the secret to those fancy senior portraits. The ones where the guys
all have tuxedoes and the girls all have the same black dress and a string of pearls. I was a
little befuddled when Mom took me to Chris Grillis’s photography place and I didn’t have
a tux. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “You just put on the top.”
Little mysteries get unraveled in big ways. “You mean,” I said, “That’s how the girls all
wear the same dress? It’s just the top part for them, too? And it’s at the place?”
She looked at me like I was being naïve. I’m sure I was, but I had wondered at it
for a long time. The closer I got to senior year, the less magic senior year became. There
suddenly seemed to be no guarantee that it would be the penultimate chapter in my life
that I had always assumed it would be. I mean, I knew what happened; it came, it went,
you went to college. My brothers had done it. But was everything about the end of high
school smoke and mirrors?
A lot of it must have been. A few months later, I got the pictures back. Ol’ Chris
Grillis had used his photography magic to airbrush out all the zits and that extra neck
fat and whatever out of my picture. Thank goodness, but there was an unreality about it.
About the super-real me, staring back at the me I actually was.
*
*
*
After an hour of so of hiking, using our legs had ceased to be sufficient. “Rock” was
a cute little word that the North Carolinians had for what we Mississippians called a
“mountain.” Despite the fact that Choctaws were not indigenous to the area (Christopher
explained all this on the way up), Camp Rockmont divided up their age groups into tribes
of American Indians before the winds of political correctness had blown over the wooded
Appalachians and the camp had decided to rename all the tribes for various types of trees.
At any rate, apparently the Choctaws were once the oldest group. They climbed this
mountain and then camped on it for a night during the last year they were at Rockmont.
As I grabbed from tree to tree, I realized I was climbing up someone else’s rite of
passage. We had to leave Meg in the middle of the woods as she refused to continue up
the mountain, but Christopher, Eli, Ryder, and I continued onward and upward. I owned a
really good pair of hiking boots back then (I have grown to prefer them, whenever I bother
to wear shoes), but even the rubber soles couldn’t protect me from the craggy rocks or keep
me from slipping. I was just about to question my brother’s good judgment when we made
it to the clearing that was the top of the mountain.
Everything fell into place. I understood the blueness, now. From the bottom, the
49
THE BROGUE
mountains look green, but at the top, staring off into the distant horizons, the tops of other
mountains all looked misty blue that faded into forest green at the bottom and the whole
thing blended into an overwhelming beauty.
Eli, who ended up at Stanford and studied in Japan as an exchange student, spouted
Epicurean philosophy. All we need, he said, is good friends, good food, and good music. And
good scenery, I added silently. We all lay back on the rock that seemed so rough as we were
climbing it, but became as inviting and soft to lie down on now. We couldn’t stay forever,
of course. We had left that girl on the middle of the mountain and there were half-serious
concerns that at any minute she could be eaten by a bear.
After we had hiked down—hiking down can be as tough as hiking up, because of the
demands it makes on your hips—Christopher turned to me, and I think he might have
seen me as more of a brother than a little brother for one of the first times. He said, “You
handled that with a grace I couldn’t have expected from you.”
*
*
*
I remember the day my senior class took that picture
My classmates
for the front of the yearbook. It was a warm, autumn day.
They didn’t tell us it was the day until we showed up for
and I fought to
school. I was wearing a teal shirt that, even though I knew
keep our eyes
would eventually end up in grayscale, did not strike me
as tough enough to show all those younger than me how
open so we could
cool I was as they gazed longingly at their 2005 yearbooks.
stare down future
Fortunately, I had my jacket with me, because even though
generations with
it was not cold, it was a time of year when it could have been
cold. I guess I still have my grandmother’s advice about the
authority.
slightest and most unlikely possibilities of pneumonia still
coursing through my veins.
Regardless, it was a brown leather bomber jacket I still wear, and some cultural synapse
has long associated leather jackets with being a badass, despite a lack of any observational
evidence I have collected to support this claim. And with a light teal shirt, I decided that
I needed all the badass I could muster. I chose my side: right, which would be floppy at the
beginning and stiff on the back. I didn’t have a comb, so I brushed back my hair with my
hand, so I looked like I usually do, but not like I usually do in photographs. The sun was
very, very bright. My classmates and I fought to keep our eyes open so we could stare down
future generations with authority. I slid my thumbs through my belt loops to get the point
even further across. One, Chris Grillis yelled. Two, we tightened our smiles. Three, snap.
*
*
*
I went back to Rockmont that next year, after the ninth grade. It was Stan’s last year;
everything we did had an air of finality. I haven’t been back to Black Mountain since then,
though not for lack of trying. We didn’t go back up to Choctaw Rock, but we climbed an
adjoining mountain called Eden Rock. More people went, as Stan himself was leading the
charge. This year, I knew the treasure waiting for me at the top. I carried a backpack with
two things of particular importance. I carried a CD player with David Wilcox’s Big Horizon
in it. It has a song called “Make It Look Easy.” You can’t keep it in a camera, he starts, not
a trophy on the shelf. Not a tale to tell the children, he continues, not a way to prove yourself.
At this point, neither Christopher nor I have any idea what the hell “it” was anymore. It’s
50
CAN’T KEEP IT IN A CAMERA
much bigger than we are; you can’t claim it as your own. But you gotta climb the mountain, find
your way back home. Well, Eden Rock was the last mountain I’d climb for a long while, I
knew.
The pack made the whole trip just that much more arduous. The song was important,
I guess, but the other thing was crucial: a camera. I didn’t have one the year before at
Choctaw Rock; I hadn’t been prepared. But this time I was going to snap a picture, keep
it on my shelf. This was how I’d remember the view. On a lark, I turned around, and also
took a photograph of my youth group. Just so I remember who made the climb with me.
*
*
*
Chris Grillis also may have been the guy who snaps photographs at the recessional after
the graduation ceremony. We were sitting according to a garbled mutation of alphabetical
order. I saw a friend of mine, my youth pastor’s wife, staring quizzically at the program,
not guessing about how we ordered ourselves as follows: valedictorian, salutatorian, high
honors, honors, regular joe’s.
After the diplomas had been given and speeches said, we marched out—step, step,
stop. Flash. I didn’t realize it at the time, but later I found my stole was askew. It was yellow,
with the word “honors” emblazoned on it, signifying how smart I was supposed to be but
at the same time the silly pomposity of which I was capable.
*
*
*
I got the pictures back. All of them, the Appalachian snapshots and the annuals. At
different intervals, of course, but they both ended up in the same place: on my dorm room
bookshelf. I don’t look at the pictures much—they’re just not that satisfying.
They’re not blurred, the colors are all there, but something’s still wrong. They don’t
show the footsteps up the mountain. They don’t show all those hours in English class and
study hall. They don’t show all the branches I had to grab as I pulled myself all the way
up to the apex. They don’t show the peculiar style of slapstick humor my friend Adam
and I engaged in to get through the long days. It was as if I had always been at the top of
that mountain, and at the end of my time at the Academy. They pictures at the end don’t
show the work, but they do not have to show it. There was no depth in the pictures. They
picture looking out from the mountain is almost useless—a mockery of what I remember
the view to be—but I like having the picture of my youth group. And my senior class.
They don’t have to have any labels to show me who were my friends, or my enemies,
because they show me the people and I know by the rolls of my heart who they were, or
51
THE BROGUE
On a Half-pint of Belhaven’s BestAddie Leak
I.
I am not a drunk, not a frequent
drinker. The taste of alcohol
is too bitter for my sugar-blasted
American taste buds. But I won’t condemn
it: fried chicken is just as likely
to kill you.
Jesus drank wine.
He didn’t eat fried chicken.
What is alcohol, I wonder,
but a stronger coffee?
Depressing or stimulating:
it doesn’t matter
in small doses.
You can abuse anything, spend a lifetime
with slurred speech or shaking
palms or gorging yourself
on saturated fats.
Everything’s a carcinogen.
They say red wine is good
for the heart.
II.
Britain’s coffee
shops are pubs. You drink,
you laugh, you play games
or you tell stories. You leave
with pinker cheeks and a liquid
sort of joy that keeps you braced
against the cold night air—
heart-warming.
I kept a journal in Edinburgh.
12:10 am, July nineteenth,
I wrote: “Felt a strong desire to
shake the bartender’s hand
on the way out and say
something like
‘Thank you
for doing what you do; you make
people happy,’ but thought
that might be a tipsy thing
to say.” Disreputable? Tell me—
when did simple joy become taboo?
52
OPHIDIOPHOBIA
Ophidiophobia
Lea Schumacher
I. Memory
“Where I saw the snake
Is where I sometimes go
In deep dreams, desiring
To see his length again
Like the sun’s blackness, coiled,
Like the sun’s center, pulsing,
With white fire all around…”
–Mark Van Doren
When I was young, I used to have a recurring nightmare. In it, my mother would
send me down to the basement to get something for her from the pantry. I would go to the
top of the stairs and look down. Everything would be blackness, and when I reached for
the light switch, it would not go on. However, I would still go down the steps, despite my
apprehension. As I reached the bottom I could see two red glowing lights, and suddenly, as
I got closer, I realized that the bottom of the stairs was a black, yawning hole. Then a huge
head reared up, and I saw that the floor was covered by a giant black snake with red eyes
and a wide, gaping mouth, waiting to swallow me up. I would scream and turn to run back
upstairs, but the head would follow me, its red eyes narrow and glaring.
This dream haunted me for several months. Sometimes I would get trapped in the
basement with the monster; sometimes I would feel his tongue around my ankles as I
struggled to get out free. When I awoke, I could still see the snake so vividly: the horrific
emptiness of his mouth and the evil of his distorted eyes.
I have always been terrified of snakes. It is an unreasonable, ungrounded fear. I have
never been bitten by one; never even seen a poisonous snake. However, fear is often
driven by fantasy. I have keen memories of my various encounters with the reptiles. The
irony is that they always involved harmless little garter snakes. After all, these are about
the only kind found in Vermont, where I grew up.
Once I nearly stepped on a long garter snake as it slipped behind some bushes on a
walking path. The path was gravel, and it meandered past pine trees and fields of asters.
I was walking with my mother and sisters, carrying a picnic to our favorite spot of trees
and moss. Suddenly, the snake was a black flash below my feet, thin and sinister. He had
orange stripes, like tongues, licking his skinny back. His eyes were bright and black. I
almost stepped on it, but I sprang over it instead. The sun was hot and my heart pounded;
my hands shook for a long time. It was so sudden, so quick and ugly.
Another time, I was carrying a basket of laundry to the clothesline and saw a snake
sliding beneath the deck stairs. Brown and long, he slipped behind the stairs, showing
nothing but his twitching tail. My family still laughs at me because I threw down the
basket of laundry and literally leaped away across the yard to the swing set, where I jumped
on the glider. I felt much safer then.
53
THE BROGUE
II. Philosophy
“…There was no fire though,
Only intensest black—
Blue black—not burning
Yet what do I see now?
The body of him departing
Even as he remained:
Motionless, yet gone…”
—Mark Van Doren
Is there a reason Satan took the form of a snake when he deceived mankind? Was
it truly a snake as we know it? I can imagine Eve wandering, perhaps singing the song
of creation to herself, feeling the rough grass and smooth leaves brushing against her
bare limbs. Her mind is spinning from the overwhelming beauty of strange blossoms and
feathered birds, and she drifts away from the familiar to the roughly-hewn bark of the
forbidden. And he is there, in the wonderful tree that whispers of such delicious mystery.
He is there, his glimmering tongue coated with nectar. Was his skin gloriously striped in
colors of the rainbow? Or was he a somber, simple black coil twisted around the knobby
branches?
I think of all the reasons I am afraid: snakes don’t have legs. They are skinny. They
are fat (which is even worse). They bite (sometimes, though not in my experience). They
are always unexpected. Once I saw one flat and dry in the road, his bones flaky and his skin
like papyrus. The hideous finality of his end made me shudder. I know these reasons are
paltry and ridiculous, yet I can’t think of anything tangible. It is all in my mind.
And I know I have other fears too, deeper fears: loss, disillusionment, being unfulfilled
in life, suffering. I wonder why I fear these things. I wonder what I have lost that causes me
to dread the idea so acutely; what pain I have felt that causes me to shudder at the prospect
of future misery. I have hardly lived, yet I fear life. The coiled mass from the creation story
hisses softly into my ear: “Did God really say…?” Did He really say, “And surely I am with
you always, even to the end of the age?” Did He really promise, “I will never leave you nor
forsake you?”
I see a great snake stretched across the ancient scroll of time, tickling doubt into the
ear of mankind. And, in short, I am afraid.
III. Reality
“…Leaving a lake of light
On the dead grass: and that
Is where I sometimes go
In deep dreams, desiring
To see him coil again,
Then straightaway be elsewhere –
Not anywhere.”
–Mark Van Doren
54
OPHIDIOPHOBIA
My sister, Hayley, used to catch snakes. She would pick them up and let them curve
around her arm. Sometimes they would hiss at her. “Pet it, Lea,” she would say, “It isn’t
slimy. He won’t bite you, just touch him.” Once I did. His skin was dry, and there were little
tiny bumps all over his back. His stripes were yellow and black, racing down his cylindrical
body. He had tiny white teeth and a flickering red tongue. I watched my fingertips stroking
his back, detached, as if they weren’t my own. I held my breath, waiting for him to turn his
tiny teeth on me. But he didn’t.
There was a garter snake that lived in our stone wall by our old house, when I was six
years old. We only saw him a few times, and we called him Sammy the Snake. Dad told
us that he liked to eat the chipmunks that scampered across the wall. I always felt sorry
for the chipmunks, and the idea of Sammy swallowing all that fur was rather revolting.
Sometimes we would find him sunning himself on a stone. He never bothered us. He just
lived.
Before I came back to school during spring break, my littlest sister, Elise, gave me a
picture she had colored for me. It shows a brown striped snake hissing across the grass, and
she wrote: “For the person who is scared of snakes! It’s a snake!” I keep it hanging on my
closet door as a way to remind myself of her and of my own silliness. Perhaps I keep it as
a talisman, her childish humor a barrier against my realer, grown-up fears; ever prompting
me to smile at my own weakness.
Now, when I dream, my nightmares are swallowed in shades of blue and black, shadows
of fear. I dream of storms and men with guns and watching the people I love leave me. I
dream of my own dread, and when I wake, my little room spins around me. The dresser is
there in the corner, a dim square of darkness. The smoke-detector flickers its red eye at me.
The wind rustles the crackling leaves outside my window, and I calm my trembling heart
with prayer.
But in the daytime, snakes lie by the lake in the warmth of sunlight. They are sleek
and black and far from me. They stretch their curved skeletons into thick lines and sleep,
basking in the glow of a day free from fear.
55
THE BROGUE
My Family Terrorist
I have the perfect plan. It won’t
take a lot of work. All we need
is a little bit of plutonium, and—
now listen, this is the important
part—a little bit of plutonium,
not much, just enough to make
a bit of radiation. Big enough
to annihilate a city or so. Then,
at a payphone, you call the U.N.,
and barter. You gotta start big.
you want a continent, you tell them.
Pretend not to be flexible. You’ll
never really get one. Then go for
a country—this is also not the real
goal. What you want is an island,
private, uncharted, and isolated.
An island and money, a lot of money.
Let them talk you down. They make
you promise to dismantle the bomb.
They might even confiscate it. But
you are always a threat. You still
have the potential. Then you and
me and the rest of the family…yeah,
you can bring some friends, but we all
go and live there. It will be perfect.
All we need is a bit of plutonium.
56
Christina Miles
P O S T C A R D F R O M J U LY
Postcard from July
Someone has spilled
a can of warm
shadows over
the sun-gold lawn
so gently that
we did not hear
the splash above
metallic buzz
of mud-daubers
and shrill tuning
of cicadas
which we might say
are leaves singing
if we had not
found their empty
brown skins clinging
to bark and grass
and lying crushed
on hot gravel
when we walked
to get the mail.
57
Stacy Nott
THE BROGUE
untitled (watercolor, pen and ink)
Frances Faulk
58
MUSCLE MEMO RY
Muscle Memory
Christina Miles
They say that after one month without a ballet class,
The stage will
you forget how to dance. You forget to flex your stomach
always call to
and butt. You forget how the head is placed and the way the
muscles over your scapula should flex when you hold your
you, and anything
arms in second position. Your vertebrae no longer realign
waist high will
to mimic perfect straightness. The shoulders and hips don’t
rotate back and in. The torso doesn’t lift to elongate the
make you want
body. Your feet no longer point every time you jump, and
to stretch or
two toes can’t hold your entire body weight. You forget to
keep your arms always in front of your legs, and to angle your
do a warm-up
head just so every time you adjust your positioning.
combination.
Your muscles also forget. They don’t remember
what it was like to be flexible. They shorten and weaken.
Complaining every time you try to make them remember. They forget how to hold up
your leg for a penchée, and how to keep your arms in a motionless second position for half
a song. No longer can they work for hours on end without complaint; no longer are they
rigorously trained to perfection. Your calves burn whenever you try to do 100 relevés. And
your splits slowly become less wide.
The little things go first. You stop rotating your ankles and flexing your feet in class.
You don’t watch television or read books on your stomach, with your legs bent like a frog
to increase your rotation. Your hair loses the ponytail line, and you wonder why you ever
bought so many bobby pins. You don’t remember the subtle pressure of the almost pink
tights under every article of clothing. And you don’t practice routines in every empty
hallway. Bright red lipstick and false eyelashes suddenly seem strange and nearly a foreign
concept. No longer do you watch a wall lined with mirrors for three (or more) hours a day.
Suddenly, there is time to do everything else.
No longer does a dance instructor frown when your balance slips or when you let
your leg drop. The girl next to you won’t try to stretch her leg higher than yours. Next
Saturday’s rehearsals will not leave you aching and tired because there will be no more
Saturday rehearsals. You won’t collapse into a chair that night and eat whatever dinner
can be easily scrounged up. The weekend after next will not be filled by performances with
two-minute shoe changes. You won’t go onto stage wearing two pairs of tights and a pair of
dance pants to dance four songs in succession, and then run silently off in pitch-black, still
blinded by the lights. You don’t reapply lipstick without a mirror or practice your échappés
in the wings of a theater, while waiting for your next cue. You won’t sit and stretch, while
watching a pas de deux and wishing you were the one with a partner. Your friends don’t
readjust your shoulder straps or push in stray bobby pins as you count the beats before you
enter.
You eventually stop analyzing every movie with dancing in it. You don’t criticize
when their technique was off or laugh when they use inaccurate terminology. You start
to use a stepping stool instead of your pointe shoes when something is too high to reach.
59
THE BROGUE
Your arms are no longer used to illustrate the steps to a routine, and routines start to fade
from your memory. Your feet will begin to heal. They won’t be calloused or bunioned.
They won’t be as dry. You won’t have to keep a roll of athletic tape with you or a pack of
band-aids.
The terminology, which will forever be a part of your vocabulary, doesn’t run through
your mind in an endless combination. The stage will always call to you, and anything waist
high will make you want to stretch or do a warm-up combination. After you stop dancing,
you just know that you can remember it all—if only you started again.
60
T H E VA L E N T I N O D R E S S
The Valentino Dress
Mary Hallberg
The town of Egypt, Mississippi, had about 700 people, a stop light, and a gas station.
Many of its roads were dirt roads, or, at the very best, unpaved and full of potholes. Most
of the residents were either high schoolers living with their older parents and itching
to graduate, or retired couples who wanted peace and quiet away from the hustle and
bustle of modern city life. There were no Wal-Marts, no major fast food chains. Very little
happened there that was of much interest to anyone who didn’t live there. It certainly
wasn’t every day that one could spot a Range Rover cruising down the dusty, unpaved
roads. But one morning in early June, that’s exactly what happened.
For the past forty-five minutes, Spencer Johnson had been asleep in the backseat
of the Range Rover, but was jerked awake when the car hit a large pothole. She sat up
abruptly and tore her iPhone headphones out of her ears—the battery was almost dead
anyway. “Jesus, Dad!” she snapped. “Be careful!”
“Watch your language, young lady,” her father, Daniel,
The front porch
said from the driver’s seat. He didn’t sound too strict, though,
was about the
and her mother, Beth, who usually backed her husband up
completely, said nothing; Spencer knew they weren’t looking
size of the Range
forward to life in Small Town U.S.A any more than she was,
Rover and was
if not less.
Beth had grown up in Egypt and still had family here,
in serious need
which was why the Johnsons (or, rather, Beth and Daniel)
of a paint job.
had decided to move back here and live in Beth’s parents’
old house after Daniel had lost his job back in St. Louis.
They had lived a lavish life: Ferraris and Range Rovers, Prada bags and Chanel perfumes,
and Spencer’s personal favorite, her wraparound Gucci sunglasses. But there was no Gucci
here. There wasn’t even Abercrombie; hell, there wasn’t even a McDonald’s. The closest
thing Holmes County had to quality clothing was Fred’s.
But there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Now that Spencer had finally turned
eighteen, she figured she deserved what every woman needs: a little black dress. She had
spotted the perfect one, a Valentino dress, and fallen in love with it. Not just in love with
it; she had become obsessed with it. She would kill for that dress and would let nothing get
in her way of having it. Unfortunately she would now have to work for an entire summer
just to save up for it.
“Well, here we are.” Beth tried to sound excited as the Range Rover pulled into a
tiny carport. “Home sweet home. At least until we can find something better.” But they all
knew that wouldn’t happen any time soon; they were too used to their way of life to settle
for anything that Daniel would be able to afford within the next several years. And by that
time, Spencer would already have graduated from college, so it wouldn’t really make much
difference. Her days of living lavishly were, most likely, a thing of the past.
The house was tiny, very tiny; Spencer didn’t even know they made houses this small.
It couldn’t have more than nine or ten rooms. The front porch was about the size of the
Range Rover and was in serious need of a paint job. One of the shutters hung off its hinges,
61
THE BROGUE
making an awful creaking noise when what little breeze there was swung it back and
forth.
Daniel turned to face his daughter. “Spencer, honey, why don’t you help your mother
with some of the smaller boxes while I take the heavier stuff?”
“Because I’d rather stay in the back of the car and rot.” Spencer shoved her Gucci
wraparounds onto her face and covered her head with the hood of her Juicy Couture
sweatshirt.
“Spencer,” Beth said in a warning tone.
“I know you don’t want to be here,” Daniel said. “But try to make the most of it.
There’s more to life than getting the new Marc Jacobs bag.”
“You never said that when we could afford the latest Marc Jacobs bag.”
“Well, we can’t anymore. So things are going to have to change, and I hope for all our
sakes that your attitude is one of them. Now go help your mother unload boxes.”
*
*
*
There was a knock at the door. Spencer was home alone; her parents had gone to get
dinner. Thinking that it was her grandparents who lived up the street, she got up to open
it. Instead, a little boy stood at the door; he couldn’t have been more than six years old and
he was carrying a large platter of chocolate chip cookies.
“Hi,” she said unenthusiastically.
“Hi,” the boy said. “My name is Adam. I live across the street. These cookies are from
my mom. As a welcome to the neighborhood present.”
“Thanks,” Spencer said. She took the platter and placed it on the already crowded
kitchen counter. She went back to close the door when Adam spoke again.
“Did you know that your house is haunted?”
Spencer groaned. She regretted answering the door; now she was stuck listening to
some kid she didn’t know ramble on about some ghost story.
“Yeah, right,” she said.
“It’s true! A hundred years ago, a girl died in here. I swear it’s true, you can ask anyone
who’s lived here –”
“Okay. Whatever. Go away.” She shut the door, ignoring Adam’s protests, and went
back to recharging her iPhone.
*
*
*
For a minute, Spencer couldn’t figure out what woke her up so suddenly. She couldn’t
remember having a dream, or hearing a noise. But she was up now and probably wouldn’t
get back to sleep any time soon. She climbed out of bed and headed toward the bathroom.
She splashed cold water on her face and stood over the sink for a moment. Then her eye
caught the corner of the mirror, and she jumped. Nothing there. She had to be imagining
things. She suddenly remembered the little boy who had come by earlier and insisted that
the house was haunted. Was her mind just playing tricks on her? Or was Adam right?
‘You’ve gotta stop doing this’ Spencer thought to herself. ‘You can’t get scared this easily.
Go back to bed.’
But as she turned to head back to her room, she caught another glance at the mirror
and screamed. Two red eyes glowed brightly in the dark.
*
*
*
Spencer didn’t wake up until almost two the next afternoon. Not only was she
62
T H E VA L E N T I N O D R E S S
exhausted from tossing and turning the night before after her early morning fright, but
she didn’t want to face her parents, who weren’t too happy with her for dragging them
out of bed at such an early hour to investigate what turned out to be, as far as they knew,
nothing.
“I swear I saw a pair of glowing eyes in the mirror. I’m not making this up! No dad,
I haven’t been drinking…” Not only was her parents’ disbelief frustrating, but it did not
help Spencer shake the image from her mind; every time she closed here eyes they were
there, those bright, glowing eyes…
“Spencer, honey, I need you to help me move some more boxes in today,” Beth said.
“And I want you to take the car later on and pick us up some things for dinner. I’ll have to
give you directions the grocery store; it’s not too far away…”
Spencer groaned and laid her head down on the breakfast table.
*
*
*
Sleep didn’t come easy that night for Spencer. Not only
As she slid her
was she exhausted from sleeping in so late, but she still couldn’t
feet over the
shake the images of the red-eyed figures from her head. By the
time three o’ clock rolled around again, she had only been asleep
edge of the
for an hour. Nevertheless, she was once again jerked awake by
bed and stood
some unknown force. She sat up in bed for a few moments before
pulling the sheets back and climbing out.
up, something
As she slid her feet over the edge of the bed and stood up,
grabbed her
something grabbed her ankles from under the bed. She tripped
and crashed to the floor. As she turned around, two red glowing
ankles from
eyes glared at her from under the bed. She shrieked, climbing
under the bed.
off the floor and dashing to the door. She ran out of the room,
slamming the door behind her. She slowly crept down the hall,
careful to put each foot in front of the other slowly so as not to make the floorboards creak.
She crept into the living room, shut the door quickly behind her, and made a nosedive
for the couch. She grabbed the blanket from the arm of the couch, threw it over her, and
curled into a fetal position. Sleep didn’t come again for awhile.
*
*
*
Spencer woke again after only a few hours. The sky was beginning to lighten but it
was still very dark inside. Spencer opened her eyes, still under the blankets. She slowly
climbed off the couch, but as she did, she saw them again. The same red, glowing eyes in
the darkness, this time staring straight at her from the living room window.
Spencer screamed and made a dash for the closest door; the kitchen door, in this
case. She stumbled around in the darkness for a moment before tripping and falling on her
knees in the middle of the floor. Shutting her eyes tightly, she crawled to the wall, stood
up, and flicked the light on. She turned around and opened her eyes slowly, but the sight
in front of her made her scream again—but for an entirely different reason.
There on the floor, just a few feet away from where she had previously been crouched,
lay her father’s body. He looked as if he had been trying to walk forward but fallen down.
He wasn’t moving, barely breathing.
This time, Beth heard her daughter’s screams from the bedroom down the hall.
“Spencer?” she called from the hallway. “Honey, what’s going on?”
63
THE BROGUE
“Mom,” Spencer cried, “Call 911!”
*
*
*
The prognosis was good. Daniel’s heart attack had been very mild and he would make
a full recovery. It was probably triggered by stress, the doctors said. The only major problem
was the family’s insurance, which had been discontinued when Daniel lost his job. They
would have to pay for everything themselves.
Spencer had saved ever penny she could possibly find for the past three months,
putting it all in a little jar in her top dresser drawer. Three hundred dollars and twenty five
cents—the exact amount that her dress cost.
The dress never saw the inside of her closet.
64
HOODED
Hooded
Martha Krystaponis
I hate our conspicuous tourist bus.
She’s an American—they say—
with no Scottish brogue.
We stop so the Chinese women can take
more pictures of sheep, on every hillside.
I want to crane my neck to see
our crossing of the Firth of Forth,
but I don’t. I wouldn’t blend in.
Misty rain and the underbelly clouds
greet noon, as my window breath fogs.
I join the horses in the lowlands as we
drive past, their blankets covering them
and their heads lowering
to the hard ground. But the moss that
drapes trees and rocks is a live cushion.
I hike, and my wet sneakers slip, but
no one sees me fall. I’m hidden in a forested
tunnel. The tour guide can’t see me,
because he’s lecturing about the
stained-glass windows of an old church.
I try to look above the treetops in a small
meadow. Ben Nevis, the mountain of heaven,
pierces clouds and disappears.
Snow on its crown is far removed from sun rays
that break through raindrops down here.
I return to the bus, on to the Isle of Skye.
Ouch, sorry. I didna mean ta keep ya waiting.
A transparent prism dances above
heathered moors, fog intermingling. My glasses
and the glaring light can’t hide such beauty.
65
THE BROGUE
Cleaning Closets
Adie Smith
“Do we have to go?” I asked as I bent into our red van and
Even the
slumped into the passenger seat.
stench of the
Mom didn’t respond, but I watched as her lips thinned and
her jaw tightened and I resigned to fastening my seatbelt.
glass mill down
We were on our way to help Grandma Sally organize her
the Ohio River
closet. As a seven-year-old, I would much rather play kickball
with the neighborhood gang than go visit Sally. I hated her
was a welcome
nursing home; it made my clothes reek from cigarette smoke.
change.
The truth is, I didn’t like Grandma Sally much either. Her
scratchy voice was never the comforting grandma-voice the
grandmothers in the movies had, and her skin was like loose leather hanging on her bones,
not wrinkles worked into skin along laugh-lines.
My grandpa had divorced Sally when he came home to find my two-year-old mom
crying in the closet, her brother trying to find the key to unlock the door, and Sally
watching television. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia that same year. After the
divorce, my grandpa remarried and moved to Minnesota. My mom lost contact with Sally,
and it wasn’t until we moved to Pittsburgh that we found her again. She was living in a
nursing home in McKeesport, an old steel mill town outside the city limits where she had
grown up. My mom tried to visit Sally every-other week, taking her shopping and on day
trips outside of the nursing home; most of the time I tagged along out of obligation.
*
*
*
I had never been in Sally’s room before. The walls were cement brick and stained
from years of cigarette smoke and not enough government funding to buy a new can of
paint. Two twin beds were pushed up against the wall on opposite sides of the room; Sally’s
was covered in a light blue comforter that crumpled like paper when I perched on the
edge.
“I’m going to give away anything you don’t wear,” my mom reassured Sally as she
began sorting through the closet.
The clothes weren’t hung up, but were piled on the closet floor up to the top shelf.
The stained folds of the fabric reeked of urine, and I opened the window to let in some of
the cool October air. Even the stench of the glass mill down the Ohio River was a welcome
change.
“Do you ever wear this?” my mom asked, holding up a burgundy sweater that still had
price tags dropping. Sally didn’t respond for a couple minutes, her hand rubbing the side of
her chin absently as she finished her mumbled conversation with the voice only she could
hear.
My mom tossed the sweater into the keep-but-wash pile at the base of the bed.
“Do you need help washing your clothes?” my mom asked gently.
“No.”
“Well these aren’t clean; can you see that?”
66
CLEANING CLOSETS
“Oh,” Sally said as her hollow eyes focused in confusion.
I rearranged my folded legs on the bed, and Sally used the squeaks of the mattress and
the crinkling of the comforter as a distraction.
“I got you a present,” Sally said to me. She shuffled over to the bed, kneeled on the
floor, and dragged out a CVS pharmacy bag. Sally had never given me a present.
She handed me the gift; her roaming eyes landed on my face and focused. Inside the
bag was a doll with synthetic yellow curls and black, beady eyes that closed when I laid
her down. The price was still on the box, and in big, red letters, it read: $5.99. Sally smiled
absently and sat down on the bed next to me, watching as my fingers worked their way into
the box and pulled out the doll.
“Thanks grandma,” I said, running my hands through the doll’s hair.
“What are you going to call her?” my mom asked.
“I think I’ll call her Sally,” I said, readjusting Sally’s dress and tracing her painted-on
smile; it couldn’t hide her black, hollowed-out eyes.
*
*
*
I leaned my forehead out the window on the drive home, watching the city lights
stretch and twist on the Ohio River. The doll was nestled in the crook of my arm, sitting
up enough that if her hollow eyes could have seen, she could have watched the city lights
flicker, just like I could, and feel the cool air from the window filter out the nursing-home
smell.
67
THE BROGUE
April 4, New York, NY
I. The Buyer
I pick my way through muck
and mud, jostle cold stiff
hands holding briefcases and slick
umbrellas. Wall Street jargon
rambles on the phone like rainwater
gurgling in a nearby gutter
and the silver hands of my watch
point out that I am twentytwo minutes late for lunch
with her. Last week she left crumpled
napkins and the check.
You waited for me, once.
A flash of red, I turn my head
reminded of the dress
she wore last night to the party
where she laughed in the corner
with another man, slender fingers
clutching her third glass
of champagne the color
of her hair. Her lips
become thin, hard lines
when she talks with me, but
she still wears her wedding rings.
You used to kiss me, often.
Slick umbrellas hurry past as I pause
to watch a yellow awning drizzle
on these curving crimson satin
petals. I grasp the plastic packaging
and extract the dripping
bouquet from the black bucket
on the corner stand. Water trickles
down my coat sleeve, tickles
my elbow as I fumble
in my pocket for a folded
paper bill to give the vendor.
Can I buy a smile with a dozen roses?
68
Sarah Swenson
APRIL 4, NEW YORK, NY
II. The Seller
I sit beneath a yellow awning,
watch umbrellas as they pass
on this wet day. The road
shimmers like silver silk
beneath taxi-cab headlights
and all my flowers wear diamond
beads. A tall man shoulders
his way through the sea
of briefcases and suit coats, rattling
stock quotes into a cell phone, combing
a hand through short dark hair.
I didn’t think that you would stop.
He sees my red roses quivering
as heavy drops of water tumble
off the awning. Suit coats surge
past him. He sets his jaw and seizes
the blushing crimson blooms,
crumpling cellophane and scattering
raindrops. He wrestles a folded
fifty dollar bill from his pocket
and tosses it on the counter, carrying
off the fifteen-dollar roses
without collecting change.
You never thought to look me in the eyes.
Those are flowers for a woman
familiar with the feel of silk
and glint of diamonds. A crystal droplet
from the yellow awning
kisses my hand as I reach out
to take his money, watching
his dark head bob
down the crowded sidewalk
until his tall form is swallowed
by dripping umbrellas.
Oh, if those roses could be for me!
69
THE BROGUE
Trying to Reason with Hurricane
Season
Andrew Hedglin
Last Christmas, I took my old friend Jimmy Buffett’s advice and went back to the
island. Dauphin Island is one of my favorite places in the world, and it had been far too
long—a year or two—since I had been there. Last autumn, I had written a story, called
“The Grey and Endless Gulf,” which I set in Dauphin Island, Alabama, and I wanted to
see just how accurate my recollections were.
Dauphin Island is a barrier island west of Mobile Bay. It’s also one of three places
to which I’ve been enough to feel truly at home, besides my home and my paternal
grandparents’ house in Bogue Chitto, Mississippi.
When my dear sweet grandmother Ethel Mae Crouch
We pretended
married the absolutely insane George Jenkins (a man
to answer the
who is totally my grandfather but who is not my mother’s
father), she married into a whole clan of eccentricity.
phone in our best
George and his two sisters, Jen and Annabelle, grew up in
George Peacock
Lucedale, Mississippi, in comfortable but generally modest
circumstances. One of my great-aunts—I couldn’t tell you
voices: “Mr.
which one, as I’ve only met them a handful of times and
George PEAcock
therefore have trouble distinguishing between them—
married into high Atlanta society, to a man by the name
hee-yah! What
of George Peacock. Now nobody in my immediate family
ken I do fo’ YOO?”
has either met or heard or seen Mr. George Peacock, so
my brother Christopher and I have entertained the idea
that he may not, in fact, exist. Mom claimed she talked to him on the phone once, but
Christopher objected Jen and Annabelle could easily have had the butler pose as him. We
pretended to answer the phone in our best George Peacock voices: “Mr. George PEAcock
hee-yah! What ken I do fo’ YOO?”
At any rate, there is a house on Dauphin Island registered to the name of George
Peacock. It is christened “The Briar Patch,” an uncomfortably old-fashioned nod to Joel
Chandler Harris and his Uncle Remus stories. Despite our family’s strained contact with
my great-aunts, they were usually so kind in my childhood days as to let the Hedglins
descend upon their beach house for a week each summer.
*
*
*
There were things we managed to do each summer: go to the beach; occasionally
visit Fort Gaines, the Civil War fortification located at the tip of the island; and take the
ferry across the bay to go shopping at the outlet mall in Foley, Alabama. One of our most
treasured traditions was eating at the Seafood Galley.
The Galley was a terminally ill-run seafood restaurant that represented the unchanging
tenacity of the Dauphin Island that I once knew. They had a dance floor they kept covered
with dining tables, after line-dancing had gone out of style down there sometime back in
70
TRYING TO REASON WITH HURRICANE SEASON
the eighties. It welcomed visitors with decoupaged plaque of Rachel Field’s poem “If once
you have slept on an island.” Wooden marlins and lawn-gnome sea captains decorated the
walls. Every year or so they would change which side of the restaurant was smoking and
which was non-smoking, just for the hell of it. Every time we came, there was a different
manager, but the menu stayed the same and the sheer appeal of the whole place kept it
open.
It was always the first thing we did when we got to the Island after we unpacked.
Mom, Daniel, Christopher, and I would just be sitting in the living room, watching the
sunset as large-as-life in the studio window and waiting for us to go to dinner at the Galley.
George and Mae would still be puttering down through the south Mississippi back-roads in
his un-air-conditioned Chrysler LeBaron.
“I sure hope one of them doesn’t have a stroke,” Christopher would say.
*
*
*
My grandmother Mae liked to call it “The Shanty” for reasons the rest of my family
couldn’t quite grasp. Nonetheless, at first in jest, but then in seriousness, we began to call
it the Shanty as well. We had some good times, there in the Shanty. One time Christopher
was trying to describe a show about chimpanzee secret agents that no one else remembered,
until a complete stranger piped up, “The name of that show,” the stranger began, “was
Lancelot Link.” Christopher was relieved to have won the argument, but the rest of us were
terrified that the man had been listening to our entire conversation, filled as it was with
graphic estimations about the death of Elvis on his toilet.
My grandfather George had a habit of making strange request at restaurants. In
addition to being the only one in our contingent who didn’t subscribe to the philosophy
of teetotaling, he also had unreasonable dietary concerns. Once, to our horror, he pulled a
bag of tomatoes out of our grandmother’s purse.
“Excuse me, darling,” he hailed the waitress. Oh, God. “I was wondering if you could
put these tomatoes in the Caesar salad. These, you see, are George County tomatoes.”
The waitress, bless her heart, took the plastic bag of George County tomatoes. But the
rest of the family agreed that the tomatoes probably ended up in the trash.
*
*
*
So imagine my shock last Christmas, after all these memories and family legends
that helped define my childhood, to find the Shanty completely gone. Not a stone was left
upon stone. Now, my mother, who had been to the Island a month before, had tried to
warn me about this. I had expected the island to be in bad shape, because I knew that
Ivan and Katrina and Bob and Bozo and every hurricane that hits the Gulf South seems
to at least graze Dauphin Island, but the loss of this building, this citadel of my youth,
surely portended no good to us. It seemed arbitrary and mean, considering that the closely
packed buildings around where the Shanty used to be came relatively unscathed.
Mrs. Tafra, the proprietress of the Gulf Breeze Motel where my mother and I were
staying (The Briar Patch still stood, but was damaged), explained that a wall had been
gone from the Shanty, but the owner had simply knocked down the rest of it, collected
her insurance money, and was now traveling the country in a mobile home with her
grandchildren. My mother and I were speechless.
The next day, my mother and I went riding in her new Jeep Liberty to see how the rest
of the island survived. The dunes were all blown to hell. Sugar-white sand spread across
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THE BROGUE
the road, making for a difficult ride. Mom didn’t have four-wheel drive, even in this fancy,
monstrous new vehicle she had so recently purchased. I was snapping pictures with my
digital camera, documenting an equal measure of untouched pink and yellow mansions
on stilts and bombed-out houses that half leaned upon their support beams. We had even
heard a rumor of a house that was carried all the way out to block the road.
I was busily snapping pictures when Mom pulled out the way of a particularly large
vehicle attempting to get through the treacherous sand-trap of a boulevard. I did notice we
stopped moving, however. We were stuck, as I surmised from the sand shooting out behind
us in the passenger-side mirror.
“Sir!” I hailed a friendly looking, shirtless stranger. “Sir, our car is stuck! Could you
help us?” After a few minutes and a few people pushing the car (which I couldn’t help
but thinking was considerably heavier than Mom’s old Camaro), we got the Liberty back
onto the road. Mom was very careful in turning around at the cul-de-sac at the end of the
road.
In the middle of this mess, I had to kick a particularly large chunk of asphalt out of
the certain trajectory of the Liberty’s tires. I thought about just how much that concrete
represented. I wondered whose home or weekend getaway it used to be. I guess it was just
another piece of debris on a devastated tourist island, but it spoke to me.
72
No Face Phase (mixed media on wood)
Mia Ortiz
73
THE BROGUE
Michael (acrylic painting)
Tyler Tadlock
74
The Web (photography)
Scott Gaines
75
THE BROGUE
Eruption of Ego (sculpture)
Hosik Kim
76
untitled (sculpture)
Tyler Tadlock
77
THE BROGUE
Oak of Antin (Xerox transfer on wood)
Robby Piantanida
78
Going Home: #1 (photography)
Danielle Temple
79
THE BROGUE
Coffee Much (photography)
Scott Gaines
80
I N T E R V I E W W I T H H O WA R D B A H R
Interview with Howard Bahr
Martha Krystaponis interviewed Mr. Howard Bahr for The Brogue
Howard Bahr was born August 3, 1946, in Meridian, Mississippi. From 1964 to 1968,
he served as a gunner’s mate in the US Navy, participating in coastal and amphibious
operations in Vietnam and the Western Pacific. After his naval service, he worked as a
brakeman and yard clerk on several railroads in the South and the Midwest. In 1973 he
entered the University of Mississippi where he received a Bachelor’s Degree in English and
History in 1977 and a Master’s Degree in English in 1980. He currently resides in Jackson,
Mississippi, where he teaches English and creative writing at Belhaven College.
Books by Bahr: The Black Flower (1997), Home for Christmas (1997), The Year of Jubilo
(2000), The Judas Field (2006), and Pelican Road (2008).
THE BROGUE: How is your forthcoming book, Pelican Road, a new venture for
you, departing from your past books?
BAHR: Pelican Road is the first novel I have published (though not the first I have written)
that does not have a Civil War setting. This was a relief to me, for I have said all I have
to say about that period. Thematically, however, Pelican Road resembles the other works
because it explores the way people make the best of a difficult situation.
THE BROGUE: How did you use real-life experiences—such as your active duty with
the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War and the years you worked on the railroads—to
shape your writing?
BAHR: Every writer writes, in one way or another, about himself. The more experience a
writer can bring to his work, the more lumber he has for the mill. My experience has given
me images, smells, sounds, emotions, good lines of dialog, and innumerable anecdotes—all
of which can be shaped to a fictional circumstance. It’s not a question of balance so much
as application.
THE BROGUE: You were the curator of the William Faulkner house for nearly
twenty years. How do you find that affects your writing? Do you believe your style
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THE BROGUE
to be similar to that of Faulkner? Southern writers in general? Who are your writing
heroes?
BAHR: It was a privilege to care for Mr. Faulkner’s house, but I do not think it affected
my writing except to add to my store of images. When I first started to write seriously, I
imitated Mr. Faulkner’s style; imitation is one of the ways—perhaps the only way—a writer
can find his own voice. I do not think my present style is anything like Mr. Faulkner’s,
though you can hear echoes of him, along with other writers I have admired such as Mark
Twain, Joseph Conrad, Kurt Vonnegut, and the Larry McMurtry of Lonesome Dove.
THE BROGUE: You are a member of the Episcopal Church; how do you believe your
denominational beliefs, and more broadly your Christian faith, affect your writing?
BAHR: I consider myself an Anglo-Catholic deeply in love with the liturgy and teachings
of the Roman and Anglican traditions, even though the two are sometimes at odds. I am
a little unsure of myself outside these traditions, so I have never had a main character who
was not an Episcopalian or a Roman Catholic. However, my characters often struggle in
their faith, trying to understand God in the context of the reality that surrounds them.
Faith is a constant struggle for me as a result of my own experiences. If there is an overtly
Christian dimension to my work, it lies in the matter of redemption. My characters often
question God, but He always leads them to redemption through their own choices, their
own acts of sacrifice, courage, and love.
THE BROGUE: What do you think it would be most helpful for young writers to
know about the publishing process? What did you learn from it that most influenced
you?
BAHR: What I have learned from the publishing business is that I want nothing whatsoever
to do with it. I talk to my agent and my editor, and I like to have some say about the book
cover; beyond that, the publishing industry gives me a headache. The writer’s business is
to do his art and mail it off—the rest is up to the folks in the big offices. The primary duty
of a publishing house, whatever label it attaches to itself, should be to reward good, honest
work and give to readers the best of literature and entertainment.
THE BROGUE: Do you have any advice for young writers from your years of
experience?
BAHR: I am reluctant to give advice out of fear that someone might actually take it.
Nevertheless, I will offer a few particulars out of my own experience:
Keep your ego in check and understand that you are the steward of your talent, not
the source.
Be proud of your work, and gratefully accept accolades should they come, but never
forget that the work is the important thing, not you.
Know that being a writer is what you are. It is a full-time state of consciousness, not
something you dabble in when it’s raining. If you are not compelled to write, then you
probably shouldn’t.
Accept the fact that getting published is difficult and often a matter of luck. Press
on anyway. Learn to endure frustration. Be of good courage. Take chances—that’s often
where the most fun is—and trust yourself. God has given you a talent, and He expects you
to use it.
82
T H E AV I AT O R , 1 9 1 3
The Aviator, 1913
Howard Bahr
The Bleriot monoplane was brown, ugly, underpowered, and barely able to keep itself
aloft, but it had risen from the grass of West End Park eager as a young goose, and now the
trembling canvas wings invited the air to lift them toward heaven. The aviator adjusted
his goggles and peered over the stitched leather gunwale of the cockpit. The wind of his
passage hummed of freedom in the warping wires; the drone of the motor was steady and
comforting. A towering mass of blue clouds, riven by lightning, passed away toward the
east. The thunderheads were sublime, but they had delayed his takeoff, and thanks to
them he wouldn’t have much time in the air now. He had to be careful. It would still be
daylight up here long after it was dark on the ground, and he couldn’t land the machine
in the dark. In fact, he wasn’t certain he could land it at all. But time enough to worry
about that. He was flying now; these might be his final moments; he had paid five dollars
for them, and he would do well to spend them looking.
Below, in the bend of the shining river, lay the crowded rooftops and chimney pots
and the umbrage of green that was the city of New Orleans. There was Audubon Park, the
gauzy oaks of St. Charles Avenue, the unfinished gray tower of Loyola and the spires of
many churches lifted over the trees. The river looped southeast through the flat marshes,
a bright ribbon fading at last into the haze. Everything moved slowly beneath him, as if
he were stationary and free of gravity above the earth’s ponderous turning, an illusion
heightened by the glimpse of his own shadow on the rooftops. The aviator felt privy to
the view of God Himself, or some god anyhow—one of the Old Ones maybe, who looked
down in wonder on the busy earth, full of pity and scorn for mortals forever bound to their
squares of green, blind to their smallness, desperate over trifles, when the whole universe
lay around them in indifferent majesty. The aviator laughed out loud at his own arrogance,
but he found no shame in it. Never mind the five dollars. He had paid for this by choosing,
a coin he believed available to any man bold enough to spend it.
Too bad an aeroplane could not be flown at night, amid the stars and the broad gloom
of darkness. He could imagine the city lighted: yellow pools of street lamps marching up
Canal, the glow of thousands of windows, the running lights of ships reflected on the
water, perhaps locomotive headlights in the railway yards, and in the deep bend of the
river, a square of soft half-dark where the old French section lay. He would climb as high
as the machine would go, then cut his engine and turn and turn over the city in a cone of
silence—a dark bird circling unseen against the stars in solitude perfect and inviolable. He
wondered, if it was quiet, if he could hear church bells, their chimes floating aloft like an
angelus in a darkened nave. Could he start the engine again? It was one of the questions he
had asked that afternoon during his instruction. Certamente! said the Italian who owned
the machine. Put the nose down, dive, switch off, switch on, hope the propeller would
windmill and the motor come to life again. No trouble at all.
But he had never heard of anyone flying at night. How would he find his way home?
And if he couldn’t, having touched a great Mystery, would it really matter?
To the east, night was coming. The aviator fancied that Time itself was spread before
him, that if he only climbed high enough he could see into tomorrow and yesterday all at
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THE BROGUE
once, what he had been and what he would become. But that would have to wait. Such
knowledge came at a height where the air was too thin for breathing, and anyway, fifty
horsepower would never see him there.
He snapped pictures with his Kodak, then consulted his watch. Forty-five minutes
had passed since he left West End. He would have thought ten at the most. He turned the
control wheel, heard the groaning of wood and canvas as the port wing warped. A little
rudder, not too much, as the Italian had showed him. The nose swung around until the
waters of Lake Ponchartrain spread out before him like an inland sea. What if it was the
sea? What would it be like to make that choice, to press out alone into the greatest dark
of all? He was still thinking about that, and trying to pick out West End Park, when the
motor sputtered and coughed and quit. He stared in amazement at the stationary blade of
the propeller. Here was a thing indeed.
He was aware of a great, enveloping silence but for the wind. He savored it, wondering
again what it would be like with darkness together. He took time to listen for church bells,
but heard none. He finally forced himself to understand that he was not floating in grace
but was, in fact, about to die. He was not afraid of dying, but at the moment, he resented
the notion. He had no time for it now, and besides, dying would be bad form in this boxkite, by the light of day.
Down below, the rooftops steamed from the rain. He could dive all right, but he
would be into some citizen’s upstairs bedroom long before there was any windmilling.
Glide, then. The Italian had assured him that the Bleriot would glide like a leaf. Keep it
level and remember to flare, like a dove settling on a branch. A dove was better than a leaf.
He put the nose down a little to get some speed, then leveled off and aimed the varnished
propeller blade at the green swale of West End where a good many oak trees stood between
him and the grass. A long red scarf nailed to a telephone pole assured him he was at least
coming into the wind. Something else about the telephone poles. Of course—the wires.
Be careful of the wires. Captain Harry Jung tightened his harness, then crossed himself. In
nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Latin was the appropriate language for death. Flare
like the Holy Ghost descending. Ave Maria, gratia plena— He could get no further with
the prayer in the appropriate language for death, but hoped the Blessed Mother would put
out a hand to her orphan son anyway. Hail Mary, full of grace. She would not fault him
for choosing this way, who had chosen so boldly herself. The trees were blurring under
him now, snatching at his wheels. The Bleriot was not gliding, not like a leaf at all. It was
falling like a millstone, tilted nose-down and plunging almost vertical into shadow. Still,
Captain Jung felt good, better than he had in years. He wondered, for an instant, what the
ordinary people were doing on the earth that was rushing up to meet him.
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T H E H O LY I N N O C E N T S
The Holy Innocents
Behold, they come: wounds all healed,
Flesh pink and warm as the clay of Eden.
They bear no envy, nor complain
That no one brought them gifts,
No angels warned their fathers in a dream.
They woke to bearded faces, felt the blade,
Cried out once. That was all.
Now, beneath a wall in Nazareth,
They pause. They settle to the ground,
Silent as the ghosts of birds. They whisper, strangely,
For in life they had no voice.
They find the door—they know it for a door—and see
The boy asleep with wood chips in his hair.
The window lattice, hung with vines,
Drops patterns of the moon,
And quiet as the moon they enter, huddle
By the palette, pale in their fresh white gowns.
One leans close; he whispers, Here we pass—
Don’t let it be in vain.
Then gone, journeying on
To the alien coast of Heaven.
The desert night is cool. The boy groans
In his sleep, sighs once, practicing the words,
While in the courtyard, shrouded in the moon,
A barren fig tree drops its leaves and dies.
85
Howard Bahr
THE BROGUE
Pill Bottle of Memories
Little brown pills rattle
around in their bottle as
my neighbor, Mr. Thomas,
(a crotchety old pill himself)
shakes them into his palm.
They numb the pain,
numb the memories of pain,
from glory days of throwing
round pills of leather to
strike out the opposition,
while striking out his shoulder,
shattering his dreams.
But his shoulder was not bad
enough to stop the Army.
Vietnam and its whistling
pills of gleaming steel and
high explosives scarred his
legs and face with thick
white ropes of twitches and aches.
Little brown pills rattle in the
bottle as Mr. Thomas, that
grouchy old pill down the street,
places the bottle with its brethren
inside the warped wooden cabinet.
86
Rebecca Yantis
M A R I A F E L’ S F A S C I N AT I O N W I T H H A N D S
Mariafel’s Fascination with Hands
Martha Krystaponis
I. Crystal Colors
Prismatic rainbows scatter past my fingers, splashing
the white cement wall with crimson, jade, gold.
The sunlight trickles through the facets of
the ten-peso imitation diamond,
saying something—but I don’t know the translation.
I stand next to him in a room filled with Mexican
blankets. We nod to a woman rattling Spanish;
he repeats his purchasing offer.
He looks at me, eyes unblinking. I wish I knew
what the light reflected in his pupils was trying to tell me.
The crystal dances in my palm as I return it
to the window behind his head.
II. Folded Together
My knuckles bump against his,
twining and folded. His blunt
fingertips are calloused
and brown, but clean. I remember
my parents’ hands, thumb caressing
knuckles, during dinner prayer.
I sneak a peek at our hands,
together by chance seating. I pray
that his thumb won’t move away
from my knuckles.
III. The Drum
The floor pulses
with the rhythmic prints
his steady handbeats leave,
the bongos by his knees
creating sound which tries
to shake through the rawhide,
but they can’t escape
to join my melody.
If he pounded on the drum
harder, faster,
maybe those sound waves
could be free.
87
THE BROGUE
An Aphid Infestation
Lea Schumacher
I was balancing precariously on a stepladder, struggling with a 10-inch basket of
scaevola. I was uncomfortably sticky under my clinging cotton t-shirt. It had to be at
least a million degrees in the greenhouse. My arms burned with the weight of the basket
as I stood on tiptoes, trying to reach the hook above my head. Being one of the shorter
employees in the annuals greenhouse, I always felt a disadvantage when I was assigned to
hang the new planters from the ceiling. This stepladder was never tall enough. Carol and I
always fought over the taller one, and since she wasn’t even five feet, she usually got it.
I couldn’t see anything but the branching arms of the scaevola, purple spindly flowers
brushing my lips and tickling above my eyes. With my right hand I pulled the water spigot
over the plastic hook of the pot and used my left hand (and chest) to hoist the pot ever
nearer to the metal pole. I was so close—just a few more agonizing, reaching seconds—
“Excuse me?”
If I learned anything this summer, it is that there
And if said employees
are certain inappropriate moments to ask employees
for assistance. For instance, if said employees are
are barely balancing
charging in and out of the greenhouse on a baking
on a stepladder while
July day carrying multiple flats of lobelia during an
exceedingly busy delivery, do not ask for assistance.
being devoured by a
If employees have their hands six inches deep in
ferocious scaeovola
potting soil, surrounded by ceramic pots and multiple
flats of nicotiana and dusty miller, do not ask for
plant, do not ask for
assistance. And if said employees are barely balancing
assistance.
on a stepladder while being devoured by a ferocious
scaeovola plant, do not ask for assistance.
I managed a hopefully cheerful, if somewhat muffled, “Yes, how can I help you,” finally
thrust the planter onto the pole, and looked down.
The woman was wearing a long, flowing, black dress with magenta flowers. She had
a straw hat, dark short hair, sunglasses, and the widest crimson-lip-stick smile I had ever
seen. She seemed to be all lips and teeth. “I was wondering if you could answer a few
questions for me.” She smiled and smiled. Her teeth were big.
I learned another thing this summer. Questions are bad. When a customer has
questions—besides the usual, “Where are your tomatoes?” (“In the far back on the lefthand table”), or “Will this come back next year?” (“I’m sorry sir, but this is the annuals
greenhouse. Perennials are right out those doors”)—it means they are either going to ask
some deep gardening question about the proper way to care for summer squash, or they are
going to complain. I waited expectantly, brushing my palms of on the back of my shorts
and wondering where Karen, the manager, was.
“I bought a hanging basket like that one a few weeks ago. Beautiful, beautiful little
baby petunias,” (‘Million bells,’ I thought grimly), “and they were the nicest pink! Kind of
a salmon but a little deeper, with a tinge of red. I hung them at the end of my driveway on
a lamppost.” She smiled. I smiled. “But something seems to have happened to them. They
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A N A P H I D I N F E S T AT I O N
are starting to get dry and shriveled even though I water them everyday, and make sure
they don’t get too much sun. What do you think of that?”
Fortunately, this was a simple question. “Well ma’am, it sounds like you have
aphids.”
“What?” The woman stopped smiling for an instant, her crimson lips slack, then
recovered.
“Aphids. Little green bugs. Million bells, petunias, are more prone to getting them.
In fact, we even have a problem with them here. The best way to remedy them is to get a
nice natural insecticide like rosemary oil and—”
“You mean there are bugs eating my plants?” She definitely was not smiling anymore.
I noticed how wrinkled her skin was under her makeup.
“Yes, that’s probably—”
“Well.” The woman clipped the word sharply. “That is unthinkable. Simply
unthinkable. I bought that plant because I wanted it to be beautiful. I wanted to see it
when I came home from work. And you’re telling me that it is infested with bugs?”
Should I offer condolences? “I’m so sorry, but that seems to be—”
“You know what I’m going to do?” Her jaw was firm and hard in the afternoon sunlight.
“I’m going to go home and kill that plant. I’m going to kill it. If it’s not going to be pretty,
it’s not going to live.”
I suddenly had a mental image of the lip-sticked woman hacking her petunias to
death with an axe. I gulped. “Well, you could get an insecticide like the rosemary—”
“No.” The woman’s eyebrows were thin lines over her wide sunglasses. “I don’t want
to fiddle with rosemary oil. I’m going to kill that thing. It’s useless.” She turned and swept
away, her large black purse clutched to her shoulder. Did she carry a knife in there? Had she
already disposed of a dog that refused to be doggish, a child who misbehaved? She hadn’t
been wearing a wedding ring. I imagined a suspicious mound in her backyard where a
“useless” husband decomposed. I shuddered. Those poor petunias. The woman was almost
through the doors when she stopped and turned to me. I could feel my body grow tense.
Her lips were a red smear against the pallor of her face. She was looking at me, coming
towards me again. I tried to remain calm, wondered wildly where Karen was. Why oh why
was I so small?
“Young lady.”
I am alone with an axe-murderer.
“Thanks for your help today.” The woman smiled again, nodded her head at me, and
was gone.
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THE BROGUE
i heart you
Christina Miles
A note, with handwriting
that pinches each letter
at its base, declares
you heart me.
Which means what? The muscle
propelling red life pumps
a little harder for me.
Or perhaps, that same
muscle pushes thoughts
of me through your blood
into the brain. Pumping
me in and out,
one hundred fifty beats
per minute. Is this how you
communicated with the other
women you wooed?
Little notes meant to spark
felicity. Or did you tell them.
Letting them feel it when
they held your hand.
Letting them look for lies
in your irises and pupils. Was it
your heart you
gave? Or just bleached wood pulp,
pigment ingrained into its surface?
Your name at the top,
mine, misspelled, below, and
a heart that separates us.
90
T H E F I S H E R VA R I A B L E
The Fisher Variable
Jerry Barlow
It’s the old Packard that he remembers the most from
Surely he’s not
that day. Not the beautifully restored antebellum home, not
out in the hallway
the magnificently sculptured goldfish pond built around a
100-year-old oak, not the antique stained-glass wind chimes
ringing a bell,
dancing with the gentle southern breeze, but that gorgeous
Fisher thought as
green ‘38 Packard is what he always remembers when he
thinks back to that day so many years ago. The car was
he turned over
already 30 years old, but looked as if she’d just come from
in the bed and
the showroom.
Uncle Cordell was standing at the door waiting, Fisher
covered his head
remembered, a cloud of pipe smoke above his head.
with a pillow.
“They took Mama away,” he said to Uncle Cordell.
“I know, Fisher. I know.”
“It’s not fair.”
“Of course it is, my boy; it’s as fair as any other part of life.”
“First, Dad; now, Mama.”
The two walked into the dimly lit house. There was a well-built fire crackling in
the hearth. It was the beginning of winter, a tricky time of year when the weather could
change from freezing to sweltering overnight. It was the time of year when one carried
one’s coat more than one wore it, but dared not be caught without it.
“I’ve got the guestroom made out for you,” Uncle Cordell said, “The one at the end
of the hall.”
Fisher said nothing in response, just sat in an old wicker rocker, staring into the fire,
watching the embers glowing different shades of red. He sat there all night looking for
answers in that fire. Answers to the questions everybody’s asked from time to time. Why
do some live and some die? Why are some happy and some sad? Why me? They were
questions that’d been around since the Stone Age, but Fisher was just now getting around
to asking them.
The fire was nothing but smoldering ashes by the time Fisher finally dosed off, just as
the morning sun was beginning its climb over the eastern tree line that marked the edge
of Uncle Cordell’s property. He didn’t wake when Uncle Cordell came down to read the
paper before leaving for an early class, but around noon hunger called him from sleep and
drove him to pilfer the cupboard.
With a P.B. and J. in one hand and a glass of milk in the other, Fisher nosed around
the old house. The kitchen and living room were exactly as he remembered from when he
and his mother would take a long weekend to visit Grandma and Grandpa, but the rest of
the old dwelling seemed more like a warehouse in a comic factory than a former plantation
mansion.
Hundreds of comic books filled every corner of all the downstairs rooms. They were
stacked as high as four foot in some places, with Captain America and Batman being the
most favored.
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THE BROGUE
Fisher thought it awfully strange that a man his uncle’s age could be so obsessed with
comics. He knew kids his own age that collected and traded them and even they seemed
a little old for that sort of thing, but a college professor in his late forties stockpiling
kids’ magazines in that manner was just plain bizarre. He chuckled as he thought of his
uptight, no-nonsense uncle, with his flawlessly trimmed jet-black beard and perfectly-lit
pipe, wasting valuable time reading comic books.
Then, just as quickly as the smile had come, a deep feeling of shame swept across his
mind. His smile was replaced with a scowl and soon he was down right pissed. Pissed at
himself for putting aside his grief for a brief moment, pissed at his dad for dying, and pissed
at his mama for not being strong enough to live life without her husband. He stormed out
of the house and took off down the road.
The house was dark when Fisher finally got home late that night. Home, he thought,
this is home now. Not even a glow in the fireplace to help him make his way to the
staircase.
“I guess we should talk about a curfew,” he heard his uncle’s voice come from the
darkness as he felt his way up the staircase.
“Mama let me stay out until 11:00,” Fisher said from the upstairs landing.
“10:00 sounds good to me,” Uncle Cordell said.
Fisher didn’t argue. Somehow arguing didn’t seem possible. The man spoke with such
authority that submission was the only option left to an eighteen-year-old whose will was
all but broken.
*
*
*
The sun was just beginning to peak over the horizon when Fisher heard a bell ringing
outside his bedroom door. It wasn’t a bell like an alarm clock; it sounded more like a hand
bell.
Surely he’s not out in the hallway ringing a bell, Fisher thought as he turned over in the
bed and covered his head with a pillow.
“Breakfast is in ten minutes,” Uncle Cordell called from the hall. “There are fresh
towels hanging in the guest washroom.”
Fisher quickly washed up and got to the kitchen where he found his uncle sitting
behind a plate of eggs, bacon, and grits. He also had coffee, milk, and orange juice, which
Fisher found unusual.
Uncle Cordell ate quickly and noisily without speaking a word until he’d eaten
everything on the plate and drank the milk and juice. He was always perfectly dressed, this
morning in a smoke-gray coat and burgundy tie. His hair, jet-black and medium length,
was combed straight back and shined with the over use of tonic.
“I went by your school yesterday,” Uncle Cordell said as he took a careful sip of coffee.
Steam from the cup fogged over his glasses, so he tilted his head down and looked over
them to see Fisher’s expression. “They are expecting you back at school on Monday.”
“I’m not sure I’m going back,” Fisher said while staring into his eggs.
“Of course you’re going back, and you’re going to start interviewing for college soon,
too.”
“College?”
“Yes, college. What did you think you were going to do after graduation, go back to
your summer job at the filling station?”
“No, I had the idea that I’d go back to North Carolina. I have friends there.”
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“Friends that are going off to college.”
Fisher thought about that for a minute. “Well, maybe I’ll see about getting a job at
the mill.”
“Is that what you want, Fisher. You want to spend the rest of your life pulling twelve
hour shifts at the mill? Even if you did, that mill won’t be around another five years. Then
where would you be?”
The truth was that Fisher hadn’t put much thought into what he wanted out of life.
There’d been little time to dream about the future since his dad was killed. Once, when
he was much younger, he was determined to be a pro baseball player, traveling from one
side of the country to the other, but that dream was just a kid’s fantasy. He’d grown up a
lot since those days.
Uncle Cordell lit his pipe. “Any college you leaning toward?”
It was a loaded question: how could he say anything but Kennedy? “I’m not sure I can
pass the entrance exam for Kennedy, Uncle Cordell.”
“Of course you can. You’ll have all summer to prepare, and I may be able to pull a few
strings. There is some benefit to having tenure, you know.”
There was a lull in the conversation. Fisher wanted to ask about the dining room.
The locked door was gnawing at the back of his mind, but before he could get the question
together in his mind, Uncle Cordell picked up again.
“I’ll set up a meeting with one of our counselors this week.”
There was no way Fisher was going to Kennedy, but he wasn’t ready for that battle
with Uncle Cordell just yet. After all, he’d just gotten there, and it was six months until
graduation. A lot could change in six months.
“I’ll have you drive me to the college today; then, you can run some errands I have
listed.”
What was this, a hint of the silver lining Fisher had been hoping for? Was Uncle
Cordell actually going to let him drive the Packard?
*
*
*
Dixon Hall was by far the largest building on campus. It sat on a hill in the middle of
the grounds, looking down and intimidating the rest of the college. Its three-story columns
were as old as the South itself and its arched windows were as elegant as any of those of
the Versailles.
Fisher watched as his uncle, the great Professor Baxter, trotted up the steps and
disappeared through the south entrance.
“This is no place for the son of an Army grunt,” Fisher said to himself as he turned
the Packard back toward town.
The errands were few: a stop at the bank, a few groceries from the New Deal, and a
drop-off at the drycleaners.
The grocery list was short and to the point: 2 cans of Prince Albert, 4 quarts of milk
(not a gallon), ½ gallon of orange juice (not 2 quarts), and 20 Swanson TV dinners (5
turkey, 5 chicken, and 10 whatever).
Fisher managed to make it home from his errands by noon.
The back porch was just off the kitchen and stretched the length of the house. As
Fisher put the TV dinners away in an ancient chest freezer that looked as if it had been on
the porch for centuries, he noticed that the dining room windows were boarded up from
93
THE BROGUE
the inside of the house. He made a close inspection to see if there were any cracks, any
clues as to what was hidden behind the barricade, but it was sealed up tight.
For the rest of the day, Fisher fought the urge to find a way into the dining room. A
crossword from the morning paper helped the afternoon pass by, and before long Uncle
Cordell was home thanks to a ride from Dr. Lincoln, another professor from Kennedy.
Supper was a lot like breakfast. Uncle Cordell didn’t talk much.
“Is this what you always have for supper?” Fisher asked.
“No, on Sundays we’ll go to the diner,” was the response, quick with no wasted
words.
“How come we eat in the kitchen?” Fisher hoped for a clue as to what was in the
dining room with this question.
“Because there’s no table in the living room.”
No help with the dining room mystery in that.
“Well, it doesn’t seem right to have TV dinners all the time when there’s no TV in
the house.”
Uncle Cordell stopped eating for a moment, leaned back in his chair, and looked at
Fisher with a tilted head before asking, “Whatever do we need with a TV?”
“We could watch the news.”
“We get two papers a day.”
“What about the ball games?”
“We have a radio.”
Fisher scratched his head. “Entertainment?”
Uncle Cordell reached behind his chair and pulled a Captain America from a handy
stack and tossed it to Fisher’s side of the table. Fisher looked at the comic, then back to his
uncle who was back to sawing through an overcooked piece of turkey.
“What’s in the dining room?” he blurted out.
“Proof,” Uncle Cordell said with a mouth full of turkey.
“What kind of proof?”
“Proof of everything,” he said as he pointed to the salt shaker.
Fisher passed the salt and asked, “What do you mean everything?”
“Proof of the ever-expanding universe, proof of the shape of nature, proof of the
perfect curve ball, it’s all there.”
Fisher didn’t understand and the mystery of the locked dining room became all the
more enticing as visions of Frankenstein’s laboratory came to his mind.
*
*
*
The weekend was fairly dull by an eighteen-year-old’s standards. Saturday was long
and boring with the radio and comics as the only entertainment. Baseball season was over,
so Fisher listened to music as he read Batman. At noon, a quiz show came on that Uncle
Cordell never missed.
He came into the living room and changed the station without even acknowledging
Fisher whose long, lanky body stretched the length of the couch as he read. The show
lasted from noon until one. There were four rounds of question for two contestants. Each
round consisted of ten questions, and the first one to buzz the buzzer got to answer. The
contestant who had answered the most correct got to compete against the clock for the
bonus round.
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T H E F I S H E R VA R I A B L E
Every time a question was asked, Uncle Cordell would call out the answer from his
seat in the old wicker rocker before either of the radio contestants could even buzz their
buzzer. Sometimes Uncle Cordell’s answer would come before the announcer had even
finished asking the question.
Soon Fisher was playing along too, calling out answers from the sports category even
faster than Uncle Cordell. The competition in the living room became charged as the two
called out their answers louder and louder trying to out do the other.
The climax came with the last question of the game. The room got very quiet as
Fisher and Uncle Cordell turned the question over in their minds.
“What American President had the shortest term in office?”
Fisher knew this. He’d heard this question before. Who was it? The answer was on
the tip of his tongue.
Uncle Cordell’s brow wrinkled as he tried to pull the answer from deep within his
mind. He looked to be in pain with his eyes closed so tightly that tears were coming to
the corners.
“William Henry Harrison,” the answer came from the radio.
“Bullshit!” Uncle Cordell said as he turned off the radio and stormed out of the room.
He spent the rest of that day in one of the extra upstairs bedrooms that he used for an
office.
Fisher went outside and spent the rest of that cool afternoon reading by the goldfish
pond.
On Sunday, Uncle Cordell stayed in his office until almost 7:00, then he came out
and they went to the diner. It was one of those mom-and-pop places that mostly catered
to the mill guys during lunch. There were a few booths, but most of the seating was at the
bar.
“The meatloaf’s great,” Uncle Cordell said as they took a seat at the bar. A short
blond waitress came up and pulled an order pad from her apron.
“The usual, Cordell?”
Uncle Cordell nodded, then she looked to Fisher, “You?”
“What ever Uncle Cordell’s having.”
“Uncle Cordell,” she repeated. She looked over to Cordell. “Is this Fisher?”
“Yes, this is my nephew Fisher.”
“No kidding. I went to school with your mama,” the waitress said. “How is she?” As
soon as she said it she tried to pull it back. “I mean...” She turned back to Uncle Cordell
with a lost look on her face. “What was that you wanted again?”
“Meatloaf,” Uncle Cordell said
“It’ll be right out,” she said and walked away.
“Guess everyone knows about Mama.”
“It is a small town, Fisher. You’ve lived in small towns before, haven’t you?”
In fact, he had. He’d lived in all kinds of towns and cities, all over the country. His
dad had moved them from base to base for as long as he could remember, never staying in
any town long enough to make any real friends. There were some he called friends, just
to make himself feel normal. He even wrote to them sometimes, but they never returned
the favor.
“You need to come to the college as soon as school lets out on Wednesday,” Uncle
Cordell changed the subject. “You have a meeting with Dean Caulfield.”
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“Why would we waste the Dean’s time, Uncle Cordell? I really don’t think I’m smart
enough for Kennedy.”
“Nonsense. You’re as smart as you want to be, my boy.”
*
*
*
The bell from the hallway came early on Monday. It was still quite dark outside when
Fisher heard the familiar call, “Breakfast is in ten minutes. There are fresh towels hanging
in the guest washroom.”
So far every morning it was the same, the hand bell from the hall, fresh towels in
the washroom, and the exact same breakfast, but today was Monday, what Uncle Cordell
thought was to be Fisher’s first day back to school.
Fisher felt odd on the school bus. Before he’d moved in with Uncle Cordell, he and
his mother lived close enough that he could walk to school, but now he was stuck on a bus
full of junior high kids.
When the bus finally stopped, everyone filed out and
Proof of the
went into the school, all but Fisher. Fisher walked the
two blocks to the Temple County courthouse. Next to the
ever-expanding
courthouse was an Army recruiting office that wasn’t open
universe, proof
yet, so he waited.
After about an hour of sitting on the curb, Fisher saw a
of the shape of
sharply dressed Army Sergeant coming up the sidewalk. The
nature, proof of
crew cut and crisp creases reminded Fisher of his father.
Highly buffed shoes reflected the sunlight into Fisher’s
the perfect curve
eyes as the Sergeant stopped and looked down at him.
ball, it’s all there.
“You waiting for me?” the soldier asked as he lent Fisher
a hand and helped him to his feet.
“I want to join the Army,” Fisher said.
“Now, that’s not something I hear every day. Come on inside and let’s talk about it.”
The two walked inside.
The recruiting office was small, and the Sergeant seemed to fill it up. He sat behind a
tiny desk, and then introduced himself.
“I’m Sergeant Miller,” the soldier said as he reached over the desk to shake Fisher’s
hand.
“Fisher Hill.”
Sergeant Miller shot Fisher a big toothy grin as he rifled through some papers. “So you
want to join the Army. I’m assuming you are eighteen?”
“Yes sir, last month.”
“And you don’t have a criminal record?”
“No sir, never been in any trouble.”
“Good, good. Let’s see.” The Sergeant pulled open a drawer, “I’ve got a few forms
here we’ll need to fill out, and I’ll need a copy of your birth certificate. Do you have a
number?”
“My phone number?”
“No, your draft number. Did you get a letter?”
“No sir, I didn’t get a letter.”
Sergeant Miller looked a little puzzled, but recovered quickly, then found the papers
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he was looking for. “Okay. Well, let’s fill out these papers and get you in the Army, son.”
The big grin was back.
Within an hour, Fisher was all but enlisted and on his way back to Uncle Cordell’s
house to look for his birth certificate.
It was a long walk back home with a cool easterly wind fighting him every step of the
way. Fisher thought about his decision—or was it his destiny? Was all this already written
down in some book, only to be played out like some Shakespearean tragedy?
Fisher wasn’t sure what he thought about free will; all he knew was that everything
would be over soon. It wouldn’t be long before he would be in Asia and would die a hero’s
death just like his father. All he needed was that birth certificate, but didn’t know where
to begin to look for it. Then he remembered the safety deposit box.
*
*
*
Back at home, Fisher searched the house. Somewhere Uncle Cordell had the key to
his mama’s safety deposit box. He turned the place upside down. He searched through
every nook and cranny of the house until there was only one place left to look.
Armed with a butter knife, Fisher went to work on the dining room door. It wasn’t
much of a lock, just enough to keep an honest man honest, and soon the door popped
open.
The room was dark, so Fisher had to feel his way around until he came across a light
switch. Soon the room came to life with bright florescent lights that were crudely attached
to the ceiling where Fisher recalled two beautiful chandeliers once hung.
The room scarcely resembled what he remembered from Christmas and Thanksgiving
dinner’s spent with his Grandpa and Grandma years before. The hardwood of the floor
was all scarred up with scratches and gouges and covered with an inch of dust. The lightly
stained birch paneling had been covered by enormous chalkboards. From one side of the
room to the other, three of the four walls were nothing but chalkboards; even the windows
had been covered.
The boards were chalked with numbers and letters that didn’t make any sense. Is it
some kind of code? Fisher wondered as he studied the X’s and Y’s chaotically placed among
numbers and brackets all over the boards.
Fisher studied one board in particular. It was as captivating as any piece of art, but
in a different way. The board called to him like a mystical puzzle, and as he stared at
the markings, a pattern began to emerge. These weren’t random symbols, nor were they
some kind of code. These were some kind of magnificent math problems, some incredibly
complicated equations.
“Do you see my mistake?” Uncle Cordell’s voice startled Fisher. He was standing in
the doorway looking at the boy, pipe lit and glasses down low on his nose.
“I was just...” Fisher started to explain.
“Do you see my mistake?” Uncle Cordell asked again.
Fisher looked back to the board. “I don’t even know what this is.”
Uncle Cordell came into the room, stood behind Fisher, and began to admire his own
work. “Well, this one is an attempt to mathematically explain the curve ball. Unfortunately
it doesn’t work out.”
He pointed across the room to another board. “That one is a ratio using phi as a base,
then applying random variables to the Fibonacci Sequence...” he notice Fisher began to
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THE BROGUE
drift back toward the fastball equation.
“Why are there so many letters in this one?” Fisher asked.
“Because there are so many unknowns, the velocity of the ball, the speed of the
rotation...”
Fisher’s face had a look of wonder and amazement, a look that Uncle Cordell knew all
too well. He’d seen it before in the faces of some of his best students. Fisher was hooked.
“This is the sort of thinking that you’ll be doing at Kennedy.”
“Kennedy,” the look of interest evaporated from Fisher’s face as his gaze fell to his feet.
“I won’t be going to Kennedy. I’ve joined the Army.”
“What do you mean you’ve joined the Army?”
“I went to see a recruiter, the one over by the courthouse. I signed the papers. It’s all
set up; all he needs is my birth certificate.”
“What the hell were you thinking, Fisher? The Army killed your dad.”
“A Vietcong soldier killed my dad.”
“I loved your dad like a brother, and I wouldn’t try to take anything away from him,
but the fact is your dad died in vain. He died for nothing. The only good to come from
Jack’s death was that you’d be exempt from the draft, and now even that’s gone.”
“My dad was a hero.”
“Your dad was a fool.”
With that, Fisher bolted from the room. Uncle Cordell did nothing to stop him, just
let him go out the door and down the road.
*
*
*
Fisher shivered as he roamed the streets that night with no coat. He wished many
evils on his uncle that evening, and vowed never to return to his home. So what if he was
cold and hungry? Starving was better that going back to stay with that bastard.
How dare Uncle Cordell call his father a fool. Fisher started to cry because, for the
first time in his life, he began to doubt his father’s character.
Could it be true? Fisher wondered. Could the great Jack Hill have been acting foolishly
when he charged that encampment? Did he and half his company die in vain?
Fisher thought about the funeral, the rifle fire, the flag, the whispers. The whispers:
what were they saying?
It began to rain, a cold rain that quickly soaked through Fisher’s flannel shirt. Then
he saw the Packard turn down Main Street and make a right on Belmont. The vow of no
return faded away with the offer of a warm ride home. It was a quiet ride, with neither
Uncle Cordell nor Fisher saying a word until they pulled into the driveway.
“I took care of things,” was all Uncle Cordell said, and the affair was never spoken
of again.
The rain came hard later that night, putting Fisher in a deep dream-filled sleep.
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A RT W O R K
Detroit (photography)
Danielle Temple
99
THE BROGUE
Edinburgh
Addie Leak
The night in town is thick and damp: no star,
No moon, no shadow seen. Just north, the Firth
Of Forth lies silent and dark, breathes the haar
As chilled waves kiss the steaming earth.
Without the lamps, I’d lose my self in grey,
Alone, perhaps, in all the city. As I walk,
The modern world begins to fade away;
The sun may rise on new-young gleaming lochs
Of yesteryear with Viking ships upon
Them, half-husked corncobs with carved curling prows,
Or clear the fog to find the Gardens gone
Again in lake. Mute Swans may float and bow,
Their beaks unpressed with symphonies to sing
As from each grasslet misty moisture drops,
And in the Royal Mile a fairy ring
Of mushrooms grows, trees replacing tartan shops.
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JACOB
Jacob
Katie Shelt
Emerging from the fog,
a fearsome stranger with a kindly gaze,
sinewed arms, and shining eyes
piercing flesh and bone.
I meant to bow my knee,
but this was no holy ground.
This land was mine,
and he was uninvited.
So I lunged,
and we struggled on and on
throughout the dark and starless night.
What had I done?
Who was this man?
This fighter with a will of steel?
I don’t know him.
Yet, he strikes fear in my heart,
and such love I’ve never known.
I want what he has
and so demand a gift,
I hardly recognize my own voice,
wondering at my own audacity.
I got my blessing then—
a lifelong sore hip
is a small price to pay
when I’ve seen the living God
and emerged alive.
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Picture Perfection
Christina Miles
There is a black and white picture that I stole from an old
As I walked,
photo album and pasted to the front cover of a high-school
my reflection
project. It is a picture of a young couple standing in the middle
of pine trees. The man is looking down at the woman in his arms,
winked at
focusing only on her. A smile is stretched across his cheeks. She is
me from a
not looking back, but instead looks at the camera. She smiles also,
prepared for the picture to come. They are young. She is almost
window.
twenty, and he is almost twenty-three. They make a cute couple.
I pasted it below the heading: The Story of a Miles. The project was a short
autobiography for my Spanish III class. The paper was littered with other pictures as well;
a photographic record of our lives had been one of the requirements. Since this picture
was the only one on the cover and the only one in black and white, it caught my teacher’s
attention. “You look so pretty in this picture,” she said. “Who is that man next to you? Is
he your novio?” She admired the picture for a few minutes before handing the project back
to me.
“No,” I replied, blushing, “those are my parents. Their engagement photo.” Señora
looked down in surprise. She had met both of my parents. My sister had been in her class
years before I started taking Spanish.
“My, well…it’s funny how black and white can change things, isn’t it. I could have
sworn that was you.” She examined the photo again. When she had finished, the rest of
the class passed my project around. They wanted to see if my mom and I really did look
that similar, or if Señora was losing it.
*
*
*
For my dad’s fiftieth birthday, my dad’s girlfriend and the manager at his office decided
to throw him a surprise birthday party. For months, they schemed and organized, hoping
for a flawless party. I was flown in from college to be his birthday gift. He had not seen me
in two months, so they thought I might be the perfect gift.
For decorations, my siblings and I scoured computers and boxes looking for pictures to
hang. Although my parents are separated, my mother helped me look through the dozens
of boxes crammed with photos that hadn’t been separated into albums. I took the spoils
of our hunt with a promise to return them after the party and pasted pictures to the walls
of Dad’s office. Tables were covered with all of Dad’s favorite dishes. I was stuffed in a box,
and the party was ready.
Dad entered, surprised. “Oh, you guys,” I heard him exclaim, “I can’t believe you did
all this.” His gaze fell on the giant box put in the center.
“You’ve got to open your gift first,” his girlfriend said. Not sure what to expect, Dad
tugged at the top of the gift. When he noticed that it had no bottom, he lifted it over my
head.
“Happy birthday!” I shouted. Dad swept me into a hug, and tears leaked from his eyes.
He spent the next few hours walking around the room, greeting old friends, tasting treats,
and playing games. He held my hand or wrapped my arm around his acting as if I would
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PICTURE PERFECTION
dissolve were he not touching me.
“Where did you guys get all these pictures?” he asked.
“Around,” I responded. “Albums, boxes…but mostly computers.” I smiled, surveying
the work.
“You do realize there’s one with your mom in it. Two actually.” I looked around the
room, frantically searching for the pictures. I prayed that my aunts haven’t seen them,
hoping that his girlfriend didn’t notice.
“Where?” He points to a black and white picture. There is a man and a woman. The
man is looking down at the woman smiling. She is looking up at him, also smiling. The
sun streaks white lines across their faces. “Dad, that’s you and me.”
*
*
*
I have a reddish-tan leather jacket. It hangs in my closet year-round except for the
two days that are cool enough to use it. I call it “vintage” although it’s really just a handme-down. It started as a gift; my father gave it to my mother who later passed it on to me.
She received it not long after their marriage, when she was 21 or 22.
The leather is worn and faded. There are parts where the red tint has disappeared
and only the tan remains, but under the collar and inside the pockets maintain the luster
of its original glory. My dad mentioned it once, while we were cleaning out a closet at my
grandparents’ house. It had been one of the first pieces of clothing that he had ever given
Mom. At the time, I had been shocked. Leather was of the elite class of material, like silk
or satin or anything without polyester, and clothes made of it should be treasured. “Where
is the jacket?”
“I don’t know…I suppose she still has it…somewhere.” I’ve never seen my mother
wear it. The year before I left for college, my mom went on a cleaning rampage and
emptied every closet in the house.
“It’s been years since I wore any of this junk. I don’t know why I hang on to it anymore.”
She made a nice pile of clothing to take to the Salvation Army. I began rummaging through
it, looking for anything that might be saved or turned into something else.
“Are you sure you want to get rid of this one, Mom?” I asked, pulling out an old
leather jacket.
“That old thing. Yes.” She answered, tight lipped. I threw it into my pile of salvageable
items. It went with me to college.
I wore it two years later, when the weather required a jacket over my long sleeves.
Walking across campus, I pulled the jacket tighter. The brisk air crept through the
openings, and I wished for a scarf. I counted my footsteps as I passed the student center,
trying to take my mind off the cold. I imagined Mom walking around her campus pulling
the jacket closer just as I had. In my mind, Dad came up behind her and dropped an arm
on her shoulder, rubbing it to stave off the cold. As I walked, my reflection winked at
me from a window. I stopped and looked again. The jacket made my hair appear redder.
I always liked that effect, and my friends tell me that they do too. “It’s amazing how well
that jacket fits, for a hand-me-down,” they’ve said.
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Worn
Jessica Bishop
“Your shirt has a hole,” I say softly,
nudging my pinkie in.
The shoulders
shrug,
as does my heart—
ah, well, not yet. Not him.
How could he know I like that shirt?
I prize things Time has kissed:
the wave-bruised
shell
tossed up on shore,
the one all others missed.
104
WHERE IS THY STING?
Where Is Thy Sting?
Sarah Swenson
It was 1857. On the coast of France was a small sea-side village called Chante-SainteMarie. It was an out-of-the-way sort of place, often forgotten and overlooked by things
like armies and governments and emperors. The people liked it that way. They went about
their own business, farming their fields, catching their fish, and raising their children to do
these things as they had always been done.
The railroad came, and a station was built in a town only a few miles from ChanteSainte-Marie. The people liked it that way. It was close enough to make use of and distant
enough to forget them. The tracks ran past the woods on the top of the cliffs at the outskirts
of the village.
This was the part of the woods that the people of Chante-Sainte-Marie never went
near. It was a very small part, and they did not talk about it. They simply preferred to
pretend that it was not there. This was the place where the old man lived.
Slowly sinking into the ground was a small and shapeless hut, nearly indistinguishable
now from the greenery and ivy surrounding it. The stone walls had lost most of their
mortar and on stormy nights there was a danger that the salty wind would push them in
on their sole inhabitant. There was no step or clearing before the rotten door and a tree
had sprung up just in front of it. Its stump was two feet thick and its heavy foliage caught
up most of the sunlight before it had a chance to reach the roof. A hard patch of ground
around the tree was worn to a dull shine where the grass had been scuffed away by the
repetitive rub of the old man’s shuffling feet going in and out, back and forth, here and
there.
It seemed he had always been there. The oldest villager could not remember a time
before him. He rarely appeared in public life and when he did he never lingered long. The
people liked it that way. It was best, they decided, to ignore him.
*
*
*
The old man was alone in his hut. It was a cold, dark night. There was no fire. He sat
on a hard cot and stared at the hearth, where a stack of dry logs were stacked. The old man
sat and shivered. He dreaded the sight of a spark, the sound of crackling logs. Once he had
seen someone die in a fire.
It had been raining that night. He had been young once, and headstrong, and foolish.
He had slipped away from his duties in the friary, walked quickly through the sleeping
town of Vinci, out a small side door in the thick outer wall, and down the switch-backs of
the steep hill to the country highway. He came through the rain, through the dark, and on
dangerous roads, only to see her. Somehow all that mattered was the thought of her soft
face and the sound of her light lilting laugh.
On those empty highways he felt bare, uncovered and exposed. Every drop of driving
rain struck him to the core; the downpour provided a poor curtain between his unrepentant
spirit and the overpowering eye of heaven. He had said nothing in confessions yet, and
every day now he chanted the hours quietly, head bowed, fearing the terrible eye of God
would pass judgment on his cowering soul.
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THE BROGUE
When he got there the house was already
My father says that
enveloped in flames. The shrieks inside made the back
he cut the dead
of his neck crawl. He saw her figure, once, silhouetted
against the brilliant orange flames billowing from one
man’s finger off and
of the upper windows. She leaned far out over the sill
keeps it in his hut. He
and he thought she was gasping for cooler air to fill her
scorched lungs. Rain hissed as it struck the smoking
says his hut is full of
tile roof of the villa, the beams of the house snapped as
dead men’s fingers.
it collapsed in on itself, the flames roared. The night
reeked of smoke and fear and burning flesh.
Somehow he had found his way back up the hill in the dark, nearly blinded by driving
rain. It was eerily still in the cloisters. A lone voice from one of the smaller chapels chanted
Matins over and over again. He wandered on. He did not know where he was going until
he stood before the dark, heavy wooden door of the storage room. His fingers brushed
the handle, a wrought iron ring, and he knew exactly what he wanted. Inside he lit a
candle with shaking fingers, then found the barrel of wine consecrated for the Eucharist
and began to drink, sucking it greedily from cupped hands. It spilled over his wrists and
dribbled down his chin. It was dry and bitter and burned his throat. His stomach was a
writhing mass of warm knots. The room spun; he bent double and was sick on the floor.
He turned back to the barrel. He drank until his head swam and the blood sang in his ears,
praying all the while for death, pleading that a wrathful God would smite him.
When he woke the next morning the bells were tolling Lauds. Outside the air was
chill and gray with the first hint of dawn. All throughout the friary, the deep rolling bells
called the monks to prepare for first prayers, prepare to raise their voices in mass in the
dimly flickering chapel with the procession, and the mystery and the Presence. The ringing
bells made his head throb. All he wanted was to leave, to flee these walls and these bells
and the stench of fermentation and piss and vomit. He wandered in the open country for
hours before collapsing, exhausted, on the muddy highway. He lay on his side with his
cheek pressing into the mud and felt his body surge with life, young and supple and strong.
He hated it. He lay there and thought about how alive he was. It was not fair. God was
not fair. Suddenly he was furious and he did not want to live. He willed his heart to stop
beating, but it went on, on, incessantly pumping and squeezing and bounding. It seemed
a terrible thing that God would keep him alive against his will and damn him if he killed
himself.
He swore two things that day. He swore that wine would never again pass his lips, and
he swore that he would never again see the inside of a church.
That was three hundred and eighty-four years ago.
The old man spent the night tossing and turning on the cot in the hut in the woods
near Chante-Sainte-Marie, groaning at every pop of the smoldering logs. The next
morning he made his way slowly to the top of the cliff. He looked out over the rolling
waves, that endless vat, and his failing eyes peered intently at the place where the water
met the sky. His long sandaled toes hung over the edge. A salty wind buffeted his body,
stirring the dark blue cloak wrapped around his thin shoulders.
The sea was far below him, licking the foot of the cliff. He curled his toes and some
small stones fell turning, tumbling, bouncing into the ocean. He watched them until they
disappeared. He picked up a few larger rocks from the cliff top and dropped them over
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WHERE IS THY STING?
the edge. They too disappeared. He imagined them sinking, swirling in the currents and
eddies, finally settling on top of all the rocks he had dropped there on all the other days.
One day he hoped he would fill the ocean with rocks. Then perhaps there would be no
more abundance of water to torment him. Then perhaps he would die.
*
*
*
“He’s crazy.” Frances listened intently to Philippe as the gang of village boys idled
near the docks, waiting for their fathers to bring the boats in with fish to gut and nets to
mend. “My father says so,” said Philippe. “He says he killed a man once. My father says
that he cut the dead man’s finger off and keeps it in his hut. He says his hut is full of dead
men’s fingers.”
Frances fidgeted with his hands. “I don’t believe it,” he murmured. The other boys
turned around to look at him.
“What do you mean, you don’t believe it?” said Philippe. “You think my father would
lie?” Frances looked out at a red buoy bobbing on the waves. There were no boats in sight.
Philippe was the biggest boy in the village, and Frances was ten and small for his age. He
swallowed. Why had he said anything?
The other boys joined in. “How about it, Frances?” they said. “What’s wrong, Frances?
Don’t you believe Philippe?” Seagulls flew over the bay, calling to each other loudly.
Frances didn’t look at the other boys. Instead he began walking along the shore towards
the cliffs, watching his bare feet press into the sand.
“Hey!” called Philippe. “Hey! What’s wrong with you? Huh? Where do you think
you’re going?” Frances walked on. When he heard Philippe’s heavy footsteps in the sand
behind him he began to run, but he did not make it far before he was tackled from behind.
The two boys tumbled headlong into the rough sand and disappeared beneath an incoming
wave.
The others came running from the pier and stood above the line of surf, waving
clenched fists and following every move. “Get ‘im, Philippe!” they shouted. “Knock his
head off his skinny shoulders!” Frances struggled against the stocky arms that bound him
and closed his eyes against the swirling silt and debris stirred up by the waves. His ears and
nose flooded with gritty water. The two boys emerged onto the sand again. Frances choked
and snorted and gasped for air. His head was yanked back by the hair and, blinking, he
found himself looking up at the top of the cliff.
Someone was standing there. “Look!” Frances squealed. “Up there!” At the very edge
of the cliff fifty feet above them was the old man. Philippe dropped Frances so fast that
they both fell back into the water and sat there with waves lapping at their legs. All of the
boys froze, mouths gaping, and stared up at the cliff.
The old man did not move. If he was aware of the boys on the beach he did not
acknowledge them. His long sandaled toes hung over the cliff’s edge. The winds buffeted
his frail body and he rocked precariously. Frances shuddered. He watched as the old man
bent down, picked up several rocks, and dropped them into the water. The boys heard each
one splash. For a long while the old man simply stood and looked down at the crashing
waves. Finally he turned and disappeared towards the woods.
Immediately the boys sprinted for the docks. Frances scrambled up from the shallows
and followed behind them, spitting grit and sand out of his mouth. They ducked beneath
the pier and collapsed against the barnacle-encrusted wood, breathing hard and digging
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THE BROGUE
the heavy wet sand up with their toes. For a long while that was all they did. No one
looked at Frances.
Philippe was the first to speak. “I dare someone to find his hut,” he said.
No one answered. Frances became engrossed in picking seaweed and debris off of his
shirt.
“I dare somebody to bring back one of those fingers,” Philippe said, louder. He turned
and shoved Frances in the shoulder. “I dare you, Frances Barnett!”
The other boys sat up quickly. “Yeah, Frances, we dare you. Unless you’re too scared?
Are you too scared, Frances? He’s just a--”
“Alright!” said Frances. “I’ll go.”
*
*
*
The old man found the dark and damp of the woods a relief after the harsh sun of the
cliff top. He shuffled through the ferns and thick moss around the trees, walking barely
visible paths that only he knew. One of his snares was full: a small rabbit dangling from his
crude trap. He looked at the animal’s eyes. They reminded him of a man he had seen once,
far from here.
It was early in the morning, nearly dawn. The ground was covered in mist. It pooled
in the ditches and clung to the tree trunks, hovering over the bodies of the fallen men
like a ghastly vulture. The old man was there as well, hovering with the mist, wandering;
waiting. Less than a mile away Napoleon’s men pressed on to the victory of Austerlitz,
anticipation surging through the ranks as they sensed the enemy’s collapse. But here, the
fighting was only a distant clamor among the hush of the trees and the already-dead.
The soldier had propped himself up on a heap of crumpled bodies. He was very young.
His legs were mangled, broken, twisted beneath him. His blood pooled on the frozen
ground and it steamed in the half-light. The old man crouched nearby and watched death
come.
“Please,” the young man was saying, “please take it to her.” His breath was thin and
rattled high in his throat. In his outstretched hand was a worn, shredded piece of paper.
His cracked bloody fingers shook uncontrollably. Tears streaked his filthy cheeks and his
nose ran unchecked over his lips.
Exhausted, his hand dropped into his lap. The paper fluttered there like a frightened
bird. “Please,” he slurred, “she…” His gaze wandered from the old man’s face, he shuddered
the length of his mangled body, and his thin breathing stopped.
Just before he died his eyes had looked like this rabbit’s, round and black and empty.
The old man thought of his hut, where the dirty faded letter was rolled tightly and shoved
into the wall with all his other death stories. He hoped that the woman was dead now.
That was what normally happened to people--they died.
It was twilight in the wood when he reached his hut, carrying the rabbit. Out on
the cliffs the sunlight would linger an hour or two longer, but in his woods the premature
darkness was welcome.
The door was open. He stopped and stood on the threshold with the rabbit dangling
limply by his side. There was a boy standing inside, looking around the small room with
wide eyes. When he turned and saw the old man standing in the doorway he jumped and
stumbled backwards into the corner of the room, then sat down on the dirt floor and burst
into tears.
It was Frances. He sat and cried until he realized that nothing was happening to him;
then wiped his eyes and nose with the back of his hand. The old man and the little boy sat
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WHERE IS THY STING?
staring at one another for a long time.
“Are you going to kill me?” Frances whispered.
The old man thought this strange. He shuffled inside and laid the rabbit on the table.
“No,” he said. It was the first word he had spoken to another living being in forty-three
years. He often spoke to himself during the long nights as he sat beside a burning candle,
to himself and the ghosts that plagued him. But this little boy was the first flesh and blood
to hear his voice in forty-three years. The old man went to the hearth.
Frances watched him stack the logs and light a fire. “We saw you on the cliffs,” he said
in a shaky voice, “I saw you.”
The old man said nothing.
“I saw you drop rocks in the water,” said Frances.
Nothing, Frances’ heart stopped beating so fast.
“Are those fingers?” he asked, pointing shakily to the wall across from him. It was
entirely covered with cubbyholes. Each of them was stuffed full of small tube-like things.
The old man did not look at the wall. “No,” he said.
“What are they?” Frances whispered. His eyes were round and dark and shone in the
weak firelight.
The old man bent down to lift the black kettle. He looked at the slight frame curled
tightly in the corner, bony fingers grasping knobby knees. “Come back tomorrow, and I
will tell you,” he said. He left to fill the kettle with water. When he returned the boy was
gone.
Frances was the one who was always taken prisoner and executed when the village
boys played mock battles, the one who gutted the day’s catch at the fishing docks, and the
one who had to feed his family’s chickens every morning. He wanted to be the one who
led his army to victory, the one who helped haul the bulging nets out of the boats onto the
pier, and the one who herded the lumbering cows into the barn at night.
The day after the terrible dare all of the other boys were waiting for him at the docks.
“Well?” they cried, surrounding him. “What happened? Were you too afraid? Did you find
it?” Frances was sullen. He thought of how he had burst into tears and hid in the corner.
“Did he cut off your finger?” they demanded. “Did you--”
“There were fingers,” he blurted.
Dead silence. “Lots of fingers. Everywhere, crawling around like… inch worms.” The
boys scarcely breathed.
Frances thought furiously. “He made me eat one,” he said, clenching his jaw and
clutching his gut. “It wriggled the whole way down, and now it’s clawing my stomach to
pieces.”
Philippe’s eyes were wide. “My father told me the old man was dead,” he said. “It’s
just his ghost up there in those woods. You saw his ghost. Now you’ll be a ghost too, you
no-good Barnett!” His voice cracked and he took a step backward. Frances’ face grew cold.
He shrugged his shoulders and pushed through them all and ran to the end of the dock,
where he thrust his shaking hands deep into his pockets. He waited there alone until his
father’s boat came. None of the other boys said a word to him all day, but he heard them
whispering to each other behind his back as they cut off fish heads and coiled ropes.
They whispered he would become a ghost.
They whispered he was dying.
Frances knew he had to go back.
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THE BROGUE
*
*
*
“Are you dead?” the little boy demanded. The old man had been sitting on a stool
and waiting for him all day and now here he was, feet spread, fists clenched, narrow chest
heaving.
“No,” the old man muttered, gripping his stiff, aching knees. “No I am not.”
Frances did not budge. “Am I dying?” he asked.
“Of course you are,” the old man said.
Frances was taken aback. He shuddered. He rubbed his cheeks and grasped his hair
at the roots. He felt very real. In his chest his heart was pounding. “Why?” he demanded.
“Why am I dying? I don’t want to die. I won’t.”
“Most people do,” the old man said.
“I won’t,” said Frances.
“What is your name?” asked the old man.
“Frances Barnett.”
“Frances Barnett, you will die. You may live a long time, but one day you will die. I
have seen many people die. No one lives forever.”
Frances sat in the dirt to think about this. The only dead person he knew was an old
woman from the village who had died over two years ago. His mother had made him go
into the church and see the corpse stretched out and lying in the open. The room smelled
of sour milk and mildew and incense burning near her cold dead feet. Frances buried his
face in his elbow and breathed deeply. He smelled of seaweed and salt water and fish heads.
“I am not dying,” he muttered to himself.
The old man did not hear him. He was thinking of all the names tucked away in the
wall of his hut, names and stories and years. Most of them had not known. Most of them
had not wanted to know. How could they be alive and not know? This little boy, even he
knew now. Death waits for no man.
*
*
*
The next day was full of dark clouds and the old man went out early in the morning
to sit on the cliff. The sun could not be seen as she made her way across the sky. The old
man sat and shivered as the salty winds grew stronger and fiercer. He was sure that the
boy would not come today. Again he had asked about the scrolls, and again the old man
had told him to come back. He would not come today. All of the village fishermen were
sitting at home by warm firesides, cursing the bad weather. The waves crashed and boiled
and threw themselves against the face of the cliff. The old man could hardly feel the salty
spray on his leathery face as he dropped stones down into the water.
The rain was falling out on the ocean in sheets by the time he returned to the woods.
The wind was blowing inland, roaring and moaning as it came. All of the trees swayed in
their uppermost limbs and groaned deep in their trunks. The whole world was restless.
The door to the hut was closed, but as the old man approached he saw a dim, flickering
light oozing out onto the dirt. He quickened his shuffling pace, lifted the crude latch, and
peered in through the crack.
Frances was there. He sat in the middle of the floor with a stubby candle flickering
beside him. In his lap, on the floor around him, covering the chair, the table, and the
cot were loose strings and ribbons and dried brittle grass mixed with scraps of paper and
yellowed parchment and birch bark. They curled at the edges from the years they had
spent rolled tightly and put away in the cubbies on the wall.
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WHERE IS THY STING?
The old man felt a terrible pain in his chest. He cried out. Frances looked up, startled.
His eyes, as they met the old man’s, were round and black and empty. “This is me,”
he said, and held up the paper. Tears ran down his cheeks. “You wrote my name.” The
papers tumbled and spun across the floor in the wind, the candle blew out, and there was
darkness.
The old man clutched the doorframe as Frances bowled past him and ran off into the
rain and the dark, grasping something tightly in his fist. The old man stumbled into the
hut and slammed the door shut, falling over the once-familiar furnishings. He sat heavily
on the cot and felt paper crunching and crumbling beneath him.
It was too dark. He reached down and fumbled along the floor, shuddering at the
ghostly brush of paper against his hands. Finally, he grasped the candle. He groped along
the walls, searching for the shelf he had built and put there himself. In trying to strike a
spark he knocked over the small table, tripped on the stool, and fell back onto the cot.
When he finally managed to light the candle he held it high.
Half of the cubbyholes in the wall were empty. The unrolled parchments rocked in
the draft that blew in under the door. The old man heard his own heavy breathing, dry and
rattling. He stared at the words surrounding him, flooding him, mocking him, stories of the
death he hungered for and names of the dying he so envied. His old, old heart beat on and
on in his hollow chest. A name glared up at him from between his long, narrow feet.
Antonio Borticelli, 1473-. The name was alive; it danced in the flickering candlelight.
The rest of the sheet was blank, it had no story. Whose name was that? When had he
written it? He could not remember. It was so long ago. It was too long. He sighed a deep,
wheezing sigh and bent down to pick it up.
Then he remembered it was his own.
*
*
*
Two days after the storm had passed Antonio ventured into the village for the first
time in forty-three years. He made his way to the small square in front of the small parish
church and ignored the stares of passers-by. As he waited he looked at the church and
thought of that night long ago, of a great fire and ringing bells and the bitter burning taste
of holy wine.
There was a small boy who lurked in dark corners of the square all day long, watching
the old man watch the church. It was Frances. One of his hands was plunged deep into his
pocket. The other hand was restless, tireless, pulling on his earlobe and twisting his hair.
At noon the square was deserted, save for the old man and the small boy.
Antonio turned at the sound of dragging footsteps beside him. The boy’s lips were
pinched and white. Frances held out a loose roll of paper tied up with a brown string. It
trembled and shook in his cold pale hand.
“Here,” the boy whispered. “here, take it back.”
The old man said nothing, and Frances saw his eyes, pale blue, pale and colorless as
though bleached by too many years of sunlight.
“I don’t want to see it!” Frances thrust the small bundle forward forcefully.
Antonio bent down until he and the boy were eye to eye. Frances felt dry breath on
his face. “Keep it,” the old man said. “When you die, bury it with you.”
“I don’t want to die! I won’t!”
“Keep it.”
Frances dropped the paper in the dirt and ran.
111
THE BROGUE
Friendship 7
Andrew Hedglin
I hurtle through a chasmic February night
down a headlight-strewn highway in Mississippi
with nothing out my windshield but
Space—
A black sky looking nothing like heaven,
with a blue strip cushioning the horizon,
waiting for my descent back to earth.
I hunch over to tune my radio,
expecting my crackled directions:
“Glenn? This is Mercury Control.”
He sounds too blue to fly—
Only an old dirge by Hank Williams:
he’s so lonesome, he could cry.
So could I, Hank, so could I.
I glance up at my rearview mirror
and sigh to see the bed of my truck
where I expected a star field, maybe
Darkness—
Out comes Pelahatchie, and suddenly
I’m bathed in the splash of friendly lights
and the roar of the small town around me.
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BIRDSONG
Birdsong
Addie Leak
I spent hours as a child walking with my parents on the trails behind our house,
one tiny, perpetually freezing hand in my father’s big red jacket pocket (My four-year-old
sweaters and leggings never seemed to have pockets of their own.) and the other in Mom’s
hand or pocket as we crunched down the gravel drive together at a speed tailored to my
short legs. We walked frequently at twilight, when the bats and birds went wild to catch
the insects swarming about, and I remember our abrupt halts and sudden hushes. When I
looked up to see why we’d stopped, my dad’s eyes were usually fixed on some point in a tree
that I couldn’t make out, and he would cup his hands around his mouth and call to a bird
that he’d spotted. “Shhhpshpshspshpshpshhh.” It would peer around, bright-eyed, until he
could identify it, or it would call back in alarm Vireo, Dad would say in hushed tones. The
chimney swallows were easiest to spot as they swooped and veered manically about in the
dusk. They were the ones that looked like cigars with wings, Daddy told me. I’d never seen
a cigar, but I loved the description.
To my father’s joy, one of my first words was
I have since learned
“nardnal”—cardinal, and I was given a pair of binoculars
years before I was given my first walkman. It was an
that a baby bird
ironic twist of fate that I turned out to be, as a little girl,
learns its song
the champion of all things feline. I had leopard-printed
by listening to its
sheets, a tiger-printed footstool, and a collection of thirty
or so little cat figurines. My dad disliked our three cats,
father and imitating
I thought, so I loyally—and silently—cheered them on
him, however shaky
when I thought of them catching birds in the yard. All
three were declawed, so they didn’t make a habit of it,
the imitations may
and, really, I was more proud of them for catching the
be at first.
moles that made ridges everywhere in our grass. But Dad
would like the cats if he weren’t so worried about his
birds, so I began to nurse a grudge against the fluttery, feathery things that we catered to
with our numerous feeders and birdbaths. When I found the occasional gift of blue jay
feathers and intestines left on the porch, I swept them off into the azaleas before Daddy
got home from work.
In spite of myself, though, I liked the little chickadees that gathered in our trees in the
early spring. With my girlish determination that the name must fit the creature, I decided
that these were what they must call orioles because “orioles” sounded like “Oreos,” and
the petite puffball chickadees were black and white like the snack cookies. I explained
my theory to my dad, and I only remember that he shook his head gravely. “Listen to
their call,” he said. I did. Chicka-dee-dee-dee-dee, they said. Maybe he had a point. (I have
since learned that a baby bird learns its song by listening to its father and imitating him,
however shaky the imitations may be at first: imagine what could happen if we taught a
few chickadee daddies to sing “oriole.”)
*
*
*
One of my dad’s favorite places to visit (even during his years in undergrad at LSU)
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THE BROGUE
was in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, the Creole Nature Trail, a place of alligator marshes,
sandy, buggy hotels, hot sun—and birds. We visited at least once every couple of years,
and, unsurprisingly, I tended to resent our trips. I didn’t like being told what to do, I didn’t
like birds, and I didn’t like bugs. I had my little pair of binoculars, but, with the singleminded hard-headedness that seems to run in my family, I soon grew to resent them, too.
There was little for me to do in Cameron if I chose not to join in the bird-watching. I
brought books, my CD player, and my journal, and dreaded the inevitable command to
look out the window and join the rest of the family. My brother and I kept track of the
number of mosquitoes that we smooshed as we drove down the long, swampy wildlife
drives with our windows rolled down. Dad drove with his binoculars at the ready, peering
out of his window for rare birds. “99!” Timothy would yell, violently swatting the seat in
front of him. “Yeah, well—” Slap. “101!” We got very good at what we did. I was really
incapable of sulking for too long, though I tried to keep up appearances. I was, after all,
making a point.
The people in charge of attracting tourists to small-town Gulf Coast Louisiana gave
it the alluring name of “Louisiana’s Outback.” I never quite figured that one out, as there
were no kangaroos, but more interesting to us than the mosquitoes were the myriad
alligators, which they didn’t have in Woodville, Mississippi. My brother and I counted
them, too, on our trips there, starting as we zipped along Route 27 to Cameron and then
to Holly Beach (where the beach was dirty—but with interesting things, like dead seagulls
and the iridescent pillows of jellyfish). Alligators lounged in the water mere yards from
the slightly elevated Wetland Walkway in the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge and made
a habit of turning to look at me every time I came within ten feet of them. There were
mulberry trees spaced along the beginning of the trail. If it was the right season—and if
the birds hadn’t already eaten all the fruit—my hands and Timothy’s were soon sticky and
purple with mulberry juice.
“Do you know what that bird is?” my dad asked me on one such trip. I must’ve been
twelve or thirteen, and our car was parked on the side of the road. It was hot, and I had
my door propped open to catch a breeze while my parents strolled around outside with
their binoculars. I looked up from my book, and Dad pointed to a lone bird sitting on a
telephone line above our heads.
“I don’t,” I said. Shockingly enough. “What is it?”
“It’s a loggerhead shrike.”
“A shrike!”
“Yes.” He looked vaguely surprised that I was so excited about it. “What do you know
about shrikes?”
“Well, there was a shrike in one of the Redwall books.” He gave me a half-grin, as if to
say I should have known. Daddy has never been a huge fan of fiction, either, and I’m afraid I
dashed away from our nightly Bible study far too often in order to read Redwall with Mama.
But if I learned things from it…
“They’re called ‘butcher birds,’ aren’t they?” I asked him.
“Yes. Do you know why?”
Um. “Well, I know they eat small rodents.”
“They do.” He nodded. “They’re called butcher birds because they impale their prey
on thorns or barbed wire before eating it.”
Oh. I looked with a bit more interest at the distant black shape on the phone line.
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BIRDSONG
*
*
*
We visited Cameron under all sorts of circumstances. Twice I took friends, to make it
more interesting. One girl and I spent the first few hours in the car deciding that we hated
each other. The other girl was an exchange student from Korea, and completely new to
everything; that trip was the more enjoyable of the two. We camped on the beach in Holly
Beach one year. I must’ve been sixteen then. There were a few other tents nearby, in one
of which reposed a rather fit teenaged football player and his family. I was painfully aware
of my tangled hair and lack of makeup as I sat by our fire that night, writing in my journal.
The wind on the beach was vicious; even Dad’s Eagle Scout cooking skills couldn’t keep
our food from tasting a little too gritty. He made a peach cobbler for us with canned
peaches and the Pillsbury Grands that we called “whop” biscuits because of the noise the
can made when we hit it against something to open it.
The last time I visited Cameron was in the spring of my senior year in high school—
March of 2005. It was in September of that year that Hurricane Rita blew through, taking
the town’s inhabitants from 2,000 to virtually none. Whole houses, I heard, blocked
the highway afterward. Mile after mile of dead cows stretched alongside Route 27. Pat’s
Restaurant, the delightfully greasy little place that sold fried chicken and seafood and the
best strawberry milkshakes on the face of the planet, is gone. Gutted. It was the promise of
those milkshakes that sustained me on our trips to Cameron.
In the spring of that year, though, Pat’s still stood. The bird sanctuaries hadn’t been
disturbed by storm surges, the cows still grazed peacefully in the fields along the country
roads that we wound our way through. The debris on the coastline in Holly Beach was still
relegated to interesting biological specimens. No nails or shards of broken windows. No
mangled beach houses massaged by the surf.
It was with misgivings, nonetheless, that I agreed to go. I was coming home from
boarding school for my spring break—arriving home and transferring my things immediately
from my car into Dad’s. I was tired, stressed from trying to finish my last semester of high
school and decide about college at the same time. I just wanted to sleep in my own bed—
but to Cameron I went. Daddy’s birthday had been the previous weekend, and I realized
(helped along by my mom) that I owed it to him to go without complaining. Finally
expecting to have fun, I actually did: I enjoyed myself with the same bullheadedness that
had once made such vacations so painful.
“How do you tell the difference,” I asked my father, “between a great egret and a
snowy egret?” We were driving through the Pintail Wildlife Drive, and, for once, I was
looking out the window.
He must’ve noticed that I was paying attention, but, if so, he was careful not to seem
too excited. “Snowy egrets are the ones with golden slippers,” he said, as though it was
perfectly normal for me to be curious. Golden slippers. I smiled.
I took photographs that weekend—the last photographs that we have of the Cameron
I knew as a child. I sat on a rock at the Cameron Jetties while Mom and Dad and Timothy
walked out into the deep, wet sand of the nearby marshes where I’d chased sandpipers as a
girl. The large, flat rocks of the jetty extended into the Gulf on either side of the Calcasieu
Ship Channel, and I sketched one of the white pelicans floating in the channel, peering
occasionally through binoculars to get the details down as it swam away from me. Upon
putting down my pencil, I discovered that the boat-tailed grackle I’d seen fifteen minutes
before was still sitting on a post four feet away, glaring at me and striking poses. He flew
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THE BROGUE
away huffily when I picked up my pencil again, and I tried not to laugh, watched the sun
set in an arc of fire across the channel.
That weekend, too, I made a clover chain, saw a roseate spoonbill vacuuming a stream
for fish, and saw a glossy ibis, its feathers gleaming all colors but their evident black, stretch
its wings to dry itself. I picked little buttercups, daisy fleabane, and spiky-petaled orange
and red indian blanket from the side of the road when we stopped to examine birds on
yet another power line. I collected shells from one of our beaches and planned to make a
necklace when I got home. There was more beauty in this mosquito-infested wilderness
than I’d ever looked long enough to see.
When I was little, I remember asking Mama why she put up with Daddy’s borderlineobsessive interest in birds when she wasn’t equally obsessed. “Because I love him,” she
said, trying to break through to my self-centered ten-year-old mind. “And when you love a
person, you want to share their interests because it makes them happy. And then one day
you wake up and discover that you’re really interested, too.”
I was skeptical. I didn’t believe her for a long time, swore that I’d never marry someone
who didn’t like cats. That was, after all, the most important thing. But, on that last trip to
Cameron, I began to experience the truth behind her words.
My dad once told me that knowing the voices of birds meant that walking through
a forest was like conversing with old friends. It was more personal, more interesting. Like
stumbling across a line while reading Gone With the Wind that says “I could not love thee,
Dear, so much, loved I not Honour more”—and realizing, with a thrill, that it comes from
a familiar poem by Richard Lovelace. Everything, Dad said, means more when you can call
it by its name. He was right; I know. When I finally opened my mind to the possibility, I
couldn’t help but know.
*
*
*
A year after our last trip to Cameron, I went with a friend to Boston to visit another
friend, Gabriel, on our first spring break as college students. We went a little way out of
town with Gabriel’s friend John after church on Sunday morning, stopping at Revere
Beach to eat at a little Cambodian restaurant called Floating Rock. The beach there was
cold indeed, and we did not walk on it, merely looked over the little concrete partition
at the sand and the waves and the seagulls who came brazenly forward. They were ringbilled gulls, but I didn’t know that at the time. They were hostile-looking creatures, with
direct, bleached-yellow eyes and a hoarse screaming cry. I stared at them for a minute.
“What kind of gulls are these?” I asked my friends. They were both from the Mississippi
Gulf Coast; William had been an Eagle Scout, and Gabriel was an MIT student. He knew
a little bit, at least, about everything, I thought.
William hemmed and hawed for a minute, ultimately to the effect that he didn’t
know—sorry, Addie. I looked at Gabriel.
“I don’t know a thing about birds,” he said, and turned away, ready to move on. I was
disappointed, vaguely irritated. He’d said it like it didn’t matter. I suddenly realized that
it did.
*
*
*
A few months later, I took a road trip to Florida with friends from school and found
myself, a few days into our visit, out sailing with them. “What are those?” I asked, pointing,
as Christina’s dad’s catamaran cut through the water. “Are they ibis?” My gaze followed
the flock of graceful white forms with their long curved beaks as they beat their way slowly
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BIRDSONG
across the bay. We hit a wave, and salt blurred my vision as the
I enjoyed myself
boat jumped to meet another jolting splash of ocean water.
with the same
Her dad answered. “I don’t know. I think so.” I was
vaguely surprised that he didn’t know. Christina had no idea,
bullheadedness
either. Jessica had less than no idea. Jaimie was from Arizona
that had once
and was still too awed by the sight of so much water to think
about birds she’d never seen; Emily was too far away, and too
made such
waterlogged, to be paying much attention.
vacations so
“All right, then.” I’d just call home and ask Dad later. The
word ibis had come out of the blue—but I was sure. White ibis.
painful.
They had to be.
I’d called him a few days ago about a bird that I’d seen drying its wings in the sun at
the Florida Botanical Gardens. “I could’ve sworn it was a cormorant,” I said, “but it was
wrong, somehow. It had a fuzzier head, and white on its wings. Could it have just been
immature?”
“Well, the fuzzy head was probably just because it was wet,” Dad said. “Cormorants
have hooked bills, though; did it have a straight one?”
“Oh—yes! It did!” An extremely straight and pointed bill, in fact—I’d been afraid to
get near it. But I had. I’d wandered away from the girls, walking stealthily and carrying my
camera, wanting to get a closer look at it.
“Okay, then. It’s related to the cormorant, but what you saw was an anhinga.”
“An anhinga!” That was fun to say.
“They call them ‘snake birds,’” he told me, “or ‘submarine birds.’ It’s because they
swim around submerged to the neck—looking like snakes, I guess.”
It had watched me as I sidled nearer. I stopped when I got within three feet, surprised
that it hadn’t flown away, and the hard, bright eye that faced me seemed to hold a dare.
My new acquaintance obviously felt no fear. I snapped pictures of him and marveled and
finally, reluctantly, turned to rejoin my friends.
The Florida sun on the sodden surface of the catamaran’s tarp was merciless. My
recently-sunburned arms were protesting against this continued exposure to the elements,
and I was breathing salt. This catamaran wasn’t made for six people, and I expected every
second to fall off. Something caught the corner of my eye, though, as we whipped through
the waves, and I jumped a little. “Y’all! Look!”
Everyone turned in alarm, surprised by my sudden vocal intensity.
There, in the waves not far from the boat, was a long, thin black neck protruding
snakelike from the water—an anhinga, with a fish speared on the end of its bill. I watched
it as it grew small in the choppy water behind us and then turned around to my friends,
delighted. They looked amused by my sudden interest in the native wildlife, and I couldn’t
help but smile at myself, as well, in amusement—and in joy. Like the baby chickadees that
I had been so determined to call orioles, I had found my voice, and no longer was I singing
in rebellion. My song, too, matched my father’s.
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THE BROGUE
untitled (photography)
Susannah Nelson
118
INDEPENDENCE
Independence
Nicole Lewallen
Delicate wings flex,
opening and closing, as I
sit dreaming on a flower.
Strong fingers pinch my wings,
and I shake my body,
pulling almost to the point
that I tear. I freeze, and
the fingers let go. I flutter
away, leaving green
dust like remnants
on my captor’s fingertips.
119
THE BROGUE
Dear Witch
Christina Miles
There was a time when, peaking
under the lid of your paper grave,
I brought short life to your figurative
form and watched the horrors you
unleashed. I saw combs, ribbons,
and gingerbread, such friendly
things, turn to death in your hands.
I used to think my games, so
dangerous, yet fun, had caught
the reality of you. I, trapped high
in a tower or chained in a dungeon,
waited for Prince Charming,
knowing you had caught me there.
You never frightened me, not really.
I knew your one weakness: you
lived only when I let you. I had
you trapped between the pages
of my book and in the folds
of my mind. It never occurred
to me that the you I knew was only
a part of your whole. So the day
that you showed me a spindle
and took me by the hand, when
you looked so kind and old, I
thought you were my friend. You
taught me how much trust stings
and the poison of believing a lie.
You taught me, when you put me to sleep.
120
A H I S T O R Y O F U G LY
A History of Ugly
Stacy Nott
On my twentieth birthday, I opened one box which contained only papers—grid
papers, with lightly drawn diagrams and numbers, labeled “Hope Chest Plans.” The chest
itself is currently under construction in my dad’s workshop. Like the bed and dresser he
built for me ten years ago, the chest is to be of satiny cherry boards that will ripen from
pink to a rich red tone. It will be lined with cedar, and will sit at the foot of my bed, where
Ugly sits now. Mama says she already has a new place picked for Ugly. And a new paint
job and cover, no doubt. This is “A History of Ugly.” It is not the etymological history of
an adjective. In my book, “Ugly” is rectangular, with hinges, knobs, and a padded top. But
I am getting ahead of myself.
We moved to Massachusetts when I was seven.
Ugly was a decorative
Twenty-eight Emerson Road was a rental house
piece in a room with
a block from the beach in Plymouth. It had two
stories, with grey shingled sides, and a basement
an old-fashioned charm
with stairs steeping down into the damp and dark
that seemed to belong
where previous inmates had left some of their
belongings. Among those belongings was an old
in Southern Living.
cabinet of sturdy wood, about eighteen inches high,
with two doors on the front and no top. As we were a growing family and could always
use more storage space, my mom decided to use the cabinet. She pulled it up out of the
basement, covered a board with batting and blue-checked fabric for its top, and set it in
our living room. It was rather rough looking; we christened it “Ugly.” And when we left
Massachusetts, it left, too.
I don’t have memories of Ugly in Texas. Mama says it held Legos in the boys’ room. But
when I was eleven, we moved to Tennessee, and Ugly became mine. I remember helping
Mama paint it pale pink on an old sheet spread in the “Black Hallway” (so called because
of its black marble tiles which we would rather have seen in someone else’s house). We
covered Ugly’s top with mint-and-white striped seersucker, gave it white ceramic knobs,
and placed it under my seersucker-curtained window. There I sat to look out on our sunny
side yard, the Malady’s house, and across the flat road to yellow Sulfur butterflies in Mr.
Sanders’ field. Or I looked at Mr. Sander’s horses in the moonlight, and at the Malady’s
kitchen window where Mrs. Julie peered out to see, by the lights in our windows, how late
or early we went to bed.
I was thirteen when we put our Tennessee house up for rental and moved to the Naval
Air Station of Atlanta; to our tiny, bunker-like, cinder block house, where my room, with
its one small window looking out onto our glass porch, was the tiniest of all. We brightened
that dark room with a yellow bedspread, painted Ugly pale yellow and recovered it with
the pastel floral fabric I had chosen for my accents. Ugly filled the narrow space between
the foot of my bed and my closet, providing valuable seating and storage. Beside it, on the
floor, I worked algebra equations, read twentieth-century American history, wrote poems
and letters. And more than one Sunday morning I dropped despairingly onto Ugly and
stared into a closet full of nothing to wear.
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THE BROGUE
It was a dream come true when Ugly and I returned to the sunny Tennessee room
two years later. Some nights, with the wind-chime clanging on the porch below, I sat and
thought how well we both belonged there under the window, gazing out into future years
spent nowhere else. Within eight months, we were gone to a long, low, red-carpeted room
in the top of an old house in lower Alabama.
That room had an atmosphere for the dreams of sixteen. Ugly got a new, quieter
cover and black iron knobs. It sat under the barn doors of my funny little after-thought of
a closet. I lived mostly on the other end of the room. We were contented there, pleased
to keep the room clean though few feet ever climbed my crooked stairs to see the light
filtering through oak leaves and Spanish moss outside my octagon windows. It became
something of a joke to call Ugly “Ugly;” Ugly was a decorative piece in a room with an
old-fashioned charm that seemed to belong in Southern Living.
Sometimes I imagine I am there still, looking out on the glistening pines, on our
wet propane tank, and the field beyond, where last year’s grass will soon be giving way to
new green. The camellias are blooming in the front yard, and rain puddles in the brick
sidewalk. Inside the room, all is still. The red carpet, the slanted ceilings, the little shelves
and knick knacks; the china violinist and violinista standing above the closet doors; the
dollhouse; my books; the vine, Rapunzel, climbing the window above them; and Ugly
waiting for someone to sit down. Maybe I will creak downstairs to fill the house with the
scent of fresh beer bread, or short bread, or zucchini bread. And maybe friends will come to
spend the evening in conversation, music, and games. And maybe we won’t move away.
In my blue room in Mississippi, Ugly will soon be replaced by a hope chest at the foot
of my bed. That chest will never be Ugly. The other day I went to the workshop to stroke
its already-beautiful sides. It sat on the workbench, lidless and bottomless, but with side
panels already sanded to a satin sheen. As I looked, Daddy used an old rag to wipe a film
of sawdust from the smooth surface. One day, perhaps, in some house where every room is
mine, the chest will have a history, too. Then I will recall the pale dreams folded inside it,
and marvel to see a reality that has ripened to a richer tone.
122
A FIFE FISHERY
A Fife Fishery
Martha Krystaponis
Stacking the stones was tedious and seemingly endless. The
She was
young man’s fingernails crusted with drying peat and lichen as
barefoot,
only the sun’s topmost sliver remained visible over the edge of the
Lomond Hills. Only a bit of daylight left to finish.
dark hair
He could already smell the steamy haddock awaiting him, the
brushing
aroma misting his face as he leaned over a bowl of cullen skink
beneath his mother’s competent wooden spoon.
against her
Patrick Harbilas lifted the last large rock and set it upon
shoulder
the repaired fence, sighing and gripping his lower back, slowly
straightening. Finally, the sheep would be caged in the field, but
blades in a
he remained trapped in Pittenweem as well. For now. You would
caress. Was
think that by now the village would have moved on to metal or
even wooden fences rather than such archaic piled-stone ones, but
she a loony,
the city council disliked the modern, industrialized look they lent
or a witch?
the place. Tourism provided a good part of the city’s income, and
they couldn’t—or just wouldn’t—jeopardize it with change.
Pat turned back towards the small village and hiked across the peat and heathered
tufts. Pittenweem was a harbor town, built on the north shore of the Firth of Forth in the
Kingdom of Fife. In clear moments, the bustling metropolis of Edinburgh could just barely
be seen across the water. Local legend said that the last clear day was in 1710, after the
Fife witch hunt ended.
Whatever was actually true of it, Patrick scoffed to himself. It’s all just rubbish anyway,
the whole lot of it. Who ever gave a bloody damn about some folks who died hundreds of years
ago? He kicked an already mangled-looking rock across the cobblestone road. It rattled
and jumped and skittered, finally ending with a plunk in the gutter across the way, as if it
was satisfied to hide from the young man’s misplaced anger. Pat shuffled along and thrust
his fists into his trouser pockets.
One time, when he was nine years old, a missionary lady had visited the town, and
his mother had graciously hosted the woman over for tea. He had snuck into the kitchen
to snitch a couple of shortbread triangles, and he heard the woman ask his mother if it was
okay to wear pants “in such a traditional area of Scotland—the whole ‘kingdom of Fife’
deal and all.” His mouthful of biscuits spewed over the kitchen counter as he guffawed and
snorted in little-boy glee; what the missionary lady didn’t know was that “pants” meant
“panties” in Scotland, so she had been asking his mother about the appropriateness of her
underclothing! His mother had sent him off to do his schoolwork without a scolding, a
smile trying to escape her lips which had tightened to restrain her own laughter. The
woman didn’t stay much longer that afternoon, pulling at the waist of her trousers as she
hurried out.
A smile crept upon the corners of Patrick’s mouth. He and his friends had laughed for
weeks over that story, strutting down the streets and yelling, “What about my pants, mum?
Is it too untraditional to wear pants?”
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THE BROGUE
He walked down the steep and narrow streets, like stone tunnels, towards the harbor
of Pittenweem. It opened to the mouth of the Firth of Forth and directly reached the
North Sea. By going over the top of Scotland, or to the south and below England, you
could reach the Atlantic Ocean and the entire world. Or you could just sail across the
Firth of Forth in your da’s fishing boat one afternoon and enter Edinburgh, the capital,
complete with modern skyscrapers and Wal-Mart’s along with the city’s castle high above.
The smell of cod being pulled in filled the air; it seemed to coat his body, his hair, his
clothes, with the intensity of it. Older men sat perched on wooden pallets beside the
boats, cleaning or repairing the nets mostly, reliving the days when they could fish for
just a morning and get twice as many cod. “Those bloody machines ruined it all,” they
mumbled to each other, puffing away at their cigars or tapping more tobacco into their
pipes, returning to their trawl nets.
Patrick sighed again. He hopped upon the harbor wall, hand-built of stone centuries
ago, and gazed out across the water as the fishing boats continued to file in and dock for
the night. The waves slapped against the wall beneath his feet, punctuating each thought
of escape held within his head.
Each idea that he would never carry out.
His mother needed him. When his parents had married, both of their families had
ostracized the young couple for eloping a mere two weeks after meeting, and relations had
only gotten worse through the years. A fiftieth-anniversary party invite had never been
mailed, a younger brother’s veterinary school graduation had two seats too few, and so on.
Pride, hurt feelings, miscommunication—the list of grievances on both sides was kept
quite clearly in the minds of those involved but never spoken of aloud.
Patrick’s father had died of a sudden heart attack three years ago while carrying a
shipment of pottery into the family’s store of local arts and crafts for tourists. Pat’s mother
had found him, sprawled amongst ceramic shards with Scottish blue and white patterns,
the national icon of a thistle, or local fish designs painted on them.
No, he couldn’t leave her and his younger siblings. Much as he hated it. Mackenzie,
Aiden, and Phoebe were too much for his mother to raise alone and still put potatoes on
the table. Soon, perhaps, things would change, but until then, he could only look up
airline ticket prices to Chicago and San Francisco online, or plaster his walls with pictures
of Tanzania, the Alps, the Great Wall of China. Mackenzie was almost ready to start high
school, and she had just begun working at the local drugstore a few months ago. Aiden
was a wild wee boy, always rustling up trouble at school and ripping up his knees. His
untidiness had become quite legendary with the teachers, much to his mother’s dismay
and scolding. But Phoebe was his complete opposite, a quiet lassie who hummed to herself
as she arranged miniature biscuits on a plate for her dolls and Mika, their cat. Once she
started school, Patrick thought he might be able to leave. Perhaps.
That night at the house, Patrick stared at the droplets of water chasing each other
down the window pane up in his room. A figure dashed into his peripheral vision, clothed
in a honey-coloured dress. The light from the open door she sprang from shed a golden
glow into the street where she danced about, arms thrown up to the sky. She was barefoot,
dark hair brushing against her shoulder blades in a caress. Was she a loony, or a witch?
Patrick first thought, back straightening and head raising from his elbows. He watched her
for a moment longer, but when she continued to contort her body in strange ways without
giving a sign of leaving and rain continuing to spatter upon her body, he clambered out of
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A FIFE FISHERY
his chair and tumbled down the stairs, grabbing his jean jacket as he raced out the door
and startling his mother from her easy chair.
The young woman turned to him, grabbed his hands, and started skipping in place.
“Oh, you love it, too, don’t you? Is there a more glorious feeling than this?” she
laughed gleefully, releasing his hands and twirling. She paused for a moment, cocking
her head at him. “Oh, I’m Ellie. You must be thinking I’m some kind of lunatic, but I
absolutely adore the rain! I was raised in Arizona, in the US, and it was so dry I thought
I’d just shrivel up and die! Does it rain much here?”
Patrick had no category in his mind for such a girl. His blue eyes were wide, trying to
soak all of her in.
“Well, don’t just stand there staring at me! If you don’t have a name, and you don’t
want to join me...” Her hand had reached down from the sky and found a place on her
cocked hip. Bug off, it told him, which startled him out of his daze.
“Ouch, sorry, my name’s Patrick. Don’t you know you’ll catch pneumonia out here.
It’s not Texas, you know, this rain’s a might more chilly.” He handed her his jacket, a bit
bashfully. “Are you just visiting here then? For a short holiday or such?”
“Oh, no, we just moved here. My dad’s gonna be some new scientist person with
growing the fish out there and all,” Ellie motioned towards the harbor area. “So we’re sort
of neighbors now, how fantastic!”
Pat noticed her freckled face losing its bright smile as she shivered into his jacket.
“See, Ellie, I told you you’d catch a chill out here. C’mon, my mum’s probably still got the
stove going in the kitchen, and you can dry off a little without trooping in and waking your
parents up.” She hesitated shortly but quickly danced along behind him.
As he closed the door and fetched a plate of crumbly butter shortbread and two cups
of milky, flower-hinted, Earl Grey tea, Patrick grinned at the thought of what it would
be like to see Ellie smile at him on his grandda’s small rowboat, the smell of fish growing
beautiful.
125
THE BROGUE
Sophisticated Nonsense
Oh, Chitter Chitter Chattering,
such lofty this or thattering!
Our minds are over mattering
(yet mindful, we still fail to see
why we must talk philosophy).
We speak of things we do not know
and sagely ramble such and so;
our topics totter to and fro...
then smug, we think our chattering
could not have been more flattering!
Oh, Chitter Chatter Chuttering,
hark, how our friends are muttering.
I fear we’ve left them stuttering!
Making such a brave attempt to decipher what we meant,
they’re looking on slack-jawed.
Hardly could they suspect fraud
for dutifully we’ve hemmed and hawed.
It’s caused delightful cluttering,
our chitter chatter chuttering!
126
Kaelen Zirbel
GOOD PEOPLE
Good People
Andrew Hedglin
I had dinner with a homeless man named Hiawatha the other night. It’s the sort of
thing that would worry my parents, if they knew. But my parents also had taken me as a
child to church—a grand, comfortable place that I have heard compared in appearance
to a Spanish plantation. There I was told the radical gospel of Jesus Christ. And Christ
wouldn’t let me look the other way. Feed the hungry, said He.
Hiawatha approached me in the parking lot of the McDonald’s on the corner of
Fortification and North State. He needed two dollars. I had almost expected him to be
there, waiting for me.
The last time I went to that McDonald’s, I ran into a man named John. John said that
he would watch my car, and that he was good people. He just wanted a few dollars so he
could eat. But when I gave him a few bills, instead of heading for the McDonald’s, he ran
across the street to the gas station. He asked me for a few more dollars after I came out of
the restaurant, muttering another lame excuse. I gave him a few more dollars, because I
didn’t want any trouble. He was eyeing my hamburger, and I asked him if he wanted it. He
said that he couldn’t possibly take it from me, so I let the matter stand. I knew I had failed
John in every way possible. I was enabling his highly probable alcoholism, and I really
didn’t give him anything helpful, anything good.
But there is always a second chance for charity in a city like Jackson, filled with
shattered dreams. When I met Hiawatha, he started asking me for money. Actually, that
was merely the gist of what he said. I couldn’t understand much because many of his
words were incomprehensible to me. I tentatively led him into the McDonald’s, so I could
make sure that he ate and that I would do something useful this time. This was much to
the consternation of the cashier (who was polite enough not to say anything, however)
because Hiawatha’s order involved a lot of grunts and pointing and half-mumbled words.
We sat down together, him and me: he with his fish-fillet and I with my double
cheeseburger. Conversation was strained. He asked if I was from around here, and I said
that I was. I returned the favor, and he might or might not have said that he was from
Tupelo. He asked again for two dollars, and didn’t give a reason. He knew I knew. I told
him, “Let’s just finish eating.”
I could barely look Hiawatha in the face. I was ashamed that this was all I could think
of to do for a man in need of much more, ashamed that I was a little afraid of him, and
ashamed that I was patronizing him because I did not know what it was to be broken and
desperate. I was also ashamed that I was slightly repulsed at the onion that was stuck in his
unruly beard. I was also ashamed because I was formulating plans for escape. I didn’t know
what else to do for him. I doubted that the homeless shelter was open. He probably knew
about it, anyway. There wasn’t a way to make a one-night fairy tale out of this man.
I finally asked his name, in a friendly way, to make the whole affair more humanizing.
That’s when I learned he was a man, and his name was Hiawatha. Then I stood up, as a
prelude to an exit. We had finished eating. I laid down the two dollars, pitifully, and asked
the peace of God to be with him. And it was me, not him, slinking back into the night,
with only a small wave passed between us, pretending to dignity, as I turned my car away
from him and unto North State Street, back to my college and my home.
127
THE BROGUE
Keys (Sharpie drawing)
Emily Faust
128
D O C T O R / P AT I E N T
Doctor/Patient
Lea Schumacher
I. DOCTOR
The clock ticks on the wall.
My hand itches, guiding
The transducer along her wide, pale belly,
Making magic, making fuzzy pictures:
A little body in a black, warm sea.
But
Today the body is still,
The waves of heartbeat becalmed.
Her face is pressed against
The papered bed,
Motionless.
I try the trick again, over and over.
The little body has drowned at sea.
Her empty face on the bed
Begs me for answers.
I have none.
I say, “I’m sorry,”
Tell her what must be done,
Remove my white gloves,
Leave her to the maternal hands of
The nurse and
The clock ticking on the wall.
I. PATIENT
this jelly is cold on my tender, pulled skin and
the doctor’s gloves are coarse and rubbery.
I hate the smell of antiseptic,
hate the roughness of paper against my naked back.
baby, where are you?
fuzzy streaks of white against black, I
imagine the color of your eyes.
there, I see him.
so still; perhaps he hears my lullaby.
129
THE BROGUE
time passes and the silence from him
is a great wave of darkness.
The doctor’s voice is muffled,
Something is wrong.
again the touch of metal and rubber and plastic.
again waiting for him to pound alive,
to stop the pounding of my own heart.
why does your heart not throb
at the sound of my voice?
baby
I will rock you gently inside me,
I will wake you up.
130
I T A L K T O T R U M P E T E R S WA N S
I Talk to Trumpeter Swans
Brandon Whitlock
Our youth group at church went on a Fall Retreat every fall (which is a great time of
the year to have a fall retreat). We packed into the various SUVs, minivans, and cars of
the parent drivers and chaperones and the two fifteen-passenger unmarked white church
vans. We always thought it looked suspicious to have two large unmarked white vans.
They tend to make people uneasy, since one never knows who could be waiting in a
huge unmarked white van. And people generally weren’t very relieved when fourteen
high schoolers in various states of hyperactivity, annoyance, and sleep and one very tired
chaperone piled out and went into Arby’s.
And all the various vehicles of our caravan would drive the long trip past fields of
cotton, and not much else, ending up at Jan Kay Ranch. There, church groups could
have a good, wholesome time on the lake (complete with canoeing, paddle boating, and
someone falling in every single year), in the pool (separate hours for boys and girls, of
course), on a hayride (for one night only), on the obstacle course (which they stopped
repairing and maintaining in 1967), on horseback (if the weather was any good), and in
the game room (where the challenge was to find a working ping-pong paddle). But we
always managed to have a good time anyway.
I went on the obstacle course most years. Yeah, it was pathetic, but it was always
something of a challenge not to let the equipment kill you. Besides, it was physical activity
that I could enjoy and wasn’t a sport, which just about everything else was. I did play
volleyball pretty often on the sand court they had near the dining hall. I was terrible. But so
were most people, and it never stopped us from playing and showering afterwards to make
sure all the grains of sand were gone from crevasses they had no right inhabiting. I went
for walks around the lake with friends. We went to a run-down, decaying amphitheater in
the woods and acted out whatever one person told us to. We went on the hayride to the
bonfire and I always started a few songs.
And one other thing I did every single year was visit the zoo.
*
*
*
I actually had some spare time my first semester of college. I was taking straightforward
classes without an insane amount of homework, I had only peripheral connections to the
plays going on, and I had no internet access in my room. In short, I desperately needed
something to occupy my time.
Since I happened to be a writer, I looked for inspiration. I wasn’t taking any writing
courses at the time, so it was basically a free-for-all. I could write about anything I wanted,
and I wanted to write about something distinctly...college. My first big collegiate work.
Friends can sometimes be good sources of inspiration. I’ve based countless characters
on various people I’ve known. As a tribute (or guilt offering), I tend to call them my
muses. It seemed only natural to take a few friend characters, put them in a house together,
and see what happened. So I decided to write a play.
*
*
*
Granted, the zoo wasn’t anything you’d buy a ticket for. As far as zoos go, it was pretty
insignificant. However, it was right there at Jan Kay Ranch, it was free, and it was more
impressive than a stable. So we went every year. Usually, my friends and I would take our
131
THE BROGUE
youth minister’s kids around to all the animals.
There was the elephant, of course. And the rhino. The ostriches. The lions, the tigers,
and bears, oh, my! Kangaroos, emus, and some wolves. The usual assortment of monkeys:
the one that showed its butt, the one that ate a pen, the one that hung on the front of the
cage and looked at us, the one that stayed at the back and hid, the one with the huge nose,
the ones that gossiped to each other about us… and so on. Monkeys are always far more
popular with people than they have any right to be, and everyone would want to hang
around by the monkey cages far longer than I thought was strictly necessary.
Several animals also roamed free outside of cages. An assortment of ducks usually
graced (if you can really attribute grace to ducks) the small lake. A family (or two) of goats
called the ranch home. There was even, I believe, a camel. And, of course, no one could
forget the llamas. Especially the one-eyed llama. It was vicious. Every year, some junior
higher overburdened with testosterone would go up to the one-eyed llama. Every year, it
chased the boy down. And if you think llamas aren’t scary, you’ve never been on the wrong
end of one.
The last stop of the zoo was this giant wilderness preserve that held the typical
American animals. Bison roamed, grazing in the fields, and further back, deer flitted about
the trees. Some egrets came and went, never staying for long. And, most inconspicuously
majestic of all, were two trumpeter swans.
*
*
*
I had written plays before, of course. My first play I wrote in third grade. It was about
a Queen and her family and friends who had to go rescue the princess. We performed it
in front of the class, and all my teachers and family members were so proud. My friends
thought it was great. And it may have been…for an eight year old.
Then there was a collaborative effort in fourth grade with four other kids (too smart
to sit through English) and my dad. This time, we wrote about two astronauts who went
into space to find substitute resources for our home planet. I played the stupid astronaut,
which was the most fun. I fell in love with the mission control girl over a bubblegum
membership card. It was much better than my third-grade play, possibly because I was
nine. And it wasn’t just me.
Middle school was death to my creativity, and I didn’t write a single thing other than
essays. So I moved on to high school, where I wrote a play for class my sophomore year
about a man trying to produce a play while, as it often does, everything went wrong.
The only other play I had previously written, other than uncountable scripts for our
church skit team and our Senior Banquet, was a script for VBS that we performed the
summer after I graduated. Fifteen minutes each night for three nights, through dialogue
and rewritten lyrics to Disney songs, I told the stories of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and
Abednego. The kids loved them, and that’s what was important.
So I thought, as an aspiring playwright, that it was high time I wrote another play. A
real one this time. And, by the end of the semester, it was finished.
*
*
*
My grandmamma, my father’s mother, was a collector of swan trinkets, facts, and
stories. We gave her a swan ornament every Christmas Eve. I also was avidly interested
in animals as a kid. I knew a lot about swans, and I knew not to do something stupid, like
try to touch one. It would bite my finger off. Never think something’s less dangerous just
because it doesn’t have teeth. Besides, we were separated by a chain link fence. I wasn’t
going to get into too much trouble.
132
I T A L K T O T R U M P E T E R S WA N S
I crept up to the fence. They waddled up to the fence. My friends tried to pull me
away back to the monkeys, but I wasn’t about to leave (especially not for the monkeys). I
could sense something hanging there between the swans and myself.
Then one of them burst out into what I assume is perfectly normal behavior for swans.
He stretched out his neck, flapped his wings, and trumpeted. I had no earthly idea what
he was trying to tell me, but I wasn’t about to let it go without a reply. I craned my neck,
threw my head back, flapped my arms back and forth, and imitated the trumpet to the best
of my ability. And he did it right back.
From then on, it was a conversation. The swans, or the one in particular that was
more extroverted, usually wouldn’t start. But he would always reply. Every time. I have
no clue what we were saying. We may have been asserting our claims on our territory. We
may have been giving the great salutation of swans. It may have been a mating ritual. All
I knew was that we were talking. I was talking to this swan.
My friends thought I looked stupid. I know because they said so. And I did. After all,
I was this supposedly sane high-school boy flapping my arms and honking so that a swan
would do it back to me. I accomplished nothing. As I left, the swan probably thought
that I was the stupidest swan he had ever seen, and I’m sure he was right. There was no
productive, reasonable purpose for it. But I did it. And it remained one of my favorite
moments of that year’s Fall Retreat. Because I talked to a swan. I didn’t understand it, and
the swan probably didn’t understand it, but we talked. And that was amazing.
*
*
*
Finally, I finished the play. It was a magnum opus, a Neil-Simon-style house play
that had four scenes, each a different time, but taking place in the same house. Two girls
and two guys lived there and dealt with each other, jobs, crushes, a mutual friend, and a
visiting Southern mother who wanted to condemn them all.
I showed the finished play to my friends. I showed it to my family. I let it sit for a
while and looked at it again after taking scriptwriting class. It seemed completely different
than my triumph of first semester, which hurt all the worse because it wasn’t. It was long.
Pointless. It had no character arcs, terrible structure, and none of what made a play good,
except for a few funny parts and some mildly believable characters.
I considered salvaging it, but I didn’t see a point. My time could be better spent
working on other plays. New plays. Plays that would begin by having structure, character
arcs, and all the important things that the other one lacked. Which meant that I had
written that play for nothing. That play, and all the poems I wrote in high school. The
inane writings I had from elementary school. Half the things I’ll write in my college career.
I wrote to communicate, but I wasn’t communicating and there was no one to listen. I was
talking to swans. No one would ever get it, no one would ever care, and I would just look
really stupid.
But sometimes, even though no one gets it, no one cares, and you look really stupid,
you have to do it anyway. You have to let it out, trumpet, and flap your arms. Because
there’s some slim chance that maybe, just maybe, the swan will understand something
and waddle away from the conversation happy and fulfilled. Maybe you’ll have made a
difference in some tiny way in the swan’s life. And maybe that’ll make you feel better
too.
Maybe.
133
THE BROGUE
Implications for a Silent Waiting Room
Adie Smith
I sit in a pastel pink chair while my left leg sleeps;
you are supine under a scalpel. I imagine your heart,
like incandescent beetles dissected and displayed,
pinned to the operating table.
Fathers should not be split,
hearts open against sterile air and sutured,
while I munch sugar-coated distractions
in this waiting room flooded with good intentions.
Heart rhythms are mechanized from a monitor.
Your symphony is performed in beeps and clicks,
muffled by man-made rifts of drywall and paint.
134
INVISIBILITY CLOAK
Invisibility Cloak
Martha Krystaponis
Invisibility is arguably the stealthiest superpower there is in the hero world. Not the
greatest one, and certainly not the most desired, but even Batman can evade detection
when his life depends upon it or suddenly appear when poor damsels desperately need
rescuing. I’m definitely not a superhero expert, but I’ve seen enough movies and browsed
through a couple of comic books at yard sales to know that it’s at least pretty handy if you
can be invisible on command.
The problem is that real life doesn’t work that way. People will always see you the
way you don’t want them to see you. My dad never failed to notice when I’d been picking
my nails back in elementary school, even when I curled my fingers up as I passed him the
bowl of mashed potatoes. He still notices my stubby nail beds and ragged cuticles when I
go back home over school breaks. Maybe some people are superheroes, but I’m not.
I used to pretend to be one, though. My younger brother, Jamie,
and I used to tie blankets around our necks and tighten canvas
We called it
belts around our waists before our parents sent us off to bed. We
the Bubbling
would climb all over an ancient, but sturdy, rust-red couch in the
den, pretending we could jump from building to building, shooting
Mysterious
razor-sharp boomerangs and grenades at the bad guys. We had the
Beyond, and
upper hand, because the bad guys only had slime to shoot and a
bubbling lava swamp wherever the stained blue carpet was. We
we had to
called it the Bubbling Mysterious Beyond, and we had to avoid it
avoid it at
at all costs. Our most thrilling weapon was our cloaks, which could
turn us invisible on our command. “Missed!” Jamie would shout at
all costs.
the floor, while I laughed from my perch on a flowered armchair.
Our wonderful capes lost their power, however, when our dad thumped back into
the room from the garage, big creases covering his forehead and his eyes widening with
frustration: “Stop horsing around, it’s bedtime.” He couldn’t make the car’s transmission’s
problems disappear any more than we could obliterate the lava guys once and for all, and
none of us knew what problems we’d have to dodge the next day. The key problem with
our invisibility cloaks was that the figurative on/off switch didn’t always work. When we
were issuing an ultimatum to the lava guys, Jamie and I wanted them to be able to see
us, but we didn’t want our dad to see us and make the games stop. Perhaps if they were
invincibility cloaks instead of just invisibility ones...
*
*
*
Since then, Jamie and I have experimented with different techniques to be invisible
in crowds, especially when we go to the Kentucky State Fair. Every year, we wade through
a swarm of school kids, grandparents, and sorghum farmers, and every year we get sick of
the pushy people that surround us and demand the right of way. As a form of retaliation—
and a way of getting through the crowd—we intimidate them, mess with their minds
a little. Jamie has almost perfected the face needed to get people to move out of your
way without really seeing you, but I have a ways to go yet. He sets his jaw firmly and
stubbornly, like when he’s angry, raises his eyebrows just slightly, puts a bored expression
135
THE BROGUE
in his blue-gray eyes. He likes to call it “granite, yet fluid,” one of those strange paradoxes
that he creates in his mind and I try to understand in my own. He plans on joining the Air
Force after college, so we call it his military face. I think being 5’11’’ with shoulders much
broader than mine also helps him get through the crowds, but he denies that his shoulders
are broad or even an important factor in his crowd-parting persona. Still, somehow he
manages to be larger than me, yet more invisible in the eyes of Kentucky fairgoers who
never even notice him as they move out of his way.
*
*
*
I wanted Kevin Ash in preschool to see me. He did one day, even gave me a tiny teal
stone he found in the parking lot at recess; I think it was actually just an old piece of chalk.
But a week later, when I was sitting next to him during snack time and listening to him
talk with some other kids, he didn’t see me at all. He knocked over his applesauce cup on
my picture of a lamb that I was waiting to show him, and like most little boys, he didn’t
apologize or clean up the mess he made. All that I saw was his light-up tennis shoes as
he ran off with his friends. I decided after that day I would never like any guy ever again,
but that vow was quickly broken around the time that Chris Turner helped me up when I
tripped in the playground, maybe a week after the applesauce incident. I never saw Kevin
again after that year.
*
*
*
Several nights ago, I was sitting on a wooden swing beneath pine trees and clouds that
were orange because they reflected the city lights of Jackson, MS. A cement rectangular
planter lay before me, broken in half, emptied, and upturned. I wished at the time that I
could shrink and hide under there, in that little cave of black with dry pine needles and
the smell of autumn swallowing me; that wish only grew more fervent when fat raindrops
started plopping down on me. It seems strange that in a place as lit and populated as a
state’s capital city, it can be so easy to simply disappear.
In most of my academic classes, however, I enjoy being invisible—able to attend,
turn in my work, and leave without drawing too much attention to myself. A sweet elderly
woman who taught one of my survey classes didn’t understand this, however. She learned
my name and enjoyed calling on me and using me in one of her many examples, even
though I was trying to blend in with the off-white cinderblock wall near the back of the
classroom. A good-looking Brazilian student a couple of rows in front of me always craned
his neck around to look at me, and I tried to act nonchalant and not too terribly nerdy.
Although I’m invisible in that class, I have the freedom to be quite visible elsewhere—
perhaps when I’m studying with my friend, Christina, at Cups, or when I’m checking my
mail, or laughing at my own writing with another friend, Brandon, while we’re trying to
crank out poems a few hours before they are due. It’s flattering to be noticed, even if it
never amounts to anything more. Perhaps my wonderful invisibility cloak catches the
light of the sun, and people notice it and want one for themselves. That’s what I like
to think, anyway, that I do still have control over those bad lava guys and the Bubbling
Mysterious Beyond.
136
S TA R G A Z I N G
Star Gazing
Christina Miles
You lie in sand. Arms
spread and eyes scanning
clouds, looking for images.
I lie with my head pressing
your shoulder into the ground.
My excuse: the sand is too hard
to make a good pillow.
Our hands bump. Mine,
like a funnel, drains sand into yours.
I’m slowly burying you. The stars
hide in the drifting clouds.
I repent and brush the sand
off your palm, I feel your fingers
twitch, wanting to catch mine.
I bury them, again. “It’s Orion,”
I said when clouds parted. Silence.
the waves of sound bounce off
hotels and echo the water beyond us.
We are star gazing, I think while the cold
sand falls from my hand to yours.
137
THE BROGUE
Providence?
High-School Poetry, First Place
Stephanie Oshrin
The air hangs from the car ceiling,
afraid as we are.
My mother and her second sister chatter,
nervous and fake.
I am silent in the back seat,
admiring the New Jersey green that
I do not really see.
Anticipation pounds in each of us.
My eldest aunt’s house is quaint and brown;
an iron eagle hangs from the door.
The Polish sitter greets us,
ringing a pale blue rag with her fists.
My eldest aunt is vacant as her sisters call,
“Cah? Cah? Hello, Carroll. It’s so nice to see you.”
Auntie Carroll’s face contorts—anger or frustration.
She musters a lost smile.
My mother’s eyes fill with tears;
I can almost hear those films about ghosts,
memories of childhood:
Silver Beach waves,
white sheets on the clothesline,
barks of Smokey Joe,
rough hands from the textile mill.
first communion and dirty bare feet,
kielbasa.
They float within blank stares,
and no word.
No words.
Do you know you are my aunt?
...
And we do not say the tragedy we think.
That perhaps your present has been captured
in the future that pulses in our veins.
Will we see your world in the years to come?
138
BIBU
Bibu
High-School Fiction, First Place
Stella Nickerson
“You should be out at the desk,” said Miss Jean.
“No one’s going to check out a book,” said Molly. “No one ever checks anything out
except sometimes the Mennonites, and there are none of those out there, just some people
using the computers and Mr. Joel with newspapers, like usual.”
Molly balanced in a child-sized chair, her elbows propped on the low table, watching
Miss Jean make a snowman out of cotton balls. She much preferred staying back in the
children’s section rather than the main room like she was supposed to do. Miss Jean made
her domain bright, with colored paper covering the white walls and carpets in geometric
patterns on the faux-wood floor. On top of the shelves there were displays of books set
upright with their covers facing the room, but also stuffed tigers and dolls in kimonos and
a model pirate ship complete with spider-web rigging and stiff white sails.
And then there was Miss Jean, called “miss” even though she’d been married for
twenty-something years. Molly supposed “missus” was too hard for little-kid lips to
pronounce. Miss Jean was middle-aged and motherly with a soft voice and high-lighted
hair and a body which looked—to Molly—as squishy-comfy as a teddy bear.
“Would you like to make a snowman?” asked Miss Jean. “My snow story time is Friday,
and I wanted to try these things and see if they were too hard for the younger kids. Now
I’m thinking they’re not too hard, just too messy. Glue’s getting everywhere.”
Molly picked up a cotton ball and a white bottle of Elmer’s glue. “Miss Jean,” she said,
“I’m thinking of doing something big.”
“Something big,” said Miss Jean. “That’s pretty vague. Did you have a specific something
big in mind?”
“Not really.” Molly dabbed a perfect bead of white glue onto her cotton ball. “It’s just
that—leaving high school, going to college—I thought that’d be a big thing, you know?
But the university’s barely half an hour away, and I’m still living with Dad, and I’m still
working here, and I’m still sitting in here every day doing craft projects with you like I
always did before.”
“So transfer. Go somewhere, bigger, farther away. You have the grades to do it. All of
my children went all the way across the country to go to school. It’s good for children to
leave when they’re that age. Sad—at least, it made me sad—but good.”
“Well, I wanted to go somewhere far away,” said Molly, “But...” She had finished the
body of the snowman without getting any glue on her fingers, in contrast with Miss Jean,
who had gotten sticky drippings on her hands and arms and the table in front of her. “You
know what Mom’s like.”
Miss Jean said nothing, only pressed her lips together in the disapproving way that
sometimes got on Molly’s nerves. When she did speak, it was on a different subject. “We
got a new book in today, and I though you’d like it. It’s over on my desk.”
“Really?” Molly walked over to Miss Jean’s desk in the corner of the room. “Bibu,” said
the cover of the book on the desk. Below the title was a picture of a strange little creature
with white fur and gigantic ears like rainbow-colored fans. “Miss Jean,” said Molly, “this is
a picture book.”
“So? You’ll like it anyway, I promise. Just read it.”
Molly took the book home with her, and once she had pulled into the driveway she
139
THE BROGUE
sat in her car reading. It was getting dark, so she switched on the car light and read by its
pale-lemonade glow. Bibu was a tiny widget, smaller than a thimble, even, but he had enormous
ears read the first page. The art was interesting, each colorful page like a painting. Those
wide rainbow flaps of ears—they must have been done with a computer somehow. They
looked translucent and fragile, thin as tissue paper or butterfly wings.
The story was thin but cute, good for children, Molly supposed. The other, smalleared widget children ran and jumped, but Bibu wasn’t allowed to do those things. “No,”
said his momma, “you mustn’t jump about. Your ears might tear, my baby Bibu.”
Molly was nearing the end of the book when she was startled by a tap on the car
window. She looked up to see her mother standing outside the car, looking in, her forehead
wrinkled in worry. Molly’s mother was a thin, tall woman, with murky, blue-gray eyes.
Molly rolled down the window.
“Honey, is something wrong?” her mother asked.
“What? Mom, why are you asking?”
“You don’t usually sit out in the driveway like this. And you usually come home
earlier. I always get worried when you’re late. I called you, but your phone must have been
turned off. I’ve told you to keep it turned on.”
“I’m fine, Mom. I was reading.”
“You should have come inside, though. I like knowing you’re in the house.”
“Mom...” Molly hesitated. Her mother’s blue-gray eyes were two whirlpools, tugging
at Molly’s conscience. It made her guilty to see how wary, wavering, and scared her eyes
looked. “Mom, I’ve been thinking of doing something big.”
“Big? I don’t know what you mean, sweetheart.”
“Like... big changes. Big life things.”
“But things are so nice now! And trust me, darling, big is overrated.”
They went inside and her mother headed to the dining room to fix dinner. Molly
realized that she had left Bibu in the car. She had been only two or three pages from the
end when she was interrupted; it seemed a shame not to finish it now. She turned, headed
out to the car. She turned the car light on again and thumbed to the last page she had read.
The picture showed little white widgets jumping against a bright-colored background as
Bibu looked on, envious.
She turned the page and read: Bibu jumped. That was all on that page.
“No!” his momma cried. “Don’t jump, my baby Bibu! You’ll tear your ears to pieces!” The
illustrations really were beautiful. As Bibu jumped higher and higher, his ears billowed out
in iridescent ripples.
Bibu jumped. He leaped. He bounded. And then... Bibu flew! The last page had no
words, just a picture of Bibu flying through a pale sky, his rainbow ears spread out like a
hang-glider.
*
*
*
Molly’s cell phone rang. She took it out of her pocket, turned it off, and threw it onto
the backseat. It landed on a heap of black trash bags full of shoes and winter sweaters. As
she turned the key in the ignition, she remembered Sundays when she was younger. Her
mother always slept on the way home from church, so Molly could unbuckle her seatbelt
without being fussed at. When she lay flat on her back, nothing was visible through the
windows but sky and the pointed tips of trees. It was easy to pretend that the car was flying,
that it didn’t touch the road at all.
She drove. As the speedometer crept up towards the speed limit, the acceleration
pushed her backwards into her seat. It felt like breaking free. It felt like launching.
140
THE JEEP
The Jeep
High-School Nonfiction, First Place
Laney Owings
“Dammit, Laney, what are you waiting on?
The sky was heavy
Give it some gas and let’s go!” I can still hear Daddy
with big gray clouds—
telling me that while stranded at a stop sign, too
afraid to start. Learning to drive a standard car—
keeping the top on the
stick-shift—was one of the hardest things I have
Jeep is not a common
ever done.
Daddy was the one in my family assigned the
practice of mine—and
task of teaching me to drive. We both share the
I did not fancy the idea
quick temper and short patience that have been
passed down from many generations in our family.
of getting soaked.
This made learning to drive the Jeep an experience
that never failed to get my blood boiling. I spent a great amount of time mapping the
easiest routes in Columbus—those with the fewest stop signs and hills. I dreaded that big
red octagon with that abominable four-letter word stamped across the center. It meant
that—yet again—I had to figure out the seemingly impossible task of letting off the clutch
and pressing on the gas at an exact rate in order to make the Jeep go forward.
The Jeep is almost as old as I am but wears its years with grace and agility. I am told
that its fire-engine red paint can be seen from anywhere across the Luxapalila. Its ripped
vinyl seats have faded to a light gray over the years, but they seem as inviting to me as
a throne. The radio has been rained on countless times; it switches on and off without
human touch, usually when I hit big bumps in the road. My passengers laugh at how the
odometer, speedometer, and countless other dials stretch all the way to their side of the
car. Why do they need to see them? I have no idea what the majority of them signify; why
do I need to see them? Some people might recoil from the thick layer of dust and dirt that
coats the entire interior of the vehicle, but every speck of it reminds me of the adventures
the Jeep and I have had together, usually speeding along back roads on lazy afternoon
drives with my dogs sitting in the back, their ears flopping, wild and carefree in the wind.
Thanks to me, my poor red Jeep suffers cuts and bruises day after day. I have stalled
out more times than I care to remember, rolled down many hills, and annoyed countless
people behind me at stop signs when, after several attempts, I still have not succeeded in
making the car move. On one such occasion, I was on Seventh Street, stopped at the peak
of a hill, and could not get going again. The sky was heavy with big gray clouds—keeping
the top on the Jeep is not a common practice of mine—and I did not fancy the idea of
getting soaked. The angry drivers behind me showed their annoyance with words and
gestures that would make my grandmother cringe. I eventually got the Jeep moving, but I
vowed to never drive again. On another occasion, I was coming back to the campus of the
Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science, my residential high school. I had almost
reached Goen Hall when the Jeep decided not to cooperate. It took me nearly twenty
minutes to travel down one very short street. After stalling out for the umpteenth time, I
stood up and cried for help to anyone who knew how to drive a stick-shift car. Luckily, a
senior nearby did, and I happily jumped into the passenger seat and let Emily Mosow man
the wheel.
141
THE BROGUE
The Jeep has taught me so many timeless lessons, the first being what I titled “The
Seventh Street Experience.” I pondered my decision to never drive again, but I soon
realized that I would just have to toughen up and try it again. The next day I called my
mom and explained my predicament. The strong pillar of sense and patience in my family,
Mom came to the school and sat with me while I drove around the parking lot again and
again. All through life and especially in school, I have encountered hard situations—
organic chemistry and physics—where I just wanted to give up. The Jeep helped me to
realize that in the end, giving up solves nothing. I knew that after that day, I only had one
direction to go, and that was up.
The Jeep also had initially prompted a strong fear of the unknown in me. For a very
long time, I never understood the relationship between the clutch and the brake. Because
of this, I rarely moved out of second gear, which is not very fast, and I rounded corners
at alarming speeds, afraid of what would happen if I pressed the brake. Being afraid of
what you do not know is natural, but letting it dictate your life is a problem. Because of
the Jeep, I now approach situations head on, even if I have no idea of the outcome. The
best learning is completely clear of inhibitions or cloudy judgments, only leaving room
for experiment. In the beginning, I was afraid of doing things when I did not know what
would happen. Whenever Daddy sensed this, he always said, “Laney, the car isn’t going to
blow up if you do that!” So now whenever I am afraid to try something new, I always first
remind myself that it will not blow up if I do.
When driving the Jeep, I always tended to pick the easy streets where I would not
have to stop as much and where there were no hills. After weeks of doing this, my progress
in driving plateaued. While taking the easy way out, I was learning nothing. I eventually
accepted this and realized that I would have to challenge myself to get better. I began to
look for hills and stop signs, and I did not zoom through yellow lights anymore. I got much
better with time and practice, and now I go certain speeds and whip around corners in a
manner that, if he ever found out, Daddy would surely prohibit me from driving the Jeep.
Despite all of my mistakes and mishaps, the Jeep has stayed with me. It did not give
up on me when I accidentally tried to start it without my foot on the clutch, and it stuck
with me when I tried to start in third gear after stopping and not shifting back into first.
It made plenty of loud noises to show me the error of my ways, but it kept going time after
time. Now whenever I want to give up, I always tell myself, “Dammit, Laney, what are you
waiting on? Give it some gas, and let’s go!”
142
T H E B R O G U E AWA R D S
The Brogue Awards
POETRY
First Place
Lea Schumacher,
“Doctor/Patient”
Honorable Mentions
Andrew Hedglin,
“Camaro, an Ode to My Past”
Christina Miles,
“Dear Witch”
Martha Krystaponis,
“Hooded”
Brandon Whitlock,
“The Fishwife”
Honorable Mentions
Stephen Delatte,
“There Was a Boy...”
Hosik Kim,
“Eruption of Ego”
Megan Prosper,
“Viaje Lluvia”
Danielle Temple,
“Going Home #1”
High-School Contest Winners
POETRY
First Place
Stephanie Oshrin,
“Providence?”
Honorable Mention
Stella Nickerson,
“flowerchild dress”
FICTION
First Place
Lea Schumacher,
“Seeing Red”
Honorable Mentions
Jerry Barlow,
“The Fisher Variable”
Martha Krystaponis,
“A Fife Fishery”
FICTION
First Place
Stella Nickerson,
“Bibu”
Honorable Mention
Hanna Miller,
“A Few Seconds, Then Thunder”
NONFICTION
First Place
Andrew Hedglin,
“Can’t Keep It in a Camera”
Honorable Mentions
Addie Leak,
“In the Summer When It Sizzles”
Lea Schumacher,
“Ophidiophobia”
NONFICTION
First Place
Laney Owings,
“The Jeep”
Honorable Mention
Brittany Alexander,
“Pretty in Tutus and Pointe Shoes”
ARTWORK
First Place
Tyler Tadlock,
“Michael”
Cover Art
Lee Cason,
“The Harvest”
143
THE BROGUE
Student Accomplishments
Belhaven College Creative Writing Program
2003 to 2008
ACADEMIC YEAR 2007-2008
Awards
Andrew Hedglin
Andrew Hedglin
Martha Krystaponis
Martha Krystaponis
Addie Leak
Lea Schumacher
First Place, Poetry: “Friendship 7”
Belhaven Award, Mississippi Poetry Society
Third Place, Creative Nonfiction: “Taking the Cure So I
Can Be Quiet”
Southern Literary Festival
First Place, Poetry: “Puzzle”
Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers
Third Place, Fiction: “A Fife Fishery”
Southern Literary Festival
First Place, Creative Nonfiction: “The Luckiest”
Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers
Third Place, Poetry: “Donut, also Doughnut, n.”
Belhaven Award, Mississippi Poetry Society
Publications
Martha Krystaponis
Christina Miles
Lea Schumacher
Rebecca Yantis
“To Turn a Terrycloth Slipper into Glass”
Poetry, Ruminate (Issue #7)
“Catamaran 452” and “I Am Not a Doctor”
Poetry, Cedarville Review
“Seeing Red,”
Fiction, Albion Review
“Do You Remember?” and “Mind of a Child”
Poetry, Cedarville Review
Internships, Study Abroad, Scholarships
Addie Leak
Lea Schumacher
$5,000 Fine Arts Scholarship
(Award Based on Creative Writing Submission)
Institute for the International Education of Students
Study in France, 2007/2008 Academic Year
Internship (Fall 2008)
University Press of Mississippi
ACADEMIC YEAR 2006-2007
Awards
Addie Leak
Second Place, Poetry: “Lullaby of Leaves
Southern Literary Festival
144
STUDENT ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Martha Krystaponis
Fifth Place, Poetry: “Tessie: Examinations of Belonging”
National Federation of State Poetry Societies
Publications
Martha Krystaponis
Addie Leak
Stacy Nott
“Tracing a Root to Lithuania”
Creative Nonfiction, Ruminate (Issue #5)
“Letter to the Editor”
Ruminate (Fall 2007)
“Letter to the Editor”
Ruminate (Spring 2007)
ACADEMIC YEAR 2005-2006
Awards
Nickie Albert
Nickie Albert
Andrew Hedglin
Cathy Karlak
Third Place, One-Act Play:
“How Biddy Saved Gillian from the Hurricane”
Southern Literary Festival
Second Place, Creative Nonfiction: “A Tattler’s Tale”
Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers
Second Place, Fiction: “Under the Name of Saunders”
Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers
Third Place, Poetry: “Outages”
Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers
Publications
Sarah Bolton
Andrew Hedglin
David Rahaim
“Nana’s House”
Fiction, Cedarville Review
“Matinee Mantra of H. G. Edgar Degas”
Poetry, The Albion Review
“Belhaven’s Creative Writing Program: One Year Strong”
Feature Article, Belhaven Tartan
ACADEMIC YEAR 2004-2005
Awards
Ian Bennett
Ian Bennett
Skip Davis
Sharmeisha Jordan
First Place, Fiction: “The Sable”
Arrowhead (Mississippi College)
Second Place, Creative Nonfiction: “Black Tuesday”
Arrowhead (Mississippi College)
Second Place, One-Act Play: “Mr. Holloway’s Toy Company”
Southern Literary Festival
Second Place, Poetry
Belhaven Award, Mississippi Poetry Society
145
THE BROGUE
David Rahaim
Jennifer Wells
First Place, Poetry: “Scottish Baptism” and “2:42 A.M.”
Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers
First Place, Creative Nonfiction:
“Near Death Valley”
Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers
Publications
Ian Bennett
Ian Bennett
Sarah Bolton
“Black Tuesday,” Creative Nonfiction
Arrowhead (Mississippi College)
“The Sable,” Fiction
Arrowhead (Mississippi College)
“The House of Bread”
Fiction, Spring Hill Review
ACADEMIC YEAR 2003-2004
Awards
Philip Bassett
Sarah Bolton
Jennifer Chajon
Roman Merry
First Place, Fiction
Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers
First Place, Poetry: “Security”
Belhaven Award, Mississippi Poetry Society
First Place, Creative Nonfiction
Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers
Honorable Mention, Poetry: “Prufrock Creeps Creole”
Southern Literary Festival
Publications
Trey Bruce
Jennifer Chajon
Jeremiah Maeda
“A Man and His Tusk”
Poetry, The Creative Spirit (Belhaven College)
“Illusion,” Creative Nonfiction
The Creative Spirit (Belhaven College)
“Gods Without Earthly Desires”
Poetry, The Creative Spirit (Belhaven College)
ACADEMIC YEAR 2002-2003
Publications
Claire Ferris
Mickie Harwell
Cari Rittenhouse
“Pleni Sunt Coeli et Terra Gloria Tua” and
“At Ten,” Poetry
The Creative Spirit (Belhaven College)
“And the Beat Goes On,” Poetry
The Creative Spirit (Belhaven College)
“Reach,” Poetry
The Creative Spirit (Belhaven College)
146
CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES
Contributor Biographies
Jerry Barlow is a senior mathematics major and secondary education minor from
Richland, MS. “The Fisher Variable” is an excerpt from a larger project that is still a work
in progress.
Jessica Bishop is a junior English major and history minor from Houston, TX. She is
indebted to the man who introduced her to Walker Percy and has embarked on Binx’s
search, as it sounds like the best of all possible worlds.
Ashlee Davidson is a sophomore creative writing major from Huntsville, AL. She enjoys
spending time with family and friends, traveling to exotic (or any, really) locales, and
learning new things (laying brick, welding, and attempting to converse in Luganda are
some of her favorites at the moment). She has two wonderfully supportive parents, two
beautiful younger sisters, and two rambunctious dogs.
Lydia Diers is a senior English major and dance minor from Hood River, OR. To add some
excitement to her final semester of college, she is learning choreography for eight dances
and planning a two-week mission trip to England that will use dance to minister to Muslim
children. In her spare time, she bakes snickerdoodles, crochets scarves, and enjoys drinking
tea with friends while watching a Jane Austen movie. She is already looking forward to
summer so she can curl up with her tabby cat, Sunny, and finish Patrick O’Brian’s “Master
and Commander” series.
Mary Hallberg is a sophomore creative writing major from Monticello, MS. She has been
writing since a young age, and has also studied theater at Mississippi School of the Arts.
Andrew Hedglin is a junior creative writing major and history minor from Madison, MS.
He has been published previously in the Albion Review. Andrew would like to thank God,
his family, Joel Andrus, Daniel Lyons, the Cabal, Dr. Randall Smith, and Mr. Howard
Bahr. They know why. Andrew is the editor of The Brogue for 2007-2008.
Martha Krystaponis is a junior creative writing major from Louisville, KY. Her poetry
and creative nonfiction have been published in Ruminate Magazine, Issues 05 and 07. She
loves traveling to Scotland, to Mexico, to her birthplace of New Jersey, and to anywhere
else she can afford. But she ultimately dreams of one day visiting Ireland and Lithuania,
the places of her ancestors. Until then, she’ll try to be satisfied with wrapping herself in
her woolen blanket and having Earl Grey with shortbread and cooking pierogies for her
friends. Martha is an associate editor of The Brogue for 2007-2008.
Addie Leak is a junior creative writing major from Woodville, MS. She has spent the last
academic year living and studying in Nantes, France, where she has become intimately
acquainted with Baudelaire, Verlaine, Proust, and crêpes, and forgotten how to write in
English.
147
THE BROGUE
Nicole Lewallen is a freshman creative writing major from Madison, MS. She is constantly
hungry and often can be found rummaging through her pockets to find change for the
vending machine, or at least staring intensely at the food behind the glass. She enjoys
reading books, daydreaming, and watching old Kung Fu movies.
Christina Miles is a junior creative writing major and mathematics minor from St.
Petersburg, FL. She enjoys travel and hopes to learn several languages during the course
of her life. Although she has not yet compiled a list of favorite authors, Christina enjoys
fantasy fiction, comic books, and poetry. She is an associate editor for The Brogue for 20072008.
Stella Nickerson is a senior at the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science from
Aberdeen, Mississippi.
Stacy Nott is a junior English major and music minor from Bentonia, MS. She is prone
to view her entire world in metaphors, chasing “the evidence of things not seen.” Having
spent fourteen years of her life watching her younger brothers being boys, she thoroughly
enjoys continuing such activities at college. She has also been a great admirer of squirrels
since she first became acquainted with Beatrix Potter’s Nutkin and Timmy Tiptoes. If there
are any squirrels in her readership, she offers them the disclaimer that “no squirrels were
harmed in the making of this story.”
Stephanie Oshrin is a senior at the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science from
Hattiesburg, MS.
Laney Owings is a senior at the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science from
Columbus, Mississippi. She enjoys reading, spending time outdoors, and passing countless
hours with her beloved beagle, Stella, and her Jeep. She plans to attend the University of
Mississippi and receive a Doctorate of Pharmacy.
Tony Peacock is a sophomore music major from French Camp, MS. He can jump at least
1’ 7”, has a tongue 1 ¾” long, and answers to “Hey, mister” and other phrases. He can be
found at the Center for the Arts sometimes. His right hand portrays all that is good, while
his left hand bears a pencil. He would like to mention that he’s left-handed—just like Jack
the Ripper, the Boston Strangler, and Oprah. He was recently quoted as saying, “Hey, you”
and “Why on earth would he do that?”
Lea Schumacher is a sophomore creative writing major from Essex Junction, VT. “Seeing
Red” is to be published in a forthcoming issue of the Albion Review.
Katie Shelt is a 2007 alumnus from Jackson, MS, with a degree in English. She currently
channels her creativity by teaching English to junior high students at a small private
school. She is also occasionally employed as a freelance writer. In her rare free time, Katie
enjoys reading an entire book in one sitting, raiding the clearance tables at bookstores,
listening to good music, and conversing with friends over hot tea or coffee.
148
CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES
Adie Smith is a sophomore art and English double major from Las Cruces, NM. She is
planning on going into the Peace Corps before going to graduate school. She is not sure
what the future will hold, but can’t wait to find out. Her younger brother is her hero, and
she only hopes that one day she will be as courageous as him. She wishes she had more
time to write and make art, but classes always seem be in the way. In her spare time, Adie
enjoys watching movies—because she gets to the end faster than books—but still firmly
believes that nothing beats wasting a Saturday morning with a good book, a glass of soy
milk, and the sun on her face.
Sarah Swenson is a sophomore creative writing major and dance minor from Brookfield,
WI. Sarah enjoys taking long walks on the beach, helping small children, making
homemade valentines, and shopping. She is addicted to coffee and shows no remorse.
She also has a passionate love of chocolate which may one day become detrimental to her
health—she’d stop eating it, but she’s no quitter.
Brandon Whitlock is a junior theater major and creative writing minor from Dallas, TX.
Rebecca Yantis is a freshman creative writing major from Weselberg, Germany. She’s
an Army brat who’s been all over Europe, and has no set hometown or home state, as it
changes every three years, give or take. Instead, she considers herself half-Alabaman, halfLouisianan, and an adopted Texan. Rebecca is addicted to old movies, good fantasy fiction
novels, anime, the Lord of the Rings, Dr. Pepper, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. If you
feed her anything peanut butter and chocolate, you will be her friend for life.
Kaelen Zirbel is a sophomore theater major from St. Louis, MO. Her passions include
acting, dance, musical improv, horse-back riding, theology, and poetry. Her poetic muses
include G. K. Chesterton, Walter de la Mare, A. A. Milne, and her two heroic younger
brothers. Her summers are filled with Shakespeare, “experimental” cooking, and many
other adventures. (1 John 3:1-3)
149
THE BROGUE
Belhaven College
If you would like to learn more about the BFA Degree in Creative Writing at Belhaven
College, please contact the Director of Creative Writing as follows:
Dr. Randall A. Smith
Creative Writing Program Director
Belhaven College, Box 612
1500 Peachtree Street
Jackson, MS 39202
E-mail: [email protected]
Phone: 601-968-8996
Visit the creative writing program on the web at
www.belhaven.edu/academics/Creative_writing/default.htm
If you would like to learn more about Belhaven College in general, please contact the
Admission Department as follows:
Office of Admission
Belhaven College
1500 Peachtree St., Box 153
Jackson, MS 39202
Phone: 601-968-5940
Toll-free: 800-960-5940
Fax: 601-968-8946
E-mail: [email protected]
Visit Belhaven College on the web at www.belhaven.edu.
150
C O N T R I B U TO R S
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