A COLLECTION OF WRITINGS

VOLUME N o 1 Late Fall, 2013 When we say we’re creative writers, we mean it. It doesn’t matter if we’re working on a blog post for a client or a story for a literary magazine; we love what we do, and we’re good at it. We hope this survey of both our professional and creative work inspires you to think differently about the story you want to tell. And, of course, we hope you enjoy.

- The writers of Metonymy Media

metonymymedia.com 1 8 Chasing Dying Things This Is How You Stay Alive By: Scott Bla nton By: Theresa Beckhusen Pg. 4 Pg. 22

2 9 About the Libertine IPL Project Greenspace Supports By: Cy Wood Neighborhood Development Pg. 5 By: Ca rl Corder Pg. 25 3 A Study in Sand 10 By: Rya n Brock Philosophy Major Pg. 7 By: Rya n Brock Pg. 27 4 Brandon, Florida 11 By: Wade Thiel The Long Slow Burn Pg. 12 By: Cy Wood Pg. 30 5 Dear Laura 12 By: Wade Thiel The Secret STEM Lives of the Founding Fathers Pg. 13 By: Nate Brock Pg. 32 6 The Glory and Majesty of Stephen Sondheim; 13 or, A Brilliant Man with a Stained Sweater Indiana Family of Farmers By: Theresa Beckhusen By: Scott Bla nton Pg. 15 Pg. 35

7 14 The Walnut Bowl Transfer Art of Shrinking By: Nate Brock By: Ca rl Corder Pg. 19 Pg. 38

2 metonymymedia.com 1 Chasing Dying Things

Scott Blanton

This city is on fire and I’ve been chasing dying things ever since you said, our voices are like birds singing funeral songs—we can never remember everything we have forgotten, but we can always forget what we have remembered. And I wonder how long our lives would last if we never touched each other in the darkness of my cramped bedroom at the house in the ghetto. I grew to hate my own two hands—the only things I used to be sure of. I told you I have more magic in me than you know. Your only response was to smile and whisper in my ear, I may never know the magic that runs in your veins, but I’ll leave your heart wishing that I did. And I can’t remember any other damn thing you ever said to me.

4 metonymymedia.com 2 3 About the Libertine A Study in Sand

Cy Wo o d R y a n B r o c k

To the writers, the artists, thespians and rogues, “Once the cloth is laid down, I pick up this brush and get down to business,” said the man with white hair, his back turned to Lift your glasses as we toast the history of a craft. We toast the a massive pipe. “I find that if you move like this, you get the pioneers who knew and understood their spirits, and passed that best pieces.” He began to run the wire brush along the rusting down. We toast the moonshiners and the bootleggers and the metal’s surface and flakes of cerulean paint fell to the ground speakeasies that wouldn’t falter. We toast the bartenders who like snow. served the steel millers, the senators, the blue and the white “Yes,” acknowledged Amit, a scrawny young man of collars together. no more than twenty. “Like this.” He reached out to take the brush from his new mentor, an old man named Jehanzaib with We toast to those now elevating the standard, and those with dry skin and cracked feet. Very carefully, very naturally, Amit nothing to hide. To those who dedicate themselves to their tickled the towering pipe with a loose wrist, freeing only the craft: to learning, to immersing, to apprenticing, to measuring loosest chips of paint from their canvas. and to polishing. We toast to the plates we enjoy, to the drinks “Please, my hands belong to a worn man. Use that we drink, to the experiences we share when we gather and celebrate. strength,” Jehanzaib laughed as he slapped Amit in the back. “All right,” said Amit. He began to push with his To the craft of mixing, of serving, of blending, and enjoying. shoulders. His wrist grew oddly stiff as he leaned into the To taste, to flavor, and to the needs we fulfill. To casting our tube, an ant pushing a watermelon. The pipe was at least forty restraints aside. years old and was abandoned during the revolution. Amit and Jehanzaib lived half a mile away, next door to each other in a Tonight, we drink to the spirit of the pioneer. pair of shacks that rested up against the main. The many other homes in their village were spread around like this with pockets of one or two resting against the many pipes that stretched out from the refinery.

6 metonymymedia.com “Very, very good, Amit. Can you handle this by yourself Amit stopped and looked at the man. He looked over for a moment while I go grab the jars from my house?” his shoulder at the trail of bare rust he had blazed in a few short Amit kept scrubbing, with both hands now, and let out minutes and turned back to Jehanzaib. “Thanks. I wanted to an affirmative grunt. race the sun,” he said, nodding to the fading light on the horizon. “Just keep doing that,” said Jehanzaib. “This is a quick “That’s the spirit. You are a racehorse. You must find lesson. By the time I get back, we will have to stop for the day.” your own carrot.” “Okay.” “Right,” said Amit, wiping his face, ready to move on. “Thanks, boy,” said the teacher, slapping Amit’s back “What do we do now?” again, turning toward the sun to walk home. Amit stopped and Jehanzaib pulled the bag onto the tarp and opened it. backed up to inspect the pile of chips and dust that lay on the He pulled out a mason jar and tossed it to his apprentice. “Be drop cloth below him. Dropping the brush, he knelt down and careful. These are hard to come by.” scooped some of the loot into his hands and crushed it. The fine powder it produced was much brighter than the grimy blue that still covered the top of the pipe like frosting on a rusted éclair. “Perfect,” breathed Amit. “The yellow twilight covered “Don’t get lazy on me now, boy,” shouted Jehanzaib the empty ghetto in a fitting from the distance. Amit looked up, but the old man was too small a shape [ film of rusty orange” ] to make out in the face of the sun that so brilliantly blazed on the horizon. “Sorry, just moving the cloth, sir!” “Yeah, yeah,” Amit thought he heard Jehanzaib say. “Okay.” The young man stood up and brushed the dust off his “Well,” began Jehanzaib, “now we begin the happy hands while looking around at his neighborhood. There was process of getting the shit at your feet into these little jars.” The really nothing worth noting beyond the pipe and Amit’s shack, old man got down on his knees and began pushing mounds of which was almost invisible next to the setting sun. The yellow blue sand into the crock in his hands. twilight covered the empty ghetto in a fitting film of rusty “Do you have another brush for this?” asked Amit. orange and only the standing water in the dirt roads and the “I tried that long ago. The hand is the best tool for this job.” heaps of glass and plastic in peoples’ meager yards shone back as “Okay.” Amit’s eyes scanned his surroundings. Children were laughing “You’re not gonna let the old man fill more jars than in the distance. you, are you, boy?” He picked the brush up and got back to work, scouring “Not a chance,” smiled Amit as he dropped to the ground. every reachable inch, covering himself and the sandy ground “That’s a good horse,” muttered Jehanzaib. He moved under his feet in unnatural blue powder. As he moved, the piles down a bit, pulling the sack of jars with him. “You are much of chips and powder heaped along with him. By the time the taller than me. Your piles are taller, too, because you can reach higher.” sweat from his brow reached his mouth, it tasted like chalk and metal. “Thanks,” said Amit. Before long, the old man was back. He was carrying a The pair made their way down the cloth until the large satchel on his back that clanked with each of his steps. piles were no more. They filled nine jars, a very good number “Good progress,” he observed, stopping at the edge of the tarp according to Jehanzaib. Amit was made to carry the satchel as and gently setting the sack on the ground. they marched back to their homes and the old man slung the

8 metonymymedia.com dusty cloth over his shoulders. By the time they reached Jehan- zaib’s shack, any light leftover from the day had dissipated like smoke into the night sky. Jehanzaib entered first, walking through the shower curtain he used as a front door. “Don’t worry about your feet,” he said as Amit entered the house. It was small and smelled like Amit’s sweat tasted. Two walls were made of stacked cinder blocks and the other two of something much flimsier, all four of them covered in spotted sheets. There was a mattress in one corner and a single table in the center of the room, and on top of the table sat a clay pitcher and a basin filled with a soupy blue liquid. “I’ve never worried about them before,” said Amit. “Where should I put the bag?” Jehanzaib turned back after dropping the cloth against the far wall. He pointed to a small pile of paint-filled jars in the corner. “Empty it over there. Be careful.” Amit decided to take the powder jars out one at a time, stacking them neatly around the pile of finished work that was already there. “How many of these jars do you have?” he asked as he placed one of the paint jars from the floor in the elastic waist of his pants. “About seventy. I used to have more, but many of them have disappeared.” Amit froze. Without turning around, he calmly asked, “Where are they going?” “I don’t know,” breathed the old man. “Some people don’t return them after they’re empty, I think. I guess I should start asking for a higher deposit.” “Probably.” Amit stood up and looked around again. “So, you have blue in the bowl from before. We got lots more of the blue today. Do we start another color tomorrow?” “Nobody cares what color they get. In this place, boy, paint is paint.” “I suppose. Why don’t you paint your home?” Jehanzaib laughed. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Why doesn’t the paint man bother with any paint himself? I guess I’ve just never spent enough time here to care.” Amit walked to the door. “So, then, what do we do next?”

