LITERARY ARTS REVIEW

SPRING 2008 I VOLUME 34 I ISSUE 1 THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM LITERARY ARTS REVIEW

Office of Student Media HUC 135, 1530 Third Avenue South Birmingham, AL 35294-1150

phone : 205.934.3216 fax : 205.934.8050

[email protected] www.uab.edu/aura

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SPRING/SUMMER 2008 I VOLUME 34 I ISSUE 1 THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM Copyright © 1974-2008 Aura Literary Arts Review. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any way, shape, or form without the express written consent of the artist. All rights to the work revert to its creator after publication in this magazine. To reach an artist regarding republication of material, contact The Office of Student Media, HUC 135, 1530 Third Avenue South, Birmingham, AL 35294-1150.

ISSN 0889-7433 LITERARY ARTS REVIEW

VOLUME 34, ISSUE 1 SPRING/SUMMER 2008 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF nathan prewett MANAGING EDITOR jazmund walker FICTION EDITOR jonathan scott POETRY EDITOR lionel copeland ART EDITOR kambre bell COPY EDITOR miles walls FACULTY ADVISOR tina harris STUDENT MEDIA ADVISOR amy kilpatrick

Aura Literary Arts Review is a semi-annual publication funded through the Board of Student Publications at the University of Alabama at Binningham. Aura Literary Arts Review is staffed entirely by graduate and undergraduate students of the university. Al1 proceeds from advertising and from the sale of the magazine go to help Aura. SUBMISSION GUIDELINES All submissions should be accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Without this, the staff will neither offer a response nor return the submission. Please do not send previously published work or simultaneous submissions; both will be automatically rejected. Submissions by UAB students, faculty, staff and alumni are primarily considered.

Aura Literary Arts Review supports the literary and artistic talents of the resi­ dents of Alabama. Any submissions from outside the state of Alabama will not be considered.Other submissions are considered as space permits.

All submissions of relatively great length (short stories, essays, plays, etc.) should include a copy of the work in electronic format.

Submissions of poetry should not include more than five poems and should not total more than ten (10) typed, double-spaced pages.

Visual artwork of all forms is accepted.

Please include the artist's name on each page of written work or on the back of each piece of visual artwork (if this is possible). Contact information and a short biography for the artist should be included.

OTHER INFORMATION Opportunities for advertising and sponsorship are available. Subscriptions to Aura Literary Arts Review are also available. Please contact the magazine for more details or visit online at www.uab.edu/aura.

CONTACT INFORMATION Aura Literary Arts Review University of Alabama at Birmingham HUC 135 1530 Third Avenue South Birmingham, AL 35294-1150

Phone; 205.934.3216 Fax: 205.934.8050 Email: [email protected] TABLE OF CONTENTS POETRY TITLE PAGE

Queendom 12 Jonathan Scott Star Lady 14 Hermitess 16

Upon Hearing It Too Many Times 17 Ken Abbot Bright Nuggets on a Rocky Stream 19 Not All of Them Left: A Sestina, Circa 1934 21

My First 23 Myra Walker-Williams If I Could Turn Back Time 24 Code 143 25

The Murder of Uncle Bill 27 Chris Mahan

Doors 6o William Virgil Davis Do You? 61 A True Story 62

Mon Petit Amour, Mon Petit Mort 63 Mark Trammell

And Heaven To Boot 64 Jennifer Crossley

5 Senses of You 96 Lauren Markham Let Me Be 97

I Know A Lady Who Sings 98 Joseph Farley emesis 99 The Midnight Path 118 Lindy Owens

A Brown and Speckled Sparrow 120 Fredrick Zydeck

Winter 121 Louis Faber

Referral to the "Specialist" 122 Lowell Jaeger

I Live in a House of Origami 124 Skye Joiner To Live in By Living Without 125 CREATIVE NONFICTION TITLE PAGE

Polaroid Angel 127 Jim Owens

What We Know 133 Chris Mahan

FICTION TITLE PAGE

Poolside 29 Kelly French

Trait's Pond 42 Jason Slatton

Pictures of Living 101 J.C. Freeman

Raccons 107 Richard Dokey

VISUAL ART TITLE PAGE

Downtown 28 Allison Bliss On the Boat Docks 82 St. Vincent 83

Going to D.C. 41 Holly S. Schwalen Downtown D.C. 84

Father and I 65 XiaoJinZou Reflection 66 The Kite 67 Principle 68 TITLE PAGE Faceless 69 Rachel Johnson Untitled 70 Time 71

Orangey (Capitalism in the State Series) 72 Jonathan Hicks Alex (Capitalism is the State Series) 73 Nigga Please (Smoke, Dresden Influences 74 Series) Nigga Please III (Smoke, Dresden 75 Influences Series)

Untitled 2006 76 Alexander Mcalpine Lady in the Mirror 77 The Blue Chair 2007 78 Moses 100

Buchart Gardens 79 Alyssa Mitchell Alleyway 94 Eye of the Tiger 95 Arc 132

Watergrass So Amy Kilpatrick

Inquiro 81 Yui-Hui Huang

Hope 8s Alex McClurg

Eid mubaarak 86 Miles Walls Kul 'aam wa 'antum bikhair 87

Tiger 88 Jeff Chambless Giraffe 89 Field 90 Oak 91 Cahaba 126

Beneath An Overcast 92 Nathan Prewett Overcast Above the Oaks 93

Untitled Monoprint 106 KathyBaty

Spirit :l32 Chad Johnson

COLOPHON

Aura literary Arts Review is printed by Alabama Web Press in the quantity of 500 copies per issue. Paper used for text is 70# Cougar Opaque Text, White. The cover is printed on 8o# Dull Cover, White. This issue is 144 pages in length.

The edito1ial process is performed with QuarkXPress 71 running on a Dell Precision 360 PC with Microsoft Windows XP. All visual artwork was submitted electronically and toned in Photoshop CS.

Fonts used are the following: Papyrus for Aura name; Mailart Rubberstamp for cover, title page titles; Georgia for body text and notes on contributors body text; lane-Narrow for title, author/artist, pullquotes; GemFont One for page numbers and genre headings; Ambrosia for back cover quote.

Front and Back Cover art by Xiao Jin Zou.

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION

For two years, I have served as the fiction editor for Aura. Along the way, I've learned a little bit about publishing and a lot about editing. As an aspiring writer myself, I used to wonder what sort of creature was prying open the envelopes containing my manuscripts. Surely some multi-armed arthro­ pod with letter-opener claws gleefully scissoring reams of my very best efforts along with the efforts of others. And I imag­ ine tears of wanton ecstasy streaming from glassy, opaque eyes. Then, at the end of the day, this creature sweeps up the shredded paper like so much dead hair at a barber shop and takes it home in wheelbarrows to wallow perversely in piles of unread stories and poems and essays and letters from his own mother. While I am still convinced there are such creatures out there, I have come to recognize the genuine difficulty of selecting one piece over another. And, there is the added pressure of the knowledge that somewhere some young writer is imagining me. What sort of ogre am I? Am I using her manuscript to roast spitted boars? I have learned that each envelope contains not only someone's story, but it also represents my own responsibility to the greater artistic community. I consider it my duty as an editor of creative writing to give each submission thorough consideration, knowing that this is only a fraction of the effort that went into its composition, never mind the courage it takes to lick the bitter gum, seal that effort, and entrust it to the care of some invisible entity. In other words, as an editor, I reverse my imagination. What sort of creature reluctantly fed a swatch of her soul into the thin grimace of the blue, postal drop-off bin and walked away with pretzeled guts? Surely someone just like me. So, congratulations to those whose efforts have been rewarded by this publication. Moreover, congratulations to those who try again-it is the far more difficult accomplish­ ment and the far more rewarding.

-:Jonathan Scott, Fiction Editor 12 I Aura Poetry/Barksdale Maynard Winner

Jona~han Scott

Queendom

I.

"Pray for the believer that his belief be simple and harmless for should the snow besmirch all dirts, blind all sight?" Says Yavanna. She is golden with adamant irises. She is earth And all things grown. She sings and heron wings stretch From the blades of her shoulders to each horizon. Her song is lord. Voice of the ageless ash.

"Pray for the sinner that his sin be simple and harmless for should the grit clog all gears, all become pearl?" Says Yavanna. Wisdom as moonless midnight looking beyond Andromeda to Beginning. Wisdom as coronal Sol, evidence Only in eclipse. She opens her mind, time genuflects. Her thought is lord. Idea of the godless bang.

II.

She takes Bourbon off Canal. Hurricane flagellates walk Sloshing margaritas-tall spires, Steeples crowned By salt-on her flip-flop toes As she passes. Mild nausea. Alleys blur, names, landmarks. Her ankle twists, stiletto snap, Fall to the stones. Cut lip. Tongues Blood-piss and tin-she tastes A minor miracle slipping, Taste of foretaste, a prophecy Filling her mouth, gagging word Of power, "Gone," Says Yavanna. A minor miracle slipping Away. Aura Poetry/Barksdale Maynard Winner I 13

She goes two flights up Through a splintered green Door. Nausea. Spin. Kitchen table upended, coffee Carafe broken, sprouting slivers From the ecru shag. A slice Into the toe of the foot with the ankle Thumping, thumping now To the pulsing, cayenne sting of stab, Bleeding-piss and tin-she Falls again. She had left Aule by the river, she left it With Aule begging, "Try once More," but gone, Gone. Now she, whose tears are loss, Weeps.

Whose veins are love, Bleeds.

Ill.

"Pray for the lover that his love be simple and harmless for should Luna pall the Pleiades, blot all stars?" Says Yavanna. Her hair is the powder-snow swept, swirling Alpine skylines. Ankles as the inside of an oyster shell- Pink and blue, she walks, leaves Grace in the shape of footprints. Her beauty is lord. Splendor of the guileless dawn. 14 I Aura Poetry/Barksdale Maynard Winner

Jonolhan Scott

Slor Lad~

Every day the same-­ Traffic complaints, Loose change for coffee. Sorry details of shoveling Shit from stables and combing Bunker sand for envied Duffers in pleated slacks. Backs hurt, ring fingers Factory manglers chewed, Birthstones and all.

"Do they not know they are the stuff of stars?" Varda plaits Manwe's hair, puzzling, "Sidereal and stellar--hydrogen, helium, Lithium and light?"

Energy not light. Tiny Ricocheting temperatures. Locked down twenty-three Seven, pounding barbells Of bunk-beds over Heads of lice, tattooed Necks like constellations Spilled-paint filled. Keepers With civilized maces, wizardly Wands and deprecations. Aura Poetry/Barksdale Maynard Winner I 15

"Do they not know, how can they not? It says so in their astral tomes." She spits his ear with diamonds. "Call my golden gondoliers, say shove off on The smelted moonsilver." She will be hammer. Crush Slag yokes and unburden Man. Manwe nods. His face festooned By her prism tears. Full spectrum Of selfless grief.

Borealis flames, rivontulet, Magnet of solar storms, Catching plasma in carafes, Pouring staffs and clefs Of minstrel songs and drama. Elves adorned in cataracts, Watercolors fall at feet shod With tidal waves, roaring, bent Rolling over the dolorous Sands of crab-crept castles.

Manwe sits on a dogwood throne, peppergrass Crown and acrobat faeries circus At heather-enwreathed ankles. Varda, Elbereth, Star Lady sings, "Know you are The stuff of stars-sidereal and stellar." 16 I Aura Poetry/Barksdale Maynard Winner

Jonarhan Scott

Hermiress

She dwells alone

Hearing the earthen Vessels slosh Crack and spill, Wetting the hull, Seeping into ocean There to be air For fish and coral.

She dwells alone

Singing contralto Dirges, gathering Clouds to store All sorrow's wisdom In jewel-drops, Slake the drought Of mirth and river.

Nienna lives alone.

Goddess of dross, Of refuse and ruin. Maelstrom swirl Her skirts awhirl Umbrella for urchins, Stanchion, she Who exalts and feels

And dwells alone. Aura Poetry I 17

Ken Abbot

Upon Hearing It Too Mon!:J Times: An Attempt To S!:Jmpothize

Other men are abandoned; Called neurotic, obsessed, boil-the-rabbit-creepy-ass-crazy, and overwrought. They don't love so deep, so true, in just six weeks, perhaps; But I am an artist, and I feel things more than others.

Current Mood: Deepest, Darkest Despair ....

She doesn't like that I got fired from my job, That I've risen above such worldly concerns and materialism Bourgeoisie status, jewelry, flowers. My love was too pure for all those things. And cruelly, cruelly, the bitch cast me aside ...

They couldn't understand me either. Expected me to slave my life away For a piece of paper. To not feel tired, or sick, or hung-over but push on like a machine. They said everyone else found it easy; But I am an artist, and I feel more than others.

And my art has suffered so, and no one knows my pain The agony a simple "It blows" can bring They speak of detail, point, and basic grammar As if it had some meaning beyond the most material. It has feeling, and surely anyone can feel its dark, dark beauty ... 18 I Aura Poetry

But I am an artist, and I feel things more than others.

And they won't listen. Nobody cares as the darkness in my soul struggles, yearns for expression. They respond as the world, not their hearts, demands. And as the eternal sadness I live pours forth and spills, I hear the callous, worldly refrain. "I didn't hit you that hard, you pussy goth freak." Perhaps .. .. But I am an artist, and I feel things more than others. Aura Poetry I 19

Ken Abbot

Bright Nuggets in a Rock~ Stream

Cold- The sluggish mist on the creek, still strong enough to not cut in the wind. The water is even colder-fingers cringe at the thought Uncurling slowly for the tin cup. The fire-blackened pan sits ready for the day With a few empty sample jars and one woebegone lonesome yellow gleam-pyrite. I haven't made the big strike yet.

The rocks are rough and heavy; hard on raw skin, but you find nothing atop them. There's not much under them either, but this is a stretch of creek I haven't tried yet. Freezing water like fire on pan-filled hands, Sand and stone rattles-up into the air, the water drying and hands screaming in protest, And back in. Wash away the silt, the filth, the dross-and nothing's left. Another and another and again, and the same. When I drop my hands, my pan floats merrily downstream, and I snatch it back Before it drifts away from me.

Calluses can only protect so much underwater, and a trickle of blood mingles downstream. Curse my own stupidity as the stone falls aside with a splash; my shirt is soaked. 20 I Aura Poetry

A cloud of muddy silt clears away to show a gleam. Bleeding hand forgotten, I begin the old pattern again. Freeze and shake, shiver and rattle, and there's the gleam when the worthless stuff is gone. Perhaps the size of my thumb, and the knife cuts it. Careful, so I don't lose it, I ease it into a jar. And with a smile I wade back into the stream. Aura Poetry I 21

Ken Abbot

Nol All of Them Lefl: A Seslino, Circa 1934

In my backyard's a little spot of grass, Tall stalks, deep roots, set into clay like stone It's where I take a leak when I get up. Sounds bad, I know, but there's a reason why. My father did, and my grandfather too- A special place; it's got a history.

