Four Quarters Volume 19 Number 1 Four Quarters: November 1969 Vol. XIX, Article 1 No. 1

11-1969 Four Quarters: November 1969 Vol. XIX, No. 1

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Bandiera Rossa • Page 1 A Short Story by Leonard Tushnet

Footnote to a Lady • Page 8 A Poem by Bruce Berger Trapeze Artist • Page 9 A Short Story by Mark S. Cowell Janus • Page 14 A Short Story by William J. Thawley Peninsula • Page 18 A Poem by Gilbert Carroll Three Poems • Page 19 Fall go May 6, 1969 "53 Therapy by T. Alan Broughton Melancholia • Page 21 A Poem by Wayne M. Towers Memorial • Page 22 A Poem by Matt Field A Clarification • Page 23 A Poem by Robert West Explorers • Page 23 A Poem by Albert Goldbarth Etemitc • Page 24 A Poem by Alfred A. Ruggiero Medea Mourns Briefly for Orpheus • Page 24 A Poem by Sister Maura, S.S.N.D. Something Just over the Edge of I Everything • Page 25 A Short Story by H. E. Francis Dream of the Toads • Page 33 A Poem by Matt Field No End to It • Page 34 A Short Story by Dorothy M. Bryant Glendale • Page 40 A Poem by Burton L, Carlson Digitized by the Internet Archive

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Bandiera Rossa

Leonard Tushmet

fifty Danny Leary Si At had the air Trotskyite) ; his second wife left of youth. The air, and not much else, him because of her unwillingness to unless the lyric baritone, a shade blink at his one-night stands, often huskier than when he was in his the climax of a fund-raising party. twenties, could be counted as part Now, thirty years later, the parties of youth. Gray at the tonsural fringe continued, for social, not financial, left of his originally black hair, reasons but Danny was still a wel- paunchy from too much rich food come guest. No hostess had to worry and florid from too much whiskey, about entertainment when Danny Danny nevertheless carried himself was present. After a few drinks he and looked to his friends like the en- would go to the piano and start off thusiastic Irishman who had given with an old and safe stand-by like them goose pimples when he sang "Kevin Barry" and go on, depend- "Joe Hill" or brought them to their ing on the ethnic make-up or the poli- feet when he led off the "Internation- tical leanings of the company, to ale" at mass meetings. "Die Moors oldaten" and "Die Gedan- Danny's friends were not those ken sind Frei" or to "Rozhinkes und had helped his through who pay way Mandeln" and "Zog nit Keynmol." college by hiring him to sing "Ave Then he would begin "Hold the Fort" Maria" at weddings and "When Irish and urged everyone to join in the Eyes Are Smiling" on other festive singing. In a little while the dullest occasions. They were the old-timers, group would be lively, the stodgiest the ex-Party people and sympathizers crowd would be singing "Solidarity who now lived comfortably in subur. Forever." As the evening wore on ban Homestead but who still remem- and as he became more intoxicated bered with fondness the rosy stormy with the music (and the drinks), the Depression days when they sold The songs became more radical and more Daily Worker and gave out leaflets nostalgic until they reached a peak and collected money for the Scotts- in his own special song. He would boro boys and Spanish War Relief. crash a chord and boom out: Danny had always been in demand Avanti populo! at parties to raise money; his voice A la rescossa! Bandiera and his repertory of working class Rossa! Bandiera rossa! songs (the foreign ones learned pho. Hardened liberals and staunch Dem- netically) almost guaranteed success. ocrats could not resist joining in the Everyone, especially girls, was at- chorus tracted to him. He made more or less Bandiera rossa trionfera!

permanent attachments ; his first mar- Bandiera rossa trionfera! riage ended in divorce on the grounds Bandiera rossa trionfera! of incompatibility (his wife became Evvivo communismo e liberta! Four Quarters

At the end the guests would look at He asked Marty, "May we join you?" each other, laugh a little shamefaced- and was answered with "Sure, why ly, and the talk would start. not?" Danny was an institution in the The Kleins and Danny sat on the modern ranch houses and spacious bottom steps. About a dozen boys Georgian residences in the hills of and girls were gathered around two Homestead. In the sport jacket and long-haired guitarists who were tak- slacks and tieless checked shirt he ing turns singing nasally plaintive habitually wore, he was the symbol pseudo-Appalachian love songs. Af- of youth to his hosts. They said, ter a few of them came "Why Can't "Danny, you never grow older." They We Get Together?" and "The Draft- meant what they said; to them he Dodger's Rag." Danny listened in- was the same Danny Leary they had tently, and whispered to Sam, "Are known in the Ironbound Club of the these kids political?" Party, And because Danny was their Sam shrugged. "What young kids contemporary, they perforce felt aren't, these days? It's the New Left, younger when they saw him, regard- they call it. What's Left about it I less of their children in college or don't know. At least in our day we their grandchildren. knew where we were going. We The young people called him Un- were positive. But these kids are all cle Danny, and were openly respect- negative, plain anarchists, against ful to him as befitted his senior everything." hands they status. Behind their When Wimoiveh started, Danny parents' friend, an snickered at their quickly caught on and joined in the accept the fad- old man unwilling to chant. His voice, better than the un- recog- ing of his green years. They trained unmusical incoordination of not) that his nized (as Danny did the others', took over. Several girls Shall Overcome" in- singing of "We turned around to see the newcomer, Leader" was stead of "Lenin is Our and asked for more. Pleased, Danny to keep up an attempt on his part sang "Follow the Drinkin' Gourd" the times, that he would have with and went on, after a little urging, to Warsawianka preferred singing the "Which Side Are You On?" No one Negilah." rather than "Havah (other than the senior Kleins) knew dropped in One evening Danny the words but the guitarists faked Kleins. Marty, for a visit with the an accompaniment and the group from college their oldest son, home hummed along. Encouraged, and con. for the Easter vacation, was enter- sidering that the New Left was still friends in the recrea- taining some Left, Danny sang one of his favor- tion room downstairs. Danny had a ites, a song that showed the full martini with the Kleins and sat with range of his voice to good advan- talking about the latest news them tage: from Red China and the resurgence Fly higher and higher and higher! of Neo-Nazism in Germany. Marty Our emblem is the Soviet star. came up for more sandwiches and And every propeller is roaring left the door to the recreation room 'Red Front!' open. Sam Klein noted how Danny's Defending the U.S.S.R. ears perked up when he heard the guitars strumming and the singing. There was silence when he stopped Bandiera Rossa instead of the expected applause. sons and the Pilutas were trying to Then a swarthy bearded boy in san- organize a branch of the League dals and dungarees called out, "You against War and Fascism in the reached into the bottom of the bag Third Ward. "Boy, were we stupid! for that one, Daddy-0!" One of the You've got to agree we did a lot of guitarists, egged on by a girl in a dumb things. But anyway, looking classic sweater and skirt, stood up back, wasn't it fun?" and said, "Fellows, I know another Marty came up with another young version. It's called the United Front man and told Danny, "Uncle Danny, song." He struck a chord and sang: the fellows were just fooling around. Fly higher and higher and higher! Don't take them seriously.— They're Our emblem is da-dah da da, all okay. It's just that " He stopped, And every propeller is roaring afraid lest saying Danny's choice of 'Da-dah!' songs showed moss-grown conserva- Defending the Da-dah da da! tism might precipitate another argu- The crowd roared and applauded ment. wildly. His companion finished for him. The Kleins tugged at Danny's "Sir, some of the fellows haven't any sleeve as he got up, red-faced at their sense. I want to apologize for them, mockery, and bellowed, "Very fun- sir. They weren't trying to mock you, ny! Let me tell you something. Be- sir, but they got carried away, so I fore you got out of diapers the Soviet hope you won't take offense, sir." Union was building Socialism! And Danny waved his hand. "That's a don't forget it was the Red Army lot of sirs. I'm not that old. Don't under Stalin that beat Hitler!" worry, boys. I'm not offended. I've He was interrupted by boos and been in tight spots before." He shook a wave of laughter. Cries came of hands with both of them. "Forget it." "Hooray! A Communist! ... A To the senior Kleins he said, after Stalinoid! The last of the Mohicans! Marty and his friend had gone down- are basical- . . . Dad, O Dad! . . . Quick, a soap- stairs again, "Those kids box!" Marty, furious, motioned to ly all right but they've been brain- his parents. They took Danny's arms washed. They don't know the facts and made him go upstairs, where of life. They're floundering. That's they tried to pacify him with an- why they're so against everything. other drink. What they need is someone to guide Danny's anger quickly dissipated. them." He grinned, "Sorry I made such a Sam shook his head. "But not us, scene. But those kids! They think Danny. They don't trust us. They they know everything! All right, we pity us for thinking we could ac- made mistakes. I admit it. So do you. complish anything by orthodox poli- That's why they feel so superior, but tics. And you know, sometimes I what makes them think they've got think they're right. We sure made the answers?" He chuckled. "For a no headway." minute I thought I was back in Bel- "What do you mean?" Danny was mont Avenue arguing with a bunch horrified. "The Negro movement, the of patriotic hecklers." He went on, opposition to the war in Vietnam, reminiscing about the good old days Snick, Core—don't you think we laid when he and the Kleins and the John- the groundwork, the intellectual back. Four Quarters

ground for all of them." to bore from within, to become the "Well," Sam replied, "maybe we apostle to the youth. He had no doubt did, but the young people don't see it he would be successful. Was he not that way. It's late and Marty's got himself a young man, close to them his friends here, but you ought to in spirit if not in age? talk to him sometime. He's got a dif- He had taken note of their wari- ferent point of view." ness, their suspicion of the the mo- Danny looked at his watch, "It is tives of older persons who tried to late, and tomorrow's a working day. help. His approach would have to be I have to go. But I'm going to call indirect. The best way, he decided, Marty. I don't agree with you. Some, to become influential was to become times an older and wiser head can needed, and what better way for that help the kids." He thanked the Kleins than to use his voice at parties, just for their hospitality and left. as in the past? He read about a party Danny made no effort to call Mar. to raise funds for the defense of sit- ty. For the first time in years he had inners arrested at a welfare office. been brought face to face with the That was where he would start. fact that another generation had The party was in an apartment on arisen, one that knew not Joseph nor the tenth floor of the Chelsea Hotel the merits of the organized radical- in New York City. On the way in the ism of the past, one that was skep- bus from New Jersey, Danny chuck- tical of the achievements of the So- led to himself at the thought that this viet Union. He had presumed that would be like an out-of-town tryout the campus demonstrations and for a play. If all went well, he'd be marches had not developed spontan- in; if not, nothing would be lost and eously but were the result of care- another tactic could be tried. He read fully planned work by the present- the plaques to Dylan Thomas, Thom. day equivalents of the Young Com- as Wolfe, and Brendan Behan af- munist League, or at least of the Yip- fixed to the pillars outside the hotel,

sels. Tliat it was not so was disturb- concluded that there would be a lit- ing to him, and unsettling because erary crowd, making his job easier, he foresaw that without direction the and entered. He noted with conde- young people, the very ®nes in the scending amusement the framed col- forefront of the fight for civil rights lage of silvered pocket combs and the and peace, were doomed to repeat the formless splashes that decorated the errors of their elders. An Old Be- walls of the lobby. We did the same liever, and uncomfortably conscious things, he thought, but in a different that he had been talking and not do. way. We made giant posters of the ing for years, he threw himself into fat capitalist standing on the op- the task of learning as much as he pressed muscular worker. could about the new activity among He was at ease with his compan- the youth. He read their publications, ions in the slowly ascending elevator. he attended several local gatherings, He recognized that the girl in the sitting quietly in the rear of the hall, black leotard and miniskirt and the wincing at their lack of discipline in boys in tight jeans and T-shirts were the conduct of the meetings and the merely wearing costumes to indicate vagueness of their goals. He felt, at that they belonged, just as in the the end of two months, he was ready Thirties the girls wore cotton stock- "