10 metonymymedia.com “In the morning I’ll show you how to pound what we Dropping the brush, he knelt down and put the lid back on the got today into a finer dust. Then we can work on the hard part.” paint jar before blowing out the candle and crawling into bed. “The hard part?” “It takes an expert eye to get the right mix. If we add too much water to the powder, the paint will be no good,“ said Jehanzaib as he walked over to his bed. “And that’s bad for business,” said Amit. He turned to leave, but stopped before crossing the threshold. “When do we get to make a different color?” Jehanzaib slowly took a seat on the mattress. “When it’s good for business. The blue from our pipe here will be just fine while I train you.” “Okay. Good night, sir.” “You, too, Amit. Thanks for your help tonight. It will be nice to have a fresh set of hands with me.” “I look forward to learning more,” said the young man as he turned to leave. He crossed the yard carefully so not to get his feet muddy and slowly walked through the blanket hanging on the front of his shack. Inside, his mother and sister were already asleep. He continued to tiptoe as he crept around their bed in the middle of the floor and lit a candle in his corner. Just like Jehanzaib’s house, every wall of Amit’s house was draped with some kind of cloth or another. So, too, were all of Amit’s personal belongings covered, giving the shanty a false air of order or cleanliness. He reached for a small pile to his left and pulled off the sheet to reveal a collection of the old man’s mason jars, each filled with a different color of reconstituted paint. Dried brushes lay strewn across the floor and one of the jars was filled with murky water. Lifting his shirt, he reached for the jar of blue paint he had stolen from his elderly neighbor and set it with the others after removing its lid. He stood up to pull the sheet down from one of the walls, revealing a half- finished painting of the oil refinery across town. He reached for a brush and wet it in the glass, then dipped it slowly into the fresh jar of paint. Very carefully, very naturally, Amit tickled the wall with a loose wrist, adding a series of blue pipes to the labyrinthine mass of tubing and smoke stacks. After just a few moments, he stopped and backed up a bit to inspect the painting on the wall before him.

12 metonymymedia.com 4 Brandon, Florida

Wa d e T h i e l

Brandon, a census designated place in Hillsborough County, Brandon, Florida, is a great place to live, work, and raise a Florida, is home to around 103,000 residents dispersed through- family, but no place is perfect. Neighborhoods in Brandon out the 33 square miles that make up the city. Located just east are just as susceptible to crime as any other city. On April 1, of Tampa and west of Plant City and Lakeland, Brandon is close 2010, two men broke into an apartment home in Brandon. enough to all three cities that its residents can drive into Tampa When the two men entered the home armed with a pistol the to enjoy a Tampa Bay Buccaneers NFL game and then come resident of the home and his friend got a shotgun. The friend home after the game, or go to Lakeland and enjoy a weekend of the resident opened fire on the two robbers, wounding one participating in water skiing, fishing or swimming on one of of them but accidentally shooting and killing his friend. When Lakeland’s many lakes. Residents don’t have to leave Brandon to the police arrived they found the resident of the apartment have some fun. Brandon has many great restaurants including dead on the floor, and found the wounded robber outside of the Beef O’Bradly’s, and plenty of stores. Many of them are located apartment building. The friend of the resident was not charged at the Westfield Shoppingtown, which was originally Brandon with the accidental killing of his friend. The robber is facing Town Center. Also there is a movie theater and the Florida life in prison. One step in deterring a home invasion robbery is academy for the Performing Arts (FAOPA) which is based at to install a security system. Although a security system cannot Music Showcase, where residents can go and see several different prevent all crime, it can deter criminals form breaking into your types of music, theatre, and art shows. In addition to different home and will also alert police in the case of a break in. types of shows, the FAOPA also offers lessons to aspiring artists. Brandon offers its residents everything they need to have a happy and fulfilled life.

14 metonymymedia.com 5 Dear L aura

Wa d e T h i e l

You don’t know anything about how it happened. You don’t friend lying dead next to two burglars every time you blink your know what it was like. How scared I was. You just blame me. eyes, and know that it is your fault. Sometimes I wish you had You don’t know what it was like to have to defend yourself been there. So you could know what it is like. So you would against two guys with guns. know that it was an accident. That it wasn’t motivated by love You don’t know what it’s like to have lived. To have or hate. When they banged on the door Daniel knew. He knew your best friend die by your own shaking hands. You don’t know that they weren’t there to buy. They were there to steal. They what it’s like to walk down the street and have everybody look were there to fuck us up, take the cash, and whatever else we had. at you with pain, pity, and anger. Some of them just look sad, shake their heads. Most of them try not to talk to me, because they don’t know what to say, even though they have known me “They’re tattooed on the my whole life. [ ] I hear people say things like, “He was just trying to insides of my eyelids.” do the right thing and it turned out wrong” or “He just didn’t know how to use that gun.” Truth is I do know. Been shooting That’s when Daniel handed me the shotgun, told me guns like that one my whole life. Just never in that situation, a to get ready. To shoot anyone who came through the door. You situation where my heart was beating fast and my legs and arms don’t know what it’s like to aim when you’re shaking. What it is shaking faster. Some people think I closed my eyes because I like to have Daniel know that you’re scared, look you in the eyes was scared or because I didn’t want to see what would happen. and tell you that it’s just like Call of Duty. Just pull the trigger They’re wrong. and they’ll be gone. That’s what I did, and I hit more than I saw it happen, I was blinded by the blasts, but I saw meant to. the before and after. They’re like snapshots in my mind. They’re tattooed on the insides of my eyelids. Every time I blink I see it. And you said I didn’t care, that I didn’t know your pain. So what if your boyfriend is dead. You don’t have to see your best

16 metonymymedia.com Sondheim will turn 83 this year, but you wouldn’t guess it from his posture or his fluid hand gestures or his beautiful sentences. You might guess it from his slightly arthritic walk and his drooping eyes, but he retains such a spark and wit about him. One of my former theatre professors, Doug Powers-Black, inter- viewed Sondheim, and he asked him about Leonard Bernstein’s influence on him. Sondheim responded with, “Mostly from 6 Leonard Bernstein I learned not to be afraid of making a fool The Glory and Majesty of Stephen Sondheim; or, of yourself. If you’re going to fall off of the ladder, don’t fall off the lowest rung.” He went on to speak of other people he’s A Brilliant Man with a Stained Sweater worked with–Angela Lansbury, Jule Styne, Ethel Merman–and to discuss the importance not of pleasing critics but of pleasing Theresa Beckhusen your fellow artists. That means more to Sondheim.

His quotability was off the charts:

“You gotta be willing to go ‘splat.’”

“Art teaches just by being art.”

“[Do] whatever makes you feel like you’re not wasting your time. Don’t waste your time.” From the moment he stepped onstage, it was clear Stephen Sondheim was completely comfortable with who he is. I could “There’s no fun onstage if there’s no danger.” tell this because of the cowlick in his gray hair, the Lands’ End-style mocs on his feet, and the faint suggestion of a couple “Math, music, medicine. They’re all related. That’s why of stains on his brown sweater. Even as I noticed this, I didn’t hospitals have orchestras.” care. Stephen Sondheim was at my alma mater. He laughed at his own jokes, and the crowd of about 1,300 Susquehanna University is lucky enough to have a gift from a people laughed with him. Other alumni had driven the three former theatre professor that provides for the visit of a theatre hours from New York and were then leaving right after, luminary. Tony Kushner. Hal Prince. Now Stephen Sondheim. meaning they’d get home around 1AM. The father of one of For the uninitiated: Stephen Sondheim defined musicals for the my friends drove up from Florida to see Sondheim. He had latter half of the 20th century. Or, he transformed musicals, he me beat; I only drove nine and a half hours. Why did we all developed his own brand, he fused seriousness and pathos and flock to see this man? Me, I grew up listening to his musicals– humor and big life questions into intense, beautiful, complex, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Into the brilliant pieces of theatre. And just let Wikipedia educate you Woods, Sunday in the Park with George, Assassins, Pacific because we have to get to the nitty-gritty. Overtures, Company, Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music–and

18 metonymymedia.com my friend Sarah and I would break into song at a moment’s notice. We even performed a scene from Assassins at the Pennsylvania State Thespian Conference. We also grew up in the same Pennsylvania county that Sondheim did, a fact that Bucks County really needs to push more, in my opinion.