It started way, way back in history, When Union gunsmoke stained the Southern grass. When Sherman and his troops found Georgia too Unsullied and unspoiled; they left no stone Atop another-families wond'ring why Their homes and food just had to be burned up

And purity was also taken up They say that conqu'ring troops through history Have gained a habit-no one knows quite why-­ Of putting women's shoulders to the grass. Some say it could rouse pity from a stone. No pity here, the soldiers all were too

Incensed and lustful, too depraved and too Inflamed, bloodthirsty, when their blood was up. But one was stopped-great-grandpa grabbed a stone And stru,k; the soldier's skull was history. He dragged the body off his mama, grass And blood and torn cloth testifying why 22 I Aura Poetry

He done it. They were frightened-why, Nobody dared to interfere when too Few people made it out unscathed. With grass Torn off the graves and fields all burnt up, Like Huns or Mongols out of history, Expecting mercy was like hoping stone

Would bleed-the raiders all had hearts of stone. So quick, before the neighbors wondered why, He dug one more grave lost to history, And never found. Of such graves there, were too Few known, too many dug, and some dug up, Defiled, but this they coated with sod grass.

He got a stone; a green and high one, too. And this is why my family built up A history, of pissing in the grass Aura Poetry I 23

Myra L. Walker-Williams

Mh:J Firs~

My First

Early morning Two push Ten fingers Ten toes beautiful eyes Tiny nose With a jazzy attitude And skin so smooth 24 I Aura Poetry

MbJra L. Walker-Williams

If I Could Turn Back Time

... I would walk across Edmund Pettus with Rev., Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. . . . Go watch my Uncle Elijah "Slim" Gilliam play for the Birmingham Black Barons . . .. Shadow Dr. Vivian Thomas as he became the doctor curing the "Blue Baby" disease ... Play a couple of board games with Ryan White and apolo­ gize for our ignorance concerning AIDS and HIV. ... Have an interview with John F. Jackie Kennedy while he ran for president. . . . Watch the original Temptations do a recording in Hitsville with the Gunk Bros. Band ... Most of all, ask my mother Susie R.Walker to hold onto life a little longer so all my children could meet her. What would you do? Aura Poetry I 25

MbJra L. Walker-Williams

Code 143

I stood there with my BFF in a daze staring at this fine speci­ men of a man and all I wanted to do was yell, "Code 143." The prettiest smile I've ever seen his lips curve so perfectly around his teeth. When he licked his lips I completely forgot the rapper ... you know the one. L.L. Bean,J.J. Evans or what­ ever his name is 5'1 I" man was so cool, calm and SEXY. His voice was like aged cognac, smooth and soothing. I just knew he saw me or saw I thought but he never noticed me until he hummed and I sang an old Temptations song. "The Way You Do The Things You Do".We begin right at the part "If good looks was a minute, you know you could have been an hour." I was weak in the knees when he turned around and intro­ duced himself as my husband. My heart thumped louder and my insides yelled "Code 143." This Vulcan like statuesque invited me out to do something he would like to show me. Our first date was Birmingham International Airport, where he was feeling a little nostalgic. He was recently honorably discharged from U.S.Air Force. He described Lear jets, pas­ senger planes, single engine, carrier, cargo, f-15 and T-38's. He had me so involved in his persona that a description of a lit­ tle monkey riding a lemur would have made sense. Not long after that we were completing each of her sentences or I could think of a song and he would sing it. Our hearts beat to the same rhythm; our thoughts are the same 90 percent of the time. He can tell if I had a good day or a bad day at work by the way I answer the phone. Code 143. Now present day over 20 years later, I am still excited to hear that cognac voice, I love looking at that Vulcan build, but most of all I 26 I Aura Poetry

enjoy the way he makes me feel, "Code 143" and he has never failed me.

Code I letter I 4 letters 4 3 letters you Aura Poetry I 27

Chris Mahan

The Murder ol Uncle Bill

« ... and the children shall rise up against their parents and put them to death."-Matthew I 0:2 I

He watched as your words clothed in white smoke disappeared into the dark pools of December's sky.

Though he knew every verse he sat silent, studying your lips as the last wisp of life slipped beyond their borders your last prayer swimming into the shallow air, as the black centers of your eyes drowned deep into the cold seas that surround them.

When it is finished, he wept beside you, pressing the warm barrel of your shotgun hard against his cheek.

And in the darkness, he was your son again, wishing he could love you, wondering if you were somewhere wishing you could love him too. 28 I Aura Art

Allison Bliss

Downtown-JaxFla Aura Short Story I 29

Kell~ French

Pools ide

The eight story building ofWaterview Condominiums casts a shadow across the far side of the pool deck pushing everyone to one side. Four other people beside myself crowd around the sunlit area. Two young women, a boy, and a man that just popped open a can of Budweiser. Waves crash against a metal wall that drops off from the sidewalk leading to the beach. In big storms, salt water and sand spray up and contaminate the pool area. The girls, one blond and one brunette, stand in the shallow end of the pool with their elbows resting on the sun-warmed cement edge. The brunette keeps glancing my way. She has to be at least ten years younger than me. I suppose I should be pleased at her attention, but it makes me feel apprehensive. It's not that I'm intimidated, but I don't want to see disappointment in her eyes when she comes closer and gets a better look at me. Stress lines across my forehead and premature grays infiltrating the hair at my temples makes me look more like a forty year old man than thirty. The consequence of pushing out ten or twelve ads a month and a forced vacation from my boss who thinks I've lost it due to the strain. I presented the slogan Sal's Furniture:The Cheap Man's Ethan Allen in a meeting with my last client. I'm in Florida at my parent's summer home and not sending out resumes because Mr. james, my boss, kept me on as a favor to my dad. Never underestimate the bond between golfing buddies. The brunette tosses another look in my direction. I 30 I Aura Short Story can't hear her voice over the waves, but I watch her mouth. Her lips turn up with a little smile as she talks. I imagine she's talking about me. I didn't exactly come here to meet women, but it would be a nice distraction if things happened to progress further. The girls move toward the silver ladder to get out. A harsh scrape of metal against cement sounds as the brunette climbs onto the deck. Water slides down her body pooling at her feet as she arches her back reaching her hands behind her head to squeeze water from her hair. I can tell it is a motion she does often. Something instinctual. She probably does it every time she steps out of the shower. It's sexy because she isn't conscious of how provocative it is. Innate beauty. I pretend to read the book in my lap, but behind my sunglass­ es, my eyes follow her as she grabs her towel. She wraps it around her hips like a skirt, and she and her friend start to walk away from the pool. As they pass my chair, the brunette slows. "You're gonna get raccoon eyes," she says. I fear that this is some term for an ogling man. "What?" She taps her finger against her temple. "Your sunglasses. You're gonna get a wicked tan." "Right," I say lifting my glasses onto my head. Sunglasses: the perfect accessory for the peeping tom or get­ ting the nocturnal rodent look. The brunette's friend lingers by the pool gate. "You go ahead. I'll be up in a minute," the brunette tells her. The girls share a smile before the brunette turns her attention back to me. "You live here?" she asks. "N 0., "Me either." She waits a moment thinking I will ask a qu_estion next. Finally, Aura Short Story I 31 she asks, "You from up North?" "Georgia," I say. She starts discussing how she and her friend came down from Massachusetts to visit her grandmother. While she talks, I watch her wrap her right index finger around a wet strand of hair. She is trying to be coy. Playing with her hair makes her look young; like she is emulating what she has seen women do in movies. It is far removed from the effortless sex appeal she had before. Now she's trying to sell herself. "I come down here about every-" "How old are you?" I ask. Her hair twirling already told me everything though. For a moment her hand stops moving, but then starts to twist again. "Twenty-one." She's lying. I can see it in her eyes, and I had heard it in her voice. I suddenly feel exhausted. She should have just kept walking and left me with fancies of what could have been. "How old do you think I am?" I know I am being unfair. "Twenty-five." I can't stop the laugh that bursts from my throat. "Thanks." She responds with a half smile as if I had been pleased by her lie. She drops her hand from her hair and rewraps the towel around her waste. "Have you seen the schools of tiny fish that swim by here?" she asks motioning to the ocean. I wonder what new angle she is trying to work. I have no doubt that this young woman is experienced whQn it comes to sex; however, this act of seduction is weak. She relies mostly on her body. Everything else is what she 32 I Aura Short Story thinks seduction should be. It isn't natural to her yet. When I don't reply to her question, she says, "They are like rolling clouds under the water, and when the sun hits them their scales light up like silver. I tried to swim in the middle of a school once, but they would never let me join them." I find her story about the fish more interesting than any sexual innuendo she might make. I envision her swimming through the water, struggling to keep up with the fish hoping they will encircle her, inviting her in as one of their own. It shows a na·lvete she tries to cover up. The Brunette of Waterview:A willing knowledgeable body surrounding a soft and fragile core. "They thought you were a predator," I say of the fish. She leans forward with a sly smile as if to share a secret. "Maybe I am." I smile. "Have you ever criticized a commercial on TV?" She straitens back up looking unsure. "I hate those commercials for mouthwash when people pretend to use it, but you can tell they don't have anything in their mouths." She is my mouthwash commercial. The ad she has presented to me for herself has turned me off the product. I can't help but find her foolish. I feel the need to help her understand what she is doing wrong. A strange desire to protect her, from herself, from other older men I know she will eventually approach, has come over me. I've been having urges to do such things of late. Not just to protect but to help people see what they don't want to. I told a blind man at a gas station on my way down here that the tie he was wearing didn't match his shirt. He told me to worry about my own shirt. "You better find your friend," I say to her. Hurt flashes through her eyes. A large wave breaks against the wall, and a gust of wind carries a sheet of mist into 33 I Aura Art Aura Short Story I 33 the pool deck. The brunette closes her eyes against the sting­ ing salt. I feel icy droplets against my neck that will become gritty once they dry. The brunette shakes her head as she wipes salt from her lips. "My friend is going to give me a hard time about this," she says. "Why?" "I thought you would be easier." Easier to seduce. Easier to give in to her young body. "I try to convince people shit is gold at my job on a regular basis. You just weren't convincing enough for me." She brushes a strand of hair out of her face in irritation. "I just wanted to have some fun." "Like with the fish." She throws her towel over her shoulder. "Exactly like the fish," she responds. I don't watch her walk away.

Now it's only me, the boy and the man left. The shadow from the building has overtaken the pool. The man and myself are the only ones still sitting in the fading sunlight. He has fall­ en asleep a few chairs down from me. His empty beer can lays on its side against the fence surrounding the pool. The skin on his round belly has turned pink. A frosted cupcake top. The boy is playing with an inflatable ball in the water. I don't get the feeling that the man is his father, but I find it hard to believe the boy is unsupervised. He has to be only seven or eight. The most I've ever had to do with kids was when I had to write an ad for an animatronic dog. Fido-Bot: He barks, goes on walks, fetches, and wags his tail. A Child's Best Friend. Not my best work I admit, but at that point in my career I still got a buzz from coming up with something clever for a client. Now I just want to come up with things like Fido-Bot: He won't shit 34 I Aura Short Story Aura Art I 34 on your carpet, bark in the middle of the night, or die too soon. "Hey, Mister:' The boy is yelling at me from the pool pointing to my lounge chair. The blue inflatable ball has rolled under it. I lean forward peeling my skin away from the back of the seat. I grab the ball and throw it too him. "Thanks," he says. He starts to play again. I ask him: "Where are your par- ents?" The boy pulls the ball to his chest nervous that I'm talk­ ing to him. He points up to the building. Each condo has a bal­ cony. Beach towels flutter in the wind hanging off the sides of a few of them. I see an old couple on one of the second story porches, two women on the fifth, and then I see a man and woman sipping at some wine on the sixth floor. Just then the woman glances down at the boy. When she sees he's fine she turns back to her husband. I wonder if they would leave their child to himself if no one else was at the pool. The boy stares at me waiting to see if I am going to say anything else. I want to ask him if he wants someone to play with him, but I don't. Instead I lean back into the plastic strips of my chair and watch him try to dive under the water with the ball in his hands. It pops back up with a splash. One thing I admire and find a little humorous about younger children is their candor. They don't hold anything back. Brutal honesty. Children:They say whatever comes to mind and get away with it. Get yours today! When I decide to tell the truth it always seems to blow up in my face like with Sal's Furniture. Fact: The place is cheap, so isn't that supposed to be the selling point? The boy is pretending to be a seal. He keeps coming out of the water and hitting the ball with his nose. I smile as I 35 I Poetry Aura Short Story I 35 watch him. "Cute kid." I look over and see that the man has woken up. "I guess," I respond feeling a little embarrassed for some reason. "You're Anita's boy aren't you?" he asks. I scroll through my memory trying to place a time when I met this guy but come up blank. "Yeah." He nods. "Thought so. I haven't seen her in years. Only recognized you from pictures I've seen. She and your father don't make it down here very much any more." "No. It's too crowded down here for them now." "It is that." The man stretches his arms above his head and then pokes his stomach with a finger. He shakes his head at the burn. "So last I heard you were engaged and starting a new job." Of course. I want to tell the guy to fuck off but resist. "I was and I did. Neither turned out how I thought they would." The man nods seeming to pick up on my reluctance to go into it. "Things never do." "No. They don't," I say. The man makes a clicking sound with his tongue. "You sound a bit bitter, my friend. You're too young to be bitter." "I'm not bitter." "And I'm not fat." Before I could make a retort, the man says, "The girl ... " For a moment I wonder if I imagined him speaking. Suddenly, he continues, "The girl was very attractive." I realize he is speaking about the brunette. Apparently, he had not been sleeping as soundly as I had first believed. "She was young," I reply. "You are young." 36 I Aura Short Story

I wish he would leave me alone. He should leave me to my lounge chair, my sunglasses, my book, and my self-pity. Those are the only things I want to be bothered with. "She didn't know what she was doing," I say. The man chuckles. "She knew exactly what she was doing." I shake my head determined to be stubborn. "She didn't." "And you do?" "I know- " "No, friend, you don't." He didn't understand. "So what, because we're both young, I should have fucked her?" The man threw back his head and laughed a deep rum­ bling laugh from within his round pink stomach. "I didn't say that." I hate this man. I hate him for calling me bitter and making me feel foolish. A part of my brain knows I'm being unreasonable, and I should listen to him because, like me with the girl, he has more life experience than I do. The other part of me thinks: Man with Pink Beer Belly: Sticking his nose where it doesn't belong. Everyday Guaranteed. "What exactly are you saying then?" I ask. He holds up his hands. "Just making an observation. All I really know is that that hot tub over there is calling my name. Maybe you'd like to join me, and we can ponder life's myster­ ies together." I can't meet his eyes, so I look at the boy instead. "No thanks." "All right. Think about it though." What exactly I am supposed to think about I'm not sure. The man pushes himself up and shuffles over to the hot tub on the opposite side of the pool. He slowly lowers him­ self in, wincing at the heat. I envision his already pink stomach turning bright red and hardening like a lobster in a pot. I 37 I Aura Art Aura Short Story I 37 decide to turn my chair around to watch boats come into the bay, as the traffic always gets heavier right before the sun goes down.