Bandiera Rossa ings instead of silk and the boys wore heads of Johnson, Goldwater, Nixon, woolen ties. If only they didn't have Stevenson, Humphrey, the Kennedys, beards, or gave up the dark glasses, and McNamara. Pizza was being or cut their hair, he thought. The served instead of sandwiches, and the way they look makes a bad impres- raffle was for a tiny abstract wire sion on workers. How can you con- sculpture instead of for a woodcut vert the masses if you go around print. But on the whole, Danny looking like a beatnik? thought, the resemblances outnum- As soon as he opened the door of bered the differences, and he bought the apartment at the end of the cor- another drink. ridor, Danny relaxed and smiled. The The host, a harried, unshaven years of war and affluence dropped young man in a black sweater and away. He was back home. Everything corduroy pants, greeted him. "Glad was familiar. The bridge table at the to have you. Our entertainment is a door for the dollar admission, pre- little late but she'll be here soon." sided over by a little blond girl with Danny smiled. How often had he a worried look and a cigar box for heard the same excuse and how often making change. The smoke. The had he obliged by filling in until the noise. The groups of young men and speaker came. Late entertainment women standing talking, with drinks meant none at all. in their hands. The improvised bar More people came. The apartment at the far end of the room. The pho- was crowded. The air of expectancy nograph playing, listened to only by gave way to restlessness. Danny knew a sad-looking boy. The chair-sitters from experience that soon couples with fixed smiles, too sober as yet or would begin to leave. Something had too gauche to join the others. The to be done quickly to keep the party gesticulating shouters, trying to per- going. He asked the bartender, "Any- suade by decibels instead of logic. body here got a guitar?" "Must be a The sneerers, drifting from the dozen," the bartender replied, and fringes of one group to another. It called out, "Hank ! Ellen ! Bring your was all here again, and Danny knew boxes here! Fella wantsa sing!" what was needed to bring them to- Three boys, guitars at the ready, gether into one coherent mass ready shouldered their way over to the bar to listen to the speaker and contrib- near Danny, and started to tune up. ute to the collection. Just as Danny had figured, a semi- He made his way to the bar and circle formed and people began to had a drink. There were differences, sit down on the floor facing him. it was true, from the old days. The Danny said to the guitarist, "Let's bartender was a thin, bearded Negro start with 'We Shall Overcome.' in a beret. There were no pictures They nodded. The room became quiet of southern sharecroppers or strik- as they played the introduction. ing workers; instead, metal signs Danny's voice rang out. His listen- reading danger—demolition, men ers locked arms and rocked with him AT WORK, CHILDREN CROSSING cov- in the chorus. When he finished, ered one wall, and on the other was there was loud applause, except from a crudely drawn mural of the Wash- the bartender who said, "Man, you ington Arch before which stood pri- sing all right but I don't go for that apic figures surmounted by cut-out non-violence stuff." Danny shrugged Four Quarters and sang "Where Have All the Flow- no attention and began to sing ers Gone?" and after that, without "Casey Jones." There was more accompaniment, "The Man that moving around. The guitarists put Waters the Workers' Beer." The ap- away their instruments. The bar got plause was louder. Calls came for oth- busy, and Danny was slowly pushed er songs. Danny gulped down anoth- away into a corner of the room, still er whiskey and held up his hand. "I singing. By the time he reached the don't know half of those you're ask- fourth verse, only a couple of boys ing for. but I'll sing 'Good Night, were listening. Irene' if you'll sing along with me." "Can't you shut him up?" came a Two more songs followed. Danny call from the other side of the room. saw the host threading his way Danny spat. "Must be an F.B.I. through the crowd, followed by a tall man," and with clenched fist high in carefully dressed Negro with a cler- the air sang the "Internationale," first ical collar. Danny felt pleased with in English, then in French. With himself for having done a good job. "C'est la lutte finale," he was again He waved to his audience. "That's the center of attention, but this time all! More later! Now there's some- as a butt. His hearers had found a ing more important," and he sat source of fun in the singing drunk down alongside the bar. and they made the most of it. They His host shook his hand and said, urged him on. "How about another? "Thanks. You saved the situation." And another?" Some one passed up While the speaker outlined the facts a tumbler full of whiskey. Danny of the case and the necessity for sup- drank it and began his old repertory. port, Danny's mind wandered. He "Bankers and Bosses," "The Red listened with half an ear: he thought Flag," "Whirlwinds of Danger" all of the many parties in the past he'd were applauded. rescued from failure, and of the "This guy's a comedian! . . . No, many there'd be in the future. He re- he's from C.I.A. . . . Where'd he dig solved to give up the purely social all those up? . . . Who'd he come functions in Homestead and get back with?" The clamor reached through to being an activist, or at least a help- the clouds in Danny's head. He re- er of activists. Tonight was a proof alized that he had drunk too much that he was needed. He drank stead- and was getting giddy. He also noted ily throughout the speech and the the displeasure on the host's face. It collection. He felt he had to do his was time for the grand finale. He duty the money was going for a — roared out good cause. He was well befuddled Avanti populo! A la rescossa! when the host turned to him and Bandiera rossa! Bandiera rossa! asked whether he'd lead more sing- ing. He smiled fatuouslv and an- and when he came to "Evvivo com- swered, "Glad to." munismo e liherta!" he felt hands be. Swaying slightly, he led off with hind him edging him to the door. "Down by the Riverside" and then He started to struggle. "Is this the sang solo "Johnny, I Hardly Knew way to treat a comrade?" he asked. You." Without waiting he went right Two husky men held him firmly, took on with "Kevin Barry." A few peo- him down the elevator and out into ple got up and stretched. Danny paid the street, where they left him with a Bandiera Rossa

"So long, pal! Remember the Ala- red sweater, the other in a leather mo!" jacket. Danny leaned against a pillar The air cleared his head a little. and dozed. He woke with a start as He straightened up and walked care- the train rolled in. He started to get fully to the corner. He stopped and on but saw that it was going down- looked up and down the avenue. He town. "Coin' uptown, I am. To the felt very tired; his legs ached from bus station," he announced to the the prolonged standing upstairs. His Puerto Ricans, who were eyeing him. mouth was dry. A block away he saw The train left, and again only the a sign BAR. He made his way there, three remained on the platform. The sat down with relief at the bar, and men said, "We'll help you, mister," ordered a whiskey. He felt better af- and holding him up they walked down ter the drink and looked around. the platform to the toilet. There were only a few customers Danny laughed when they entered in the place, mostly couples sitting the filthy little room. "Wrong exit. in booths. At the far end of the bar Mus' be the other way." The door two young men, arms around shoul- was blocked by Red Sweater leaning

ders, were harmonizing softly. Dan- against it. Leather Jacket said, "Let's ny smiled when he heard them. He have the bread, mister." with it in ordered another drink and Danny's eyes slowly focused on them. his hand went down to join him. "No bread. No bread. Here's for appreciated his "Rose of Tra- They coffee and doughnuts." He reached treated them, had an- lee." Danny into his pocket and pulled out a hand- other whiskey for himself, and sang ful of change. Leather Jacket took Wearin' of the Green." They "The the coins and almost in the same ordered another round. Danny had motion grabbed Danny from behind, darker of the two noted that the holding one arm across his neck. the and decided didn't know words With the other he took the wallet for he was Italian. He said, "Now my from the back pocket while his com- favorite," he sang alone "Ban- and panion searched in the trousers' side diera At the last line the bar- Rossa." pockets. He spun Danny away from the counter and tender leaned across him. Danny slipped and his head slapped his face with a wet towel: struck the stall. He sat dazed for a songs "Out! Out! No goddam Red moment, then shouted, "Up the reb- here!" the two young men And els!" and slowly got up. grabbed him by the elbows and tossed Leather Jacket hit him in the face him outside. with the back of his hand. "Sh-sh! Danny got up from the sidewalk Shut up or ril kill ya!" and shook his head. "Now, why'd blood the they do that?" he said aloud. "Why? Danny wiped the from lips. coughed and 'S only a song. Confused workers, corner of his He that, fellas? tha's wha' they are. Confused by the pleaded, "Why'd you do colored, white, but all cap'list press." You're Fm brothers. began He staggered down the avenue, men are Right?" He Shall Overcome.^' mumbling to himself. At 14th Street to sing "We he went down into the subway. The Leather Jacket smashed his jaw platform was deserted except for two and Danny fell again. He looked up slim young Puerto Ricans, one in a from the floor, called weakly, "Avan. 8 Four Quarters

ti populo! A la rescossa!" Leather A train was heard rumbling into Jacket kicked him. the station. Leather Jacket seized Red Sweater asked. "Que dice? Danny, cracked his head against the Habla espanol?'' wall, and threw him into the stall. Danny scrambled to his feet. "Si, The two ran from the toilet, leaving si! Ay, Manuela! La Quinta Briga- Danny lying in the foulness, crying, da! La lucha final!" "Comrades! I'm on your side!"

Footnote to a Lady

• Bruce Berger

She had Prussian control Over that set of rules she took for her soul. Ever since she had been knee-high To a commandment, she knew right from wrong And proceeded thereby. A relative's blunder, catching her by surprise. Could summarize glaciers in her eyes. To one and all she was always polite And would never criticize till they were kindly out of sight. Caught once in a childhood fib, She forever stifled the instinct to ad lib. In no corner of her house could you find A rumor of lint, and conversely She lived in only the most wholesome part of her mind, At evening she did indulge in a small drink, Or two, between the stove and the sink. Neighbors admired her little bump of fun. Which never of course interfered With the way things were meant to be done. Old age overtook her, when at last it dared. By a process of gradual exclusion Of those for whom she had eared- One for the creatures with whom he stooped to mix. This one for his comedy, that one for her politics, Till at last she excluded herself as well. A slightly terrified St. Peter, hearing the knell, Flung wide the portals of heaven, making it snappy. And I hope he smiled For the lady who was always right and never happy. Trapeze Artist

• Mark S. Cowell

The city was a cold and bleak place sleepwalking my daydream as I would in the winter, like a scene done in a dog. The Egyptian child was still charcoal. Across from the art mu- mummified in its little painted cas- seum, ducks froze in the park where ket. Upstairs was a wall-sized paint- the muddy little river had frozen ing of a beheading beheld by preg- solid. The sun was bright and made nant court ladies. There were many long shadows but gave little warmth. family portraits and I knew them all I came striding briskly across the by name. park, my boots in need of new soles, I had just left Medieval Christian crunching in the frost-brittle grass. and expected Renaissance around the I hugged my tattered wool shirt corner, when I came to a gallery that around me. Having abandoned what stunned me. It had five times as friends I had, what friends had not many paintings as was practical, and abandoned me first, I was making my many of them were on the floor, way toward the museum, where I leaning against each other or the could spend the afternoon in well- wall. Many were hung with no feel- heated rooms. ing of symmetry. It looked like a gal- The guard taking tickets at the lery "in the process of being re- door looked down his slight and up- arranged, thank you," but there were turned nose at me when I came in, no workmen or barriers. It appeared because of the way I was dressed and more like a European gallery where the way my nose was running, and everything was for sale, an informal probably because it was Saturday marketplace. No one else was here. and many of the visitors to the gal- I slipped my hands into my back leries were members, dressed as if pockets, where I could feel my but- they were going to the Symphony tocks move as I walked, and I strolled later in the afternoon. J sneered back around with the feeling that I could at him, weakly, purchase anything I chose. I wandered with no real sense of Then a painting halted my feet purpose, seeing very little, like a per- just as sure as a duck that had gone son meandering around his own to sleep on the water the night be- house on a Sunday morning. I'd been fore and woke to find his webs en- here often enough. Most of the cased in ice. rooms contained nothing of interest In the gilt frame was a circus to me. I stopped every so often to scene but not a circus like the Amer- nod a polite good morning to my ican extravaganzas under the Big favorite pieces, and once in awhile Top. It was a formal circus where I would stop to stare back at people. the spectators in top hats and opera I felt no hurry because I had no- glasses sat in boxes under decorated where to go afterwards. I was simply trimmings and could almost touch —

10 Four Quarters the performers. The first thing I saw I expected one, but she could not in the painting was a handsome man, give it. It was on the tip of her dressed in red tights, sitting on a tongue, on the gleam of her eye. If trapeze. He wore a monocle and sat the artist had waited just three sec- very stiffly as if he had a bad back. onds longer before capturing her on He was looking off to his right, my the canvas, she would tell me. What left, and his trapeze was even with would she tell me? Who I was? No. a row of boxes three quarters of the She was much too Earthly for vague, way up the picture. On the circus nesses of that type. floor beneath him stood a clown I turned to my left and started with his face painted in a smile walking along the circular aisle that despite what his pouting lips be- went around the circus floor, feeling trayed. I could see he was only her eyes and those of the clown, fol- a child and that deeper behind his lowing me no matter where I went. face he had never been a child. The trapeze artist's eyes were look, His young eyes looked up as if ing ahead of me, toward where an they had just met mine this in- usher stood, and I hurried to catch stant, and his gaze was penetrating, him before he moved. disturbing. The rest of the audience I had been placed here by the art- was leaning forward in its seats, ist for a purpose, with very little eagerly watching with strict decorum, time, and my memory, like essential except for one; and my eyes, as they pages ripped from a book . . . had traveled around the painting, I came up to the usher. He was a had studiously avoided looking in her young man but still growing and his direction until now, and she had not suit was too small for him. His face only noticed me, but stood up in re- Avas rounded and freckled, and he action to me, seemed shocked to find wore a funny little flat-topped hat me here. She had just risen from her that stayed on his head by means seat and turned toward me with an of a little chin strap. He looked like expression, or how can I explain it, an organ-grinder's monkey. "How do an expressionlessness that painted I get backstage?" I asked him. her face both blank and surprised at "I'm sorry, sir," he replied, hardly the same time, a transition, as if her turning his head, "but only perform, surprise was giving way to something, ers are allowed backstage." waiting to find out what would trans, "This is important," I said. I had pire. I wasn't sure I recognized her to get around by means of the stage but I was sure I should. I glanced door because I certainly couldn't down at the clown, who was watching just step into a solid canvas oil paint, us both, and knew that I should be ing with everybody looking. The remembering something and feeling guards got mad if you just touched my mind was slipping. them. "Who?" I whispered to her, hop- Reluctantly he turned to look at ing no one would notice. me, and the color drained from his She was a beautiful lady, no long- face, his whole tone changed. "Oh.^ er young, but not yet old, frozen in Pierre! I'm sorry I didn't recognize that moment, dressed in a pale pink you for a moment there. But you satin gown that buttoned to her neck. Don't you already—yes, yes, it's I waited for an answer almost as if quite all right. Over behind the col- Trapeze Artist 11 ored ices. Hope you're feeling bet- ance noises outside the backstage ter, Pierre!" sawdust walks. "Tlie little clown." I was already out of earshot, hur- He slapped me on the back. "Yep, rying and excusing myself as I stum. have to be off, Peter; hope to see bled along the aisles, stepping on the you up in the ropes real soon. Take toes of well-dressed ladies. Across the care of that head." way I could hear the band playing I began to run again, having an a slow march tune with too many even clearer sense of danger than be- trumpets and no tuba. fore, that something awfully wrong When I saw the door and the long. was happening and that Td have to rounded, canvas-lined hallway that get back, and around, because I did- led from behind the booth of colored n't want Marie to be hurt any more ices, downward, I broke into a dead than she'd already been. run, fearing that it Avould fade aAvay like a mirage before I reached it. Through and down I ran along the Song of Marie: poorly lit tunnel, blank canvas flaps There once was a time, the daA\Ti along each side. of that day, when my mind was free Before I reached the end, a figure and made his room a castle wide, filled the lighted doorway and came overlooking the springtime park toward me. It was a much older where birds sang and ducks sailed clown in a tattered, dusty suit with smoothly across the pond, hardly rip- giant floppy shoes. pling the water except when they "Say, Pete, you old frog," he said, ducked their heads and their little stopping me just as we were passing. tails popped into view, and lying at "How do you feel today, chippy chip- my back, he touched me and turned py?" me around. His eyes sparkled in "Pretty good," I said, wondering morning sunbeams like cut wide and why I didn't recognize him. he white and mad as could be, gasping looked so familiar. "Why shouldn't for every breath of sight. He painted I?" furiously in those days and loved "That was a nasty tumble you took with insane jealousy, and in my in- last week. Your noggin wasn't meant nocence, I reacted to both with the to be bounced on, beanhead." same natural rhythms that blew the "Yeah," I said. "But I was pretty rose back and forth in the green- lucky, I guess." clear gardens of the park beneath "You always were, old chap." Far the window. I listened to every word away beyond the canvas darkness he uttered when he looked at people where we talked, I heard the band running by on their way to work and the cheers of the crowd, rising with Wall Street Journals tucked un- and falling like giant waves in a der their arms, or pushing strollers storm. "You'd be a king Avithout a into the park, or stumbling by in the prince if it hadn't been for Marie. night breaking empty bottles in the Forgive my frankness." gutter. "I am that man," he'd say "Sure," I mumbled, less intent on and his eyes would roll, "my lungs his words than on a wave of light gurgle and I need a shot." Or the that seemed to be rolling into the time we found a bird's nest in a tall back of my head from the perform- bush and he shook all over, saying, 12 Four Quarters

"I am not even born yet and the shell I didn't want to hurt Marie any- is tight around me." He cried in the more, and I had to be there when it night beside me, and soon I found happened, because I was carrying one of his little men growing inside the parts of her mind I had stolen, of me. and she needed them now or she'd But it wasn't the time for him, the never need them again. dusk of that day when his mind I ran past the dressing rooms to- guessed it. I hadn't told him, fearing ward the huge doors, built to accom. his moods. Out he rode from the cas- modate elephants, that led into the tle walls, driving me into the black, center ring, where music jumped up and the night never let up. He ac- and down like a caliope, merry-go- cused me of sabotaging his art, his rounds, and cotton candy mints that song, his life, his mind, clipping the dissolve the second you place your wings of the ducks to keep them in tongue on them. I ran panting. the park. He chased me through the Two policemen ran in from the city, beating me with his fists until, center ring just as I was about to gratefully, darkness came down. run out, and grabbed me because of Somewhere near train tracks where my hurry, before they even noticed lines and lines of silver trains and who I was. Then they relaxed their the smell of animals and sawdust grips and said, "Oh, Pierre! Pierre! sided, I lay to sleep. We are sorry." Pierre found me there, coming "What's this all about?" I asked. ." back from one of his many night- "The madman from Bristol . . time walks, haunted strolls he took "The one the papers have been after the last performance had been writing about?" I asked, remember- given and he'd stripped his gaudy ing the panic headlines and the peo- costume. He abhorred but was caught ple locking their doors. in the world of that train, moving "Yes," said the fatter of the two. from town to town, from show to "He's been spotted here. We're look- show among a people proud. His ing for him now. Have you seen any- wife, before she died, had been fer- one in ragged clothes and torn tile; Pierre had not. I think I would boots?" have loved him, the way his face The thought of clothing bothered wrinkled all up and his hand shook me. I could remember changing into when I told him of myself, but I was the red costume I now was wearing, beyond that. The curtain had come even though I wasn't scheduled to down. I wanted to explode in love perform until the doctor was sure my for him but every time I started to concussion was better. But I couldn't feel him, I never could quite move, remember where I had changed. It as if I'd been paralyzed in the midst must have been my dressing room, of a change, stopped by black clouds but I couldn't remember my dressing that rolled over me like fists, frozen room. "No, I don't think so," I said. like a smile in a photograph. So I "How's your head mending, Pi- simply stayed, watched him nightly erre?" asked the policeman, as his on his trapeze, and raised our little partner continued his chase toward clown. the dressing rooms and the tunnel I had come in. "Fine, thank you." Trapeze Artist IS

"I was on duty, Friday. I saw it. He held me and we swung far out, That sure was a nasty fall." once, twice, and I let go, arching up "I'm afraid I'm still having a lit- and into Marie's box, a stunt I had tle trouble with my memory," I told pulled on our first anniversary, much him, anxious to get on my way. to the delight of the audience. "Certainly, certainly. Good luck, The crowd saw nothing, seething Pierre." The policeman continued as back and forth like pacing lions, fast as he could with the paunch he watching the scene below, noisy and was carrying. potentially dangerous, but it was Just then a roar came from the only like the swirling background crowd outside that was nothing like colors of a painting that add to but the usual roar of a circus crowd, but do not interfere with the foreground more like the scream of panic. I had subjects. I took Marie by the shoul- heard it once, I remembered, many ders and she looked at me. years before when one of the tents "Pierre," she said. There were tears had collapsed. I rushed into the cen- in her eyes. ter ring. "Tell me," I said, pulling her close. High above, George, who had been "That man," she said and her taking my place as catcher, was sit- voice Avas like a wind through win- ting on the trapeze, still, looking to ter barren trees. "He was ... he ." his right. My little clown, several feet was . . in front of me was standing, quietly "He was the father of our little watching above him. Marie was clown," I said. standing in her box, turned toward "But how did you know?" she one of the decorated aisles, trans- asked. She didn't expect an answer fixed. Police were running in. A man and there wasn't one. She simply had jumped from the topmost box, leaned against my chest, sobbing un. down to the sawdust floor. til her body was racked with love I couldn't be sure if I had seen for me; I knew that too, and while him falling or not. It happened in an she cried, I looked over her head, instant. The crowd was hysterical, around the hall Avhere people were and the band had broken hurriedly milling. into another march, the conductor The hall had been very luxurious waving his baton for all he was indeed, where we had been giving worth. My little cIo^ti was now look- our show, the walls, like old opera ing down at the body of the man, houses, decorated with paintings. but my eyes never left Marie. It was One in particular, near where the as I had feared. She was not moving madman jumped, caught my eye. It at all, but staring blankly at the spot was the painting of an art gallery from which the madman had started where a man in tattered clothes was his suicidal plunge. staring at a picture, his hands thrust "George!" I screamed up and my deeply in his back pockets. He looked partner turned and saw me. I climbed like he was about to do something the ladder effortlessly, reached the but had been frozen an instant before near trapeze, and swung over to him. he could. I wondered about him. Janus