But it’s not just familiarity or hometown ties. His lyrics pluck at you and refuse to let go. Cinderella doesn’t know what she 7 wants, even when confronted with the charming prince: “But The Walnut Bowl Transfer how can you know what you want ’til you get what you want and you see if you like it?” And Bobby, a man with a string of N a t e B r o c k one-night-stands and lack of real connection, finally turns: “Somebody, hold me too close. Somebody, hurt me too deep [...] Make me aware of being alive.” (Actually, just listen to Raúl Esparza sing “Being Alive” at the Tonys.) And Dot, who has determined to leave artist Georges Seurat for a man with a stable job, still has feelings for her former lover: “We lose things. And then we choose things. And there are Louis’, On a finely carved wooden shelving unit, fastened at and there are Georges. Well…Louis’ and George.” Sondheim’s an adjacent wall of the living room, in my Grandmother’s two masterful lyric-writing isn’t just about sending you off with a bedroom apartment in Griffith, Indiana, sat a slightly rounded tune and some fun rhymes–though he does that, despite what bowl with a steepled middle point in the center. Inside the bowl, many critics say–he gives you insight and makes you think. there were always batches of dense and firm walnuts; in the middle point, a tool used for cracking. The bowl sat center on My former professor, Doug, closed the evening out by thanking the top shelf, middlemost to pictures of her children and grand- Sondheim, of course, and by telling him, “Your art has ennobled children. Below the bowl rested a decades-old doll of Betty us. It has taught us about being human. It has taught us to be human.” Boop; above hung a penciled portrait of Frank Lloyd Wright collaged with an image of Fallingwater. The layer below all else Sondheim’s musicals focus a great deal on human connec- housed the bird watching books, almanacs, and home remedy tions and how important they are for survival. The characters guidebooks that were essential to her everyday activities. At the in Assassins claim that in a free country everyone has “the right end of the shelf laid the netted cloth bag holding various old to expect that you’ll have an effect. That you’re gonna connect!” western novels and the political writings of Rush Limbaugh she To the assassins, the chance to connect is considered a basic received weekly from the Griffith Public Library. The walls and freedom, a foregone conclusion. Making connections is a part of objects surrounding the peculiar walnut bowl stood for more being human, and without them, you can end up hurt, damaged, than a hope-and-balance structure for the life she lived; they derailed. Because Sondheim’s musicals allow us to connect stood for the incredible amount of memories and wisdom she with history, with art, with other people, they strengthen our acquired in the eighty-seven years of her tangible life. humanity. That’s brilliant writing. In the fall seasons—the ones I remember most—after- noons were spent first on the porch with a large set of Nikon binoculars and half-a-dozen bird watching books, then they

20 metonymymedia.com were inside in front of the walnut bowl as she prepared some snack or lunch. There, in strategic planning, I held each walnut up to my eyes, looking for the cracks that could possibly mean a conquest over the hard shells to the cache within. Most times, most every single time, my efforts were deployed against a grain of immeasurable success; when the muscles between my phalanges and metacarpals holding the nut cracker finally overcame the shells, the tool would crash into them, obliterating the entire piece—sending fragments all over the wooden shelf. The winters were spent on the large hill at Oak Ridge Prairie; the enormous lump of earth carried my brother and I swiftly from the top to the bottom on those slender purple sleds to my grandmother’s welcoming feet. Again, in the summers, at the Oak Ridge Prairie—Grandma with her binoculars and books again— rolling down the hill on our sides as the other children did the same and flew kites. One summer, the three of us made our way to Lemon Lake, in Crown Point, to tour the lake and the small playground. We walked through an opening in the forest to the lake. There, we were greeted by a rolling cloud of Monarch butterflies. All of the sudden we were emerged into this sea of gorgeous life and we stood dormant under that large cloud of flapping wings with our eyes and mouths agape, completely in awe of the whole scene of it. In my memory, after most outings or errands—if not at Oak Ridge Prairie, at Gibson Woods, Lemon Lake, The Hair House, or various toy stores— I would approach the crusty room waiting as, one-by-one, we were summoned by her. She wooden bowl when back at her apartment in hopes for a cleanly called me in last and, when the time came to enter the room, I pulled fruit. Each time, denied of any real exception. Each time, walked the hallway alone, scared. I was scared about losing the my grandmother would come with her small, wrinkled hands memories I had with her. Scared that, in this last visit, every- and place them over mine; firmly, yet gently, squeezing until thing about her would leave with her last breath. As I entered the shell cracked at a nearly straight line and folding open, the room, her body—lying among the ripples of linens and her revealing a whole piece of the brainy thing. wrist linked to a scarcely beeping monitor— made me weak. As This walnut bowl, this conclave lens-shaped object was I sat down in the chair planted in tandem with the bed, I stared the specimen that encapsulated all the influence my grand- at her figure—the hospital bed sunk in under her. Her skin was mother had on all of us underneath her. When Helen Mercer dry and cracking. As she lay there in front of me, tucked inside passed away in January of 2012, I don’t think she realized this. the dipping bed, she became the walnuts within the bowl from Then, on the cold winter afternoon, in her hospital bed, she her apartment in Griffith. After raising the bed to sit her up, we called each one of us—her family members—into her room, silently stared at each other, holding whimpers. I held inside the individually. We, the family, all sat inside the hospital break tears that built up, my eyelids held them like a dam. She broke

22 metonymymedia.com the silence: “Do you remember the time we went to Oak Ridge Prairie and there were all those butterflies? They were every- where. We couldn’t hear their flapping. Do you remember?” At this I let out a choppy sigh, tears nearly shooting out from my eyes. The dam was broken and the salty solution fled from my eyes as soon as they came. My grandmother’s eyes and mouth pressed into her face, a sad grunt from her lips escaped her: “Oh, I haven’t made tears. In all of this, I just haven’t been able to— my body is dry. Everyone keeps coming and going with 8 tears and I just cannot.” This Is How You Stay Alive My grandmother sat inside her bowl, hard and dry, Theresa Beckhusen and I sat watching her. She cried where no tears came out. She moped; nothing but slivers of saliva showed inside her mouth. “I know I’m ready and I know this much: I’ve enjoyed the time we’ve spent together. Even when I go, I’ll take those memories with me.” My cry became an excessive blubbering as I reached my hands out, wrapping them around her, pulling her into me. There, with my arms squeezing my grandmother’s dying body, I truly became my grandmother’s grandson: I squeezed her— firmly, yet gently—and told her: “crying isn’t hard, Gramma. You’ve worked beside these young men for two summers now. Not when you have something to cry over.” Her skinny, Together at this amusement park, this Sesame Street-themed drooping arms reached for me—one on my arm around her and amusement park, you’ve cleaned bathrooms and swept up one on my wet face. Her hand felt so cold against my running juice boxes and hauled overstuffed, dripping plastic bags from tears. She moved her hand from my arm to my hand, gripping trash cans and tossed them into big wales as the Count counts it, squeezing it, and her eyes let out a flourish of tears. We sat, backward in Spanish from loudspeakers all around you. The for a final moment where we were really, truly together, and wales are mostly gray, and you picture them spouting not water cried. “Thank you,” she let out before I made my way back to from imaginary blowholes but all of that trash juice. You’ve the break room to join my family. Each one of them watched me joked with these young men, fielded their casual flirtations, and as I opened the door, tears streamlining my puffy cheeks again. mostly tried to conform to their world. There, after the youngest and final family member was called in and sent back, we all took in the reality of Gramma’s dying Standing next to home plate now, that need is even more urgent. state. We all took in the reality of everything she meant to us, You grip the bat tight, knowing you stick out more because individually and wholly. There, I looked at each of them looking you’re a lefty. You’ve always felt that to make it, to be accepted, back at me; tears falling mutely from the corners of our eyes, all you had to play by the guys’ rules. You can’t complain about crafted to be the same as hers. the smell of the dumpsters. You can’t be squeamish about the pink-from-cotton-candy barf soaking into the sand you’ve poured onto it. You can’t let your male employees pull one over on you when they hide in the men’s bathroom instead of doing their jobs. A female manager is looked down on for crying when

24 metonymymedia.com things get tough. So, later in the summer, when you accidentally drive the trash truck over the parking lot’s curb and into mud, you lock your face.

Just hit the ball, you think. You don’t even have to get on base. Just show them you know what you’re doing up here. Matt had said you were the first girl they asked to be on the depart- ment softball team. Like it was some great honor. But it was. You gained their respect enough for that. Matt and Leo call you Reese, a nickname your older sister uses, so you feel that the three of you have become a weird kind of amusement park family. A family that pressure-washes shower stalls and unclogs toilets. You know those guys would look out for you. But I don’t need looking out for, you think, sizing up the pitcher.