All I can see now are red and green lights from the boats as they float by. The waves hitting the wall drown out the purr of the engines. I haven't turned around since I moved my chair. I know the boy has gone inside because I heard his mother call him to dinner. I assume the man is still in the hot tub. I would have seen him gather his things from the chair beside me if he had left. I should probably leave soon if I want to avoid another conversation with him. I'm still hot over his remarks. You can't just come out and tell someone who you hardly know they are too bitter or that they made a bad decision. I jump as a hand the clutches my shoulder. I turn to see the brunette. Her friend is not with her. "Still here," she says. She looks a bit sour over my pres­ ence, but there is also uncertainty. She doesn't know if I will just ask her to leave again. "Yeah, I'm still here." "Aren't you lonely down here by yourself?" When she asks, I listen for some sexual undertone. I hear none. "I'm not by myself. There's a man in the hot tub," I say motioning over my shoulder. She glances to the other side of the pool. Her brow scrunches. "No one is in the hot tub." I push myself up and see that she is right. The man's towel is still in his chair though. I walk down the side of the pool with the brunette at my heels like a puppy. The cement still holds some warmth from the sun but has begun to cool. I keep my eyes on the hot tub, glowing like an ethereal well. In it I can see a large mass floating 38 I Aura Short Story at its center. I feel the brunette's nails dig into my arm as we draw closer. The man floats face down. His arms dangle with his knuckles rubbing against the bottom of the tub. He is the color of the pool. A clear blue that is glowing white from the lights. His skin looks waxy. Fake. "Is he-" "Dead," I say. I feel the brunette's hand start to shake against my wrist, and then she pulls it away violently scratching me. "Do something," she yells. I shake my head. She looks from me to the dead man and lets out a sharp laugh. She's going into some state of shock. She runs to the side of the pool and grabs his wrist. expect her to pull away when she first touches him, but she doesn't. She locks her hand onto him and tries to flip him over. I am entranced. I have never seen anything as powerful as this girl struggling to save this man who has probably been dead for an hour. I feel like she is spilling out into the tub with him. She's putting herself out there to give him something to grasp onto to pull himself back from the dead. As she struggles beside him I can't help notice the smooth line of her thigh. She is still in her bathing suit from earlier. The light from the pool illuminates her features, and she glows white. Angelic. A stark contrast to the bloating blue body she so desperately tugs on. Her lips purse at the exer­ tion, and I suddenly find myself wondering what her face would look like in a moment of ecstasy. She is attractive; the dead man had been right about that. Young still, but then can I really fault her for not being born earlier or exposed to more? When she realizes she can't pull him out herself, she Aura Short Story I 39

looks to me. There are no tears in her eyes-only need. I move beside her to take the man's other wrist. I expect him to be cold, but when I take his arm, it is warm. The rational part of my brain knows that the heat from the hot tub has kept him warm, but for a moment I think maybe he isn't dead. Maybe he has only just passed out, and we have found him just in time. Once we flip him over and I see his vacant eyes any delusion I have about him being alive disappears. I drop his arm and fall back feeling ill. The girl still pulls on him. She isn't accomplish­ ing anything other than scraping his body along the side of the pool. I latch onto her hand and pull her away from him harsher than I had intended. "Stop," I tell her. For a moment I think she is going to fight me, but she collapses at my feet instead. She starts to cry. The man has floated back into the position we originally found him. "You should go call 91 I," I say after a moment. She makes a strangled sound in her throat then nods her head slowly. The suggestion seems to focus her mind. "Yeah, okay." Her voice shakes like she has just used it for the first time in years. She glances at the dead man one more time before jogging away to find a phone. I take a seat next to the tub to wait for the girl or the paramedics to show up. I try not to look at the body, but it keeps bumping into the wall next to me. This is as real as it gets, and yet I find it hard to believe. I have never seen a dead body let alone one face down in a hot tub. I think about the interaction I had with this man earlier. I had been so upset that he had called me bitter and questioned my decisions, but really I think I was just pissed that he wasn't bitter. He had seemed c;ontent. I wish I had taken up his offer 40 I Aura Short Story

to join him in the hot tub. Maybe things would have turned out differently. The ad Hot Tubs: A Warm and Bubbly Place to Die comes to my mind as I watch the man's hair floating in the water like a loose clump of seaweed, but in reality his death was far from ideal. The tub is warm, but there are no bub­ bles only life draining heat that probably stopped his heart and now incubates his dead body. The sharp scent of chlo­ rine covers the stench of death, but I can imagine the bac­ teria feeding and breeding along his body. I understand the brunette's desperate need to get him out of the water. The desire to flee rushes back and forth in my mind like the waves crashing against the wall, but I remain sitting on the side. Waiting. I won't leave him to float alone in his steam­ ing tomb, nor do I want someone like the boy from earlier to come across the body. I can stand vigil. I can do that much. AuraArt 141

Holly S. Schwalen

Going to D.C. 42 I Aura Short Story Jason Slatton

Trail's Pond

The body had lain in state for a week, perhaps two at the most and, in the crisp, white cold, had taken on a strangely wan and artificial complexion. The surprising whiteness against the darkened underbrush had first drawn Knod to the curling nest of evenfall at the pond's head. As he stood in that morn­ ing's first chilled breath, he could discern what he saw was cer­ tainly a girl: the breasts, while small, were obvious in the body's recline. The hair, dun-colored, shoulder-length and tangled, lay partially across her face. The rest of her splayed hair threaded through the leaves and branches beneath her, and ran riot with red dirt and nettles. She had fallen into this nest of brush from the steep muddied incline that met the pond's banks, and had­ n't moved after. One arm and hand were obscured by the right side of her body, while the left arm had twisted abruptly in the fall and hung outwards, horribly kinked to the side, as though she were carrying and had dropped a large bundle. Her legs twined together, scratched from her descent through the brambles. Her open eyes were washed pale and dim, and she appeared to be staring out over the pond's black and green water with a great sadness. * Knod came to this pond often, making the one-mile walk up from the main road that led to Glaston. He was a broad-shouldered man with wiry white hair, large gnarled hands and a steady, loping gait, and he had known both this farm and this wide span of woods for 60 years. Knod had never married, and after burying both parents just a few years Aura Short Story I 43 apart, had come back to the farm alone, resigned to mending what needed to be mended on the property, baling what need­ ed to be baled. Walking the woods became his only solace. His home, white clapboard, green half-moon shutters and a porch running the length of its face, stood alone on rural route IS, a blue-tar ribbon of road winding through a middle Tennessee countryside crowded with cottonwoods and open hayfields. Usually, the long walks he took to this quiet copse of pond and forest were silent and without incident and he thought he often took to this trail of pressed leaves and fallen branches more for the journey than the destination. The trail led out from a line of trees bordering the back of his home and slowly rose up an incline of forest for a mile, cutting through a thick, humming blanket of saplings, sweetgums and leaning oaks, their arms threading together, forming a ceiling of forest above him. The path ended further into the woods at Trait's Pond, a quiet and dark piece of water fed by a small brook at its north side. The pond's banks were soft and red except for its southernmost reach, where the water lay bordered by a steep spill of mud, clay, and fallen trees. Winter had begun pulling into season now for several weeks, and the rich mansion of leaves had given way to bared branches and a forest floor that crunched and snapped under his feet. Though in the warmer months he often brought along a cane pole, tackle and a lunch of hard tack or bread and cheese to the water, the colder clime led him to bring along only his food on this day. The fishing would have been non-productive for some time now. He had spent the morning like many others, idly sipping black coffee at his kitchen window, wondering at his dormant beehives and the hay barn out back. Both needed attention, but could wait till the days were longer and warmer. He hitched on his thick outdoor pants, pulled on a grayed flan- 44 I Aura Short Story

nel shirt, and laced his boots, though his fingers would occa­ sionally bark if he pressed or pulled too hard on the thick strings. This routine had become more difficult in the several years preceding, though, strangely, his eyesight was keen and sharp-the better to marvel at the gnarled fingers that ached him so. His iron stove chucked and hissed behind him as the fire within found a knot in the wood, and he stared out of the kitchen into the brown grass that joined the tree line. Today would be good to walk, good to smell the air and good to touch the same trees along the trail that seemed to him to be as knotted and furled as his fingers. He fished out his buck knife and opened the icebox, cutting a thick wedge of cheese he layered with three slices of bread. After wrapping the food in wax paper, he tucked the package into his thick brown coat and slowly pushed his arms into its sleeves, again wincing ever so much as his shoulders protested this movement. Most things came with a small price of ache these days. He surveyed the kitchen, seeing the stack of brittle newspapers at the backdoor that opened to the porch. Too heavy for one trip to the garbage, and too high for several sin­ gular trips. Best to leave that for now, though ignoring such things led to sloth. He smiled.An old man who lived alone in this kind of backcountry would eventually come to sloth one way or the other. He slowly opened the screen door, letting it softly slap shut behind him, and walked towards the trees. Knod's lungs heaved as they met the chilled morning air. Though his chest would sometimes tighten at this cold, he found the sensation pleasurable and somehow immediate­ there was a feeling of living in this air, a feeling of something real. His knees sang in protest as well, though he knew they would eventually bend and stretch without challenge as he pushed up and through the forest. He touched the trees on Aura Short Story I 45 either side of him idly, drawing his fingers along the icy bark, not­ ing patterns in the skin that had grown familiar to him by now, hearing his own breath surging and releasing within him. The quiet descended around him, save his own breathing and the sound of his boots against the frozen fallen leaves beneath him. He knew that, upon his return later, the forest would have picked up just enough warmth from the ... he noticed, off to winter sun to turn the leaves his nght, a jornng from frozen to merely wet. This back-and-forth cycle ;ncongru;ty k7 the would eventually break them down into fragments, but for landscape. now they still clung to the fall months that had come before, and carpeted the trail with washes of red, pale orange and yellow. The expanse of woods lay out beneath, above and in front of him, and, as he always did, he began to slow his approach as he neared the water. He met the small, rolling incline that led to the shoreline, and stopped to scan the far shore, hearing the quiet rabble of brook that fed into the pond.As he began his descent toward the pond's banks, he noticed, off to his right, a jarring incongruity in the landscape. Something lay half-exposed there in the tangled scrub. Knod wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and stared out at the incline at the naked figure. The pond, placid and still, dropped out in front of him in what seemed to be direct opposi­ tion to the alien figure in the branches and leaves. Knod turned and stared out into the woods behind him, watching the trail for any movement. He scanned the trees ringing the pond. The forest surrounding him revealed no noise, no movement save what had been there so many times before. He could feel his own blood beating in his ears, and turned again towards the figure before 46 I Aura Short Story him, half expecting it to have vanished. Rummaging back through the walk from his home, he inventoried anything that might have seemed awry. The walk had been as always, and his memory revealed no change or dissonance. Knod crouched down then, resting his elbows on his groaning knees, and quietly blew out a breath of warm air. His mouth was dry now, and he could feel the cold creeping back up and around him. "Lord God-a-mighty." He sat back into the hardened dirt, crunching down into the frozen earth, feeling his back tighten and protest. His eyes skirted back over the tree line across the pond, this time not so much to scan for another person, but to have anything else to look at besides the violence there by the pond. The sky doming over the trees was impossibly blue and tinged with slate and grey. Wincing at the cold and his frail joints, he approached the frozen and muddied incline. A small spit of land jutted out from the scrub and provided a plat­ form upon which he could stand and lean in.As he moved closer, Knod paused and looked at the girl's eyes, half-mast and fixed at some unknown vantage across the water.At the left side of her temple, a large, dark grey and blue bruise stood out in sharp relief to the chalk-white skin of her face. At the center of the bruise the skin had broken and blood had begun to seep, congealing and turning black in the freez­ ing air. She had been struck hard, hard and without care or mercy. His eyes moved down to the fingers of her left hand. They were small, almost gentle, he imagined, though the nails were colored with angry black polish. Several of these nails carried mud caked beneath them. She had been grabbing for something, something to hold to, and had found only the red clay of this part of the county. He looked up then, to the top of the evenfall, and saw Aura Short Story I 47 the midsections and tops of trees hanging over the pond. She had come from there, some fifteen feet up, and had slid down into the knotted branches and red clay. Her underside was frozen into the mud and clumped brush. A swarm of small, angry circles were clustered inside her left elbow. He knew of this a bit, and in seeing the bruises flashed back to the rattling cars that would careen down RR I 5 at late hours when he would be fighting his way into an old man's sleep, their pound­ ing music, and always a snatch of some young boy or girl's yelp whooping into the night air. These children had changed, changed into something very different than when he was young. Knod rose and headed back towards the trail, hoping to find something to hold as he made his way up to the top of the incline, reasoning he could then see how she had fallen. Here, the trees were thin and brittle from the encroaching winter, but he found that, by grasping them closer to their bases, he could pull himself, shaking, up and through. The crest of the hill revealed little save a scattering of dirty, crumpled beer cans, scattered cigarette butts, a pair of red panties. Whatever else had been left here had been taken. He began to put together what must have happened, who must have sent that girl's body down that dirty scud of land. This was some­ one's lost child, someone who might not know or even care that their daughter was alone out here, naked and dead on the shoreline of a backwater pond. He held to one of the trees at the lip of the crest and looked down over the water, and then inwards toward towards the girl's body. Beaten, he thought, beaten and tossed away like trash. Even still, his walk to the top of this crest had revealed little more than what lay before him, and In the time between when this had happened and now, much in the forest had changed with the cold. 48 I Aura Short Story

He sometimes scanned the community papers at night, and even occasionally joggled the rabbit ears on his television to see the local news. He remembered no mention of a girl gone missing. Most, if any of this kind of thing, happened far beyond Glaston in Franklin, some 40 miles away. If no authori­ ty, no parent had come looking for this girl, he doubted any­ one would. Knod shakily threaded his way back down to the trail and again walked the distance to the body. The morning wore off slowly and he could feel the chill that always came with a hard winter's daylight. He pulled the sandwich from his pocket and took a bite of the bread and cheese. The taste was dry and vaguely stale and he threw the food behind him into the trees, folding the paper into his coat pocket. He stood there for a few moments longer, watching his breath radiate into the morning air. The pond was still, occasionally showing the odd ripple from the brook. His eyes felt strained, raw and suddenly very tired, and he rubbed his forehead absently. "Dear sweet Lord-what becomes of all this?" He turned from the girl and the pond, and slowly made his way back up the shoreline, to the trail and the woods waiting beyond. * Knod sat that night at his kitchen table, his hands spread out over the yellowed formica, a stale cigarette slowly burning down to its filter between his index and middle fin­ gers. He had fished both the bright green plastic ashtray and brittle cigarettes from beneath his sink, having stopped his smoking some years before. He had attempted to quit, tired of the strain that descended onto his lungs, and hadn't even given a random thought to the cigarettes until he'd returned home from the pond. Oddly, he hadn't been able to throw Aura Short Story I 49 them away, owing more to his own doubts about stopping than anything else. The flat, metallic taste of the smoke was familiar, but did little to calm him and he found his hands still shook as he drew the cigarette to his mouth. The dish­ es from his half-eaten dinner lay in the sink, and Knod stared up and out through the kitchen window where day fell from white to gold and orange to night. She was out there now, broken and alone. He began to think of the cold, of the green water, and the girl's eyes staring out into the dark of the forest. How long could he leave her there? How long before someone else, a hunter, one of the hikers that occasionally wandered through that stretch of woods, anyone, would stumble across her? What of whoever had done that awful thing to her? Would they return? She needn't stay like that, alone, exposed to the winter and the surrounding woods. How long could a reasoning man sit with this? He had passed the rotary phone in his kitchen several times that afternoon, pausing, expecting how he would be able to describe what he had seen. The call would bring patrolmen, an ambulance, surely, and they all would tramp back into the woods up to the pond to pull the girl out. He had even once picked up the receiver, and listened to the humming report on the other end, and then returned it to its cradle. Knod watched the smoke from the ashtray trailing up and into the fluorescent light above the table and ran his hand thorough his thinning white hair. The walls and joists around him whined and cracked as the oncoming cold settled into the house. Morning would take him back there, back to the pond for her. * 50 I Aura Short Story

