Four Quarters: January 1971 Vol. XX, No. 2

Four Quarters Volume 20 Number 2 Four Quarters: January 1971 Vol. XX, No. Article 1 2 1-1-1971 Four Quarters: January 1971 Vol. XX, No. 2 Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/fourquarters Recommended Citation (1971) "Four Quarters: January 1971 Vol. XX, No. 2," Four Quarters: Vol. 20 : No. 2 , Article 1. Available at: http://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/fourquarters/vol20/iss2/1 This Complete Issue is brought to you for free and open access by the University Publications at La Salle University Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Four Quarters by an authorized editor of La Salle University Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. January, 1971 four vol XX, no. 2 • fifty cents '^ ffnarters 13 m Cd ^ C3 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Lyrasis IVIembers and Sloan Foundation http://www.archive.org/details/fourquarters91unse fiour Quarters The Plumber, story by John L'Heureux 3 Mother Political, poem by Stephen Berg 12 The Dilemma of Freedom, a note on the novels of Alexander Solzhenitsyn by Leo D. Rudnytzy 13 Two Poems by Michael Lally 20 The Tears on the Face of Persephone, story by Jean Seitter Cummins 21 Campus, poem by William Stuckey 26 Two Poems by Robert Anschuetz 27 Two Poems by John Druska 28 Your Turn in the Jungle, story by Isabel Bourgoyne 29 Teeth, poem by Dana Scott 35 Breakthrough, poem by T. Alan Broughton 36 And the Holy Ghost, story by Pamela Painter Skeen 37 Lesson for Tomorrow, poem by Arthur M. Miller 42 Ocean City That Time, poem by Alfred Ruggiero 43 So Long Mom, poem by Bruce Berger 44 Cover drawing by James Hanes Published in November, January, March, and May by the faculty of La Salle College. Subscriptions: $2.00 annually. Single copies: $.50 each. © 1971 by La Salle College. Manuscripts may be sent to four quarters, La Salle Col- lege., Phila., Pa. 19141. Unsolicited manuscripts must be accompanied by a stamped self-addressed envelope. The editors cannot assume responsibility for loss or damage to manuscripts beyond that of reasonable care for materials received. Marginalia . The ending of a year, as James once wrote of the ending of a novel, is for many persons like the ending of a good dinner, "a course of dessert and ices," "a distribution at the last of prizes, pen- sions, husbands, wives, babies, millions, appended paragraphs, and cheerful remarks." We have little to do with babies or millions, but in these appended paragraphs, we have a few cheerful remarks about prizes in the year just ended. The finest in contemporary American short fiction is honored annually in two outstanding collections: the 0. Henry Prize Stories, edited by William Abrahams, and The Best Short Stories collection edited by Martha Foley and David Burnett. The Foley-Burnett collection includes an honor roll of distinguished stories published during the preceding year. We glowed as we counted the six stories from four quarters that were honored. From the January, 1969 issue, the editors chose Lorrie Keister's "Friends" and Claude Koch's "You Taught Us Good." "Dear Harry," by J. F. Hopkins and "The Sunder Score" by Loy Otis Banks were chosen from the March issue. Robert Joe Stout's "Why Not Say You Loved Her?" and Thomas A. West's "The Sincerity of Coby Sedgewick" were the pair chosen from our May issue. We offer hearty congratulations to these contributors for their achievements. May they continue on to greater things in 1971. Pleased as we were to have so many of our authors honored, we could not resist a thought for the many fine stories we've published over the years that haven't made any lists but have been their own rewards. In our maudlin mood, we also had some sympathy for the anthologists. And for their spouses. What would it be like to be mar- ried to someone who was reading a hundred literary magazines all at one time? Under such circumstances, how does one keep the coffee table straightened up? Authors, anthologists, agents or agitators—we wish you a happy 1971 filled with acceptances, grants, awards, or whatever your taste in desserts and ices may be. J. J. K. The Plumber • John L'Heureux He always sat in the park. It wasn't really a park, it was more a fenced-in green, but he called it the park and he always sat there. It was cooler than his rooms and sometimes other people came to sit and, besides, where else could he go? So Mr. Ransom sat there every day watching everything that happened and within two days forgot everything he had watched. Thus his way of living provided him with endless stimulation. It was inevitable, therefore, that since he was eighty, people would