You swing and miss at the first pitch. Your arms are stiff, and you can feel the guys on your team behind the chain-link fence. You dig your toe into the dirt and breathe. You’re in your backyard holding a yellow Wiffleball bat, and your dad explains how to choke up, how to swing. Not like a golf club, he tells you. You are five. When you reach the baseball unit in gym class in second grade, you are incredulous that anyone doesn’t know how to hold and swing a bat. But when you play a season of softball in fourth grade, you’re stuck, clueless, in right field, balls soaring over your head. But you like the night games. The field grows bigger; you’re onstage. It’s a night game right now, and you feel eyes on your back. The second pitch is lobbed at you. You swing. You connect. You gun it to first base. Too late. But it doesn’t matter. You whammed that ball and a runner advanced to second. Leo gives you a high five. Way to go, Reese, Matt says, his eyebrows raised on his freckled forehead.

In your solar plexus, you feel a glow in spite of yourself. You grab your shirtfront and wave it to bring some of the night’s cooled-off air to your skin. You made it. You balance on the perimeter of the ramshackle dugout in your secondhand cleats while Matt and Leo stretch and compare their favorite Kings of Leon songs. You sit down alone on the end of the bench and wait for the inning to be over.

26 metonymymedia.com Eric Scott, a resident of Indianapolis and a veteran of IPL Project Greenspace, helped build a Pocket Park—the Paige Booker Memorial Park—in his neighborhood. The location was once a rental property, but the tenants were evicted, and then burned down the house. Now the park hosts barbecues and neighborhood get-togethers, offers swings and slides for the children, and reveals native flora and horticulture. 9 “My children know who is responsible for the park: they IPL project greenspace supports put their own labor into moving mulch and planting trees— they know what is expected of them in the community and the neighborhood development rewards that come from it,” Scott said. “Our neighborhood had the labor, but without IPL and KIB, we could never have Carl Corder got the materials or resources together to do something of this magnitude,” Scott concluded. KIB and IPL are currently working with other neighbor- hoods to further Project Greenspace’s goal of creating greener neighborhoods in urban Indianapolis. Julie Rhodes, resident of Cottage Home neighborhood on the East side of the city, is working with her neighbors and IPL Project Greenspace now to complete a park. Rhodes began Over twelve years ago Keep Indianapolis Beautiful talking with her neighborhood in 2007 to figure out a way (KIB) partnered with Indianapolis Power and Light and the City to encourage families to stay in the community, and moved of Indianapolis to create IPL Project Greenspace—an organiza- towards building a playground. Rhodes knew of KIB’s commit- tion that works with neighborhoods, schools, and churches to ment to Indianapolis’ urban neighborhoods and partnered with develop vacant lots into parks, gardens, and outdoor community them and IPL. centers. Project Greenspace and willing neighborhoods in India- “Over time we continued the process of getting more napolis are responsible for several spectacular land develop- people to understand what the community space could mean ments, that, in return, develop the communities around them. to them. It wasn’t just about families who had kids, but people KIB’s Phil Schaefer, program director of IPL Project who had dogs, or wanted a quiet place to read, or people who Greenspace, believes these renovations not only enhance the wanted to garden; so, we got more and more interest from the neighborhood’s physical aspect, but the relationships between community at large,” Rhodes said. neighbors as well. “IPL Project Greenspace brings people IPL Project Greenspace encourages long-term devel- together and gives them a tangible result and improvement to opment in Indianapolis. These vacant, used, and underval- their neighborhood,” Schaefer said. ued places are transformed into beautiful places that build IPL and KIB provide project management grants, tools, community pride and add value to the neighborhoods across trucks, and landscape architecture to best fit the neighborhood; Indianapolis. residents, as well as volunteers from IPL and KIB, create the “When we built [Paige Booker Memorial Park] we project. The parks and gardens replace vacant areas that would showed the city that not only did we care, but cared enough to otherwise facilitate littering, illegal dumping, or worse. do something about it,” Eric Scott said.

28 metonymymedia.com 10 Philosophy Major

R y a n B r o c k

The Philosophy major is designed to help students engage with Program Strengths questions about meaning and morality, explore the history of Faculty is actively involved in the Indiana Philosophical Associ- philosophy as a discipline, and examine the role of ethics in ation and has been published in a variety of publications on a a modern context. Under our accomplished faculty, students diverse range of topics are encouraged to explore some of the toughest questions to Small class size allows for the development of meaningful face societies throughout history: What is truth? Is there a relationships between faculty and students God? How do we define what is “good”? Courses in the history Upperclassmen are encouraged to work with professors to create of philosophy (including Aristotle and Medieval Philosophy) customized, independent study courses to help them explore introduce students to the great thinkers of the past. Basic ethics their special interests courses (such as Ethics or Christian Ethics) invite students to Special topics courses are regularly tailored to student interest consider greater topics related to philosophy. Focused special topics and independent study courses (like Existence of God What to Do After You Receive a Philosophy Degree or Business Ethics) give upper-level students the chance to go According to recent data, philosophy majors are more likely to beyond the questions and begin developing solutions to score well on graduate school entrance exams than any other real-world problems. humanities major. Thanks to the skills philosophy majors gain in civil discourse, rational thinking, research, and communica- tion, they typically make more money throughout their careers than other majors, and are well suited to a variety of fields.

30 metonymymedia.com Law School: Many of our own alumni have gone on to great success in law school and beyond. Philosophy majors score higher on the LSATs than any other undergraduate major, and are prepared to engage in the kind of nuanced debate required in a courtroom setting. Graduate School: Outside of law school, our majors have done very well in graduate programs in psychology, philosophy, education, and more. Whatever your ultimate career goals, a philosophy undergrad will give you the foundation for academic success into the future. Public Administration: Our focus on service and leadership often manifests in our philosophy majors going on to work in public administration and other service-related fields. Social Work: Social workers must have the ability to see complex situations from many competing points of view and communicate clearly and effectively. Many of our majors have gained those skills and gone on to successful careers in social work.

Philosophy might be for you if... You’re active in your school’s debate team, or enjoy constructing compelling arguments You’re interested in exploring the existence of God You’re looking for the meaning of life Questions about morality intrigue you You want to sharpen your reasoning and communication skills

Curriculum Guides These curriculum guides outline the different classes you will need to take as a Philosophy major. The General Education guide provides a list of all the classes you need in order to fulfill our general education requirements. The Philosophy guide outlines and lists all of the classes you will need to take in order to fulfill the major’s requirements. Be sure to take a look at both guides in order to get a complete picture of what your classes will look like.

32 metonymymedia.com 11 The Long Slow Burn

Cy Wo o d

He sat on the curb outside of the Laundromat, He saw her walking up, struggling with two plastic fishing in the pocket of his Levi’s, his right leg stretched laundry baskets full of dirty clothes, too full for her small out straight. Among all the loose change, he found the small arms. The larger basket began to slip from her waist, but before cardboard box. They tasted better in a hard-pack; like beer from she could stop to rearrange it, it had fallen, taking the other one a glass bottle, just natural. He preferred unfiltered, but the with it, spilling her clothes all over the parking lot. Red didn’t doctor put an end to those, something about insurance. Why bother to get up, nor did any emotion fall over his face. He was fuck up the natural taste of tobacco smoke? God put the stuff too enraptured by the smoke he was holding in this throat. here for a reason. Who was he to go against a guy like God? “Diana.” He thumbed open the top of the box, pulled the plastic She was caught off guard, not having seen him as she had lighter out, and then chose one of the last two cigarettes. Only approached. Her look of surprise quickly subsided and gave way two left: that wasn’t good. His lips closed around the chosen to disgust once she placed the voice with his face. “Red.” She smoke. He never touched one until it was lit: just one of his spit his name at the ground while picking up a green blouse. He things. He flicked the plastic lighter on with his thumb. One hadn’t replied to her calls in weeks, so he assumed he was about day he was going to get a Zippo. One with flames on it. He to catch hell. Her curly hair fell from behind her ear and hid admired smokers that had Zippos: they were dedicated. He her face from Red’s view. He inhaled again and blew acrid cupped his other hand around the flame and held the light to smoke into the hot night air. He still hadn’t bothered to move his cigarette. Smoke furled into his mouth, down his throat, and or made any other attempt to help Diana, but his eyes had fallen into his lungs. It burned, but not as much as he liked. He had on a pink piece of lacy material she had yet to pick up. A smile just moved up to wides, what the smoking connoisseurs called twitched at the corner of his mouth, but died almost as quickly the throat-melters. If he couldn’t have his unfiltereds, he was as it appeared. going to get as much tobacco in a rolling paper as possible. He’d “Nice night,” he said. His face was blank, though sweat start rolling his own cigs before much longer. The tobacco had formed on his forehead and was trickling slowly down. He industry wasn’t satisfying his needs. didn’t bother to wipe it away. All the tobacco and tar and rat