That night, Knod lay tangled in his bed sheets, wading further and further into a muted and dark dream. The dream held no noise but his own ragged and labored breathing. He found himself breaking up and through the surface of the pond, gasping for air, the sky black and dead above him. With each motion of rising, he felt himself pulled deeper ... he turned h;s eyes into the recesses of the pond, his kicking feet upward, see;ng meeting no foothold, no floor. He struggled to only a miasma of break the surface again dark water. .. and again, hoping to see if the girl was still there in the steep grade of mud, but the dark revealed little at the edges of the pond. He felt himself sink deeper, and as he began to pull the freezing water into his lungs, he turned his eyes upward, seeing only a miasma of dark water and the grayed edges of his own eroding sleep. He woke, clutching at the sides of the bed, his lungs still contracting, his heart leap­ ing in his chest. The room around him was as he had left it, though he carried remnants of the dream with him even then, tasting the silted water on his tongue. He pulled himself upright from his pillow and tried to calm the hitch in his breathing, and scrabbled for the glass of water he kept at his bedside. His eyes slowly focused to the onset of dawn around the bedroom, the gloom outside giving way to growing light. He saw by his bedroom door the muddy trail boots from the morning before and remembered the dirt and carpet of leaves along the trail to the pond. Knod pulled the spread and afghan aside and as his feet touched the oak-plank floor, he began to piece together the walk back to Trait's Pond. * Aura Short Story I 51

As he passed through the tree line, Knod shift­ ed the pack slung across his back. He didn't normally travel on foot with such a load, especially one that tugged so sharply at his shoulders. Pressing on and upwards through the brush and thicket, he found himself faltering already-the work that lay ahead would certainly be arduous, and the chill had picked up considerably. He pulled his cap down over his ears, bent to keep the wind from numbing his chin, and continued over the path of leaves threading out into the forest. Buckling now and then with the weight of his pack and the cold, Knod paced himself by the increments of ground that lay directly beneath him. His heart thumped in counterpoint with his footsteps, a dull, pulsing loneliness. A handful of min­ utes passed as the ground rose. The pond lay just beyond a range of saplings framing the trail ahead of him. He lowered the pack off of his shoulders car­ rying it with one hand, the slack straps dragging through the leaves, the metal scoop of the shovel catching intermittently in the dirt. The girl still lay there, though the strong winds that had sung through the woods the night before had pulled a drift of leaves off of the crest above her, covering most of her face and shoulders. Knod unrolled the pack he had brought up from his house and began pulling out the dry kindling gathered that morning. He knew he would have to warm the frozen ground before di~ing, the kindling providing a good base for fire. He had at random picked an area just 20 or 30 feet back from the shoreline, seeing one spot as good as the other; he would have had, at his 52 I Aura Short Story advanced age, little chance of carrying her back to his home, or even much of a ways into the woods. With the kindling arranged in a circular mound, he set about gathering more dry branches where the path led off into the woods, piling the wood so the flames could breathe and grow. He fished a box of camping matches from his coat. Knod's fingers, numb now from the cold and age, seemed thick and unruly, but he was able to strike successfully within the first few strokes. He leaned into the piled wood, waiting for the match's flame to catch the thinner branches, staring into the nest he had made there, smelling the smoke curling out of its center. He blew gently into the growing flame, which jerked and ebbed with the force of his breath. He knew that he would need to wait there for a while, and in doing so he began to scan the sky above him. There was no definition save the broadened white that gave way to gun­ metal gray at the furthest reaches of the horizon-he thought then that certainly snow was somewhere in the off­ ing. The fire blazed up for a few minutes and then settled in, cracking and hissing as the branches flamed. Knod drew closer, letting the heat bath his aching shoulders, hands and knees. The ground was sufficiently warm now, and as soft as it was likely to get. As quickly as he could muster, Knod kicked at the fire, sending the branches sparking towards the water, clearing an area where he could work. His knees protested in the cold, but Knod continued his movements. He turned for a moment to gaze towards the girl, and then walked towards his unrolled pack for his shovel. The coming snow would cover most of this area for a few weeks, shifting back and forth between slush and a brittle, frozen skin. The path leading here would still be passable, but Knod knew that, as silent as these woods normally were, the coming Aura Short Story I 53

snow made the entire forest even quieter and strangely dead. Holding the cold handle of the shovel, he broke into the layer of clay and sand that met the formed the extended banks of the pond, and began to dig. * Knod surveyed the hole, some six feet in length and three feet in depth. Digging had knotted his muscles and joints, and his breathing came in halted, painful rasps. He turned from the disturbed dirt and made for the incline, knowing this to be the most difficult part of his task. The leaves around the girl's head and shoulders had scattered since he had begun building the fire, and he could again note her dimmed eyes. The nettles and branches wound around her, scratching the skin of his fingers, and he hesitated before touching her arm. He pulled in even closer to her, and as his hand tucked behind her shoulder, a first flake of snow caught in her hair. Knod brushed it away, and gathering a lung-full of air, pulled her forward from the brush. Her slight frame hitched and caught, and as she came to him, he winced at the cold and ungiving body. As he pulled her up and away, she carried some of the branches and leaves from beneath her. The cold had set into these woods some weeks ago, and her limbs were frozen in stasis. Knod, with great concentra­ tion, kneeled towards her and gathered her up onto his right shoulder. Shaking, he turned towards the hole, the bor­ ders grayed with ash, and hitched her up further, feeling her hair pressed against his cheek, her arm bent around to his back. More flakes of snow fell around him, and he blinked as they clustered and around his eyes and mouth. He staggered with her towards the hole, the sky above him gray and whis­ pering with the falling snow. He slowly moved back from her, still holding her shoulders, and then stepped into the hole to 54 I Aura Short Story better lower her down. Knod could only place her awkwardly into what seemed to be a position of rest, and his rough, cal­ loused hands left the smooth cold of her shoulders. He looked once more at her face. Who knew of her? Who knew of her and wondered after her? He put one hand on her fore­ head, the tips of his fingers Knod stood pressing inwards. Her skin was over what he blank, hard and he felt driven to had done and speak though there was no one to hear. The snow fell harder quietly shook ... now and as he stood there, lean­ ing, his throat caught. Knod stood over what he had done and quietly shook, as much from the cold as the action of put­ ting this poor girl into the earth. Grasping the cold metal han­ dle of the shovel, he scraped the surrounding dirt in around her, moving gently and without sound. The new-fallen snow covered the dirt and disturbed clay, and soon little was left of what lay beneath him. Staring at the freshly packed dirt, he was struck at what kind of mercy would leave a spent old man to bury a beaten child in some backstretch of a forest, and reasoned it was mercy enough. He rose and breathed in deeply the frigid air. The snow, even when he was a boy, always seemed to smell clean, hard, almost new. Though the morning sky began to darken with snow, the woods around Trait's Pond faintly crack­ led and shifted with the changing clime and the mantle of snow ringing the trees and covering the floor of the forest, carrying with it its own kind of hushed light. He gathered up his pack and shovel and made for the head of the trail and home. * Aura Short Story I 55

A week passed, then two, then three. As winter set into the county, Knod stayed inside more and more, and had ven­ tured beyond the tree line only a few times since the burying of the girl. The packed dirt had lain undisturbed, and Knod told himself that the matter, though certainly one that brought him unease, was over. He busied himself around his property as he did each winter, patching holes in his barn roof, cutting wood, tending to the odd repair around his home. His hay money normally sustained him through the colder months, and he often only left his home to travel up the highway a few miles to buy what few groceries he needed to accompany his canning from the summer before. The market had a bulletin board near the ice cooler, and he had checked twice, parsing over the want ads and missing dog fliers, but had seen nothing that connected at all to the girl. Likewise, the local television station had reported no news pertaining to anyone missing.

* Knod was awoken from his sleep by a muffled, insistent knocking. He focused his eyes to the room around him, the television, which had been broadcasting a western he had fall­ en asleep to, now displayed the early evening news. The knock­ ing persisted, and he pulled himself up blinking from the couch, focusing on the noise. The knocking came from his front door, and before he could place his feet on the floor, he heard, from outside, a man's voice. A younger man's voice. "Hello? Anyone in there? Anyone home?" Knod made for the front door, moving to the side win­ dow to check the front yard. A Duster, mottled gray with primer, was parked sideways at the end of his drive, and the wheels bore no hubcaps. Buttoning the front of his overalls, he pulled the deadbolt and opened the door. "Evenin'." 56 I Aura Short Story

The young man at his door had stepped back from the screen and his right hand retreated, as well. Knod could see that he had been just before trying to open the screen, though it was latched. He was young, probably in his 20's, but looked altogether more weary and lined than a normal man of his age. He wore a scuffed and worn down jacket, jeans, clay­ caked sneakers. He was big, bigger than most of the young men Knod had seen. His eyes were set close together, black, raw and bloodshot. He ran his hand through his black and knotted hair, and Knod noticed that his fingers were tattooed with random, jagged shapes. He could smell cigarette smoke and, faintly, whiskey. "Evenin'." He paused behind the screen, and the young man leaned in closer, coughing, shaking his coat around him. "Cold as hell, ain't it?" He smiled, and glanced back at his car. "Heater's busted. Been busted all winter." He turned back to Knod. "You live here?" "Yeah. Can I help you?" Knod noticed the young man was probably drunk, or at least on his way to getting there. "Well, hell. .. I. .. I'm Larry." Knod kept one hand on the doorjamb, and one in his pocket. His foot lay wedged against the base of the door. The television murmured in the back room. "Can I help you, Larry?" He shifted back and forth." 'Help me' don't quite cut it, y'see.l guess I just wanted to ... well ... y'see," he paused," ... all this property 'round here yours?" Knod shook his head." 'Cross that a way, cross the road, is Emberton's. All of mine stretches back of here." "Nice place. Lots of room. 'Specially for a fella like your­ self. You live alone?" Knod didn't answer, and edged further into the door. "Lotta woods, ain't it? Shit, a fella could get lost up in Aura Short Story I 57

there, couldn't he? Shit, he could slap get his ass in a real bind in a woods like this." "Reckon." Knod looked at Larry through the screen. "Can I do something for you?" Larry continued as if he hadn't heard. His voice grew more steady, and he looked up at Knod and then around, to the darkened room behind. He smiled. "Yeah, I guess you'd need all kinds of trails and shit up in there. Wouldn't wanta get lost.An old son-of-a-bitch like you could find himself in a real fix, huh? What you reckon?" Knod sighed and pulled his hand away from the jamb, pausing before pushing the door shut. "I think we're done, son. Evenin' to you." "Yeah, you got a good 'un back in there. Cuts clean on back to that piece-of-shit pond. Pretty quiet back there." Knod paused, pulling the door back. Larry leaned into the screen, smiling. "Got your attention now?" "This is private property, son. You'd might wanta ... " "'Might wanta' what?" Larry laughed quietly, his eyes dancing, glimmering. "Shit-1 reckon we got all sorts of things in common." He turned away to face the road. "All sorts of 'private' shit." Knod looked beyond the boy into the dying evening. The sky was giving off one last glow before darkening alto­ gether. The wind had picked up a bit, and Knod stifled a tremor from the chill. This was trouble. Larry turned, hitched out a pack of cigarettes and, widening his eyes, nodded. "Smoke?" Knod set his jaw firmly, feeling his teeth ache. "You been back in there?" "Shit. Back, in, around, all over. I guess you could say I misplaced something. Come back to check on it-not that an old man asleep in front of 'Gun smoke' would know anything 58 I Aura Short Story like that." Larry backed against the porch post, taking a long drag. He whistled through his teeth. "Yeah. Funny thing. They's something 'bout when things freeze-why, you can tell when the ground's been dug up." Knod glanced quickly behind him. His rifle lay in the closet in the kitchen. "Yeah-see, the dirt stays pretty much like it was when it was dug out. Eventually, it'll settle. Weather. Time. Hell, after a season like this, and a few more snows, why, you'd never know ... " He dropped his cigarette onto the porch." ... that... ," and leaned into the screen, grinning, "something was buried there. Even a fuck-up like me knows that. 'Course you might say I have a leg up." Knod's gaze hardened. Was the rifle loaded? "Did you do that to her?" Larry blew out into the cold air, "Nothing she wouldn'ta done to herself. Know what I mean?" Then, under his breath, "Lord, she sure had a mouth on her." Knod flashed back to the pond, the girl's eyes, the snarl of bruises on her arm, the sharp, wet smell of the dirt. "Do you need something here, son?" The two men stood facing each other. "Need? Me? Nah. Looks like you done most of the work. Right? You did that, huh?" Larry tapped the top of his cigarette pack. "Old bastard like you ... probably took hours." "God help you, son." "Yep. And if he don't, why, you just help yourself." Larry backed slowly away from the screen, tucking his hands into his back pockets. His eyes glittered, danced. "So ... what now, old man?" Knod unlatched the screen, stepping out onto the porch. The porch creaked beneath his feet, and the wind picked up along the tree line. Aura Short Story I 59

"We square here? Huh?" "Nothing square about you or me, son. Nothing at all." Larry's smiled faded. He stepped back in the direction of the Duster, watching Knod intently. "Nice talking to you." "Drive away, son." "I get up this-a-way ever now and again ... business ... " "Drive away, son, and don't come back here. Or back there." Larry lay his hand against the hood of the Duster and whistled, frowning. "Awful cold this time of year. Old fella like yourself oughta be careful, 'specially all alone. Why ... ,'' "Boy, this is when you leave. Get gone. We're done here. Absolutely done. This is the easy way." Larry edged backwards and yanked open the rusted door of the Duster. "I guess we understand each other okay, huh?" Knod gave no reaction, reaching behind him to open the screen door and pulled slowly into the doorway. He could feel the warmth of the house beckoning him back in, and the Duster coughed and sputtered to life. The car jerked for­ wards, and Larry slowly steered out onto RR IS, the tiny ember of his cigarette the only illumination behind the wind­ shield. Knod watched through the screen as the taillights retreated into the dark.Another gust of cold pushed through the trees in the front yard, pulling drifts of skittering leaves along the front walk, and Knod latched the screen and quietly closed the front door. This would be a long brittle winter, with much work to do to prepare for the spring, but it was best to leave those things alone for now. 60 I Aura Poetry

William Virgil Davis

Doors

Doors always know both sides of the story.

They talk among themselves, argue over matters suggested to them, come to conclusions. Sometimes they even speak up about things, giving answers, or asking additional questions so as to be fully informed.

With them nothing is ever simply open or shut. Aura Poetry I 61

William Virgil Davis

Do You?

