Four Quarters Volume 17 Article 1 Number 4 Four Quarters: May 1968 Vol. XVII, No. 4 5-1968 Four Quarters: May 1968 Vol. XVII, No. 4 Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/fourquarters Recommended Citation (1968) "Four Quarters: May 1968 Vol. XVII, No. 4," Four Quarters: Vol. 17 : No. 4 , Article 1. Available at: http://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/fourquarters/vol17/iss4/1 This Complete Issue is brought to you for free and open access by the University Publications at La Salle University Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Four Quarters by an authorized editor of La Salle University Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Hay, 196$ tour vol. XVH, no. 4 • fifty cents Quarters The Things of Spring • Page 1 ^ Short Story by Claude Koch The Threat • Page 5 A Short Story by J. F. Hopkins Interruption in August • Page 11 A Short Story by Thomas A. West, Jr. The Pianists •Page 18 A Poem by Richard Loomis The Manipulators • Page 19 A Short Story by Gerald W. Sadenwater Sedation • Page 28 A Poem by James Atwell, F.S.C, A God for Thelma • Page 29 Joe Stout 90 A Short Story by Robert Vietnam • P«ge 38 A Poem by Paul Ramsey Two Poems • Page 39 Vesper Dome Spider's Fool by Judy Dunn g The Broken Iconoclast, To My Mother, Automat • Page 40 Poems by Brendan Calvin, R. F. Kaczorowski, Paul Kelly Woman with Aquarium, Litany • Page 41 Poems by Sister Maura, S.S.N.D., Nancy J. Wiegel At the Frontiers of Knowledge, Overpass at 6 A M • Page 42 Poems by Minna F. Weinstein, Sister Maura, 5-SJV.D. Lux Perpetua, Found and Lost • Page 43 Poems by Richard Loomis, T. Alan Broughton The Old Man • Page 44 A Poem by Nathan Cervo Copyright 1968, by La Salle Collie Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Lyrasis IVIembers and Sloan Foundation http://www.archive.org/details/fourquarters91unse The Things of Spring • Claude Koch The last elusive freeze was in April whose arm she leaned wondered with around the twelfth, by mid-afternoon a familiar catch at the heart if this simply a bite in air, a slight bewilder- was what the afternoon was meant to ment in high sunlight. "Unseason- do. able," everyone said, though it hap- pened every year. On the playing II fields of St. Praed's, parents in light topcoats and young girls cocooned in Young Tilden came out early, their huge brothers' sweaters lingered while the managers were manhand- through the season's first track meet, ling low hurdles and raking the broad standing as indolently in small far jump pit. They were his classmates groups as those tranquil figures on in Upper School, but he turned away the Plaza of St. Mark's across a can- from them, bundled in his sweatsuit vas by Canaletto or Bellini. Light with his heart feathering and his and dark blues of St. Praed's, pale mouth puckered and dry. His legs blue and white of DeCourcy—all were like water under him for his cooling colors despite the sun, except first varsity meet. He cut across the for the odd high yellow-green of a field fanned with young green and peeled and tinted arching trunk of heard grackles singing fantasies they sycamore beyond the field against would forget by May in the boxhedge dark conifers that held the eye, a under the Headmaster's window. At summer spot above the milers pacing the far bend of the track where he there—yellow forsythia so distant would start his "kick" in an hour or and so spare they seemed like so, he tried to think how it would stringed butterflies rising from the be, but he could not imagine himself grass against Old Hall, and chaste thrust in a pack of runners—only far tone and even voices and the low behind, pulled to earth by the con- horizon of the hills beyond Fiddlers striction of his chest and the weight Run to the west composed the spa- of a tumbling heart. There were apple cious afternoon, elements of order trees beyond Middle School under and reserve. which he could stretch and, while a But runners rounding the final squirrel ticked above him, fall asleep turn revoked all that. Their anguish until it was over, forgetting and for- that distance had obscured, the heat- gotten—if he kept walking. ed pounding of their feet, the bodies He had not noticed before how unstringing like spent dolls, startled dark and speckled the branches of those onlookers into sympathy and the apple trees were and how the buds wonder. A slight woman in a flopping spread like casual rain. He sat against rose-shaded hat pressed a hand to her a trunk, all his senses animal-sharp, mouth, and the clerkish man on and pulled his long legs up against — Four Quarters his chest, hugging them and shiver- changing and not just the season. ing. He closed his eyes to slits, and the His parents would be out there managers diminished and the track soon. "Youngsters running about in was far away. Thrusting his hands their BVD's," his father had remark- underneath his jersey and rolling the ed the night before at supper ; "I nev- cloth up around them he pulled some- er could see what it was all about." It thing in to protect himself. Is this was the way he said something wry, what his mother did? He'd held his his head bent to his plate and his scholarship for a year now, and as voice muffled, as though he were far as he knew, his summer work had dead sure no one would even smile paid the extra costs, if that was it. though they always did; and now he He dropped his head back against the was confessing he'd never seen a trunk and closed his eyes, and pro- track meet: "Not in all my life." jected on the lids he saw himself ris- "Your father and I are hardly the ing and walking away, though he did athletic type, Billy." not know where. Perhaps he dozed, Young Tilden was frightened into forgetting where he was. When he a detachment like a dream's, so that opened his eyes, it was to the illusion this time he thought of them without of a bright figure tangled in the the lonely dryness in his chest of the branches of the flowering trees, while last year or so whose meaning he birds sang the scents of other flow- could never comprehend. He was six- ers, not yet there, up from the earth teen, and his parents seemed to be of his youngest memories. receding from him, growing stranger "Son," the figure disengaged from and more frail, though their physical the trees, and young Tilden saw that appearance hardly changed. His its jeweled and wavering outlines mother now—he breathed deeply to were compounded of his tears, "what still the unnerving throb of his breath are you doing out here?" and filled his thought with the fra- "I'm scared, Coach," he said, star- grance of all the springs of his life tled into a frankness that bewildered —his mother he could see quite clear- him. He rubbed his sweat jersey over ly as though she were stepping to- his eyes, busy with it longer than ward him through the lattice of low his shame required. branches that protected him from The man held out a hand and field and track. She was bent slightly swung Tilden to his feet. "Your moth- at the waist, and she pressed her hand er and dad are out there. I was just to her side; but her face under the talking to them." He was a wiry, odd loped brim of the rose-colored little middle-aged person, with eyes hat she'd made herself was serene. and skin tightened as though to shield Why did she hold her hand so to her himself from sunlight or dust that side? She never spoke of herself might rise like a whirlwind at any alone, and sometimes he felt that moment. both he and his father were perform- He squinted up at Tilden. "You're ing before her—that she'd taken that going to be a runner," he said. part on herself in her life, to be an "You've got what it takes to be up audience of one to applaud them. there with the best of them." Such crazy thoughts he'd been hav- The boy bowed his head and smiled ing, as though the whole world were like his father. They walked in, bend- " The Things of Spring ing under the blossoming limbs. It "He'll be all right once he gets kept him occupied so that he need not started, Bob." The familiar phrase answer and need not look at his was what his mother would say. coach. He thought how it was true "Your coach was talking to us. that they all protected him, but from He's a quiet little man." His father what he could not know. They came spoke to his mother, but young Til- out of the grove, and the greensward den knew it was for his benefit. "I spread, field beyond expansive field, didn't expect that." His father's ap- through the largess of bright air to proval was always indirect. Now he the low evergreen horizon and the raised his eyes to the boy and smiled, town.