34 metonymymedia.com it out to Diana. “You want one?” He never gave away his last smoke. Never. And he knew she had given up. Going on a year now. But that never stopped him from asking. She’d give in again, one day. “No,” she said. She never looked at the box. Out of sight, out of mind. But not really. Red had tried to give up once. Any time he was walking down the street and saw someone else smoking, he wanted to jump on top of them, tear the cigarette from them and inhale it to the filter. When you’re a smoker, a good smoker, it’s all you think about. When you try to stop, it’s all you think about. Like sex to a nymphomaniac: it’s just too damn hard to give up those carnal pleasures. Red was going to get her. Every time he saw her around, even if it was just in passing, he offered her a cigarette. He never pressured her, just offered, and always just once. But that was enough. He knew it got her thinking. He remembered his first smoke. He was on top, and his arms gave out once he was done, and he collapsed on top of her. He rolled onto his back next to her, and they caught their breath. Diana sat up and grabbed two cigarettes from her poison and everything else those anti-smoking commercials bedside table. She lit both in her mouth, and started to hand advertised made his face go numb. The feeling usually came one to Red. He looked at it hesitantly, because he had never back, but Red was quick to buy another pack of cigarettes as touched one before. Not that he was against it; he’d just never soon as it did. His hair, not red, was cut short, and glistened had the reason to. Diana reached out the put the cigarette right as sweat ran through it, locking hairs together, pointing them between his lips. They lay on their naked backs and smoked. upwards. He hated his parents for naming him after that creepy Red felt awkward with the cigarette in his fingers. He fucking clown. couldn’t figure out how a man was supposed to hold one. But he She had almost forgotten he had said anything, and felt more awkward smoking the thing. The first time he breathed couldn’t remember what he asked. “Right,” she said, as her in, he held the smoke his mouth and couldn’t stand the taste. most generic answer, and gathered her clothes and placed them The next time he drew it into his lungs and coughed back in the baskets. She glanced at Red, and when she noticed harder than he ever had before. He twisted to his side and sat where his gaze was directed, her eyes widened as she turned up to cough more effectively. Diana never moved, but he saw her and snagged the thong in one motion. She buried the intimate smiling when he laid down again. Red was hooked. under the rest of the clothes. She pulled both baskets over to Red looked up toward the dark sky outside the Laundro- the curb. Once both were stacked on top of one another, she mat. The stars might have been out, but the streetlights made sat down slowly, like it was difficult for her. She pulled her it impossible to tell. It was a clear night, and Red watched the hair back into a pony-tail, grabbed a shirt from the basket, and smoke drift up from the burning end of the cigarette. He loved wiped the sweat from her face. Red didn’t look at her, but kept watching the ash. The little burning cone left over when he enjoying his cigarette. He thumbed open the box, and held tapped the dead tobacco away fascinated him. Sometimes he

36 metonymymedia.com would play a game when he smoked to see how long he could nothing. Red rolled his eyes. He was having a really hard time get the ash to stay on. He had never made it to the filter. He getting through her head that there really wasn’t an “us.” It had knew cigar ash stayed on longer, but he couldn’t bring himself been sex, once. Maybe if he just calmly explained to her that to smoke those. The burn and the buzz just weren’t strong he wasn’t the kind of person she wanted to get involved with, enough. He wanted his burn to hurt and his head to get that he was a chain smoker with a history of heart disease in his fuzzy. He wanted bile to rise in his throat. “I think smoking has family, that he would probably be dead by the time he was forty its advantages,” he said. He thought about how his life was like anyway, that he wasn’t good with kids, and didn’t really know that cigarette burning between his lips. It burned away, and what it was like to have a functioning family life, and that he once that ash had fallen, it scattered into nothing. No trace left was about to be in poverty because of all the money he spent but the stained filter. It didn’t make sense to him that cigarettes on cigarettes. Maybe if he just explained all that, she’d take it had filters. Red didn’t have a filter on his life. in stride and understand, and stalk the next guy she decides to Red could tell she had something on her mind. She was have sex with. predictable, and almost too easy to figure out. It hadn’t been “No, I never think about us,” he said. So much for that. It nearly the challenge Red had hoped it would have been. Sure was the truth though: he never thought about an “us.” He did enough though: “I have something to ask you,” she said. think about her though. He thought that if she would have a He didn’t remember any time he had answered one of terrible car accident and was left as a vegetable for the rest of her questions honestly. He gave her enough credit to realize her life, he wouldn’t have to deal with her anymore. He thought this, but she always seemed to keep asking. It dawned on him that if he held out a little longer, maybe she’d just kill herself, as he blew smoke in front of him that he wouldn’t miss Diana maybe slit her wrists in a bathtub (down the street, not across if he never saw her again. He wasn’t wishing death on her, not the road), and she would be gone for good. He wouldn’t even really, but if she were to move to some uninhabited island in the have to visit her gravestone. As a matter of fact, the only way middle of the ocean, that would be fine by him. Red could get her off of his mind was to smoke. If he thought He was tired of seeing her around everywhere. Her face about her too much, it would kill him. And Red wanted to go had been pretty the first time he’d seen her, sure, but seeing slowly and painfully, during chemo. her around town after that, watching her face light up whenever “Doesn’t it bother you? How can you make love and then they’d run into one another, it had gotten old. He wondered just forget about them?” Her voice cracked, so she had pulled if it was possible to hate someone after having sex with them her knees up to her chest to make it seem like it came from once. He didn’t see why not. Plenty of women hated him now. physical exertion. Red closed his eyes. He hated when people He assumed she was waiting for him to give the go-ahead called it “making love.” They had only known each other for before she asked her question. “Shoot,” he said, and cursed a few hours. How can you make love to someone you’ve only silently as the ash fell from the cigarette onto his jeans. He’d known for a few hours? Sex, though, sex you can have with get it to stay on to the filter someday. He watched an old Ford someone you’ve never met. Red held the smoke in his lungs for pickup pull into the parking lot. It had a step-side bed, like a little longer this time. Red thought that if he were to actually the one his dad had once. This one fit in well with the other quit smoking, all his emotions and thoughts and feelings would cars in the lot. It was rusty, and the muffler had long since come pouring out of his mouth in one huge mass, like that little disappeared. Red pulled a short puff and tried to blow a smoke Dutch boy taking his finger out of the dike. Good thing he ring. It didn’t work. never planned on stopping. “Do you ever think about us?” she asked. She didn’t look Red was silent as he watched a father and teenage boy walk at him when she asked. She stared straight ahead, looking at into the adjoining sandwich shop for a little late dinner. They

38 metonymymedia.com were both glowing in the light of the street lamps, but their flicked his red lighter four times, shook it, and realized it smiles made them seem like they really were glowing. The father was out of fluid. He flipped it on the ground in front of him, clapped the boy at the base of the neck and gave a squeeze. They gripped the cigarette between his teeth and asked, “You got a light?” laughed at some inner joke as they walked inside. They looked Diana turned her head to look at Red. He couldn’t help happy, but Red doubted either of them smoked, so they couldn’t but to turn and look at her. Their eyes locked together for the be really happy. Happiness lied in a lit cigarette. first since that night. She pleaded to him with her eyes. She He avoided Diana’s question by asking one of his begged him to look deeper at her, to look at her than more than own: “Do you tell other people about this?” He never just a piece of meat that he got off on one night. Her eyes were mentioned his situation with Diana to anyone. Of course, aside soft, and even though it was dark, the streetlights let him see from Diana, he didn’t talk to anyone else, and he for damn that they were blue. He hadn’t noticed that when she had been sure wasn’t going to have a heart-to-heart with her. He didn’t on top of him. Red sucked hard on his cigarette, but it wasn’t want other people trying to figure out his life anyway. He was lit, so his lungs were only met with tobacco-tinted air. He wanted to feel a burn in his lungs more powerful than anything else, something that would make him cough, turn blue, or get sick. He wanted to stop looking in her eyes. He saw a ring of [ “Happiness lied in a lit cigarette.” ] orange-red around her pupil. It looked like the burning end of a cigarette. His eyes were burning. It was like her eyes, those cigarettes, were being pushed into his eyes. He wanted to blink, contented with his life as it was, with nobody else looking into but couldn’t. it, and was almost on the verge of happiness. Almost. Finally, she blinked, slowly and confidently, and she Diana didn’t answer, but a tear slowly trickled from turned her head to face forward again. Red shook his head and the corner of her eye. Her face gave no indication, and the tear looked away. Diana looked up into the sky and stood up. She blended with the sweat from the hot summer evening, so no one grabbed her baskets and walked into the Laundromat. Red would have noticed. Red didn’t look at her, but he knew. He looked around. His gaze finally settled on the ground, and he looked up and blew smoke into the air, and as it drifted apart pulled the cigarette from his lips. He stared at the unlit smoke he saw his life spreading, disappearing with the smoke. As the in his fingers. It was whole. Every flake of tobacco was still in smoke faded he could see the flashing lights of a jet flying there. There was no smoke drifting up from the end, no ash overhead, leaving a thick trail of smoke behind it. forming, no red sparks drifting on a breeze. The paper was Red pulled the last puff from his cigarette and nearly still crisp and white. The filter didn’t have any stains. It was gagged when the last flake of tobacco burned away. He saw his perfectly clean. He snapped the cigarette in his fingers and life end in that cigarette. It burned down, and then there was threw it on the ground in front of him. nothing. No more pleasure, no more hurt, no more time. He “Figures.” didn’t drift up into the sky, or get buried in the ground. No, anything that was left, and that wasn’t much, was just tossed away, forgotten about. No one would remember him as a favorite smoke; they’d just move on to the next one since he was gone. He shook this thought away and realized he still had another, so he wasn’t done living yet. He smashed the butt beneath his heel, and mouthed the last one from his pack. He