He wanted to know, but he didn't know how to ask. What, really to say. He wanted her to tell him without his asking: to think it through from his point of view, realize his unasked question, and give him the answer he wanted to hear. It was too much to expect, but he expected it, and waited - he was nothing if not patient-for her to figure it all out, to say it to him suddenly one day and in such a way that both of them would have been surprised. It never happened. 62 I Aura Poetry

William Virgil Davis

A True SlorhJ

She likes to walk naked at night. I've seen her often and told people about her, but they never believe me. You would think people would believe this sort of thing, even if they know they are true. I can tell by the way they look at me, by their eyes, which turn their heads to one side. Especially women. They lower their eyes when you tell them such things, just as they do when they tell you a secret-so you will know it is supposed to be a secret by their way of saying it.

Anyhow, this woman walks naked almost every night. I do not say she is beautiful, but just the same I love her for doing it.

I have told you this because I know that you will not believe it. Aura Poetry I 63

Mark Trammell

Mon Petit Amour, Mon Petit Mort

She is brunette Sometimes blonde Never scarlet I let my fingers Trace her gentle curves Modest though they are They are an exquisite journey To a place I wish I could live Or at least visit more often.

Her small frame Forces me to relinquish myself Before I'm ready Her sighs penetrate The nighttime air She gasps for breath And begs me to stop Before I have hardly begun.

I do as I am told I remain your faithful servant To the very end Even at my own expense Modest though you are At least you are satisfied And that is something. Perhaps everything.

Your little death Is my life. 64 I Aura Poetry

Jennifer CrosslebJ

And Heaven To Boot

She's smiling in her sleep, eternal in her dreams. She knows everything we don't know. A Mona Lisa smile. I can read it on her once again smiling, pink lips. She's solo no longer, got all she ever wanted: daddy, brothers, sisters. And heaven to boot. Aura Art I 65

Xiao Jin Zou

Father and I 66 I Aura Art

Xiao Jin Zou

Reflection Aura Art I 67

Xiao Jin Zou

The Kite 68 I Aura Art

Xiao Jin Zou

Principles Aura Art I 69

Rachel Johnson

Faceless 70 I Aura Art

Rachel Johnson

Untitled Aura Art I 71

Rachel Johnson

Time 72 I Aura Art

Ja nathan Hicks

Orangey (Capitalism is the State Series) Aura Art I 73

Jonathan Hicks

Alex (Capitalism is the State Series) 74 I Aura Art

Jonathan Hicks

Nigga Please (Smoke, Dresden Influences Series) Aura Art I 75

Jonathan Hicks

Nigga Please III (Smoke, Dresden Influences Series) 76 I Aura Art

Alexander Mcalpine

Untitled 2006 Aura Art I 77

Alexander Mcalpine

Lady In the Mirror 78 I Aura Art

Alexander Mcalpine

The Blue Chair 2007 Aura Art I 79

Purple Rose Alyssa Mitchell

Buchart Gardens Alyssa Mitchell 80 I Aura Art

Amy Kilpatrick

Watergrass Aura Art I 81

Yui-Hui Huang

Inquiro 82 I Aura Art

Allison Bliss

On the Docks Aura A rt I 83

Allison Bliss

St. Vincent 84 I Aura Art

Holly S. Schwalen

Downtown D. C. Aura Art I 85

' '

. . . '

Alex McClurg

Hope 86 I Aura Art

Miles Walls

Eid mubaarak Aura Art I 87

Miles Walls Kul 'aam wa 'antum bikbair 88 I Aura Art

Jeff Chambless

Tiger Aura Art I 89

Jeff Chambless

Giraffe 90 I Aura Art

Jeff Chambless

Field Aura Art I 91

Jeff Chambless

Oak 92 I Aura Art

Nathan Prewett

Beneath an Overcast Aura Art I 93

Nathan Prewett

Overcast Above the Oak 94 I Aura Art

Alyssa Mitchell

Alleyway Aura Art I 95

Alyssa Mitchell

Eye of the Tiger 96 I Aura Poetry

Lauren Markham

5 Senses or You

I love the smell of a fresh box of Crayola TM Shades of perfection untouched Like the colors of you and me Lying side by side - we touch

I love the sight of sunset kissing the horizon hello Transcending God's canvas, time, and space Like every tomorrow wrapped into one Sundry emotions rise up- we embrace

I love the sound of a rainy Saturday afternoon Timbre of percussion upon the roof Like the rhythm of Africa's drums Love comes down- we move

I love the feel of grass between my toes Element of life that sustains the creation Like the seed that grows within me Imagination brought to life- we are nation

I love the taste of mixed berries in the summertime Naturally flavored dewdrop kisses Like wishes made on birthday candles Dedications made promises- I reminisce

On why I love the smell, sight, sound, feel, and taste of you ... Aura Poetry I 97

Lauren Markham

Ler Me Be

Why can't I just be me Why do I have to be like him and you and she just can't stop prayin' for me askin'- God why? Why did she fall for the lies, why does she enjoy the kissing between her thighs, that look of passion in his eyes?

In his eyes I see the world, light and darkness- me For you fail to see that when I am me I am as close to God as him, and you, and she could ever proselytize me to be So then, would you please let me be Could you please let me be ... 98 I Aura Poetry

Joseph ForlebJ

I Know a LodbJ Who Sings

I know a lady that sang with a voice so melodic it shamed the birds.

I know a lady who sang with so much beauty the birds in the trees grew jealous Each morning they rose earlier to practice; though the dawn was far off their sound did not improve.

I know a lady who sang night and day even when others were sleeping. So much beauty and so much noise

I know a lady who sang too much. Her voice became like fingers on a chalkboard to those who had to listen day after day and night after night.

I know a lady who sang and still sings but she sings elsewhere now and I sleep alone. Aura Poetry I 99

Joseph Farley emes1s

feelings well up inside banging against your skin poking prodding begging to be released on paper you hold off as long as you can but out it comes another mess to be cleaned up later 100 I Aura Art

Alexander Mcalpine

Moses Aura Short Story I 101

JC Freeman

Pic~ures or Living

A child was born at seven o'clock p.m. on Sunday, June 8, 1986. I was in the delivery room, because I am an Evolved Sensitive Man. Coincidentally, that is also the type of guy who is unable to think on his feet when a good excuse would be awfully handy. Although I most certainly did not lose my nerve, a spasm in my neck caused me to look up at the clock precisely at seven o'clock p.m. on June 8, 1986, a Sunday. That oh-so-common clock etched its information in my brain. I think more about that minute with each passing year. At this moment, twenty-one years have returned to the ages since that evening in the late Spring of 1986. That minute has become a multi-layered entity in my life. It stands as part sign post, part accusation, part opportunity, and part talisman. The talisman portion is the most troubling, for I have never been able to figure out where I can take that minute so it can be better honored and not be a part of my decay and nightmares. One thing that minute can never be is a reminder of things that could have been. That infers possi­ bility. And that would have been a lie. I loved that little girl, but I am not her father. I began my relationship with her mother just a few weeks after the child's conception. Oh God, how many times I have tried to make the untrue real. But there was no energy left over to convince anyone else after I believed, and my belief was a temporary wisp. I didn't need to be the biological father to love her; but that is not how the world sees it. And for once I had to agree with the world and step aside when there was no hope for me to reclaim the lost love of her mother. 102 I Aura Short Story

The little girl was three when I was weaned out of her life for good. There was no animosity, no recriminations, no lies, no truth, no love, no real good bye. I don't remember the last time I saw her all that well. The end came about in a general way. Sometimes I am inclined to believe that real life could benefit from a writer's embellishment. Perhaps we can't force equity upon reality, but we might be able to make our water­ shed moments more respectful and kinder to the jagged wounds they cause. Three-years-old. A good age. A most resilient age. I left her in time, before I could carve out a niche in her memories. Most likely I faded out of her mind and became nothing. Life is already too short, and yet it diminishes further. My own first memory is, coincidentally, a historic one. Me and my brother and our mother were sitting at the kitchen table in our house on Bainbridge Island. All of a sudden I was on­ line that lunch-time in the late Autumn of 1963. I didn't find myself in hysterics about being jerked into this most bizarre of Universes. I was fine and dandy and knew everyone. It has taken forty-eight years for me to come to the realization that eating breakfast on that morning on that same late autumn's day in 1963 is as clear in my mind as witnessing the second World War or the erecting of the Pyramids. Everything prior to that lunch belongs to the dust. * I was born on a day very different than that pre-sum­ mer's eve held in the June of 1986. My body was yanked into Creation on the third day of January 1959. That was also the exact same day Alaska became the forty-ninth state. I have never been to Alaska, which is a shame, for I hear that it is quite mighty. Mikey Mantle was a Yankee. Ike was President. Orson Welles and Edward D. Wood were making movies which were Aura Short Story I 103 not infested with atomically mutated insects. Television had assimilated the greatest portion of American society. Along with pursuing Liberty and the pursuit of happiness, one could also pursue "Gunsmoke", "77 Sunset Strip", and something known as "Lawrence Welk's Dodge dance party", if one was so inclined. My research has found that the number one song in the U.S.A. that week was "The Chipmunk Song" by (sur­ prise) the Chipmunks (recorded during that now infamous Beale Street jam session in which Alvin discovered both Krishna and heroin).Ah happy days. Prosperity. A sort of conservative con­ Still, down in spicuous consumption. Still, Dixie, someone down in Dixie, someone got paid to paint "colored got paid to only" signs for all things point "colored ranging from drinking foun­ tains on up. It was illegal to only" s;gns ... marry out of one's race in Virginia. If you happened to be a woman and the owner of a heinously hooked heiny, then you could expect a visit from the goose-or to be specific: a gander. And there would not be a god dam thing you could do about it. Luckily I was not dropped like a foal in a field in the third world. But I was brought into one of the two nations on the Earth that had the ability to end the Earth over and over and over again. I've always felt this fact to be akin to holding a pair of fully loaded pistols to your head. Why this was the way things were? Beats me. But there was not a goddam thing to be done about this either. Over in southeast Asia hell was stretching and lim- 104 I Aura Short Story

bering up for a long long session. At home women, minorities, and and the young were getting just a little tired of kissing the collective butt of the Greatest Generation. Rock and Roll was in between its first decline and resurrection.And the world was actually taking its first baby steps into the realm of Outer Space. And I was. And I recall nothing ...... that is, until three shots rang out in Dallas. At the precise moment John Fitzgerald Kennedy stopped being a person, and while a big part of what made him JFK lay on a Texas street, a certain James Craig Freeman flickered into self awareness. Even I can not muster enough self contempt to lament such an uneven trade. Things are what they are, and what they were. On November 22, 1963; I was six weeks shy of my fifth birthday.

* I still can see that certain seven o'clock. I really didn't like children that day. So whiney and needy. Expensive too, or so my parents said many-a-night when I was supposed to be asleep. The first time I held the girl I was lying on the bed flat on my back. I held her at arms length, sizing her up. She was far franker with her assessment and promptly let go a stom­ ach full of formula. Warm. On my neck. She smiled. I had to laugh. To my surprise I began to obsess over her well being, and it filled me with a mixture of pride and warmth when she sought out me only whenever she encountered what she per­ ceived as injustice, or even tragedy. I never believed I could feel that way. I go to for three years. I should bear in mind that some never get to feel that way at all. I loved her mother too. I think she loved me, for a little while, once. I remember teasing her while she was in labor: '"oh my water broke. My contractions. Just me me me"', I Aura Short Story I 105

said. "Come here Jim, I only want to kiss you," she said. It took the baby only a fraction of a milli-second to find a method to roll off the sofa onto the carpet the first time I sat her alone. These things and more I recall every time I see that clock. Baby is twenty-one now, and her mother got married to another guy back in 1990. I read the announcement in the paper while I was sitting in a tavern, alone. I only wish them all the very best. Sometimes providing the very best for those you love the most is to be gone from them. That can be a noble deed, it also can serve to cause you to envy the dead. Only three when I saw her last. Perhaps she is one of those brighter stars, the kind that need less time to acclimate themselves to the Universe. It happens. I know people who claim to remember being two. All I can do is believe them. 106 I Aura Art

Kathy Baty

Untitled Monoprint Aura Short Story I 107

Richard Doke!:J

Raccoons

He was alive because those who live had memory of him. I might as well be dead, Warneke concluded. Many of his friends had, in fact, died, and when he recalled them from work, at parties, on the gold course or from across the neighborhood where he had aged, mowing, pruning, offering his own red hickory to the barbeques of evening, their faces, their dress, their very manner were the same as those he still encountered. The living and the dead are one in the gray insubstantiality of thought. When those who remember pass on, he too would be a name tipped awry in a field of chis­ eled stone. It was five o'clock, the hour of longing. Outside the pub window the sun seized the vehicles that crept upon the street, cracking windshields, making fists against hubcaps, squeezing blisters of green, blue and red from fenders and hoods. It pleased him that he no longer hurried, that his own light was a blanket beneath which he might doze or study each nook and cranny, the beckoning of each shadow. Everything made him think. He looked about the room. Released at last from the cubicles of work, the drinkers made nests, clustering at the bar or perching above miniature tables. Really, it was not a pub at all. It had the carved, bur­ nished wood, the shape of the bar and the glasses and bot­ tles just so, the spigots for beer. But it was not a pub, not a real pub. Ellen and he had been to pubs, in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. This was an imitation pub. There was brittleness 108 I Aura Short Story in the laughter. The drinkers were dressed too brightly. Three years ago today he had found Ellen upon the dining room floor of their home, and now the face he recalled was the face at the altar the day they were married. "Will there be anything else, sir?" the waiter said, leaning close enough to make Warneke believe the man thought he was hard of hearing. Warneke put his hand upon the top of the cup. The wait­ er smiled and backed away. Warneke waited until five-thirty. His legs hurt. They always hurt when he sat too long. His left elbow throbbed, a reminder of the time sixty years before when, working summers at the Santa Fe while attending Berkeley. He had stepped backward unloading a boxcar, stumbled and dropped straight down, striking his elbow against the steel ramp. He started for the door. One or two people recognized him and smiled. He went you to meet the bus. The cemetery was on the other side of town, an anomaly from a past when time traveled by foot or carriage or sailed upon the sea. The ice cream vendor and taco truck, the fire engine and ambulance-wailing their shrill prophecy-were not permitted to this island of silence, where me might stand beside Ellen's marker and ponder the one, universal truth. At first he had brought flowers, real flowers, to put in the pewter vase he had found at home, but their wilting was more than he could bear, so he had gone to the silk flowers he had discovered in a crafts shop on Third Avenue. He placed pebbles in the vase to keep it steady. The flowers stood pertly, with starched, flared blooms, but each time he visited, the vase was tipped over, the silk flowers spilled to the ground. The vases at the other markers were spilled as well. "What's doing that?" he asked the grounds superinten­ dent one afternoon-they had become friends. Aura Short Story I 109

The superintendent said, "Raccoons." "Raccoons?" Warneke said, putting his face in the shade of the oak tree above so that he could see the small man, whose name was Rodriquez, more clearly. "Yes, raccoons. There's a family of raccoons that live in the cemetery. Maybe it's squirrels, but I don't think squirrels would do that. Raccoons are very curious. Haven't you ever seen them?" "No, I haven't." "Well, they're out mostly at dark. You'd have to be here late. I know it's raccoons. I'd bet it was raccoons." "There's nothing to be done, I suppose? It is annoying." "With raccoons you can't do nothing," Rodriquez said. "You just live with raccoons." "All right, then," he said, steadying the vase and rear­ ranging the silk flowers, whose colors had begun to fade. When everything was in order, he stood silently watch­ ing Ellen's name etched across the polished stone, the dates scratched-the beginning and end-with horrible finality. There was room for his name. He had paid the stonecutter and had arranged for the cremation. He blinked. Rebecca, Tom and Elaine were scattered to the north, south and west. Weren't they obligated by some last courtesy to parenthood? Yet he had seen the advertisement on television and had paid the premium against neglected love and debts of children. Rodriquez went by in the dented pickup. Potted plants were in the bed of the truck. Throughout the cemetery work­ men pruned, mowed clipped. It was an old cemetery. It was the oldest cemetery in town.As soon as the workmen reached one end, they turned, marched back and again again. There was a pointlessness about gardening the dead, like charting the lumbering of planets. 110 I Aura Short Story