think him mad. The park was a tattered affair people passed through on their way somewhere else—to shop or to work or to shorten the distance between Cambridge Street and roadway. It was a gloomy place with patches of grass here and there, and a fountain that no longer worked, and a few benches. Few people except the old man ever sat there. Saturdays were best in the park. That is, they were the nearest thing to summer which was really the best. You could always plan on plenty of excitement Saturdays, what with young girls—it was impossible now to guess how young, they all wore such grownup clothes—bringing back books to the library and lingering in the park to say hello to their boy friends. And the fathers who brought their children to play in the grass while they themselves did their homework; they were students at Harvard, no doubt. The women gossiping. That fine young man with the St. Bernard. The Jesuit from across the way who was growing a beard and who, when he spoke, always said such pleasant things even though all the unhappiness of the world was in his eyes. Regina, who never came except on Saturdays. The crazy lady with her bag of cookies. The lady with her pocket pekingese, the man with his two corgis, the professor with his astounding parrot. Saturdays were best in the park—except for summer. In summer there were children every day and, even though he couldn't see Tim Keefe's house with the garden in front, there was splendor enough right in front of him. The baby squirrels played their antic games, foolish- ly freezing in position while a dog sniffed them all around, and then off terrified to a tree. And the birds, some fledglings and some mother birds, squawking and chirping and carrying on. And the dogs: the yellow mon- grel with the crooked leg, the St. Bernard whose name was Abelard, the big black Labrador, the crazy brown and black dog that ran whimpering through the park, snapping at everyone who got in his path. Even the other dogs made way for him. What else? The swans singing in the trees when the sun shimmered through the sticky new leaves, but of course that was an illusion, he knew that. The glorious trees: maples, oaks, an elm in the comer near the library. The flowers, there were only three little clusters 3 4 Four Quarters of iris, but they were an unusual gold and purple, a heraldic device beside the cement fountain. The grass, each blade honed to a green perfection. And the weeds, no ordinary weeds, but dandelions and crab grass and, near the fence, a beautiful ragweed. Catalogues never approximate the reality of things, failing usually by excess, but for Mr. Ransom they failed by default. No description was ever sufficient to capture the wonders of his park. Words only piled up catego- ries, never captured the individuality of the thing, though of course he never said this nor did he think it. He had been a plumber all his life and his words and thoughts had always been ordinary, cliche-ridden; only his vision was strange. Attix Ransom was not born in Cambridge. He had come there late one summer afternoon, a baby of two years, so that when he grew up he might attend Harvard. That was his aunt's idea which, along with most of her ideas, was never realized. All of his ancestors had gone to Harvard and Margaretta Susan Ransom, having determined that her ward would go there also, sold what little remained of the family inheritance and rented a tiny apartment in Cambridge where she became renowned for her fine sewing. She died when Attix was fifteen and had only just been apprenticed to a plumber. It was the plumbing, her friends said, that killed her. Attix Cornelius Ransom was the greatgrandson of the richest man Louisiana had ever known. He owned not one but several adjoining cotton plantations, staffed by darkies he had never succeeded in counting, and he was an importer as well. Though he began life poor, the times and the land and the swelling slave trade made him a fortune which doubled each year. When in 1865 he died at a small town in Pennsylvania, "fighting to protect our slaves" he had said, his wealth miraculously remained intact in the hands of his son, Jason Cornelius Ransom. Miraculously, that is, insofar as the son's ability to bribe, cheat, and swindle Yankee and Nigger alike could be termed miraculous. Jason fathered and reared seven children amid fantastic wealth which did not prepare them for the financial annihila- tion which followed the long night of August 14, 1888, when their father gambled away every boll of cotton and stick of furniture they owned and then, being a gentleman, put a bullet through his head.

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