40 metonymymedia.com Cypher Wheel While he worked as Secretary of State, he created the first known cypher wheel to keep messages coded and secret among the department. Jefferson put disks with letters etched in varying sequences onto a rod. The disks could be put in any order and whoever shared the wheel could unlock a secret 12 message by understanding a specific sequence of letters and then The Secret STEM Lives twisting the disks in a particular order. Jefferson used this to encode messages that were for certain people only. The cypher of the Founding Fathers wheel would later become used for military tactics during many wars.

N a t e B r o c k Plow Thomas Jefferson was a farmer in the Virginia hillside. Like most all farmers at the time, Jefferson used a traditional plow head until he saw how ineffective it was on his soil. With help from his partner and son-in-law, he drew up a model for a new plow head designed specifically for effectiveness on the hillside Washington, Jefferson, Franklin. All of these men are known as farms of Virginia. His idea stemmed from the 90 degree angle, founding fathers of the United States of America. While they mixing his understanding of his land, farming, and math to will always be known most for their political accomplishments, create a device that cooperates with his field soil more effectively. these men invented more than America. As innovators and keen utilizers of hands-on STEM learning, they can all be accredited Thomas Jefferson’s hands-on STEM projects lead to some great for some fine contributions for the world. inventions that are still practical today, proving he is more than a founding father. We appreciate Jefferson for not only giving Thomas Jefferson is known as the author of the Declaration of us our swivel chairs but for showing us that STEM projects can Independence and as the second President of the United States. be done by anyone, no matter what they are known for. Next But what other note-worthy things has Jefferson done? week we take a look at the hefty list of inventions that Benjamin Franklin gave to the world. Stay tuned for another fascinating Swivels and Codes and Plows, Oh My! post on the outlying contributions of the founding fathers! A man who believed in hands-on STEM study and invention, he is the creator of several devices and products still in use today. Have we left out any of Jefferson’s STEM projects? Know of any of the other founding fathers’ contributions to the STEM fields? Swivel Chair Are you currently working on a new STEM project? Share with Perhaps you’re reading this post from a comfy swivel chair. us in the comments section below! Well, guess what? Mr. Jefferson made that! Utilizing his knowledge of math and physics, he crafted the very first swivel chair, which he used while drafting the Declaration. The seat and legs of the chair were separated by an iron spindle, enabling full rotation of the chair.

42 metonymymedia.com 13 Indiana Family of Farmers

Scott Blanton

Buffalo, perch, and duck may not be products you see everyday grow food in all different ways for all different people. While in your home. But someone in the state of Indiana is taking one farmer may grow a small number of animals in a very the time and using their passion to raise these animals for our specific manner for a specific client, the next farmer will grow consumption. There is a family in Indiana that exists on our thousands of animals for another group of consumers. Both back roads in our country homes—a family that we don’t always are important and necessary to provide Indiana citizens with see, but we all rely on. This family supplies many of us with our food. Indiana grown food.”

The Indiana family of farmers is comprised of those farmers Dig IN isn’t about highlighting one farm or one specific that we can see tirelessly working in their fields until the sun product, but rather about highlighting Indiana and many of its sets. The Indiana family of farmers is comprised of farmers products and farmers. Beyer also says, “We need to place value who take extra care of their livestock. These same farmers are on all Indiana grown foods, regardless of any other label.” At committed to bringing great food to your dinner tables, which Dig IN we want to emphasize the family of farmers we have and is why those same farmers provide the food at Dig IN. what they are doing.

Leah Beyer provides the chefs at Dig IN with the meat and For those curious minds and those looking for a new food to try, produce they are looking for their creative recipes. Not only this year at Dig IN you will be able to find Indiana raised goat does she help the chefs of Dig IN find the products they are meat! This year’s event will feature more than 20 chefs from looking for, but Beyer is also a farmer. On the practice of around the state using Indiana grown and raised products. Get farming she says, “I feel an obligation that one farming method your tickets today! isn’t highlighted as better or superior. We have a need to

44 metonymymedia.com I didn’t know what a dehydrated person would look like because I didn’t buy into myths like dehydration or starvation or heat stroke or anorexia. None of us did. Hell, Drew slept right through it. And I didn’t know what Drew would look like dead, had never imagined death as a thing you can see—touch with your fingers. But this is what it looked like: his eyelids were half-open and the eyeballs inside looked like thick, plastic snow globes. Felt like stones. 14 Then—as if his soul had collected for a while in the hot Art of Shrinking air above us, but became too heavy and returned to the empty body—Drew awoke. Carl Corder Said, “Where the fuck’t everything go for a while?”

*

Our Clermont was a parasite town latched onto a two-lane artery running out of the greater animal that is Central Indiana. But the real reason Clermont was a town was Raceway Park—a mile-long drag-strip of concrete rebar six The cabin wasn’t ours, but at night my brother drove the three feet deep—where, each summer, in the surrounding area, a of us up the logging road, out of town, into the woods. We hundred-thousand people plop campers and tents on every piece went to the cabin to sweat. Hardwood floors scabbed with burn of soybean field or parking lot, and for three weeks watch cars- marks, film of sawdust. A single room with no windows save the strapped-to-jet-engines blast down straight pavement at three exhaust fan, creaking the breeze until we nailed a tarp across. hundred miles an hour until one of the cars reaches the finish We kept the door closed. We slit holes in Hefty trash-bags for line—or explodes. our arms and legs, pulled the black plastic over our heads like Oddly, the few of us who still lived in Clermont ponchos, and tied off the wrists and ankles with rubber bands. despised racing. The others, whoever used to live here, ran Then we fell asleep like that. To be smaller—to weigh less. off a long time ago with the visiting race fans the way some In the morning Buck—my brother—and I wobbled sixteen year old girls leave town with sweet-talking Ferris-wheel to the door with a liter of water collected in each our suits. carnies. People like my father. Before he left, he’d claimed he’d Laughed as each of us ran an X-Acto knife across the bags, and found work with a racing team as a machinist. I believed him watched water flood out as if from a gutter during a thunder- some. He quit his job as a real machinist in town—where he ran storm. Stay in a sauna for twelve hours. Sleep in a garbage bag CNC machines that turned hunks of metal into moving parts— for eight. You might sweat fifteen pounds. and said he was going to make fast cars go faster. We were missing Drew Jensen, there outside—the None of this was true. morning spreading further into the surrounding hickory trees. Come race-season, my brother and I sometimes saw him I figured he was still sleeping in the cabin’s room. We yelled: wearing a grime-covered racing suit trying to get into the pit Fatty. Bitch Sleeper! Lazy Ass. We shook him on the ground stops, or back into a tavern. I walked by him once when he was where he lay, but the sweat was the only moving part. arguing with my brother outside The Saloon, and he turned and