Rain birds chirped nearby. Warneke enjoyed their jeep, jeep, jeep and the mist that often made rainbows. Over the three years it had become easier, though his imagination still tried to reach down beneath the grass. He heard a voice and turned. A woman near his own age was bending over a head­ stone. She was small, tiny, in fact, with curly, silver gray hair, which fit her head so perfectly that he thought she must have come from the beauty parlor. Her manner was direct, yet a bit airy. She seemed to float. The flowers were real, yet there was the same nonsense about stooping, arranging, skipping back, stooping and arranging some more. "Oh, hello," she said. "I came in from the other side, behind the piracantha, and didn't notice you. Usually I'm not here this time of day. It's those raccoons. They're so playful. There's a whole family of them, did you know? I love watching them. But this evening I have a reception, so I'm early. My name is James. Agatha James." He wanted to smile but didn't. Instead he nodded several times. "Warneke," he replied. "Ivan Warneke." "Iavan," she smiled. "My, now isn't that a grand old name? Nobody calls anybody Ivan these days, do they? For that matter, nobody's called Agatha. Old fashioned names for old fashioned people." She smiled broadly. Her teeth were white. He won­ dered if they were real. "Are you old fashioned?" "I never thought about it," he said. She stepped to him quickly with a motion time to the rhythm of the rainbirds. "They spill the flowers," he said. "They what?" she asked. "The raccoons. They spill the flowers." "Oh, yes, they certainly do," she laughed. "They're so playful. Aura Short Story I 111

They can't help that, I suppose. They're raccoons. You've not seen them?" "No," he said. "I never knew raccoons lived here." "They most certainly do," she said. "A mother and a father raccoon and two little raccoons. When they're all in one spot, it's like a pile of hairy cushions. Then the pile shakes, scatters and runs every which way, knocking things about. They love to play." "The flowers," he repeated. "Oh, of course, the flowers," she When they're grinned. "Yes, they do sometimes all in one spot, spill the flowers. But they make me laugh, and that's so impor­ If's like a pile of tant. And you can always hairy cushions. straighten the flowers. I enjoy straightening flowers. It's a nice, little something more to do." He frowned and watched Ellen's name. "Your dear wife, then?" she said, following his eyes. He nodded. His face grew warm. "That's my Horace, right there,'' she said, pointing. "Horace Talbot. He's old-fashioned too. It's eight weeks now. Eight whole weeks. I'd like to come each evening, you know, but, of course one can't come each and every single evening. But it is proper to come often, wouldn't you say, if you truly love someone?" He was embarrassed. "I don't know," he said. "One can do as one chooses." "Yes," she said, peering down. "Of course. Ellen, there. It's been three years, now, hasn't id Three years certainly must be enough time." He was shocked. 112 I Aura Short Story

"Eight weeks, I should say," she went on, "is no time at all. I hear Horace in the bathroom sometimes." Her eyes fluttered. She made tapping motions against the air. "I hear a noise and say, 'Horace is in there shaving,' or 'Now Horace is opening the cup­ board.' Sometimes I hear the car in the driveway, or I hear the lawnmower outside. Nothing is settled. And I think, tomorrow Horace will stop teasing me-Horace loved to tease me. He'll open that door and he'll say, 'Surprise, Aggie!' and we'll go to Alustiza'a for lamb chops or to the theatre or to a ballgame." She blushed, moved to arrange the flowers, stopped. "This must all seem quite silly to you.After all that time, I mean. There must be comfort in saying, finally, that a door is closed. And always will be closed. And that's right, certainly." She tried to brighten. "Then another door might be open, mightn't it? I've been telling myself that for eight weeks. A house has many rooms, Ivan, even if one is closed forever." A shadow crossed her face. Warneke was thrilled. He was lonely? Was it as simple as that? No one had to be lonely, even if, philosophically speaking; you understood that you were condemned, as if by fate, to be alone. A house with many rooms. He liked the metaphor. He had lived with Ellen in a house for forty years. Each room had been shared, but if you thought a bit further, in terms of a whole life, a house did have more than enough room. People came, occu­ pied it with you for a time, and were gone. Why shut up the entire house? Why not throw linen over used furniture, close the door where they had been and go on? There were many rooms. Today was a room. "You must have loved your Ellen very much, then," she said. He was embarrassed again. He wanted to say, certainly, of course, but this seemed impertinent, like bragging about how well you played a bridge. Aura Short Story I 113 "She was a fine lady," he said, and felt foolish. "A lady," she mused. "My Horace was a real gentle­ man too. The kindest and gentlest man I ever did know. But he had a sense of humor, mind you. How I would laugh! I was never bored, not for one minute in all the years. There was nobody like my Horace." They were uncomfortable, hovering beneath the oaks. He looked at her. She was not that old. She was, almost, attractive. What a thought! He was done with that. That had left as well, like a cruise ship chartered away by the careless young. "Do you like lasagna, Ivan?" she asked shyly. "Lasagna," he repeated. "I have the most fantastic recipe for lasagna. It was my mother's recipe. She got it from her mother. I have all the family recipes in a box at home. Beef. Chicken. Lamb. Fish. Every dessert. Cobblers. Cakes. Cookies. I have recipes for ten different kinds of oatmeal cookies, and not a one of them from any book." She grinned. "Like Moses down from the mountain, I could bring you a marvelous dish every night from now on, and you'd never eat the same thing twice. My Horace loved to eat.Anything I fixed, Horace ate it, and held out his plate for more." She smiled. "You do like to eat, don't you Ivan? It is a pleasure that can last all our lives." He was stunned. "1-1 don't eat too much, these days, I mean," he said. "I don't have much appetite, it seems." "No appetite," she declared, standing straight. "Every man must have an appetite. What's the point of being a man if you don't eat? What do you eat? Do you go out?" "Out? No, not very often. A little deli food some- 114 I Aura Short Story times. But I find they salt it too much. I mostly fix a little some- thing at home." "Like what? What do you fix?" She took a step closer. She was certainly younger than twelve years. It could be fifteen years, easy. "Sometimes I fix a little sandwich. Or I have cereal. I like cereal with fruit. I eat a lot of fruit. Bananas. Pears. Apples." "Sandwiches?" she cried. "Cereal? For dinner? What way is that for a man? You're keeping your stomach in jail. A man's stomach needs to be free. A man's stomach needs to live." In spite of himself, he laughed. "That's it," he said. "Life is a feast? You should fV!erlot is a eat my lasagna. You should eat my cacciatore. What do you say, Ivan? red diamond Lasagna and wine. You have to in my crystal. have red wine with lasagna. Tell me you do drink wine, Ivan. Don't tell me you drink water with food. "Well, sometimes, 1-" "You're certainly not a beer drinker, are you? You're a wine drinker. Believe me, I can tell. A me riot is the ticket, wouldn't you agree? Lasagna is beautiful on my white China. And my crystal. Me riot is a red diamond in my crystal. What's the matter? You're not bashful, are you? You wouldn't want Mama Aggie's original lasagna, with secret herbs and spices? Ivan, it's not good to cook for one." "Yes," he smiled happily. "Yes, I would very much, Agatha." "Naturally, you would," she said. "I'm what you'd call a great cook. I'm better even than great. I'd cook you dishes you've very seen before. I'm very proud of my cooking. You've never had cooking until you've tasted Mama Aggie's cooking." Aura Short Story I 115

She tapped him on the chest. Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes burned. "I could write a book, Ivan," she declared, "I'm the best damned cook you'll ever know." Confused, she stared at him a moment, turned, looked at the flowers and skipped back. Warneke's heart leapt. Why must each day be the same? How fine to have someone, just for the end, for age to be friendly, after the squander of desire and greed. How lovely to hold just one hand, to smile and watch the sunset. He stepped to her side. "When?" he asked. "When what?" "When do you want me to come for lasagna? I'll buy the wine, of course. You said me riot, Agatha. I'll bring two bottles of merlot." She looked into his eyes, which were as blue as the sky. "Tomorrow evening?" she said. "What's wrong with tomorrow evening?" "Nothing's wrong with tomorrow evening. That would be perfect, in fact. Where?" "My house," she said. "What's the address?" I live at I 025 Acacia Circle." He watched her. He was happier. "What time, then?" "What's wrong with seven o'clock?" she replied. "Then seven o'clock it is." He blushed. "This is really so fine, Agatha." He liked her name. He liked that it had three syllables. "Thank you, Agatha. Very much:' . "Her eyes widened. "Well, Ivan, why shouldn't I cook agam.,, She moved away. 116 I Aura Short Story

"I won't eat a thing all day,Agatha" he called after her. "I'll starve myself. I'll have two helpings of everything. You'll see, Agatha." She waved without turning and disappeared beyond the piracantha. He heard and engine.A brown Mercedes moved toward the cemetery entrance. The next day he went to the liquor store to buy the wine. He fussed all day about what to wear and when to get ready. He watched a movie on TV. He thumbed through some old National Geographics.At six-thirty he went to the car. When he found I 025 Acacia Circle, the brown Mercedes was in the driveway. He parked his car and got out. He stared at the house. It was a very large house. He guessed eight or ten rooms. There were a lot of lawn, oak trees and a brick walk going up to the front door. He stood on the walk. He held two bottles of merlot in a brown paper bag. The house was dark. Not even a porch light. Maybe she had a thing about electricity. She went about the house after him, switching off the lights. He smiled, stepped to the front door and pushed the black button. He heard chimes. He straightened the collar of his shirt. He waited a moment. He pushed the button again. Warneke stepped back and look up at the second story. All the rooms were dark. He went back and pushed the but­ ton. The porch light came on at the house next door.A young man came out. He was barefoot, wore a tee shirt and frayed cutoffs. A metallic listening device was stuck into his right ear. He carried a silver case the size of a pack of playing cards. He walked over. "Mrs. Talbot's not there," the young man said quietly. "Mrs. Talbot's not there?" Warneke repeated. "She's gone," the young man tried to explain. Aura Short Story I 117

"Gone?" Warneke asked. "We were supposed to-" "Sir, she's dead." Warneke's mouth was dry. "She was supposed to be somewhere last evening," the young man explained. "She didn't go out. So some people came over. They found her. In the house." "In the house," Warneke said. "They found her in the bathroom," the young man said. "She was in the tub. Sir, she did something to herself." The bottles crashed against the stone walk. He turned, ran to his car and sped away. The next evening Warneke drove to the cemetery. The last rays of the sun shone through the trees. Warneke crouched behind the piracantha. He command­ ed a view of Ellen's marker and the marker where Agatha Talbot's name would appear. It was wrong to spill flowers. His legs ached. He squeezed the shotgun and waited for raccoons. 118 I Aura Poetry

Lind!:J Owens

The Midnighl Polh

Today from the atrium the oleanders crept. It has been coming, I have foreseen it in the dark where soil is kept, in spider cracking windows and the pale greenery's lost steps. though ·I had once thought the escape to be inept.

I used to worry their fragile buds, when seeking freedom from prism light, would not survive the harsh transition would not survive the come-on night. Now I see the morning to come after the midnight run would be the first light born, negative the shield, through which the oleanders used to see: the dawn, the triumph, oh the sight! Harmony of the dew with daylight's furious might and the sun breaking the way - it makes the gloom so bright while I, in my room with my pill candy and my Aura Poetry I 119 sheets: the white is just too white and the walls are Mary clean. I watch them from my window, I hunger at the sight. I envy them their beauty, for their strength, and for their flight. 120 I Aura Poetry

Fredrick Z~deck

A Brown and Speckled Sparrow

There's a bird fidgeting at the attic window, a brown and speckled sparrow reappearing every few seconds to watch me while he munches on a berry or bug he's brought to the sill. I pose for him - pretending I'm an oil painting he's come to admire. He seems agitated. I resume my writing. He nibbles on his grasshopper appearing to be much more content.

Suddenly I understand. The window is his TV screen and I his favorite show. I make a few faces. They go unnoticed. I dip my pen again and return to my poem. When I glance up -the sparrow, a pearly and sapphire splendor in the ivy, is cocking his head and pecking at the glass. I try to come into better focus but worry he's trying to change the channel. Aura Poetry I 121

Louis Faber

Win~er

It is 0° and the cold seeks to escape through window sashes and door frames, to find succor and warmth on the couch or tucked in a corner of the bedroom where it thinks it can hide unseen until spring arrives. Even the squirrels are staying hidden leaving icicles to do their death defying falls into th~ waiting snow, with no one to see their passing. 122 I Aura Poetry

Lowell Jaeger

Referral lo lhe "Specialisl"

Tabloid horoscope warns of two rogue planets in Cancer, Friday's full moon. Such hooey! Still, I won't fly this weekend no matter how low the fare.

Stare into the night sky, strained to recollect how once-upon-a-time I could dive from high cliffs into the dark waters, swim unscathed to the opposite shore. Crossing streets I quit looking both ways. Wandered shirtless, barefoot down graveled roads and scoffed at sunburn in my bed again back home.

Fried myself red in the lifeguard chair, blistering my shoulders and chest, my nose peeled raw, shiny as stripped chicken flesh. Pedaled hundreds of hours, my neck aglow in solar radiation ... surfacing all these years later, sores on my face and back.

Friday, I'll stand exposed to Dr. X's full inspection. Two planets in Cancer. Aura Poetry I 123

Full moon. Can't stop thinking how stars blink and extinguish. I breathe out and breathe in. Can't stop the heavens to save my skin. 124 I Aura Poetry

Skye Joiner

I Live in a House of Origami

I Live in a House of Origami

I live in a house of origami, of neatly tucked parts and acute angles, knowing that if I unfolded all worried wrinkles, all bends, the sheet would then spread to create a field, exchanging titles from that of 'homeowner' into 'farmer.'

Afternoons to trail the rows of blue lines across the pages pondering what may grow of trees may ground; Nighttimes then for lying down, facing up, where the airplanes see an illustration from three dimensions subtracted depth to return to his roots. Aura Poetry I 125

Sk~e Joiner

To Live In B~ Living Wilhoul

Spontaneity: a building without walls; rooms of no room, or infinite. Bathrooms lacking ceilings.

Neighbor's tree growing in the kitchen; the kitchen itself. Thought as action, or vice versa. A fruit-bite.