• William J. Thawley

The row houses on my street our games to the alley. Here were the showed two faces. In the front, two other faces of the houses. parallel rows of brown-brick houses I knew the sights and sounds of confronted each other down a grad- the alley best because my bedroom ual incline, like trains frozen in the was at the back of the house on the act of passing on a hill. The opposite second floor. Several times a week sides of the street were nearly iden- I was awakened early by the barking tical: the porches paired off into twin of the neighborhood dogs and the brick fortresses with cream-painted cries of the black "rag man." They posts, trees and electric lamps lining were unintelligible, almost mournful the sidewalks, and at dusk two multi. blasts: "Ragsboaaahns! Boaaahns!" colored metal lines of automobiles The cries and the clattering of the converging downward toward Belair wagon grew gradually louder ap- Road. Between five and six o'clock proaching from up the alley, and the the men came home from work with dogs in the yards nearer to ours took suitcoats hung over their arms, ties up the barking. I often got out of bed undone, or in workshirts. carrying and went to the window to watch the black lunch boxes. During summer- horse pull its rickety burden past our time, in the evening, if the dwellers yard. Sometimes the man stopped did not watch television, they sat out near our gate to pick up an old rag front—isolated from their neighbors or a discarded piece of furniture ly- by the brick parapets of the porches. ing at the end of a yard near the gar- Seeing these respectable citizens of bage cans. The horse stood waiting, Baltimore lounging on their porches his head drooping—immobile except always gave me the impression that perhaps for a twitching flank. Then the porches were like the boxes of a the man climbed back onto the seat, theater or stadium, and the people shook the reins, and contorted his were waiting for a performance to be dark features into another cry. The staged in the street: a performance wagon started up again, the horse which, evening after evening, sum- clopping its heavy iron shoes down mer after summer, failed to be given. onto the cement, and disappeared Of course the neighborhood bovs from my sight behind garages down played step-ball in the afternoon when the alleys, rattling, the bells on the there were few cars—bouncing a horse's harness jingling. As the cries Pennsylvania Pinky off the lower grew fainter, the barking of the dogs front steps—and there were occasion, in the yards diminishing, I knew the al games of touch football in the wagon had reached the bottom of the street. But these games were for the alley and was gone. benefit of no one but ourselves. And In warm weather the alley was of- in the early evening we often shifted ten a marketplace. \^Tiite and black 14 Janus 15

hucksters traveled down the alley in stopped singing and began to blow decrepit trucks or red horsedrawn and suck air through a harmonica wagons with yellow lettering, selling supported at mouth level by a wire fresh fruit, vegetables, and crabs. The frame hanging around his neck. I women gossiped over the fences and thought the boy was the son of the haggled with the hucksters. I staged blind man and felt bad because he battles with toy soldiers in the yard, couldn't play in the summer but had listening to my mother talk to neigh- to follow his father around to help bors as she hung the wash up on the him get money. line. Farther up the alley another wom. It was during one of these military an and a girl plopped coins into the re-enactments when I first saw the tambourine. When I saw the girl give blind beggar. The Germans were en- them money, I thought that I should trenched at the bottom of the yard have, too, but my mother had taken where the grass stopped, the soil in her purse with her when she left to which large bushes grew beginning go shopping. I watched the two fig- in a depression. I was at the top of ures turn the corner at the top of the the grass plot checking the American alley: the blind man had stopped positions for the assault. Dogs began playing and was tapping the cane barking down the alley. I heard sing- before him to feel the curb of the ing, mixed with the jangling notes pavement. of a steel-stringed guitar and the ring That evening I ate my food in si- of a tambourine. I went to the gate lence, thinking what would happen to and looked down the alley to see us if my father became blind or what who was the cause of this music. would happen to me if I became A black man, singing and playing blind. I tried to see if I could eat my the guitar, was walking up the mid- food with my eyes closed—until I dle of the alley. Off to one side a lit- dribbled milk down my chin. tle boy danced with a tambourine. As "What are you doing?" my moth- they approached, I saw that the man er asked. wore dark glasses. His body swayed "Nothing," I said. Bending to my in time with the music—a white cane plate more conscientiously, I wiped dangling from the crook of his left the milk away from my mouth. arm like a pendulum. His song com- "Blind people must have other municated a sadness to me as his people who pick out their clothes for voice rose from low bellowing notes them and cook for them and read to high ones, where it trembled. things for them, huh, Dad?" My A woman who lived three yards father had finished eating and was down came out of her house and leaning back in his chair in the pro- walked to the gate. Holding up his cess of lighting a cigarette. tambourine, the boy ran over. A few "I suppose they do," he said. coins fell from the woman's hand "You've seen blind people with see- drumming lightly into the tambou- ing-eye dogs too, haven't you?" rine. The boy thanked her and ran "On television," I said. over to the blind man to deposit the "Why do you want to know about coins in a tin cup which hung from blind people?" my mother said. the neck of the guitar. When they "For no reason. I just wondered." passed our yard, the blind beggar I left the table, went down to the 16 Four Quarters cellar, and practiced walking around man spoke in a low voice to the boy, with my eyes closed. After a few min- who turned and said: utes I stopped because I could not "Yes, ma'am. We'd appreciate it." keep myself from cheating, partly Mrs. Hoffman disappeared into her opening my eye to see if I was going house. When I next saw her thin to bump into something. form emerge, she carried two glasses The next day I waited for the blind and a pitcherful of what looked like man, but he did not come. After two lemonade. She walked to the gate, more days of fruitless waiting, I handed the glasses to the boy, and, ceased to think about him. Over a bending over the gate, filled them week later I was walking down the both. The blind man stood facing alley on my way home from the the houses on our side, his head neighborhood grocery store. Carry- slightly elevated. He pulled a hand- ing a six-pack of Coca Cola and a kerchief from his pocket and wiped small bag of groceries, I walked slow- his forehead and mouth. When the ly following the progress of a large boy handed him the glass, he thanked red ant that rested on a piece of pa- the general air before him including per floating in the gutter down the both the boy and Mrs. Hoffman. Al- middle of the alley. The barking of though he stood erect, his frame dogs from the bottom of the alley be- seemed to be weighed down by his came audible, and I heard again the flesh; his clothes hung on his body voice and clanging guitar of the blind damply. man. "It's really a hot one today—isn't I hurried home and, rushing it?" Mrs. Hoffman said. through the kitchen, deposited the "Yes, it is," said the blind man, cokes and bag of groceries on the grinning at the house. table. My mother was in the living Mrs. Hoffman looked over into our room reading the paper when I yard. She waved and said hello. The rushed in and asked if I could give boy watched over the rim of his glass some nickels from the change to the as I waved back. I gazed down at blind man. My mother asked what the cement—holding the nickels in blind man was I talking about. I my wet palm. Mrs. Hoffman asked if said the blind colored man who came they wanted any more. The blind up the alley singing and playing the man handed his empty glass back to guitar. When she said I could, I went the boy. out into the yard and sat on the back "No, thanks," he said. steps by the kitchen door waiting. The boy said he would have some The sun was at its highest point and, more and drank another glass quick- sticky with perspiration, I wiped ly. Mrs. Hoffman took the empty drops of sweat from my upper lip glass from him and, laying both with my hand. The blind beggar and glasses and the pitcher down on the the boy appeared from behind the lid of a garbage can, reached into garage four yards down the alley. her apron pocket for some coins. Mrs. Hoffman, who lived one house I rose from the steps and walked down, shouted to them from her down to the gate as the blind man door. Would they like something cool began to play again. The boy walked to drink? The boy looked at the up to the gate and held up his tam- blind man. Ceasing to play, the blind bourine. Our eyes met briefly. With —

Janus 17 embarrassment on both sides, he the pavement skirting the corner looked away up the alley as I added house. three nickels to the coins Mrs. Hoff- I waited at the entrance to the al- man had dropped into the tambou- ley until they were halfway to the bottom. I followed slowly rine. The boy muttered his thanks —keeping close enough to hear the blind man's and deposited the coins in the blind voice and guitar. The two figures man's cup. turned right at the bottom of the al- the blind man passed in front As ley; no one had come to the gate to of me, I saw the dull white of one give them anything. I hurried down eye behind the dark glasses. He wore the alley afraid that I might lose a white linen suit and a white shirt sight of them. When I reached the with a thin black tie. I was a little in alley at the bottom which crossed of him because I had seen a play awe the other at right angles, the blind television about heaven: the cast on musician and the boy were disappear- had been all Negroes all the angels — ing left on Lake Avenue toward Bel- and God. The blind beggar reminded air Road. of the man who played Gabriel, me I saw them standing outside the but the blind man had a guitar in- bar on the corner near the traffic stead of a horn. He appeared to be light—apparently waiting for the over fifty in age, and I thought he street car which would take them tired walking and singing must get back to the Negro section of town. all day with the heavy guitar slung Instead of following them directly, around his neck. Beads of sweat were I crossed to the other side of Lake apparent at his temple and along the Avenue and then turned and walked line of his jaw. slowly down the street. Leaning As I watched the white clad figure against the side wall of the bakery alley, I decided to proceed down the on the corner opposite the bar, I con. follow. I waited until Mrs. Hoffman sidered turning back. I glanced once had gone back into her house and the more at the blind man just in time pair had turned the corner before I to see him suddenly start forward. left the yard. Then staggering backward he col- Walking quickly up the alley, I lapsed onto the pavement. The guitar held my breath as I passed the yard banged against the cement ringing where the woman rarely cleaned up out atonally. A few other people who her dog's mess. When I approached had been waiting for the street car the end of the alley, I slowed my gathered around the motionless form pace; stopping, I peered around the on the pavement. A man who had corner. The blind man and his assist- been watching from the doorway of ant were passing by the grocery store the bar came out and, crouching on the corner of the next street down. down, unhooked the strap of the gui- The blind man was not playing tar and lifted the instrument off the only walking slowly, tapping his blind man's chest. The boy took the white cane before him. When the guitar and stood clutching it by the pair turned into the alley which ran neck. He moved backward with small behind the store, I stepped onto the steps—staring at the blind man with curb and walked briskly, hands in frightened eyes. Moving closer, yet pockets to appear nonchalant, along not crossing the street, I saw that 18 Four Quarters blood stained the pavement near the boy and asked him what was the blind man's head. blind man's name. A woman among the onlookers "Janus," the boy answered. said to call an ambulance. "Is that all? Doesn't he have a last "The poor man!" name?" the policeman asked. "Heat stroke," one old woman "No." nodded to another. "Is he your father?" The man from the bar was speak- "No," the boy said. ing to the blind man whose lips re- The policeman again asked the mained motionless. A policeman people to stand back, and he crouched crossed Belair Road and approached by the blind beggar. He said some- the crowd gathered around the blind thing in a low voice to the man who man. He told the people to step back had come from the bar. I looked at and he bent down to the blind man, the boy, who still stood miserably who looked incongruous lying there guarding the blind man's guitar. In in his white suit with all the white his eyes the moist fright had flamed people standing around. When the to anger, which he directed at the policeman stood up, he turned to the pavement by his feet.

Peninsula

• Gilbert Carroll

Her body nearly eluding her grasp, With language quivering her carelessly embroidered face She throttles my impatience Trying to convince me of her thought, however dilute:

She peremptorily pushes out all her stagestruck hands With selfconscious elbows; but only conveys The same hazy attempts That frozen bat's wings express Long after their numbed nerves care to question.

And then satisfied that she'd quite forgotten Whatever it was she wanted to tell me She withdraws in her fitfully soughing stockings Up to her room of quiet furniture.

There, in warm, lace-tippled sunlight She rocks away the damasked hours Reassured by that gentle motion of Something she'd quite forgotten. Three Poems

• T. Alan Broughton

Fall

The mountains were an edge of frost honed to cut the distant blue and trees were bleeding near at hand as though they clutched the season's edge. Across the corners of the panes the cluster flies made torpid groups of black and seething stains. The horse was cropping final green, the willow lapsed its yellow fingers down to bleaching grass, and when I turned my hand palm up, I saw the lines divide, pale as the cracks in ice.

May 6, 1969 (for Mary)

Light was light all day. No false illumination of the sky, it shifted Over the bowl of lake and hills, brought changes to the unmoved trees. Beneath us, rock, above, the hawks in glide. We spoke and touched and reached for constancy.

Light on the limbs, birds in the net of trees; we let our bodies rest and cup the wind. Even the hawks at varying heights held wings as silent as the touch of brail, and wrote the ease of undivided air. We touched, contained our circling constancy.

I do not fear the images of loss. While driving home I saw hung from a tree that struck the darkening grass a tire that swung from rope and twisted slow. Tliere was no sound, the circle gaped and arced out to us empty in its flight.

Hawks in the sky, light that is light, flesh that we touch and trees on their way to leaves: I speak of fullness flowing beyond all brims. We spoke and touched and reached our constancy.

Therapy

In your office five minutes late I detail how hard it is to park. Distant but friendly you agree, then cough once, your rap to open corridors, then lapse to professional silence. Maps are on your wall. Buenos Aires, Orinoco, Sea of "Doctor, this week I am cut off. Forgive us our sins of glib, unprophesying tongues. Give us our daily reticence." But for fifty minutes more I will gibber and squeak, wheeling pale around the bloody flesh my mind throws up to this pit of mouth. Ulysses hears and is ashamed. Melancholia

• Wayne M. Towers

Alone, I stand on scrubby shore, ruffled by wind, Cried by gulls, watching endless whitecaps meet, and mate, Tumbling in conjugation, impelled by the moon, Sundered by the breakwater, exhausted on the shore. The ephemeral caress of these salt-blooded lovers Ignores the washing pain that laves the web of thought.

I am strung out like a net, dripped and drying. Beaded with salt seas, frayed with effort. Frayed with use, I am mended, only to be frayed again. Mended by the fisherman, the man of strong, sure craft. The man who draws his life from the sea, and my bursting. Does this man, this lonely, self-sufficient man.

Contemplate my mending? Does he feel the sure slip Of thread, conspiracy of survival, and. Meditating on the world he limns within the sea. Does he look to the stars that tumble and copulate Like fishes? Shoals of light, little life-flickers. Swimming in a world distant from men's thoughts.

A pulse of life that graying men with metal ears Net with traceries, and draw a harvest to be reaped Into electric stores, that red receded draws away The dreams of men to distances that dwarf My limitless ocean's gulf.

Alone I am, stretched between two poles, Listening to the skies with dim, corded ears. Electronic subtleties elude me, but I hear. Amid the ocean murmuring love, and ecstasies Of tumbling gulls, the faint voice of a love I cannot reach; and, dreaming of her return, Dragging wine-dark robes, like Wordsworth's child,

Withdraw to an unknown space to turn like a cold. Pocked world, and pulse like a quasar, loud, strong, clear, Heard, but never understood, like the beacon on the point.

21 Memorial

• Matt Field

Cardboard feathers, scarlet in the elmshade on the Common; the school band scatters starlings from the white steeple and children in costumes dodge among parked cars.

Tercentenary sunlight lies along dusted shelves, refracted in scrubbed glass cases of artifacts in the exhibition, vibrating in amplified speeches and recitation.

A stir in the quiet wakens dust in the floorboards, dry rot in the paneling, unforgotten parchment odor of the past, but breaks and falls away from the sealed glass.

June air, compoimd of buttered popcorn, exhaust fumes, and the brown river bending below the milldam, floods the opened museum windows but ebbs and falls away.

Safe in their cases, precisely labeled, woven baskets of patterned brown grass hold powdery kernels of yellow com; the hollow grinding stone is empty.

Even preserved from air the beadwork crumbles and the purple shells have faded; on the tablet in the Square there is no record of Their going.

22 —

A Clarification

• Robert West

To confess As the bonebare aged do With bells in place of teeth

And sing In disregard of each chance note As dice bouncing on frosted tile.

One fine day breaks In a chorus of cattails And a rowdy riveting of light:

One doesn't ask for proof Those eyes, brought to a boil By the midday sun, are enough.

Explorers

• Albert Goldbarth

"We have discovered in rat psychology ." (and apparently it works in children too) . . You slam that textbook page, its lips are crushed. With the raft's one steer-pole we spear that tome, our burnt Offering in the campfire. It is charred, and silent. We toss it in the fringed lagoon; it twists and turns Furry with the sunken coins.

This is our Life, now.

Sheer clouds, and cider. Beneath the blue batiste of sky, Our heads at noon upon the ground's thin crust Quiver: in time to the tempo of the heavy throb of the world's great Glistening body-sacs below. We are almost there.

At dusk you leave. You have hiked ahead Without me. This is correct. Before I light my candle In the planet's midnight chest, I must check My own heart. It can't be ore, Or paper. 23 Eternite

• Alfred A. Ruggiero

Gray sea and gray sky At evening Sand pale clean And the cool faint of Mist after dusk And far up the beach A figure Dark gray against Misty gray At evening Coming alone To no one but You In the utter silence Of always now

Medea Mourns Briefly for Orpheus

• Sister Maura, S.S.N.D.

Orpheus had sung women had not the marriage hymn torn Orpheus to at their wedding. bleeding shreds

Jason listened for his scorn of them. though his eyes If Orpheus were never left alive, he might sing the golden fleece. now, before the nurse Under ceremonious boughs brought Jason's children of the island, to their mother.

Medea herself If his hand had lidded flamed the lyre her eyes string, he might melt to watch a that smooth round settlement of worms stone that banged at her sandal toe. in her breast

Nevertheless, she where Apollo's priest wished now said a human heart that the Ciconean was supposed to be,- 24 —

Something Just Over the Edge of Everything

H. E. Francis

"Wind, you never felt this way from her, gone into that quiet he before," old Gert Cobb said and lived in. God knows she tended flicked her eyes shut tight to let the cleaned, washed, cooked. "I wobble wind touch all over her. "Spring on these pins, Stell," she'd say. Her warm as baby skin." She laughed great hands would come down on aloud, passing Starrett's grocery, and knees like stone monuments. "I drag stopped to listen: the sea sounded in around that hospital four hours." She a slow wooooosh, wooooosh from be- was good at it, clean as a whistle her yond the potato fields. It lifted her wards were. right out of herself. The grocery And there was Stell, pretty as a clerk was out soaking up sun. "Hear picture. that?" she said. "Just in the nick," Stell said. He frowned. "It's just the Sound." "I'd be on time for my own fu- "Boy, that's the whole ocean. Why, neral," Gert whooped, for they were it sounds like forever." And just at off, the afternoon was launched. It that moment the bells from St. John's made her feel all young to be with pealed out the midday hymn. "Good Stell. On the bleak days when the Lord! It's high noon. Stell's wait- storm gray came close, pressing its ing." And she quickened, hobbling dark face against the land so you along on her arthritic legs. couldn't move without its breath at This morning she swore—promised you from every side, Stell held it off. herself no matter how Bill acted— Stell understood, she lived every min- she woudn't go to Stell's. It's Bill's ute with her hand in needle point, last day home, he's my husband. But finishing chairs, rug making, and she'd gone every Monday for—well, clubs and charities and her fabled she coudn't remember when she did- baking. nt go—and Stell was her longest "You sure got the magic, Stell." friend, almost family. Then Bill said, Her hand yearned to touch. The table hard, "How come you staying tempted, a real kaleidoscope of color home?" "I'll go then," she said, wait, fallen into a beautiful pattern. "All ing. "Yeah," Bill grumped. "Stell's my years taught me nothing like that. son Dean's home, there's something Your man's lucky. My Bill—he never special," she said. "Yeah," Bill said. came home to no spread like this."

"Well, if you want, I'll stay." "No, "He came home to you. It's what a you go," he said. man finally does come to." All those years in that house to- "Never once," Gert said. Walls gether, and he had long since drifted seemed to split open. She'd said she 25 "

26 Four Quarters wouldn't let them. He's going today pointing his finger at her—to shoot. —you knew that—and I should be "Ha!" she cackled, "Hahahaha," with him now, but I couldn't. He throwing her head back. Years he doesn't want me, you know that. Stall. had done that, since childhood, their You can feel when somebody wants bond from the time-when. you or don't. Right away when I got "Dean!" She clapped her hands up this morning and even before I joyfully. He kissed her on the cheek, looked at him with his eyes wide took one of her hands. "You beauti- open staring up at the ceiling, I said, ful antique!" "You," she said, proud. He don't want you, Gert. Like you That voice! How it touched her, soft, come into a room and all day there's er than hands. Refined. And he a smell's not for your nose. Oh, I smelled clean man-smell, after-shave don't know how to say it." and soap smell. "I don't hear nothing "You've said it strong enough for for looking," she said, all stares. me." "What you been up to? Now you tell "Now that's no way to talk when me everything," she said, clapping I'm eating, is it? Still it strikes me her hands. that way. And something else— I'll Tlie sun came down, the cherries tell you: he wants to go." on the tablecloth glowed. She'd seen "Oh, no—he can't." him first in Stell's arms, all little "Oh, yes, he does. Wants to get body and red. "Dean sounds real out. Doesn't care. He's give up, Stell, royal," she'd said, and Dean Stell long since. Like he sat down one day and Linas named him—for her, it and said. It's over, I'm not doing was her mark on him. And right out nothing more, not even moving. And of that little flesh came the kids in you know he hasn't, hasn't— the schoolyard, the fights with Ron, "Now, Gert—Your Ron's coming. the girls, the near drowning, diplo- And Bill'll be just a couple of hours ma, summers away and work and col- away. You can see him when you lege—all in that flesh sitting there. want, and with your son working All my years, all the years of Bill, next door to the home, you'll have and all Ron's life—Her eyes soared news in every letter from him." to the kitchen clock. She shivered as "Sure," she said, staring into bits if in a sudden breeze—like some- and gobs of caked seafood. "Truth times she could hear it upstairs in her is I want him to go too—you 'stand empty house: it came down the stairs that? —like a great thing's lifted off and ran all through. With instinct us. And he'll get right things, there'll she raised her hands. They caught at be more people and doctor help—for her eyes in the mirror. Big. Claws when he gets those funny spells like with no perch. She wanted to hide he don't know me. See?" them. But there was no place. "Some Sunday we'll drive up." "Gert! You're not even listening. "Holidays they let them come home I'm—going—to—be—married." if they're okay." "Married!" Suddenly her eyes "We—Listen. There's Dean." The couldn't see him. He floated up over car door slammed, and before Gert the sideboard into the mirror, blend, could think, there he was, pushing ing with her own half-image she in, arms filled with bundles. "You!" could see. He was saying, "Scarsdale he cried, setting them down, "You!" . . . and Jewish, but we'll work that ——" —

Something Just Over the Edge oe Everything 27

out . . . and sweet, with talent in ad- you're pretty philosophic today." But

. . but vertising — . and no June bride, his voice changed, came like a quick September " This time she kissed arm around her. him. "Married." The tide rose over "Don't laugh. Don't now," she the house, flooded the room, said. You're thinking I don't mean wooooosh, wooooosh. What did it it, but he'll be happy there, yes. It's mean, married? There was Bill. And his way now—been, for a long time: Ron. His son. Yes, from the first, he's just not uith you. And he wants Bill had made Ron his son. Now Bill to be out of it. We'll be free—see? was going away, and Ron was taking the first time. Only I dont know what all arguments, the ten- ." him. After the that is . . The wind always batter-

sion of years, Bill's slow drifting . . . ing at the walls, the endless sky? You And what am I, just something they can let it in, there'll be space^now. tore life out of, a passageway? "And the house?" "Bill?" He was standing in the "He—Ronnie—don't want it. Nev. mirror. er did. It's not modern. And he can't "I jor^ot— "Oh, Gert," Stell said. keep two places. He's making me sign "What?" Gert said. Bill was gone. it over to the state—it'll pay our It Stell now, and Dean. "I forgot was keep. No more work now. I'll be to where I was." home. And BilFU get what he needs Stell laughed. then at the . . . home. Ron won't all laughed it off too. "I did." She time be making trips to see how he But she had. She looked into the mir- is." wrong, she said. I ror. Something's ".4nd you?" wasn't here. "Got to go." Now she "Me? Lord, Dean, with t-^vo legs hurried. She was floating—toward and a whole house!' But her eyes the door. were riveted ahead now: the '63 "I'll go with you," Dean said. Chevy was in the drive, a black shine "You'll need help packing." by the house. "It's Ron," she said, "Take her in the car," Stell said, then "Och!" She cramped. "An old clutching her hand, the only sign lady can't hurry that way." "That short way?" Gert said. "Got a safety pin inside you." "A few blocks can be eternity some. "You would!" she said. "Ron. Oh, times—if your son's waiting." Ron." He was just coming out of the But outside she said, "Let's walk house and stopped in the doorway, it's my last request, before you get short and stocky. It jolted her, her married" she pealed out. "It's excite. ment, beginning." wind belched inside. "Spit and im- age." Forty years the father went in "She'll be here—almost tomor- and out, then he w"as the son. But row," he said. the voice was weaker, nasal, not "Be sure you make her see what's strong and deep like Bill's. "Just got here, on this island. It's in you too, here." I know." The sky came down, and "I was at Stell's." the sea came in. "Married—it's an anchor in all that. Keeps you in the "Pop said." There was no attack in routine. center, like—you seen it—the eye of it. he knew her the hurricane. Like that." Inside, Bill was sitting in his leath-

. "For chief cook and bottle washer er chair bv the window: and with 28 Four Quarters the four of them, it felt all crowded, there's no more time, only now, and close to, and low. all peace everywhere." "Hello, Dean. I saw you coming. "Yes. Yes," she cried, setting her I's watching. Come to see the old man hands against the screen, as if try- carted off?" ing to reach into it. But the sun on "Bill!" her hands, big and worn, hard and "Oh, he don't mean nothing, Ma." callused and raw-looking in that hard light, made her pull them down. But Dean laughed it off. "If I had Then she fell to, darting back to the your luck with a little free time . . . ! packages. "Take these down. I'm com. But look here—don't you go com- ing." plaining about modern gadgets, Bill, She began a quick last check, because I brought one with me. pulled open the closet door—She You'll need that—with all those wom- stared into the dark hole, the empty en to fhrt with." left side where his clothes had been. "A Remington good stuff, Dad," — Space. "What am I doing?" She shut Ron said. Bill grappled, the cord fell it, making a quick turn to the win- and hung, he wound it in. dow. Now the blue was everywhere, "Present?" he said. She saw his blue pouring in, blue inside—she hand tremble. felt she was on the bottom of the She felt her legs go stiff, her jaw sea, the water was rising over, all said, "I'll go and hard, and she up was quiet except for those sounds in in the bedroom." get the few things the dark stairway down. "Let me carry them," Dean said, "Ma!" Ron. All impatience, that and Ron rose too. voice. "You keep your father company," "I'm on my way." She took the she said to Ron. two suits—one he never wore, dark The bedroom was the bright bowl with pin stripes, the Sunday best for —all light, huge windows that let special occasions that almost never the whole sea in. Below, the land came, all moth-smelly too. "You got went vast into the horizon; above, all to air this out when you're there. I forever going on and on in her sight; should've done it, but I didn't re- and that sound of sea! "Paralyzes alize—" you!" she said. From downstairs "Didn't realize," Bill muttered. came the two voices, distant and "Please, Bill, not at the last min- muted like the sound of rocks chaf- ute," she muttered, all her heart sud- ing gently in the undersea current. denly swollen and full in her. I can't "My Ron was born in this here room. breathe, she thought. "You better Now why'd I say that? Where else'd open that door," she said. he be born?" "Why—you in a hurry?" Bill said. "He woke up to the world's best "You know better than that," she view," he said. said. "Yeah.— That Sound makes you Even Ron said, "Pa." But she tried feel " Her hand went out, seemed to say: spring . . . flowers . . . sea to grapple. . . . what? Anything to let out her "I know what you mean." heart growing, to give it space. But "You do?" no words came. She stood still. I can't "As if it comes up over you and fall, she thought. Through the sun — —

Something Just Over the Edge of Everything 29 glare and heat waves shimmering left them standing in a fine shadow over the fields beyond, small clouds of dust balled up around them. floated like suds. She waited—in a It was all over—just that quick. minute something would come, sweep Forty years sudden-over. And her up, she could float, drift—The li- where'd we get to? First Bill's here, lacs dipped in through the screen, then almost as quick Ron's here. the hedge wriggled over the lawn. . . . Where they going? Abruptly she Bill said, "You pack the car?" to wanted to call, Wait for me! She Ron. started up the walk. She had to see. "No, sir," Dean said. "My special "I'm going upstairs, I can see them services required." But Ron scooped from the window. You don't mind up a box— one minute—do you?" Already she "I made it small as I could. You was on the stairs—how hollow they can get it all in with no crowding. sounded—to her . . . their room. She I'm keeping some things here you could see up-island two or three won't need just yet. They don't give miles—more. The little black car was you lots of room there." But the just turning past the caution light house would be all of sudden big, it at the crossroads, along the potato would spread wide and high. . . . fields, toward Southold, moving fast, When the car was all packed and too fast. As she watched, she felt her- she turned back in, her breath self grow, grow and grow, but never caught: Bill was standing in the be able to fill the emptiness. No doorway like that again. Now why'd Her hands touched at the screen he have to do that again? she wanted to pull them back. Come Ron said, "We better get started if back, let me help you. For all her we're going the same day." life she'd thought. Let him be more, "Yes," she said, and the ground in his heart. But she said, "I made rose an instant, then settled. Bill came him—small. It was what we made." down the steps. She saw his shoes And she stared down the thin road one hole unlaced, how he liked them. that seemed slithering in the distance, Even after he'd passed, she saw the and the sun over the western trees holes on the walk. burnt into her eyes until the trees "You'U be seeing enough people and fields rose in green-brown waves, from around here, you'll get sick of and tiny clouds dirty as dishrags us," Dean said, but she was watching floated over. Bill's eyes roam far down left, where Dean's footsteps below barkened the other houses were, patches white her back. She swung around—too as lace through the trees, and the fast, and the window, the whole room, steeple, and town, then clear space. swung around in a thick current, and His eyes came back, bluer than sky. her feet moved with difficulty. She He's taking it with him, she thought wanted to float along easily, but her and reached out, even if he made no leg fought up, the other fought up, move toward her, and brushed her and her hands stroked out in awful lips over his dry skin. But his own slow motion, yearning, yearning for- eyes were like blinds pulled down. ward—She struck the bedroom door, "Now you drive careful, Ron," she rocked out into the hall, and started said, but that motor already gunned, down—it was so dark! —and the drowning her out, he waved fast and stairs shone—so much wax! —and ! —

30 Four Quarters

one blended into the other smooth as She felt no pain, nothing, yet she a slide, and she felt herself sucked couldn't move. She saw clouds drift- down faster and faster, plunging, ing over, beyond the window; she with her arms out, lunging headlong heard sounds everyhere, but she felt down toward the hole at the bottom, nothing nothing. The word filled where the sunlight struck hard and her with terror. What'll they think's bold on the floor. And far off some- wrong? I'm fine, fine, she cried des- one deep in the hole called her, called perately, tearing with all her might

her again, "Gert . . . Gert!" And she with her arms, wrenching her eyes opened her mouth wide to answer, out of their sockets—but nothing but no sound came. happened, she was lying there, still. When she opened her eyes, there I'm paralyzed. I won't try to move. was a vast space, all shifting dark I'll save my energy, maybe . . . And and light—and slowly she came up, she did, she lay still a long time, striving, like when a girl swimming letting the little rags in the sky float underwater in the Sound, and sud- over her eyeballs and the sun inch denly there was air and light and its way into shadows, but she heard space—and it all cleared. Directly buzzers, chimes, hushed voices, and before her was a window—-and sky, steps going up and down, to and fro but far. My window! she nearly said, —where, going ivhere? Why not but it was not—was not wood, not here? And then—times—her eyes divided into pretty little squares, not swam in darkness. She wanted to cozy, and no curtain. Gone. Some- shout: Where is it? Where's light? thing dark ... a head ... a face, sun? But she saw only corners and came close. "Hello." It was a man edges, window edges and gleams

she didn't know—but—yes . . . yes: against the metal and pinpoints of Doctor Barron. "How are you, Mrs. light deep in the night distance. It Cobb?" I'm —fine. Where's my win- was then she thought of her house: dow? Where "How are you, Mrs. I must get up and go, the house is Cobb?" he said again. I'm fine. Fine! empty, all my rooms are waiting, Why didn't he hear? I'm fine. But without me it's not ours, I have to no sound came. She heard none. She hold it together, something might felt none. And when he raised his come. . . . head out of view, she turned her own Bill would be sitting in his room at head to follow, but it didn't move. Brentwood now, and Ron in his rent- She raised her arm to tilt, turn over ed room, where he went every night —but it didn't move. Nothing moved, after work in the hospital. She had nothing. I'm in the hospital, hospital. to keep the walls whole so that if they But I ivork here. Get out of bed. Bill came—They'd expect that, even if she cried. Ron! No sound came, no they never said. Inside, she knew. one heard, but she heard motion, Besides, there was something, some- shifts and scrapes, rubber soles, thing might come. I been waiting. brushings, far-off buzzings and bells. But no—it would be like everything

. . . Now she remembered: she went else: in the garden you put out downstairs, Dean was waiting. She hydrangea slips, and they died; slugs must hurry back, or he'd be gone. ate at the petunias; wind tore off No, that wasn't right. Something hap- shingles; water rotted a^vay the pened: I went downstairs, I—fell. posts; and snow and ice pressed at —— — — — "

Something Just Over the Edge of E^'ERYTHING 31

the fence, wedged into the walk, Dean sat on the bed and bent low splitting the cement. Trying to get at over her, trying to make her hear, us and destroy. You got to fight it all whispering in her ear, close. "Gert, the time. If I stay here too long, my it's me, Dean. And Bill and Ron.

house And mother—"Stell. Stell . . . ? And Then—times—right in the middle there she Avas, all Avhite and pretty, of her words, she'd take a long jour- Avith a big picture hat over her chest- ney, she'd go out through the win- nut hair, to keep clear of sun. \^Tiere dow, and the star would come to- all you been? It's so long—I Avas up- ward her. She felt herself rise out stairs in my bedroom, I heard Dean of her whole body. Yes, yes, she'd doAvnstairs, and I—But their faces say as the star blazoned toward her, Avere still, mute, blunted. They didn't and then when it stopped, she hear, they didn't hear. She struck reached out and her hands followed out, she cried out, Lz^ten, listen to after it, went deep into the whole me! "\^'hat's Avrong Avith you all? But night flowing toward her. nothing registered. They made a semi, As abruptly, it would go. I'll nev- circle around her bed. They didn't er get out. Never. My house—Bill stay long. And noAV and again they Ron—And she heard them. She Avere back, bending over, cutting off laughed to hear them. Their voices the sky, sometimes their eyes close to fell like water, soothing and cool over her, sometimes just black shadoAvs her in this burning heat, and she cutting out the sun. It Avas Avorse then, closed her eyes to let it sink deep because then she couldn't see the

into her veriest bone. sky or be touched by it. and she "You aU right, Gert?" It was BiU. kneAv she couldn't touch them or be He come running—she Avanted to touched by them, that flesh she Avant- think that. ed to touch and couldn't. "Mama, you'll be home in no Other times she heard voices: Doc-

time." Ron! Home . . . tor Barron's, the nurse's, a patient's. She opened her eyes. They iiere— They didn't knoAv how her hearing standing there at the foot of the bed. seemed to have groAvn so keen—she Ron. Bill. She must be tilted, the heard everything, oh yes. "Hoav room was at such an odd angle. She long'll she be like that?" Bill. "Let's reached out her arms step outside," the doctor said, but the But no arms moved. Both of them voices came: "She Avon't get better. stared at her, Avaiting. No telling hoAv long she'll go on. "She can't hear nothing." Bill said. On the other hand, there are cases— I do. Everything, she cried. And sometimes she took that jour- "Looks it though, her eyes all at ney. She had such a feeling that if us like that." she Avent far enough over, if she ever "She's like that all the time," the got the least near the wake of that nurse said. star, it Avould suck her into the thick Tell them I can hear! she shouted. of the current, doAvn over the edge "Gert?" of everything, and she Avould see Dean "Gert?" "Dean brought us. He went all the Dean—and Stell. She kneAv their way up, Ron's car broke down after time; ahvays noAv Avhen they arrived I got to Brentwood." it Avas afternoon, two-ish by the sun. — — — — —

32 Four Quarters

But she couldn't tell in all the gray "There must be some way to make now. And this afternoon Dean bent her know she's us," he said to Myra. down to whisper-— —how he never gave "Those years of her in our house up, that boy! "Gert, it's Stella and made her—I'm as much her as Moth, Dean." er s. "Please, Dean. She can't," Stella Ron, she called out to Dean. Her said. heart thudded—she was sure she felt it her heart beat in her, it Oh, I can. I can. Dean — and made the whole white wall and the sky "I know she can. Mother." He beat. Ron. She felt her heart thrust spoke in her ear again. He had start- her up for a minute. The nurse came. ed giving her the day's news a week "I think the light's hurting her ago—eyes, seven accounts now eyes, they're watering," Stella said, even if she couldn't reply. But today "poor dear." there was something new in his voice, "Don't please," Dean said the some new quivering. He was smiling to nurse. "I know her. I know she loves down into her eyes. "This is Myra, the light. It can't hurt her, really, Myra. She wanted to come today." can it?" And there was the girl—his wife she'd "All right," the nurse said gently. be soon. How lovely with all that When they all went, she concen- light on her and her hair glowing. trated as hard as she could, trying He was back down beside her, he to remember the sound of the feel of whispered in her ear, "And someday his breath in her ear. And slowly, we'll have a girl, it'll have your mid- little by little it came yes. she dle name, Marcia. Marcie." And just And tried hard to make her own breath at that moment she was aware that — — come so she could hear it, to make she had been listening not to his it come fast, faster, faster, and hard, words, but to his sound, his breath, hard hard. And she could hear it. the sound of him, of air. Breath. She Me. The sound filled her, his sound, closed her eyes to hold in the feel of all the others' sounds, and the sea's the sound of his breath inside her. out there below, on the beach. She She was filled with the discovery of wanted to sit up and see but, know- the feel of the sound of life moving ing she couldn't, she settled into in his breath. She was giddy with it. memory and saw her beach and her "You see, she's gone to sleep," sea it came into her like the light Stella said. — from the window. And she saw the No. Her eyes flung open, light two boys down there—Stell and I poured in with sudden violence, tears sent them out into the world. Marcie. sprang up. She'll be like my granddaughter, she "Oh, the light must be burning her said, feeling herself rise. Bill. She eyes," Stella said. "Nurse—" wanted to tell Bill Our granddaugh- No, no. ter and We have two sons. She saw "She understands, I know she them both—Ron and Dean—there does," Dean said. in the window, but they ran into one Yes, Dean. Yes. Tell me. another, fused. Which was which? My But what she felt, what she wanted son, she said. to feel, was the sensation of the But when would Bill come? Bill, sound of his breath in her. it doesn't matter if I'm not at the Something Just Over the Edge of Everything 33 house. I'm here. The house is where grew, all sound now going through you're breathing. She laughed. It's her, a sea of sound. Bill, son, she you. Now came the morning hells cried, striving to keep her eyes open from St. John's—passing into her. and her ears keen, striving so she And she could hear children shouting could tell them before she was lost somewhere below. Bill, I got to see in the sound. where it takes me. Where? Where? For there it came. And with joy she thought with terror and anxiety, and terror, filled with the wonder of feeling the intense sound inside her. it, she wanted to tell them. It is this: What is it? For it grew, she palpi- I am dying, but there is the sound tated with it, she could not bear it, of bells. I am dying, but there are could not bear the wait. Rapidly it children on the beach.

Dream of the Toads

• Matt Field

Around the Pond hylae shrill in transparent evenings, embracing twigs in wet fingers.

When the toads sing dreaming "all questions" Thoreau said "take a new aspect." At the cairn, pilgrims

heap more rocks nervously. Hurry and bring heavier objects artifacts bricks morning papers empty bottles.

Heap up microphones nightsticks mace napalm and the charred fusilage of an A-7 Corsair to silence all questions.

Maybe the weight of words alone can stop toads from singing; maybe we can keep them down. Hurry. No End to It

Dorothy M. Bryant

I don't see no end to it. I used to ain't never going to have to see. think by the time a man's fifty he Like he's never going to be hun- seen everything. He's got a few things gry. Or wear clothes two sizes too figured, you know. Like he gets peace big so they last longer. And if some- and quiet to mow his lawn and have one say rat or roach, he's going to a couple of beers on a Sunday after- say, 'What's that?' *' Or never share noon and watch the games on TV. a bathroom, so you always know no That asking too much? matter how early you get in there, But everybody's going crazy. All somebody already peed all over the upside down. My old lady says seat. He's never going to start going that's a sign I'm getting old, I can't down into the mines when he's twelve keep up with the world. I tell her, it years old and start coughing his life ain't like going to the beauty shop away before he's thirty. And if he to get the latest hair style, like what's gets sick, I pick up the phone and in this year. No. It's like, suppose call the doctor, right now, never you was playing a game, follow me? mind the money. And he's not going Learning, say, baseball. And you to leave school and work for the rest learn all the rules and you practice of his life at some crummy job and and you can hold your own pretty never amount to anything. That was good. And then all of a sudden you the big thing. Not only high school; go out there one day and everybody's you need a high school education doing something else, and you tell just to dig a ditch. Right from the them, hey, you can't do it that way, beginning, my old lady too, we was that's against the rules. And they set on him going to college. That's say, we didn't like them rules, so why we only had the one, so we could we're going to change them. And I do things for him. figure, maybe they can change the You're going to say we spoiled him. rules, but then it's not baseball any- Hell, we never could afford to spoil more. See what I mean? Never mind. him. Things were rough after the You take my son. When he's born war. We got out of that coal town I say to myself, you're a nobody with and came here and I didn't even have a fourth grade education, but your a trade. Soon as I got into the plant, son is going to be somebody. Sure, there was a strike and we were out I know, everybody says that the day six weeks. That was the first big his son is born. It's only natural to fight my old lady and me had. She want something better for your kids. was afraid; she said I should scab; I start to think of all the things hap- but I says no, in the long run that's pened to me when I was a kid, all no good, we got to stand up for de- the crap I put up with, and I decide cent wages and the safety precau- there's a long list of things my son tions. I was right, she admits it now, 34 ;

No End to It 35

we got a health plan and all, but then going to count off the years like this it was rough; and I'll tell you one or so what else could I ask? two days there, Rick wasn't hungry, About that time my old lady goes but me and the old lady was. to work. She says it'll be better to But we hung on and we got our start saving ahead a little for Rick's conditions, and I started making pret. college, and besides she doesn't know ty good money. Every time our con- what to do with herself in the house tract came up, we pushed hard, and anymore. So she takes up typing and we did pretty good, for years, until gets a job in an office. Besides, automation and inflation and taxes prices are going up, and it's like no and, well, that's another problem. I matter how much we get for a raise, worked hard in the local and I never it ain't enough to keep up with the tried to get out of picket duty the inflation and we want to make sure way most of the other guys did. I fig. there's enough money for Rick to stay ured it was for Rick, so that some day in college so they won't take him in I'd be able to send him to coUege. the army. That's another thing I don't All the time he was little, we was want my son to see if he can help it; getting him ready. The old lady, she it wasn't like the old movies on TV. used to read to him all the time and There's no trouble getting him into even taught him to read a little be- college; he's right at the top of his fore he started school. How do you class, he can take his pick. He wants like that, little kindergarten kid, the to go back east to a place I never book bigger than he was, reading. heard of, but he says it's very good, We took a picture. I still carry it, and he can make good connections see? there, so we send him. It should be And all the time we keep telling good, it costs a mint, even with the him, you're going to go to college so scholarship he gets. Only thing is we you'll be somebody. You don't have can't keep paying plane fare for vis- to be a nobody like your father its, so it gets lonely sometimes. At standing on a lousy assembly line all first everything is fine; the first year day, the noise so loud you can't hear when he comes home for Christmas, yourself think, and nothing but this he's going to major in business ad- every day for the rest of your life. ministration, and minor in English We started before he could even un- so he can go into advertising. I'm derstand. So he never even thought pretty proud of the kid. I take him to ask, do I want to go to college? everywhere that vacation, even to the He was going, just like breathing. plant, showing him off. It's like I Once, when he was about sixteen, just became a father again, passing he gave us a little scare. His best out cigars and telling everyone what friend quit school, got a job, bought a fine son I got. He gets embarrassed. a car, all that. But I fixed it. I got I think he's a little ashamed of me. Rick on at the plant temporary for Why shouldn't he? What am I? A the smnmer. A few weeks was enough. nobody with a fourth grade educa- He said one day, how do you stand tion. it, Pop? But I don't think about it When he comes home in the sum- anymore, like serving a sentence, a mer, he wants to work at the plant day at a time. I got ten years till I to help out with his expenses, A good retire, and I figure my son is never kid, you see, not spoiled. I look back 36 Four Quarters on that time now, like it was the and look at each other like across a Garden of Eden, the best time of my gulch where it don't pay to talk be- life; it seems like years ago. cause you're too far apart to hear The second year the trouble starts. what you're saying. Not all at once, just little things you That night was bad. He goes to don't notice. He comes home for his room early and we sit up, me Christmas, very quiet, reads a lot. saying is this what we worked so Says he's not so sure he wants to be hard for and my old lady saying in business. And I say, so change what did we do wrong? That kind of your mind, you can be a doctor or a stuff, you know. Don't get you no lawyer, anything you want, I'm not place. So we both decide we're going going to tell you. He gives me a fun- to pretend he don't look like a mangy ny look and says do I have to be a lion. So next morning I ask him, doctor or a lawyer. So I says well casual, how's school? And he says, what do you want? And he just he don't want to go back. It's like shrugs. I know something's bugging another kick in the gut. His mother the kid, but he's not talking. His mo- drops the coffee pot, and we're all ther can't get nothing out of him jumping around making sure no one's either. burned and cleaning up the mess. When he goes back to school, he Then we sit down again all quiet, real starts writing these long letters; they quiet. don't make any sense, and I even I don't see any purpose to it, he wonder, Jesus, I hope he's not tak- says. I don't know what I want to ing anything. One of the letters says do. Just go to school, his mother maybe he wants to be a teacher, and says, find out later what you want I even swallow that. I tell my old to do. They'll take you in the array, lady, write back and tell him, sure, I says. No, they won't, he says, cool why not; it don't pay any better than as ice. I won't go. That's all we need. I make on the line but it's clean His mother starts crying, and that work and plenty of vacation time. I drives me almost crazy and I start wasn't trying to push the kid, you yelling, "Did I work my ass off all know? Then for a long time he don't these years so I could have a convict write at all. We even call him a cou- for a son?" And that's all the talking ple of times to see if he's all right, for that day. and he says, yeah, I'm all right, and Next day he says when does he go that's all he says. to work in the plant like last summer. Come June, we go to the airport to I just look at him; then I say, let meet him. I didn't know him. His me understand you, you intending mother almost passes out. You should to work this summer? He says, sure. see him. Hair down to here. Clothes I says, where? At the plant, he says, like I wouldn't give to a tramp. I real slow, like I'm dumb. And just as look at him and say what happened, slow I say, looking like that, I would, somebody steal your money and your n't take you to the plant, even if clothes? He just looks at me, and they'd hire you, which they won't. the old lady pokes me to shut up and And that's all the talk for a whole act like it's nothing. And we go week. His mother tells me he's out home and she's talking and laughing every day looking for a job. and Rick and me we just sit there At the end of the week I come No End to It 37 home from work and I hear the old you trying to do, lose me my job. lady singing in the kitchen. I walk And he starts all this stuff like Mike in and she gives me a big kiss and said, with new words like military- she laughs. I figure he's finally driv- industrial complex, and we just start en her batty. Then she puts the food yelling at each other, me trying to on the table, humming all the time, make him see that talking to these and she calls, Ricky, dinner's ready. guys about anything but bread-and- And he comes out. Clipped. The butter is stupid and even if he made beard is shaved off and his hair is sense they'd call him a red and it short, well, not real short, a little drip- would just make trouble for me, and ping down his neck, but you can see was this all he learned at college? his ears anyhow. I start to smile, but Then we stop yelling finally, and then I figure he'll think I'm crowing there's the big silence again. This so I just say, you look good. And time it lasts for the rest of the sum- he says, you were right; I couldn't mer. He don't bother anybody at the get a job. And I say, "I'll take you plant anymore. He's polite at the din. down to the plant Monday." And I ner table, and every night he goes think we all feel a lot better. He goes out. And his mother just looks miser- out with some of his old friends that able all the time, and I want to wring night, and the old lady and me talk his neck. it over and decide we won't push him Come September, one night, he about school. It'll be like before, a says, look, I think I know what I few weeks in the plant and he'll be want to do. I don't want to go back ready to go back to college. east again, I told you. I've applied to So that's what we do for the next the university here, right here. I've month, and everything's going pretty been accepted. I can live at home. If good. I notice he's talking a lot to you can pay the fees, I'll pay for the guys at the plant, very friendly, books and extras out of what I made but he complains same as ever about this summer, and Mom can quit the work, so I think everything's go- work. Right away the old lady's cry- ing to work out. Except sometimes ing again and kissing him. I could I see guys looking at us kind of fun- almost kiss him myself. I go out and ny when we come in the locker room. buy him an old Chevy so he can com- Then this old guy, Mike, comes up mute easier. to me one day and says, you know And that's what he does. He goes you better muzzle that kid of yours. to the university and when I come What's the matter? Well, he says, home at night he's there at dinner, the kid's going around to all the and his mother humming around guys telling them the union ain't again, and after dinner he goes to his looking out for them, and they ought room and we hear him typing or he's to run the plant themselves, and, you quiet studying. It's a lot cheaper, but know, the kind of stuff I ain't heard the old lady don't quit her job be- much since the thirties, about the cause things are already looking bad working classes and all. The guys at the plant with the new contract don't like it, the shop steward don't coming up and the company making like it, the foreman don't—That's tough noises, and we figure she enough, I tell him, I'll handle it. should hang on till we see how it So that night I tell him, what're comes out. Besides, she says, I like 38 Four Quarters being out in the ^vorld where things he goes out every morning at six are happening. "What would I do at o'clock to picket. And at six o'clock home?" And I begin to relax, think- at night his mother and me sit and ing everything's finally going to set- wait to see if he's going to come tle down. I'm thinking it was just a home or if we're going to see him phase and he's all right again. on the six o'clock news getting bust-

That's when the roof falls in. At ed. And I don't say anything to her, first I don't know what's going on but I'm scared because I remember at that place except it sounds like a how bad things can get when you get few jokers don't want to learn any- tough on scabs and the police get thing and don't want to let anyone scared and—but every night he's else go to college. I say, if they don't home for dinner, in the big silence, like the school, they should quit and what is there to say? and then he make room for others. Strike? They goes out to a meeting. I'm so mad don't know the meaning of the word, I could kill him, and Im scared and for what? They want to take over someone else will. and tell the professors what to teach But I ain't got trouble enough. them. When I went to school, you Contract negotiations break down, kept your mouth shut and learned and our union goes out. This time or else they threw you out. That's all. it looks real bad. The company won't If you're so smart you can tell the budge: right from the beginning teachers what to teach, you're too they're hard-nosed like they can hold smart to need school. out forever. And half our members So, now, there's no more humming whining 'cause they're afraid they'll in the kitchen, just a big argument miss a payment on their new car, in- every night. Sure, he's Avith the stead of seeing the long range loss strikers, what else? And he's explain- if we don't hang together now. ing to me, like I'm some dummy, So there we are, and I wonder if hoAV the college perpetuates the svs- things can get any worse. At least we tem, and how the people Avho get talk a little now, like the day the po- the diploma get in and the others lice used mace on the campus. I seen are out. And I tell him, I'm a no- worse in the old days, and I told Rick body with no education, but I didn't a few stories I'd forgotten myself. It need two years of college to learn wasn't all chanting and sign carry- that; I knew it since before you were ing then, but I didn't tell him about born, why do you think I work my how sometimes we had to carry weap- ass off to get you through college? ons on the picket line— all I need is Maybe if you went hungry like me to give him ideas! And my old lady, and had to stand on that assembly she just comes home from work and line all your life, you'd be glad to gives us dinner and goes to bed while go to school. And he says, that's just Rick and me each go to our meet- the point. And I say, you're throwing ings. Once we're talking again I try away everything we did for you, your to get Rick to be sensible. Like may- mother and me, you're saying shit on be he should transfer to another col- it, and he says that's not true. And lege and I should quit the plant and his mother just cries. And that's the see if I can find something else. And way it is every night. No end to it. he says, in the long run, that's no And the students call a strike. And good. If you don't stand and fight No End to It 39 here, you just have to do it some- with these ten kids mixed in. Pretty place else. Like he's been listening soon they start to talk and our young- when I telephone the weak brothers er pickets are flirting with the girls at night and give them the old pep a little, and before you know it old talk. And I don't see no end to it. Mike's teaching everybody to sing "Solidarity Forever." And I don't see how no good can And I'm think- ing, that's all come out of it. Except maybe what we need, the next com- happened last week. pany press release will be about the conspiracy between us and anarchist I was out on the picket line, as students. usual. It was raining, as usual; it I manage to get next to Rick, and always rains when I pull picket duty. while we walk I ask him what's it all And I was hunching up in my jacket, about? He says, when the kids heard trying to sink my head in as far as I about you being on strike they could and asking myself what kind were impressed. I say, why? And he says, of half-assed jerk I was, walking in well, their parents are doctors and the rain at my age, I'd probably die lawyers, white collar people. They of pneumonia. And guys I never don't know anything. He says how he thought I'd see cross a picket line, told them some of the stories I told going through. him at dinner, and since they found Then I see Rick coming, and he's out he was the son of a working man, got about ten kids with him, three they really look up to him. And I try of them girls. He says, "Hi, Pop," to to get it straight, but we're always me and introduces all his friends, stu- interrupted, one kid after another dents from the university, strikers, asking me questions about strike tac- and they all call me Sir and say how tics, and liaison between the students glad they are to know me, like good and the working classes, and I laugh little kids when their mother says, at their half-baked schemes but they be nice now and shake hands with ask why I'm laughing, and they sure your uncle, he's rich. Then Rick in- listen hard when I tell them. After troduces them to the other pickets; a couple of hours everybody's cold he knows them all from last summer. and wet and just walking, and I'll Then he says to me, who's the picket hand it to these kids, they probably captain, and I tell him, you know I never had to walk to the grocery am. And one of the other kids says, store in their lives, but none of them can you use us, Sir, we want to complains or tries to leave; they just walk the line with you a while. hunch up like me and keep walking. Well, I don't know how the other And then Rick and me are togeth- pickets are going to feel about these er again and I shake my head and kids, they never had a good word tell him, your friends are not too for that strike, they say anybody can bad, at least they listen respectfully go to college has to have rocks in to your old man. And he looks at me their heads to strike. But then old with this big smile and says, why not, Mike, who's listening to all this with you have something to tell them. a funny smile on his face, says there's You're somebody. no rule against citizens joining a We didn't talk at all anymore. Tell picket line, and we welcome any sup. you the truth, I couldn't. I had this port we can get. So there we are lump in my throat. 40 Four Quarters

Which don't mean I agree with promoted to the top jobs where they him. I still think the kid's crazy. So make even more money for doing every day we go out and picket and nothing while the women still do all at night we sit at the table and argue. the work. She tells how she never The old lady goes to bed, and we're would have got the job to help pay still sitting at the table yelling at each for Rick's education if she hadn't other. come cheaper than a man; so that Only last night she don't go to bed. means she's been a scab right along. She says something a couple of times, And then, get this, she says she's I don't really hear, and then she yells tired of working hard all day and at me, something about going on coming home to fix dinner for a cou- strike. "Who?" I says. And she says, ple of lazy bums Avho won't even dry the girls at the office. I been trying a dish or pick up their dirty socks. to tell you but you never listen. What I never seen her so mad. And she strike, I says, you're not even organ- didn't cry either. She just gets up ized. And she says they're getting and puts her coat on. I ask her, organized. And Rick says, how can "Where you going?" and she says to you go out on strike, you're the sole a meeting, and on the way out she support of the family now. Then she's slams the front door. really mad, and slams down a dish, So Rick and me do the dishes, both and says, oh, you're so pure but you of us saying nothing, and finally he want me to scab. says, she's right. I'm so tired I just Then she tells us how some of the nod my head. younger women (they got college de- Then after a while I tell him, grees and they're still behind a type- you know what I think. I thing she's writer just like her) have been tr^'ing right. And I'm right. And you're to organize because they make less right. And everybody's right. And I money than the men and the men get don't see no end to it.

Glendale

• Burton L. Carlson

Grandma Lane lived up the street. Lantana bloomed beside the porch.

Eucalyptus made evenings cool.

Snails made their homes in lantana like birds in trees

or worms in apples leaving trails.

Black ants farmed aphids. Contributors

"W EONARD TUSHNET, a physician in Maplewood, New Jersey, last

-*-^ appeared in this magazine with a story, "Obituary," November 1968. BRUCE BERGER had two poems, "The Skaters" and "Encounter," in the March 1969 issue. MARK S. COWELL writes from his home in Plain- ville, Massachusetts: "I married a black chick from Chicago, and we now own four cameras, three frisbees, two gorilla savings banks, and a tangram puzzle." WILLIAM J. THAWLEY is currently widi VISTA and living in a small steel mill town near Birmingham, Alabama. GILBERT CAR-

ROLL lives in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. T. ALAN BROUGHTON has had poems appear in The Quest, American Weave, Northeast, and

other magazines. WAYNE M. TOWERS was a student in English litera- ture at La Salle College and was graduated with the Class of 1969. MATT

FIELD has had poems in previous issues of this magazine. ROBERT

WEST lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee. ALBERT GOLDBARTH has had his poetry published in such magazines as Southern Poetry Review, Poet and Critic, and Epos. ALFRED A. RUFFIERO is on the staff of the De- partment of English, La Salle College. SISTER MAURA, S.S.N.D. teaches at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, Baltimore. H. E. FRANCIS, associate professor, Department of English, University of Alabama, Hunts- ville, and editor of POEM, had one of his stories appear in The Best American Short Stories of 1967. DOROTHY M. BRYANT writes from Contra Costa College, California, where she teaches: "I am married, have

four children, two novels, working on a third, but this is the first thing

IVe published except for film and book reviews I do for an underground newspaper." BURTON L. CARLSON has written for Southwest Review, Midwest Quarterly, and Tennessee Poetry Journal, among other magazines.

Editor, EDWARD P. SHEEKBY, F.S.C

Associate Editors, JOHN J. KEENAN, F. PATRICK ELLIS, F.S.C Business Manager, CHARLES V. KELLY Circulation Manager, RICHARD P. BOUDREAU Typographic Cover Design by JOSEPH MINTZER

Manuscripts and other correspondence should be addressed to the Editor, ionr qnar- ters. La Salle CoU^e, Philadelphia, Penna. 19141. Manuscripts should be typed double-spaced and should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Annual Subscription: Two Dollars.