46 metonymymedia.com saw me, just for a moment. He didn’t lead-on in any way that he But more and more I felt like the hawk, searching for recognized his other son. Or he chose not to. something I saw once, at a glance, but lost. Maybe I was looking I thought my mother might still live in Clermont, but I for my parents, or some floating parts of Drew inhabiting that was fairly certain she came and went with the races, too. I heard black pavement at the Raceway with the rest of the souls lost she popped up once a year at the abandoned drive-in theater, there in fire, speed, gasoline—in sweat. Or I wanted only to across from the Raceway, where they host wet t-shirt contests. hold small life in my jaws and end it. Our cousin said he’d seen our mom’s tits—and I believed he had. When I first heard my cousin say that, something felt * bitter, hurt. Something inside I’d left from before when the four of us still lived together. I think I felt this again when my Here’s what happens: the dragster’s engine explodes. Or father didn’t recognize me outside of The Saloon. Not embar- one tire’s strength doesn’t match the other and the car mashes rassment: grief. A piece of shrapnel working its way up and out into a concrete wall. The parachute fucks up when you reach of my thigh. I hope that somewhere along the way I sweated it two-hundred fifty miles an hour and are supposed to stop. Any out, or spit it onto the ground along with a one-ounce mouthful of these, and another driver goes in Clermont. Or a drunk fan of collected saliva. Or Drew Jensen, or my brother, beat it out of leaving the Saloon rakes their car against a fence, over-corrects me on Red Flag day. and bulls into your bedroom. Cancer grows on the mesh of your throat. You get plain old. There’s only a few ways to die in Clermont. “I didn’t buy into myths like Then, I lived with Drew, mostly. But I also lived with dehydration or starvation or Coach Dixon. And I also lived with other guys on the wrestling [ ] team. And, sometimes, I lived with a girl named Bretta, who heat stroke or anorexia.” worked at The Salon—though her parents weren’t aware I did. I brought them all with me, one at a time, into the Raceway at An old maritime signal-standard roped to the end of a midnight to the end of the drag-strip, where most explosions wooden staff, that year we brought the blood-red triangular flag and deaths occur. All of us—Bretta, Drew, Buck—agreed: there into the hot wrestling room on days we needed to kick into gear. was something special about that spot. Where souls became County, then State, was coming up, so we hoisted it into place bodies and nothing more. And maybe the sense of an absence next to the Indiana State flag. We trained harder, looking up at was also important. No people. No cars. The silence before the cloth through stinging, sweaty eyes, in between countless impending noise: we knew the fans would come—jamming our rounds of pummels. streets and filling our bars, we knew drivers would die—and My brother popped his shoulder against my jaw on Red this made the silence even more relevant, brought a certain Flag day like he was trying to get those pieces of shrapnel out calmness. of me. Drew, too. That night we returned to the cabin with Bretta walked with me to the track, brought a bottle black eyes, scabbed faces, and purple tumors growing beneath of beer she’d stolen from her parents’ refrigerator and her our skin. The three of us were working to get metal slivers out cigarettes. She took sips from the bottle and smoked slowly as of each other. We were trying to get smaller, smaller—so that I climbed the metal rafters from the back, inching my way up maybe the hurt that seemed to curse Clermont, Indiana would the metal. This was in January, and the wind pierced. We wore pass us over, just miss us, because we were too small to be seen. coats and stuffed pants, and the metal of the rafters numbed my Like field mice a hawk glimpses, then loses in the gray wash. hands. I’d not eaten in three days.

48 metonymymedia.com The fall from the rafters tore the skin from my neck, He wanted to call me Steven—and as we were tangled together, and blood bubbled to the surface as I lay on the concrete each fighting for leverage, for a cross-arm or cradle, he called ground. About an ounce of blood, maybe. Bretta met me at the me that. Asked if I liked this, said Steven is a creep. “Steven, bottom and took her pant leg to my neck to stop the bleeding. you’re a creeper, aren’t you? Oh Steven, do you like this, this The skin had caught on a bolt on the way down—fifteen foot creeping?” he said. drop, maybe. She tipped the bottle of beer to my lips, and I swallowed. I wondered if a mistake had been made—if maybe Later that night, when we’d gone back to the cabin, I this guy had just got my name wrong, or if he had proof couldn’t sleep—a kerchief pressed to my neck—thinking of that of something wrong I’d done when I was younger that I’d taste of beer: calories and alcohol and weight. The guilt fluid brings. forgotten: a neighbor’s window I peeked through, a porn magazine I stole. He dug his chin into my back and brought * my arm back further than the joint wanted to allow. More so, he made me feel like he had something on me, some secret. As Always smaller, always lighter. The art of shrinking we pummeled each other and dug nails and chins into each yourself. By February the body-fat is depleted, maybe four other’s skin and bled from our eyebrows, I scanned everything percent left—what only a few Olympic athletes maintain—and wrong I’d ever done. I wanted nothing more than to know what remains is chiefly water-weight and minimum stomach enzymes. what he meant—who was he talking about? What made me a Say you were like me. Say your natural, healthy weight creeper? But when the Mater-Dei boy pinned me, when he held was one-sixty, and you decided to wrestle one-forty-five. That me against the rubber mat like some fish writhing in clasped means, once a week, you drained fifteen pounds of water-weight talons—when he wouldn’t let me up until a second after the before a match. Spit, pee, sweat. Spit, pee, sweat—until after whistle blew, I couldn’t do a thing. weigh-in, when you had an hour to drink Gatorade, eat oranges, “What just happened?” Buck asked, “You were limp sip Nutri-lite before the match. This was the deception. I out there.” saw it on their faces when they looked at me across the mat. “He called me Steven. I don’t know.” I was bigger than I should’ve be. I didn’t look like I weighed My brother called me Steven for the following month. one-forty-five and my body confused them. I saw their fear, But even though I’d lost—was done that season—I the nervousness. And I imagined a noise. An absence. I’d hear began to sweat every day, spent my weekends at the cabin, my it when I was in control, when I became surprisingly stronger lunch periods in the locker room standing on the scale to steal than the person I fought, when they lost adrenaline because I’d bites from an apple, forgot about anything except the release of deceived them. I’d hear it then. water and the control of sweat. But that noise only lasts a few seconds. All week, all Buck stopped calling me Steven. But I didn’t stop. that water flowing down foreign drains, all the sweat evaporated Do I know what held the leather in my mouth so taught? into the air and taken up into the muddy Clermont sky—all of What I believed all that destruction might remedy? I don’t. that for a few seconds of control. Maybe I just wanted to win. That is a simple, good thing to This was worse: someone controls you. want. My guess is, my brother and I were after something more. County Tournament. After I hadn’t slept at all the night I like to think we believed we lived in a world where nothing before—when, in the morning, Coach Dixon had to catch me too terrible had yet come down the road, but knew, eventually, as I fell off the scale—when I was caught off-guard, a boy from something would. And, one way or another, I was going to be ready. Mater-Dei High School beat me. What’s worse: he talked to There was a lot I couldn’t control—couldn’t turn my me. He whispered. Something about someone named Steven. parents into people they never were, couldn’t afford to take

50 metonymymedia.com Bretta out of Clermont to someplace that didn’t smell like oil. Didn’t feel sorry that Drew had nearly died. That evening I pulled on long-underwear, then two hooded sweatshirts, snow pants, when I went into Bretta’s bathroom and turned the shower on to high heat and began to do crunches on the linoleum floor—then, nothing else mattered. Not even when she pounded on the door, when I heard her say, “Please, don’t.”

*

I woke at four and ran bleachers. Thirty-two times on the stairs—up and down, again and again—before my legs turned to putty. I heard Coach Dixon yelling my name from the football field. “Justin, Justin,” he said, rhythmic. I tried to hit five stairs before he said my name again. I’d hear a noise during matches. Gymnasiums get loud: parents screaming for their son or daughter, multiplied by at least two—one parent for each. Multiplied by how many coaches are screaming instructions. Multiplied by the gasping, cussing person you are trying to stick to the floor and hold. Multiplied by your own gasping and cussing as you try to prevent that someone from sticking and holding you. The noise I would sometimes hear is the absence of all that. I heard this when I had control. When I could keep someone’s shoulder blades pinned to the ground forever, my muscles turned to granite, a funny-face held for too long. That was the noise I wanted to hear running bleachers. A sound that meant nothing was going to move—or shift. Coach Dixon’s voice ruined that, a Pavlovian magic. My name got closer until he picked me up off the ground and carried me down the bleachers. “Dammit, Justin,” he said, but not angry. And my arms were the only parts of my body working then, so I wrapped them around Coach Dixon and squeezed his thick neck as if waiting for a referee’s whistle to blow.

*

52 metonymymedia.com Buck and I walked up and down the drag-strip and say anything. But instead wrapped my arms around her back picked up glass bottles and chucked them over the fence, where like I had done to Drew and Buck so many times before in the they popped against the blacktop and shattered into a glass misting. wrestling room. Stopped only when she said, “Not so tight.” “I heard Coach Dixon found you on the bleachers,” he said. “You know we don’t have matches anymore.” * He is like his name—Buck—an animal. Big and clever, in his own right, but considered dumb by most human standards Summer came. Along with the season arrived the like bubble tests and Algebra. He understands more than people SUV’s and trailers, Hot Rods and Winnebagoes, beer advertise- grant him, but different kinds of things. ments on television and painted cardboard signs for wet-t-shirt “Just wanted to run,” I said. contests along the main road. Lines of cars formed all the way “Dixon said you couldn’t walk afterwards.” out into two-lane country roads—both lanes now coming into “The fuck he knows?” Raceway Park, no going out. “Yea, big mouth, right? Telling people that. Maybe you I hadn’t seen Buck in months. should think about other things, though. How’s Bretta? Not We sold everything we could think of. We sold Coca- thinking about Dixon, or running, or anything like that.” And Colas in our garages for five bucks a can. We ordered t-shirts this was his way of telling me I’d gone too far, trying to sweat again. for that year’s race and sold those. When these were gone, we We found another brown bottle on the lawn. The tag took sharpies to white Fruit-of-the-Loom t-shirts and wrote had peeled off, and most of the liquid was gone. But some fluid “Raceway Park—Clermont, Indiana,” and sold those next. We remained at the bottom, made a sloshing noise when I picked it sold a lot of beer. up. “Probably beer,” he said said. “Or piss.” Sweating was easy with the heat. The Clermont ER I thought it could be spit or rain water that had recorded more dehydration cases in that one week alone somehow seeped through the loose-screwed cap into the bottle. than the rest of the year combined. The muddy blanket over For a moment I considered chucking it over the fence, to spill Clermont pulled back, an impatient sun waited behind it, out on the blacktop like the gasoline, oil, and blood there ready to burn our shoulders and steal water from our bodies. before. Instead, I unscrewed the cap, poured the liquid onto the grass. I obliged, running dirt paths in the swampy woods at the “That’ll filter through bedrock, then clay, into the hottest hour of daylight, sleeping in the tire-smelling cabin. wells,” he said. “Someone will drink what you just poured.” The wrestling season was over, but that didn’t change anything. I thought about how easily water flows through the Better, in fact: no one to catch me running bleachers, to wonder ground, into our wells, how there is so much available water. how I spent my afternoons. Buck probably understood I was thinking about water. Loss. He When the race fans had all arrived, Drew and Bretta was like that, like an animal. wanted to walk the strip. Even though we hated the races— “Yea, someone will drink that,” I said. “Gross, huh?” hated our town because of them—the excitement was too much. I opened my jacket, put the empty bottle in the inside Insects to the Zapper. pocket. I took it home with me to Bretta’s, put it on her mantel Other summers, I would walk around Clermont nervous next to the red flag that leaned against the wall there, to keep. I might see my parents, re-opening wounds like a cigarette’s I wanted to own the beginning of a thing. Wanted to know the cherry pressed into a fresh scab. That summer, I didn’t care. origin—a dirty, brown bottle—and know where water ends up. I weighed one hundred thirty seven pounds. When I took off But I didn’t tell Bretta this. When she asked what the bottle was my shirt and looked in the mirror, I was something from an for, where it’d come from, I crawled into her twin bed, didn’t anatomy class—my skin stretched so taught around the muscle

54 metonymymedia.com I appeared to have no skin at all. No metal shrapnel poking Buck and mom sat at the counter together and the image through my legs for my parents to see. Looky-here. I am one was unoriginal, sad. An empty chair between them, locals and hundred bucks. The real thing. race tourists murmuring in the crowded bar. My mother and her I let go of Bretta’s hand when I saw my brother outside wry smile, drunk—happiness, happiness, happiness, happiness. the Saloon, stubbing out a cigarette before going back inside the From inside the bar you could still hear the growls and pops of bar. Drew and Bretta had seen him too, stood in front of me. the dragsters at the time trials. Every few minutes a growl would My brother’s dark shape passed behind the tinted windows and come and the noise in the room would halt. I pulled out the sat at the counter with a woman—recognizably my mother. seat in the middle, between my them, got a Pepsi from the man “Hey, hey,” Bretta said, tried to take hold of my hand. behind the counter. I felt powerful, felt the sinews in my arms, could almost I focused on the Pepsi in front of me. Began to think feel the shape they would form wrapped around someone’s neck. about how it would taste, if I would drink it. I hadn’t tasted My body was a predestined thing, in a perpetual state of respite soda since elementary school, since I began wrestling. If either between now—resting, at ease—and when it would be called to act. of my parents saw me, they didn’t say anything. I sat there deciding if I’d drink the soda. “You shouldn’t damn the They both stared back at me like they’d been looking me over for a while, remembering—and I wondered what they [ dead—that’s God’s job” ] remembered. Which version of me? The version who cried too much as a child, or the version who said almost nothing for a “Look at that,” I said. month after Trent Nichols punched him in the jaw. The version “Forget them,” Drew said. “They’re not who you who once loved them, or the version who told his teacher his remember. Get that through your skull.” parents drowned with their car in the White River. No, the Here’s what I thought, almost said it out loud: fuck version they get is this one: I’m scared shitless in a place I’ve them. Buck, Bretta Drew—even my mother. You shouldn’t damn never been, wanting to know where my family has been—who the dead—that’s God’s job, and I figured you ought to leave they’ve been. I wondered if they liked that version. What should it up to him to take care of that business—but in that quick they think? What’s most practical? Coincidence? Ghost? Funny moment, I did. Damn them all. I felt like the only person with seeing you here! any grist to their bones. “Hello Justin,” mom said. A pop—engine spark—growl. “You’re better than them,” Bretta said. She’d been beautiful when she was young, and was And this was a great thing for her to say after taking pretty still—fierce and quiet both, like one of the crows that fly her boyfriend through Clermont, arriving where his lost family around Clermont. Her hair jet black, purpling. I looked at her, hung out, beginning a new chapter for his life free of guilt and saying nothing, and knew I was happy to see her, really. questioning. Free of sweat. It was almost the perfect line to say “Back for the races,” she said. as she shuffled us along out of the parking lot to take me back This was funny to hear. A rewarding explanation, I home. But it wasn’t quite perfect enough. wanted to tell her—but didn’t. Because I was having a hard time I ran into the bar, big neon-red letters. being mad. Whenever I’ve needed to be angry it hasn’t worked, and instead the anger turns to numbness, to something blank— * like a computer screen gone a digital blue. “It’s nice you found us,” Buck said.

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“Hey there, Justin…” mom said. “Woo-hoo.” Some nights I take out the bottle Buck and I found Was I winning? Was I making a point here, sitting with at the raceway, fill it to the brim with water or soda—about them, staring at the Pepsi, silent? I waited for that absence a liter—and drink the entire thing at once. I don’t wrestle to form—waited for the noise, when the murmurs around the anymore. Haven’t for a few years now. From where I live, you bar would fade, my parent’s voices would dissolve—as if the can hear the jet-engines from the raceway roaring across the air could be vacuumed out of the room, only a dull tinkling night like belches. On warm nights, I open the windows and of glass and ice. Another dragster growled. One great moan. I listen to the pop and growl of the dragsters, listen for explo- waited. Thought that if I waited long enough then, eventually, sions. I don’t try to know if Buck is there, what he’s are doing. the absence of sound would come and I would reach absolution. Instead, I fill the bottle with Pepsi, drink it, and wait for that Then that never happened. cold, good pressure to build in my stomach. Years later, I realized that absence would never happen I see Bretta walking to work some mornings and she again; or had never existed in the first place. is kind to me, smiles in a familiar way, the smile she flashed “Justin,” Buck said. passing sellers at swap-meets, or when she met my friends when “Justin, Justin.” she and I were dating. She doesn’t say anything about the weight I missed them. I liked sitting between them, enjoyed the I gained. Forty or fifty pounds. She is very pretty, and I tell her way my mother smoked her Kool cigarette only halfway, though about the house I live in now, that I have my own room, which she tapped a new one out of the pack immediately after. I saw she laughs at. Though I don’t mean it to be a joke, but a possibility. my father in Buck, his widow’s peak—my own in the mirror behind the bar. I waited as long as I could because the time was temporary—special—maybe the last time I would see them. And I enjoyed as much of my own silence as possible until both of them were saying my name—“Justin, Justin”—trying to get me to say something, wanting to hear from their son and brother, maybe my mom wanting to know the name of the girl from The Salon she’d seen me walking with. Bretta, I could’ve told her, and she is as beautiful as her name—I could’ve said. “Justin, listen to us.” “No, no” I said. “I think you’re confused. That’s not me, I’m not Justin.” I said. “My name’s Steven. You have me confused.” Stood, picked up the glass of Pepsi and drank. I wasn’t used to carbonation then and the fizzing burned my throat, but I swallowed in chugs, kept the ice back with my teeth until the soda was gone. I felt it already—a full stomach, hydration. Like the last years of their absence culminated to that cold feeling in my gut and the empty glass on the counter.

*

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