So ignore the carnivores; we'll piss on trees, call it morality. 126 I Aura Art

Jeff Chambless

Cahaba Aura Creative Nonfiction/Barksdale Maynard Winner I 127

Jim Owens

Polaroid Angel

On a cold Sunday morning on a winding back road, someone noticed her face down in the rocks. The someone was going to church and saw her body lying on the gravel pull off looking like a doll flung from a car landing wrong-side-up right where the road led into a thicket of pines and sweet gums. She was almost home. Lying there, I imagine her looking like a wayward angel blown from the night sky-searching, feel­ ing her way. Flying under the cover of night when angels move unnoticed, going where angels go. She was close. Her home was not far-5 miles maybe. Fourteen years before, I dropped her off at her home every day after high school. She loved to ride and worshiped my GTA. IT was one of the fastest in town cocked and loaded with a 350 cubic-inch V8 engine sporting a 5.7 -liter carburetor. It could jump from 0 to 60 in 6.5 seconds like candy-apple red lightning. Beneath its hood it was a Corvette with a Trans Am body-easily as fast but in disguise. I turned the key for the first time in the summer of 1989 with 3 miles registered on the odometer. I was 16. I took curves posted for 25 at speeds exceeding 60. The suspension owned the road sticking 16" tires to the black asphalt like bubble gum. It never failed. Guys wanted to race seeing it parked at Taco Bell with girls all around. Pretty and sweet girls, wearing too much make up, hovering like honeybees. Beautiful below caked powder. Beneath the good, the GTA's 235 horsepower waited and hissed, red-hot, inciting all of them-wanting them to pick their poison. It never said a word-just sat-everyone from high school here. Guys with fast cars of their own wanted a shot. 128 I Aura Creative Nonfiction/Barksdale Maynard Winner

I'd tell them there was no use. It's get under their skin and they'd want it even more. On a straight section of a desolate road they'd see what I meant. Sometimes they skipped the race and wanted to fight. Either way we took it to the back roads. Sometimes I dream. I can feel her and the cold white rocks. I can see her last breath breathing white dust and the stream of red blood from her nostril as it rolls into the white powder and thickens. I imagine the last minutes, like a lifetime for her, as her poison races through her veins. Nothing stolen. Money spent. Rings still on her cold fingers, thick Coke-bottle glasses broken beside her, one dime, and the tattooed angel wings on her back. Wings that could not lift her and take her home. They were a part of her I never saw. Her sister told me before they failed her. "The tattoo is only the tip of the iceberg," her sister said years ago. It was all part of a downward spiral. All things I never saw with my own eyes. One night, on the quarter mile at Pittman straight, she sat beside me while we raced a baby blue Corvette. The quar­ ter-mile straight was dangerous. It started on a curve and ended in pine trees. By the time I hit 70 the pines were dead ahead. I locked the disc brakes and we slid sideways until the wide, sticky tires found purchase in the gravel. A few feet away our dust blew toward stout pines coating them like sugar. It was a game of chicken against trees, not racing. To win, I'd brake at the last possible moment. I pushed the limit between speed and stopping-winning versus crashing. I never lost. The guy in the baby blue Corvette drove up and said he missed second. He wanted another shot. We lined up, side by side, on the dark road for another go. Engines screaming. I knew he found second the second time when I heard his rear tires bark as they caught the asphalt. I didn't matter. I smoked him. Aura Creative Nonfiction/Barksdale Maynard Winner I 129

Every day, driving from school, she'd want to stop and buy candy. She always bought Reese's Cups. She'd sit half on the console next to me and half on her sister's lap chewing chocolate and playing the stereo. Her sister telling her the junk food would make the pageant dresses too tight. She'd turn the volume way up. Poison: Every Rose Has Its Thorn. I called her Reese's Cup because her breath smelled like peanut butter while I drove. Years later, choruses rose from warm and clean churches while she lay spread-out on chalky white rocks. It was February -the coldest month in Alabama. During the She had the most beautiful face. It lay blanketed with dust n;ght someone on dirty blonde hair beside len her at the that back road while ragged rocks pressed images into her gravel road. soft skin. Frost came before daybreak. Frozen crystals glis- tened on pine needles and grass blades coating anything exposed between earth and sky. During the night, someone left her at the gravel road. She pushed the limit, too far. No one knew who took her there. No one knew who opened the door and threw her away. We called her glasses Coke-bottles because the lenses were thick like the old green ones. The bottles filled with the cocaine formula back when drug stores were apothecaries. The ones I'd look on the bottom of to see where they were bottled. The ones they'd give me a dime for when bottles seemed to mean something more. Like the clear ones I throw away-no longer worth anything. The bottles old men lace with peanuts and remember themselves, as boys, a long time ago. The last picture I have of her isn't real clear, but I can see her glasses in it. She looks beautiful with those thick, red- 130 I Aura Creative Nonfiction/Barksdale Maynard Winner rimmed glasses she'd wear if she wanted to see. Half the time she didn't. In school, everyone thought they were funny because they looked out of place on her. She wouldn't wear them. Most of the time her world was one big blur, but none of us really knew. She said they didn't make contacts strong enough. It was funny to see her wear them, but it's not funny anymore. She was legally blind. She was one year younger than me. I graduated high school and went to a small college to raise my GPA hoping to get into Auburn University. She dropped out of high school her senior year. In time we lost touch, but I saw her once in Birmingham before she got the angel wings. I have a Polaroid of the two of us at 5 Points Music Hall holding beers and smil­ ing. We weren't legal to drink, but we had aliases. Almost everyone from our hometown had at least one fake ID. Go to the right place, say the right thing, hand the right guy a $50 bill, and anyone could be anybody. I was home for Christmas. My arm is around her and hers is around me. It was 1993. She's wearing a grunge-flannel shirt and her crazy red-rimmed glasses. The huge frames held her prescription. In high school we took turns playing with the other's heart. In the picture we are friends. We were older. We were thinking the worst was over-survivors of our hometown and veterans of one another. The hometown was in the rearview mirror. That last time I broke her heart, but it didn't matter anymore. Shed' forgiven me. The dust had settled, at least, I thought it had. She finished her GED and was enrolled in Jeff State Community College. We were catching up at the big bar talking about old times.A man with a Polaroid camera asked to take our picture. We posed and he demanded ten dollars as if we'd owed it for two months. He was wired. He had a scheme-taking Polaroid pictures for another gram of coke. It Aura Creative Nonfiction/Barksdale Maynard Winner I 131 came clear when he walked away. After the picture developed, she looked at it and laughed. I put it in my shirt pocket thinking I'd wasted the money. In it I see her bright red lipstick-the most beautiful cheeks supporting the heavy glasses she certainly never wore in pageants. Her back to the curtain, she'd face blinding lights with an auditorium full of judges. She'd be dressed like a doll-look­ ing like an angel-her dress, hair, and make-up perfect. She'd smile at blinding lights and a blurry wall of flashing images while other girls saw smiling parents and camera flashes. If she could see the end of the runway, turn at the right moments, and walk back behind stage she would place in every pageant she entered. Most of the time she won. She never fell. One summer night four of us drove to Tuscaloosa for no reason. Her best friend sat beside my best friend in the back seat of the GTA. She sat beside me as I drove. It was a maiden voyage. It was a double date. The GTA was brand new rumbling west down 1-20/59 like a bright red arrow fired into the dark night. Looking back, I cannot believe how young we were. The girls didn't know what my best friend and I were doing. They didn't know why we wanted to drive so far or so fast. We wanted to feel the car move 90 and see the highway reflectors shooting like stars through the darkness. The T-tops were out and, above us, the night sky looked clear like a black ocean with deep sugary white pearls glistening. Wind blew our hair. The girls played music. I watched the streams of light from the oncoming lanes until they blurred into an infinite white line. It all flew past us into the darkness settling next to pines and sweet ~urns beside the warm road, 132 I Aura Art

Chad Johnson

Spirit Aura Creative Nonfiction I 133

Chris Mahan

Whor We Know

In the summer of 1983, I was a small boy with pudgy cheeks and sandy blonde hair. My mother dressed me in tan corduroy pants and light green IZOD shirts with alligator emblems. I was still an only child, and we lived in the town of Appalachian, Alabama, in a log house we rented from my Uncle J.R. for two hundred dol­ lars a month. It sat at the end of a long dirt road surrounded by chicken houses and cow pastures. Sometimes it smelled so bad in the mornings that I would hold my nose with one hand and shovel giant forkfuls of gravy and biscuit into my mouth with the other. My mother would laugh at me and tell me to "stop being so melo­ dramatic," as she filled my Scooby-Doo glass with a cloudy orange mixture ofTang. I was happy. My Aunt Boots lived next to us, and my Grandmother Nash's house was literally a rock's throw away from our front porch. I know because I tried it once and momma whipped me with a hickory switch. My Uncle Joey still lived with my grand­ mother then. He was a quarterback with bad knees, a maroon Pontiac Grand Prix, and a girlfriend named Susan who bit his lip while they were kissing, leaving it swelled and bloody for days. My momma's name was Susan too, and she told me that Joey ran over my first dog, Fred, by accident, but I don't remember that. What I do remember is peeing on Joey's back while he was drinking lemonade on my grandmother's front porch. He whipped me, but not with a hickory switch because Joey wasn't my mother, and only mothers used hickory switches. I got a new dog named Troopy. He was a small white dog with short hair and pointy ears. My mom said he was a beagle mix, but my dad just called him a mutt. I loved Troopy, but Troopy got cancer in his bones and my daddy said he had to be put to sleep. I cried and held him against my chest the day they took him, 134 I Aura Creative Nonfiction refusing to let him go until they promised to bring him back so I could bury him. My dad had once told me that when my great­ grandfather was alive, they had to bury their own dead, and that it was better in some ways because it helped with the grieving. I did­ n't understand exactly what grieving was, but I knew it was some­ thing you did when someone you loved died. I loved Troopy, and I knew I would need help with the grieving. Eventually, they pried him from my arms and took him away in our beat-up brown Honda Civic. They promised they would bring him back and I believed them. They lied. In the fall of 1983, I was five. We moved out of Uncle J.R.'s log house and moved into a little, brown, three-bedroom house in town. We still had a dirt driveway, but it was shorter than the other one. Everyone else in the neighborhood had cement drive­ ways with basketball goals. Daddy said we couldn't pave ours because the power company wouldn't let us, but I knew that wasn't the real reason. The real reason was that we were poor and cement was expensive. I knew we were poor because, sometimes, my mother would cry when we were at Wai-Mart and apologize because she couldn't buy me anything. I didn't care that we were poor though, because I was happy. But, being poor made my momma cry and my daddy mad, so at night I started asking God to make us rich. I don't think he heard me. In the summer of 1985, my cousin Crystal and I stayed at my Grandmother Mahan's house. I stayed there because Crystal was my best friend. Crystal stayed there because her mom and dad fought a lot. We spent our nights riding around in the back of my grandparent's aqua blue AMC Hornet singing songs and calling my grandparents geezers. Paw Paw would ignore us and look irritated. Granny would turn around, shake her fist, and threaten to give us a "knuckle sandwich." Then, she would smile and give us pepper­ mints instead. The door handles were rusty, and the sun had faded the car's aqua finish to a dull blue. Crystal called it the Smurfmobile. Paw Paw used to load us up in the Smurfmobile and take us to a restaurant that looked like a big red barn. It had a little rock Aura Creative Nonfiction I 135 stream inside that was filled with so many catfish that they could barely swim. Me and Crystal would dip our fingers into the water and touch them. Their skin was slimy and cool. Crystal said they felt like snot wads, so we made sure to touch them every time we came. One night, on the way home, I found a police stick in the hatchback of the Smurfmobile. It was long and black. The handle had little grooves in it that Paw Paw said helped you hold onto it. ran my fingers up and down the shaft, tracing every indention care­ fully. There were lots of them. When I asked Paw Paw why he had it, he didn't answer me right away. Then, after a long silence, he said, "I have it because I'm a union man." I wanted to ask more, but something in his voice made me hesitate. Paw Paw could be impatient and ornery. On Sundays, we would go and visit my Uncle Randy in the state penitentiary. Before we could see Randy, we would have to take off our shoes and go through metal detectors. Sometimes the guards would make us go into another room and strip down to our underwear. When they did that, my grandmother called them sons of bitches and flipped them the bird. They always threatened to make us leave, but they never did. Just before we walked through the door into the visitor's room, there was another metal detector and a big glass case that read CONTRABAND in big black letters. It was filled with tiny knives made from toothbrushes, vials of white powder, and dress shoes with hollow heels that contained Visine bottles full of brown liquid. Once we got inside, I asked Uncle Randy about contraband. He told me that the things in the case were stuff that people had tried to sneak in to the prisoners. He said that some of those people had ended up in prison too. I swallowed heavily and ran through the inventory of things that I had in my pockets making sure that none of them were contraband too. Uncle Randy, seeing I was nervous, hesitated for a second, and then leaned in close to me. "I think you're safe," he whispered, dragging his whiskers across my cheek as he moved away. I smiled. relieved, and waited 136 I Aura Creative Nonfiction patiently until my grandfather wasn't around. When he finally got up to get some coffee from one of the vending machines, I asked my Uncle Randy about the police stick. Randy glanced at me suspiciously. "Why don't you ask your Paw Paw. 7" I answered without hesitation. "I did, but he didn't tell me the truth." Randy looked at me surprised. "And what did he tell you?" I paused for a second, struggling to remember exactly what Paw Paw had said that night. Then, it came to me. "He told me he had it because he was a Union Man,'' I replied. Randy laughed and ruffled my hair with his big calloused hands. His arms were thick and covered with faded blue tattoos of panthers and Indian spears. I was in awe of him. He told me that Paw Paw hadn't really been lying, he just wasn't telling me the whole truth because he thought I was too young to understand. He said Paw Paw used to be the president of the union and that he used the stick to "beat the hell out of 'scabs' who were trying to cross the picket line." I still didn't understand, but I pretended that I did. I didn't want my Uncle Randy to think I was too young to understand things too. Sometimes, I would sneak the police stick out of the car and pretend to beat the hell out of "scabs," like the ones that were always on my knees and elbows. Crystal used to laugh at me and tell me I was stupid. Once I shook the stick at her and threatened to "beat the hell" out of her too. When she told my grandmother what I had said, I got a whipping. Apparently, grandmothers could also use hickory switches. When I was eight, I realized that Granny and Paw Paw loved Crystal more than me. My little league team won the champi­ onship that year, and they had promised to come and watch me play. I believed them, but they never came. They had always gone to Crystal's softball games and beauty pageants, and whenever Paw Paw came back from his truck driving trips, he would bring Crystal teddy bears and Barbie dolls. He never brought me anything. One night I cried and asked Granny why they loved her more, but Aura Creative Nonfictio n I 137

Granny said they loved us both the same. Then she said Crystal needed more love because I had a good home. I didn't believe her. One night Crystal and I were playing in the back of the Smurfmobile, and I accidentally hit her in the eye with the police stick. She cried a lot and Paw Paw yelled at me so loud that it sounded like thunder echoing in the car. His fist was clenched, and I thought he was going to hit me, but Granny stilled his arm and told me to go inside. The next day, Crystal's eye was purple and swollen. She still says I did it on purpose. I don't believe I did. The truth is, I don't know. When we were nine Crystal's dad got a job in Mobile as an electrician, and she had to move away. The day she left, her mother took us to Dairy Queen. We both had corndogs and French fries covered with swirls of ketchup and mustard. When .. . we watched the my Aunt Sharon wasn't look­ ing, we stole her onion rings road through a b1g and giggled as we shoved square hole that them whole into our tiny mouths. On the way home, had been cut in the we watched the road through floorboard of her a big square hole that had been cut in the floorboard of mom's orange her mom's orange Opel GT. Opel GT Crystal said it was there because the Opel used to be a stick shift. We used to drop things through the hole and watch them roll down the highway behind us. Normally, her mom would yell at us, but that day she just smiled and looked at us with sad eyes. When we got back to Crystal's house, my dad was there. Crystal's mom told her it was time to say goodbye. We stood at the top of the driveway crying and hugging each other for what seemed like hours before they finally pulled us apart. I kept crying until the Opel vanished out of sight. My dad said they would prob­ ably move back one day. I wanted to believe him, but I couldn't. 138 I Aura Creative Nonfiction

Crystal moved back a year later. When I was thirteen, I was a scrawny boy with spiked hair and a rat-tail. I listened to Guns 'N' Roses, wore oversized t-shirts, ripped blue jeans, and a scuffed white pair of L.A. Gears. Crystal listened to New Kids on the Block, wore her hair crimped and her bangs teased. I laughed at her and called her stupid. Sometimes, she would threaten to "beat the hell out of me." Crystal started going to parties that I wasn't invited to and, sometimes, Granny would try to make her ask if I could come too. Crystal didn't want to ask though, and I was too embarrassed to go when she did. Eventually, I stopped coming to my grandmother's. Crystal was popular and had new best friends. I got picked on and fought a lot. When I was fifteen, my friend Shawn gave me my first joint. I didn't feel anything, but Shawn said that he didn't either his first time. I kept trying it until I did. A few months later, I started drink­ ing too. I shot out police car windows with my pellet gun, and busted mailboxes with my old little league bat. I got arrested and assigned a probation officer named Hal Blackwood, who called me "Mr. Mahan" and screamed at me until a blue vein bulged from his forehead. At first, I was terrified of him, but after a while, I just did­ n't care. Shawn was murdered by his cousin's boyfriend. The guy had called Shawn's cousin a whore, so Shawn hit him. Shawn had never liked to fight, and he felt bad about it afterwards. Later that day, the guy came to Shawn's house saying he wanted to make up. Shawn was never the type to stay mad at anyone for long, so he apologized and offered to shake the guy's hand. The guy smiled, took Shawn's hand, and shot him twice in the face. Then he turned the gun on himself. Shawn was dead before the paramedics arrived. When I heard what had happened, I wanted to cry, but I couldn't. Then, one night, I went to my girlfriend's house and drank Aristocrat Vodka until the blades on the ceiling fan blurred and I threw up. She told me I cried all night and said I wanted to die. I believed her. I wasn't happy anymore. When I was sixteen, I drank a lot and drove a Ford Mustang. It was electric blue and had a six-cylinder engine. My parents said Aura Creative Nonfiction I 139 we were too poor to get the V8 and that I would have to make the payments myself. I got a job at Captain D's and started taking LSD with a guy named Eddie. One night, a new boy named Daniel came to work there. I found him in the freezer with his mouth full of stolen lemon meringue pie. I could tell he was embarrassed, so I pretended not to see him, but he knew I was just pretending. Daniel hated me because he was even poorer than I was, so one night he told a counter girl that I called her a whore. I cut a gash into his back with a grease scraper and got myself arrested. When it happened, I wanted to kill him. Afterwards I just felt bad and wanted to say I was sorry. I never did. Two months later, my grandparents bought Crystal a Mustang for her birthday. It was a VB convertible. Sometimes I thought about busting the windows out with Paw Paw's police stick, but Paw Paw wasn't a union man anymore, and the stick had disappeared. Six months later, Crystal's Mustang was repossessed. Two years after that, I flipped my Mustang doing 120 on the inter­ state. My mother told me that I should have been dead and that God must have been protecting me. I wanted to believe her, but I wasn't sure I could. When we were eighteen, Crystal and I stayed at my grand­ parents' a lot. Crystal stayed there because she lived there: I stayed there because, when I was home, my parents fought a lot. We started doing drugs together- coke, meth, LSD. Crystal's friend Terri moved in with us. Terri was a whore and I was an asshole, so we started dating. Crystal liked drugs, but we liked them more. When Crystal stopped, we didn't, so sometimes we would go into her room when she wasn't there and do them without her. Crystal's room was safe because Paw Paw trusted Crystal. One night, Terri overdosed in Crystal's room and almost died. She threw up in Crystal's floor and her nose bled all over the comforter. My friend Hollis said we should throw her in a ditch so that if she died, we wouldn't go to prison. I wouldn't let him, so he got mad and left us there. I told God that ifTerri didn't die I would stop doing drugs. I pretended to believe it. I lied. After that night, Crystal and Terri stopped being friends. 140 I Aura Creative Nonfiction

One afternoon, they got into an argument in my grandmother's driveway. Crystal called me a cokehead and Terri a whore. Terri hit her hard and slammed her head into the side of my car. It almost knocked her out. Crystal sat in the driveway holding her head and crying. We both laughed at her. I wanted to cry too. Terri and I moved into a house in Oneonta. I didn't talk to Crystal for two years, but we continued our feud in other ways. Crystal stole my guitar from my house one night and pawned it. So, one night, I snuck into her room and stole her Pearl Jam tick­ ets. Crystal got twenty-five dollars. I got two seats in the nose­ bleed section at the Civic Center. Terri was pissed off that the seats were so bad. I just laughed and wished Crystal was there instead. My mother said we were cousins and that we would always love each other. I believed we would. The truth was, I didn't know. Three months after we moved in together, I caught Terri sleeping with my best friend Hollis, my cousin Nate, and Nate's girl­ friend Brandy, but not at the same time. I picked her up from work one afternoon with all of her stuff stashed in the trunk. I told her we were going to the movies. Instead, I took her to her mom's house and threw her stuff out on the pavement. She called me an asshole and I called her a whore. We were both telling the truth. I haven't seen her again since. With Terri gone, Crystal and I managed to be civil to each other, but things weren't really the same until the day my grand­ mother passed away. When she died, we held each other and cried until we ached all over, just like we had in her driveway years before. We talked about the Smurfmobile and the restaurant that looked like a barn. We sang the geezer song together until every­ one in the room looked at us like we were crazy and busted out laughing. Later that night, we found a bag of my grandmother's peppermints and ate them until we cried some more. Neither of us said we were sorry, but we didn't have to. We were cousins and we would always love each other. Now I'm almost thirty. I still have pudgy cheeks, but my sandy blonde hair is now brown and receding slightly. I dress myself in baseball caps, Old Navy shirts, and ragged khaki shorts. I still listen to Guns 'N' Roses, but they now share a shelf with Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. My parents moved back to Appalachian, but now they live in a trailer instead of my Uncle J.R.'s log house. None of us are rich, and sometimes being poor still makes my mother cry. I gave up asking God to help though. Sometimes I still go to church with Mama. She says God tries to talk to me. I don't think I hear him. I stopped doing drugs, but I still drink too much. It worries my Dad sometimes. He says alcoholism runs in our family and that I should be careful. Sometimes I think he is right. Other times I don't know. Most of the time, I just try not to think about it. 142 I Aura Contributors

Ken Abbott writes both poetry and short stories, although he doesn't seem to have a long enough attention span to write novels. He has in previous competi­ tions placed third in poetry at the Southeastern Literary Festival and won first places in poetry, short fiction, and nonfiction at Gainesville Community College, where he edited the Chestatee Review. A native of Georgia, Ken is working towards a degree in Secondary Education with an emphasis on English.

Allison Bliss has a B.A in Fine Art and Interior Design from Judson College. After graduation in 1986, Miss Bliss dove into the job market of graphic arts and design as well as digital pre-press for many years. Miss Bliss is a member of the Birmingham Art Association and has participated in several member art shows, as well as "Random Acts of Art," and was honored with First Place in Photography in the Spring Juried Art Show "Art In Bloom."

Jeff Chambless lives in Birmingham and photographs in his spare time. He is a graduate of Transylvania University and Samford's Beeson Divinity School. He enjoys using antique cameras and films to capture modern scenes and photo­ graphing in infrared.

Jennifer Crossley is a reporter and page designer for the New York Times Company in Florence, AL. She graduated with a B.A. in communication studies from UAB in May 2007.

Richard Dokey has a collection entitled Pale Morning Sun, which was pub­ lished by the University of Missouri Press in the spring of 2004. It was nominat­ ed for the American Book Award and the Pen/Faulkner Award presented by Southern Humanities Review for the best story to appear in SHR in 2006. He has had a number of other stories published between 2002 and 2007. Currently he has a story in Confrontation and stories forthcoming in Weber Studies and Phantasmagoria.

William Virgil Davis has published three books of poetry: One Way to Reconstruct the Scene, which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize; The Dark Hours, which won the Calliope Press Chapbook Prize; Winter Light. He has published poems in Poetry, the Nation, The Hudson Review, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, The New Criterion, the Sewanee Review, The Atlantic Monthly, and in many other journals. He has also published half a dozen books of literary criticism, as well as scores of critical essays. He is professor of English and Writer-in-Residence at Baylor University.

Louis Faber is a corporate attorney and adjunct professor of English Literature in Rochester, New York. His work has previously appeared in such journals as Aura Literary Arts Review, Exquisite Corpse, Borderlands: The Texas Poetry Review, Midnight Mind, Pearl, Midstream, European Judaism, The South Aura Contributors I 143

Carolina Review and Worchester Review, among many others.

Joseph Farley is from Philadelphia, PA.

JC Freeman is living proof of a recession. Since 2004 he has been laid off three times due to business closure. Needless to say, he struggles to stay out of the 19th century more than he strives to stay out of the 21st.

Kelly French is a senior at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is currently seeking her Bachelor's Degree in Anthropology as well as English with a concentration in Creative Writing.

Jonathan Hicks is a student at UAB. He hopes to pursue a job in the media and law. He takes pictures of bands around town for fun and likes to partici­ pate in theatre and write in his free time.

Yu-Hui Huang is a student at UAB currently completing a B.F.A. in Art.

Lowell Jaeger has published two collections of poems and several chap­ books. Recently he compiled and edited an anthology of Montana poets, Poems Across the Big Sky, and sold more than a thousand copies in five weeks after publication. Several of his poems are forthcoming (or have recently been printed) in The Iowa Review, The Atlanta Review, The Coe Review, Poetry Flash, Georgetown Review, Big Muddy, and The California Quarterly. Currently he is compiling New Poets of the American West, an anthology of poets from western states.

Chad Johnson is BFA Art Major, and a senior at UAB

Rachel Johnson is completing her bachelor degree in Art at UAB.

Skye Joiner enjoys discussing the initiations of revolutions without any real endeavors to any such things. Sky likes to function on a purely superficial realm, where he enjoys drinking too much soda, thinks babies are really cute, and pets random dogs on the street.

Amy Kilpatrick, M.A. has advised Aura at UAB since 1998. Formerly she advised Marr' s Field Journal and Black Warrior Review as Director of Student Media at The University of Alabama, where she also taught photojournalism. As a photojournalist and reporter at The Tuscaloosa News, her photos have been published in The New York Times, L.A. Times, Newsweek, Newsday, Woman's World, Football Digest, USA Today, and many AP member publica- tiOnS.

Lauren Markham graduated from UAB with a BA in Spanish and is cur­ rently working in the School of Public Health at UAB. She is also a non-degree seeking graduate student looking to get into the creative writing program. 144 I Aura Contributors

Chris Mahan received both his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in English from The University of Alabama at Birmingham. During his tenure there, Chris received The Samuel B. Barker Award for Excellence in Graduate Studies and The Gloria Goldstein Howton Award in Creative Writing. In addition, Chris has also served as an editor of four publications including Aura which won both a Golden Crown and The National Pacemaker Award under his tenure. In addition, Chris has published poetry and creative non-fiction in various literary journals across the state. Currently, Chris is teaching creative writing courses for both Samford University and the Magic City Community Writers Program and spends his sum­ mer's working as an editor and instructor for The Ada Long Creative Writing Workshop for High School Students. When he is not teaching or writing, Chris enjoys his work as a volunteer for The National Literary Alliance and The Blount County Council for the Arts.

Alexander McAlpine is a graduate from Midfield High School1997, he gradu­ ated from Lawson State Community College 2005, with an Associate in Art. He now attends U.A.B. for his B.A. by the time spring semester is over he hopes to have my B.F.A by then. He has entered the Red Bull can of art, the 32nd annual student jury exhibition and had two of his works enter. He has also entered in the Walgreen's African- American contest.

Alex McClurg is a twenty year old artist attending UAB and plans to apply for the BFA this semester.

Allyssa Mitchell is UAB sophomore majoring in Communication Studies and a minoring in Studio Art. Her interests include writing, painting, traveling, graphic design and photography. She is currently the Photo Editor at Kaleidoscope and hopes to be an editor at The Rolling Stone in the future.

Lindy Owens is an English major at UAB with a minor in creative writing.

Jim Owens is a graduate of Auburn University with a B.A. in English (Creative Writing). Currently, he is working toward a M.A. in English from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Nathan Prewett serves as editor of Aura Literary Arts Review and attends UAB, majoring in English with a concentration on Creative Writing. When not writing he enjoys photography.

Jason Slatton currently resides in Birmingham's South Side and is both a writer and musician. He graduated from the University of Alabama at Birmingham with a B.A. in English and is currently completing an M.A. at UAB with a concentration in Creative Writing, and is also a graduate teaching assistant in that same pro­ gram. Jason is active in the Birmingham creative community and serves as an Assistant Editor for the Birmingham Poetry Review. He would like to thank Danny Siegel for turning him on to the films of John Ford and Frank Capra. Aura Contributors

Holly S. Schwalen is a student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham

Jonathan Scott is currently completing his Master's thesis in Creative Writing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Mark Trammell is an Graduate Student and Education Major at UAB, and has a Bachelor's Degree in English and an Associate's Degree in Film Directing. He is also the editor of the Forum Section of the Kaleidoscope and the resident film critic for DAB's newspaper. He loves movies, music, and literature, and writes short stories, poet­ ry, screenplays, and novels and works on short films in what little spare time he has, which isn't much. He also likes short walks on long beaches and long walks on short piers.

Miles Walls is a UAB senior studying Journalism, German and Arabic. He works as a copy editor for The Birmingham News and Aura Literary Arts Review and is managing editor of DAB's student newspaper, Kaleidoscope.

Myra L. Walker-Williams is a wife of over twenty years, mother of three, one of which is an Aura staff member, UAB student newspaper writer, and UAB Honor student. She has been writing as therapy because she did not talk to anyone as a child. She read a lot and became inspired by Emily Dickinson as a poet and Maya Angelou as an author. She has asked her children to write down what ever they can't say and "tell your secrets on paper, because it will never tell on you. Along with whatever you write always find the humor in any­ thing."

Xiao Jin Zou is a senior UAB Art studio major and Art history minor.

Fredrick Zydek is the author of eight collections of poetry. T'Kopechuck: the Buckley Poems is forthcoming from Winthrop Press later this year. Formerly a member of the faculty in creative writing at UNO and later Lecturer in Theology at the College of Saint Mary, he is now a gentleman farmer when he isn't writing. He is the editor for Lone Willow Press. ,, t1 L'resh as the first beam glittering on a sail. ~ That brings oqr friend.s .qp from the qnderworld.

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM