EDITOR David Bartholomy ASSOCIATE EDITOR Chris Tiahrt

Home , Begging for Love, Hello Counselor, Seven Crows, Wraith (Image Comics)

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EDITOR David Bartholomy

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Chris Tiahrt

ASSISTANT EDITORS Dori Howard Patrick Pace

DESIGNER David Stratton

Cover and interior artwork by John Dawson: cover, “Arrested Sky”; back cover, “Fire Breather Squeaker” p. 1, “Shibadance” p. 4, “Bucky Fuller” p. 32, “Da Gulls” p. 60, “Window Texture” p. 86, “Snowtree” p.113, “ Somewhere on the Edge of Maine”“

Editor’s Note: All of the 44 writers in this issue were invited to submit work because they are affiliated with Brescia’s creative writing program and because they are from this region or are writing in it. Some are current or former Brescia students, some have given workshops or readings at Brescia, and some have read at Third Tuesday Writers Coffeehouse, which is an outreach of Brescia’s creative writing program. The result is an assemblage of talented writers from Western Kentucky and Southwestern Indiana. The policy of Open 24 Hours is to present work that is truthful, fresh, artful, provocative, and clear and therefore deserves to be read. D.B.

The views expressed in this journal are, of course, those of the writers. Address all correspondence to David Bartholomy, Brescia University, Owensboro, KY, 42301 or .

C o n t e n t s

Humid Voices

Dori Howard Glitter ...... 5 Joey Goebel Awful Quiet ...... 6 Teresa Roy The True Religion...... 13 Jim McGarrah On the Streets of Saigon in 2005 ...... 14 Jay Chaffin Lost Causes and Human Walruses ...... 15 Michael Battram Quotidian ...... 21 Michael Battram The Descent of Management...... 21 Phoebe Athey Damned Mexicans ...... 22 Patrick Reninger Why I Refuse to Sign Up for Direct Deposit ...... 25 Ed McClanahan Horsefeathers: Stories from Room 241 ...... 26

Bringing the Body’s Breath

John Hay Exile ...... 33 Annette Allen Learning to Talk ...... 44 Teresa Roy Up Until Now ...... 45 Alice Driver “Mackanan”: Lost in Translation ...... 46 Dori Howard Five Spot ...... 47 Erin Barnhill Time Capsule ...... 48 Mark Williams Hitler the Pigeon...... 49 Jesse Mountjoy A Friend of My Uncle ...... 50 Rusty Smiddy We Lived on the Street that Led to the Dump . . . . . 56 Laurie Doctor This Work ...... 57 Jordan Overby Role Playing ...... 58 Kelly Lee The Melody of Her Words ...... 59 Laurie Doctor A Place Beside the Sea...... 59 0p2410.qx 3/12/10 11:57 AM Page 3

Love and Fried Potatoes

Rey Ford Visiting Kentucky in Late Spring ...... 61 Richard Taylor Innovation ...... 62 Richard Taylor Henderson ...... 62 Linda Neal Reising Congregation of Crows ...... 63 Steven Skaggs Sectional Sink ...... 63 Joe Survant Owl ...... 64 Missy Brownson-Farmer Relearning the Alphabet . . . . 64 George Fillingham On the Britmart Road ...... 65 Tom Hunley P. T. Barnum ...... 66 Tom Hunley Babe Ruth ...... 66 Lynn Hardesty Faith Like Fields ...... 67 Tom Raithel Fog ...... 74 John Beemer Orchid ...... 74 Ashley Boswell Potato Peeler ...... 75 Adria Nassim Welcome to Tractorville ...... 76 Todd Autry Ol’ Hosscat ...... 77 Jason Rhodes I Was Eight Years Old...... 84 Irene Mosvold About Last Night ...... 85 Curving with LIfe

Clayton Galloway Shatters ...... 87 Annette Allen On the Day Before I Was Born ...... 93 Jim McGarrah The War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City. . . . . 94 Katerina Stoykova-Klemer To the Bugs Still Drowning in the Pool ...... 94 Katie Beyke Reawakened Sisterhood ...... 95 Julie Marie Wade The Follower ...... 97 Amy Tudor Overheard: The Father and the Earth . . . . . 98 Mary Welp Roasted Root Vegetable Soup ...... 99 Chris Tiahrt Status: Three Years (a Writer’s Block) . . . 101 Rey Ford It Is Silly ...... 103 Sagan Sette Broken Gingerbread Houses Taste the Same ...... 104 Ellyn Lichvar When Your Husband Lost His Arm . . . . 107 Patrick Reninger Two Weeks After ...... 108

Contributors ...... 109 Creative Writing at Brescia ...... 112 0p2410.qx 3/12/10 11:57 AM Page 4

Humid Voices

“His hands were in his coats pockets. They had been the whole time, and she couldn’t tell if he had a weapon.” Joey Goebel, p. 6

“I decide to remain on the floor, where I am safe from the toxic air and the close proximity of two people I find revolting.” Jay Chaffin, p. 15

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Open 24 Hours Dori Howard Glitter

This is how it begins: Unassuming girl in a crowded high school hallway. A boy she doesn’t know, trying to know himself. He delicately clasps her arm and pulls her Toward him, a foreign tide, as students rush past them on all sides like careless bodies of water. His tongue probes for answers in her innocent mouth and it’s quick and it’s over before she even sees his face and he has faded again into a sea of backpacks and books and lockers, leaving scented traces of cafeteria ketchup and a whispered and humid thank you in her ear.

Her first kiss with a boy. His last with a girl.

This is how it continues: Straight girl sheltered in a gay bar, reveling in a colorful glitter pit of mirrors and dance floors and embraces that stitch permanent imprints of designer cologne into the seams of her clothes. Since her first kiss, she cannot count the many more she’s given and received from men who love men who love men, and she carries the memory of the first like a secret coin in her pocket that she will never spend. It’s an extrication, the knowledge of living as a man’s epitome Of her gender. She is a man’s scrutiny of attraction. His capping test of genetics.

So she falls in love over and over without consequence. She falls in love over and over with men who love men who love men. She falls in love with George who develops a harness for poetry that gives her infinite power over her words. With Alistair who ties her to a city life and shows her how to count the cracks in crowded sidewalks and the number of steps across bridges. With Thomas who proves that her heart is a measuring tool.

She is content as they mold her into a candle free of flame, hold her skin free of touch, and she is never lonely is this world they have created so soft and unassailable because it’s true that love is love is love.

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Joey Goebel Awful Quiet

It was not uncommon for Irene to be up at around 3:00 a.m. At least once a week, she had a wide-awake spell, which she always handled the same way: she took one half of a sleeping pill, went to the family room downstairs so she wouldn’t wake her husband, and read a book until the pill sang its sweet, simple lullaby to her brain. After taking half an Ambien, Irene turned on the family room lamp and plugged in the Christmas tree lights. The soft glow of the lights had been an image that had soothed her since she was a little girl in overalls. Irene actually enjoyed the nights when she couldn’t sleep. Her kids were peacefully drooling on their pillows. All the TV’s were off. No cars passed by outside. The telephone would not be ringing. The silence was perfect. She lay on the couch. Once her old brown shawl was draped over her just so, she opened her book, The Godfather. She had read it twice before and seen the movie over twenty times, and like most Americans considered it to be the greatest film to have ever been made. The film and the book were about some mobsters who take turns getting revenge on one another. There was something about The Godfather that always made Irene come back to it. Maybe it was because, despite all the violence, it was basically a story about a family whose members put each other above everything else. So she felt her muscles relaxing as she read about Vito and Sonny and Michael and all the rest. Thirty minutes into her reading, the shawl was making her feel toasty warm, and she felt the first hint of sleepiness. She looked over at the multi-colored Christmas tree lights, just to enjoy them for a moment. As she returned her gaze to her book, she thought she caught a glimpse of something. She looked at the doorway between the family room and dining room, and her heart instantly began beating faster than it ever had in all her life. Without a sound—without any warning whatsoever—a stranger had entered her home. He simply stood there, silently staring at her. * * * They stared at each other for twenty horribly long seconds. Irene’s nerves sizzled with fear, causing her entire body to go from toasty warm to fiery hot. She opened her mouth to scream. “Shhh,” said the man, his finger to his mouth. He wore black gloves. His face was wrapped in soiled, tattered bandages, not like a mummy so much as a hideously wounded hospital patient, and all Irene could see of his features were his dark eyes and purplish lips. “Please, I know this will be difficult for you,” he said in a slow, steady, quiet voice, “but try to remain calm. Do not cry for help. I may or may not be here to harm you. How you behave in the next five minutes will determine my decision. If you do as I say, you are much less likely to be hurt or killed, though I should warn you that no matter what—even if you do nothing at all to offend me, there is still a possibility that you’ll be killed within the next five minutes.” Irene threw her book aside and sat up. It was as though she had become her heartbeat. It was beating that hard, that fast, that loudly in her head. “I do acknowledge how terrifying this must be for you, a complete stranger suddenly appearing in your home in the middle of the night. That is Open 24 Hours 6 0p2410.qx 3/12/10 11:57 AM Page 7

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actually the primary reason for my visit—to terrify you. You are scared, no?” “Yes! Please don’t hurt me.” “I had hoped that you would speak more quietly than that.” “Please don’t hurt me,” she said in a near whisper. “You did say you were scared, correct?” “Yes.” “Terrified, even?” “Yes.” “Good. Oh, I don’t mean to sound insensitive. I am not necessarily pleased that you’re scared—though part of me does take pleasure in it, I must admit. You should see the look on your face right now.” Her blue eyes bulged. Her chin quivered. She trembled as she observed his outfit. He wore all black with his white bandages. He kept himself wrapped in a black trench coat with a black shirt and black slacks beneath. On his feet were black combat boots. As she stared at his mouth with its vaguely injured quality—the lips looked uneven, like they couldn’t close properly—Irene’s mind dizzied itself with questions. Who was he? What was he? Was he even human? Was he a ghost? A monster? Or was this Death Himself, ready to take her away? “I want you to know that I have nothing at all against you as an individ- ual,” he said, still calm—gentle even, as though he were talking to a troubled child. “I find no fault with you specifically. No personal grievance of any sort. I should clarify that I’m only following orders.” “Whose orders?” “I can’t say. I don’t mean to sound cryptic, but really, I could never tell you who sent me here.” “Take anything you want. Please, just leave.” At this, he laughed. “That insults me a little. I’m not a common burglar. The reason for my visit goes far beyond a desire to take your material possessions. I can see why you’d immediately think that, since you have so many material possessions yourself.” He looked around at the elaborate Dickens Christmas village set up on the fireplace, at the home entertainment center, and at the toys strewn about on the floor. “What do you want from me?” “I told you. I want to frighten you. And also I might want to take your life. Do try to remain calm.” He took one step forward, the first movement he had made at all. He was now in the family room. Irene threw her shawl aside. “Why me?” “Your name just came up. Your number was chosen. Quite literally, actually.” “Buy why?” “Why what?” “Why are you doing this at all? Why are you even bothering scaring me?” “It actually has nothing to do with you, if that’s of any comfort to you.” “Please leave. Please.” “You should talk more quietly so you won’t wake your family and involve them in this.” “How did you get in here?” “I can’t tell you because then I won’t be able to get in as easily if I decide

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to return.” Irene had to remind herself to breathe. She desperately wanted to call her husband’s name but didn’t want to endanger herself. The man continued to stare at her. She stared back. His hands were in his coat pockets. They had been the whole time, and she couldn’t tell if he had a weapon. He slowly tilted his head diagonally, never breaking eye contact. With his head tilted this way, the man seemed like some sort of predatory animal, and Irene was afraid he would pounce on her at any second. She broke eye contact and looked at the plush white carpet. She had to tell herself to calm down and think. Think. What can a person do in a situation like this? She cut her eyes sideways at the telephone on the coffee table in front of the couch. “The police can’t help you,” he said. “I know this might be difficult for you to understand, but there is absolutely no way for you to stop me from doing what I’m going to do. It will either happen or it won’t. It only depends on what I decide.” “I’m not going to just lay down and let you kill me. I have two little children.” “Not to sound callous, but that is of no relevance. Really, your name just came up. There’s nothing more to it. Your time will soon be up. I realize you’d like the opportunity to talk your way out of this, though. If you have anything you want to say to me before I make my decision, I’ll gladly listen, though I should mention that nothing you say will have any effect on that decision.” “John!” she blurted. It came out like a sneeze that could not be stifled. “I told you to be quiet. I was entirely clear about that point.” The man suddenly took one more step toward her. Irene folded her arms around her head. She peeked from behind her arms, hoping that he might have disappeared as quickly as he came. But he was still there, and now only four feet from her, leaning the top half of his body toward her like a grade school teacher hovering over a student shaking in her desk. “If you shout again, then that’s it for you.” Irene prayed that John had heard her, but he clearly hadn’t or he would already be down there. “You need to speak as quietly as you can. Now I’ll ask you once more. Do you have anything to say for yourself?” “What is this about!?” She couldn’t keep from crying. “All I can tell you is that it has nothing to do with you or with me. In all honesty, I don’t exactly know why I’m here either. Now, I will present you with one last opportunity to say what might prove to be your last words.” Irene could only cry. The man did nothing but stare at her, looking down as she remained cowering on the sofa. She was thinking about what a sense- less way this would be to die when she saw John creeping down the steps with a baseball bat. Wearing a T-shirt and boxer shorts, he had his finger over his mouth, and Irene had to force herself not to look behind the man again. She had to keep the man’s attention on her. “I don’t know why you’re here, but I beg you not to hurt me or my family. If it’s something I’ve done, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll make up for it. Please, let’s just work something out. I’ll change. I’ll do anything. Just leave.” Open 24 Hours 8 0p2410.qx 3/12/10 11:57 AM Page 9

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Irene could see a baseball bat now, raised high in the air behind the man. It came down with the utmost force, only to make contact with the carpet. The man had somehow side-stepped the blow without even turning around. His hands still in his coat pockets, he now directed his eerily calm stare at John. John swung at him a second time, this time like he was swinging at an incoming pitch. The man casually stepped back, untouched, calm as he could be. “Go get the kids and call the police!” said John. “I wish you wouldn’t,” said the man. “You and the kids get out of here!” said John. Irene ran through the dining room and shot up the stairs. Behind her, she could here John grunting as he swung. He would not stop swinging. * * * Irene decided to get the kids out of the house first and then call the police from outside. She grabbed her cell phone from her nightstand and rushed into her younger son’s room. “Logan, wake up.” She tried to sound as motherly as she could, but her voice still shook. “Come on, sweetie. We need to go outside.” “Why?” he asked, with one eye closed. “We just do. It’s okay. Let’s wake John up. Just wear your pajamas. Come on.” She took the little boy by the hand and they ran to the next bedroom. John Jr. already had his light on. “What’s going on?” he asked. “We need to get out of the house,” she said. “Why?” “We might not be safe.” “Why?” Logan was five, but John Jr. was eleven and would have to be given a real answer. “There’s a robber in the house. We have to get out now.” At this, John Jr. sprang from his bed. The three of them ran into the hallway. The sound of something big falling over came from downstairs. Logan started crying. “It’s okay, honey. Come this way.” Irene led them back into Logan’s bedroom. “We’re going to have to jump out the window.” “Why?” asked John Jr. “I don’t want the robber to see you two at all, and we can’t go downstairs without him seeing us. We have to get out of the house.” To get to the window, she moved aside Logan’s little play table that he had covered in Spiderman stickers. She opened the window and peeked out, and as she had expected, there was no way to climb down. They would have to jump, and they would have to propel themselves outward a bit to avoid the bushes below. “I could jump first and then try to catch you, but I doubt I could catch you and we might end up getting hurt worse. It’s not a long fall. I’ll go first to make sure it’s safe.” “Mommy, don’t!” cried Logan. Irene picked up Logan. “Shh. It’s okay. Hold on to me as tight as you

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can.” “No!” cried Logan, but she already had him scooped up and perched herself on the window ledge, one arm under Logan’s bottom, the other on the side of the house for balance. She jumped and landed on her feet, though the pain sent through her legs caused her to fall. She managed to fall sideways so that Logan wouldn’t be smashed. “Are you okay?” she asked. “Yes.” The jump had put a sudden stop to his crying. “Where’s Daddy?” “He’ll be out soon.” Irene looked up to see John Jr. already squatting on the ledge. “Do you want me to try to catch you?” Irene yelled. “No.” With that, he jumped. He landed on his feet but then did a little roll move like someone in an action movie. He got up with ease. “Are you okay?” “Yeah.” Only now did Irene realize that it was freezing outside. The lawn was covered in frost. “Did you call the police?” asked John Jr. “I wanted to get you out first. I have my cell phone.” She reached in the pocket of her flannel robe. She did not have her cell phone. She had set it on Logan’s table before moving it. Irene looked up and down the street. The lights in every house were off. She wished now that she had bothered getting to know her neighbors, since she would have to call the police from one of their houses. She considered which household should be the recipient of a frightening 3:00 a.m. doorbell ring. “Mom, was it that man under the streetlight from a long time ago?” asked John Jr. Irene had been too befuddled the last five minutes for this even to occur to her. * * * It was one of John Jr.’s earliest memories. It must have bothered him more than he let on, because this wasn’t the first time he had brought it up. It wasn’t that big of a deal, really. Eight years ago, on a humid summer night, Irene, John, and John Jr. went for a walk around the same suburban neighborhood where they currently lived. They did this every night back then for the sake of exercise, and because it was such a safe, pleasant walk. But this one night, as they turned a corner onto the street where they lived, from afar they saw a figure standing underneath a streetlight that was cattycornered from their house. “Look,” said John Jr. “What is he doing?” Irene asked. “He’s just standing there,” said John. “He’s not doing anything at all. Weird.” “Who is that?” asked John Jr. “We don’t know,” said Irene. Maybe people did this sort of thing downtown or in bigger cities: wait on street corners for some unknown reason. But this was the suburbs. The streets here were for driving, walking, or kids riding their bikes. For someone to just

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hang around on the street doing nothing was a truly surreal thing to see. As they got closer, they saw it was a man wearing all black. He stood so still that Irene wondered if it was a mannequin. Eventually his head moved; he seemed to be watching them. It soon became clear that he was not going anywhere. “That is creepy,” said Irene. John Jr. motioned for his dad to hold him. His dad picked him up and told him not to worry. Fortunately, they would not have to pass the man; their house was on the corner just before the streetlight. They did not walk close enough to see his facial features. As they went up the front walk to their house, the man’s head slowly followed. Other than that he was motionless, his hands stuck in his pants pockets. He wasn’t even leaning against the pole. “You two go on in,” said John, setting his son down. “What are you going to do?” asked Irene. “I don’t know. I guess if he wants to, he can stand there all night. He’s not breaking any laws. He’s not trespassing. It’s not illegal to be weird and freak people out, I guess.” “Let’s all go inside,” said Irene. “He might have a gun.” “You two go in.” But she wanted to see what would happen next. John stepped down to the end of their walk. He waved at the man, first a friendly little hand-wave, then a sweeping arm-wave, like he was trying to flag down a helicopter. The man didn’t make a move. “He must be crazy,” said Irene. John took a few steps forward. “John!” “Daddy!” “Hey!” yelled John. “Are you okay?!” The man remained still. “Can I help you with something?!” No reply. Nothing. “All right, then. Have a good night.” They went inside and tucked in John Jr., though they both knew he wouldn’t be falling asleep any time soon. From the living room, for the next hour they kept watch on the man by peeking through one slit of the closed window blinds. Cars occasionally passed by, slowing down as they passed him. His gaze didn’t follow the car; it stayed on John and Irene’s house. John and Irene were debating whether to call the police when suddenly the man walked off. They went outside to watch where he went. He just kept walking, never looking back, finally turning the corner at the end of the street, and that was the end of it. * * * Irene decided her best bet would be the older couple across the street. The old man had always seemed tough and wouldn’t be too upset. “Guys, we have to get to a telephone. Come on.” But just as they headed off, they heard a series of crashes come from their house, followed by a deep, frustrated growl. “Stay right here,” said Irene. “Don’t move.” The boys stood by the mail-

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box, shivering. Irene ran up to the front window and looked through the little gap where the curtains met. John was now sitting on the sofa, his head bowed, his shoulders heaving. The man stood motionlessly in front of him, still with his hands in his pocket. The entire room had been destroyed. The Christmas village was now scattered across the carpet, reduced to a thousand jagged pieces of porce- lain. The baseball bat was poking out from a hole in the TV screen. The Christmas tree lay pathetically on its side, its lights off, as though it were defeated. Irene saw that the man was now staring at her. She jumped back from the window and started across the street to make the phone call. But before she made it past her front lawn, she heard the front door open. John was coming out with the man behind him. “Boys, run,” said Irene. “What’s—,” said John Jr. “Run! Run to Donna’s house and I’ll call you in a little bit.” Donna was a cousin that lived on the other side of the neighborhood. The boys obeyed. If anyone happened to be up and looking out their front window, they would be startled by the sight of two little boys running as fast as they could in their pajamas. Irene and John met halfway down their front walk. The man stood a few feet behind John. “Are you okay?” she asked. “You . . . can’t . . . hit . . . him,” said John, still out of breath. “I tried . . . everything. It’s impossible.” “Did he hurt you?” she asked. “No.” John turned so that he stood between Irene and the man. John and Irene were trembling from the cold. The man wasn’t. “Please . . . ,” said John. “I’ll be on my way now,” said the man. He took a step forward. John’s body tensed. Irene clung to him from behind. The man laughed. “Won’t you let me by?” John and Irene stepped back, and the man walked past. “Wait!” said Irene. The man turned, next to the mailbox. “Yes?” “Is that it?” “That’s it.” “You’re just going to leave like nothing happened?” She was smiling. “That’s right.” “And you’re not going to kill us?” she asked. “Not this time, at least.” “What does that mean?” asked John. The man took a couple of steps closer and looked John in the eye as he spoke. “It means that from this moment forward, for the rest of your lives and your children’s lives, there will be a remote possibility that I will visit again. It could be at any moment, day or night, winter, summer, maybe a year from now, maybe twenty, or maybe never. You’ll only know after it happens.” “I’ll be ready next time,” said John firmly. “And if I ever see you again, I’ll

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kill you.” “I would expect that. And that is fine. If that should occur—which is doubt- ful, judging by your efforts inside the house—but if it should, there are others like me. I’m sorry. I know this must be hard for you to accept, but this is one that you just can’t win. Good night.” And with that, he walked off in no particular hurry, past the streetlight on the corner. John and Irene rushed inside to call the police. As John placed the call, Irene was careful not to get any glass stuck in her sock-feet. She saw the clock, which was now on the floor. It was still keeping time. 3:23. Only eight minutes ago she had been lying on her sofa, reading a book, and enjoying the peace and quiet. John left to pick up the boys. Not wanting the kids to see the mess that John had made, Irene started picking things off the floor. Thinking about the man’s final words, she felt a thick shroud of anxiety drop over her and sadly accepted that she had just entered a state of permanent restlessness.

Teresa Roy The True Religion

After Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed, it had all been said. Though there were no two ways about it, we yammered on anyway, putting on too fine a point, mucking up grace with politics and sly intent.

Maybe we should just shut up; lie fallow in a field for seven somethings —weeks, months, years— ears cupped hard against the earth. Then begin again with a grain of truth, if there is one yet to be heard.

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Jim McGarrah On the Streets of Saigon in 2005 After Reading a U.S. Court Decision Finding the Makers of Agent Orange Not Responsible For Birth Defects in Vietnamese Children:

They swarmed me, like hummingbirds, a flock of boys two generations from war twitching so fast in the white sun I hardly saw the animated hunger hiding in their dark eyes. With watches and postcards held aloft, some scuttled on skateboards while others scraped kneepads and bike gloves along Dong Khoi Street dragging knapsacks full of salvaged treasure, Zippos, rings, bullet jacket brass, photos, and private things torn from battle dead thirty years before these casualties were ever born. Their humid voices echoed over traffic and claxtons from cargo ships, some moored, others dry-docked in the Bason shipyard. I bought a pack of 555’s from tiny twins, maybe twelve years old, maybe fifty. The acrid smoke veiled the stench of dead fish rising from the Saigon River as the whole group hailed a cyclo driver for my ride to peace, my reason for return, a ceremony by the Ministry of Arts and Literature, an invitation to remember, a celebration of repentance and forgiveness. Each child waved goodbye as if we were cousins, ordinary people with ordinary lives. Some used their only hand, those without arms shook their feet, three wriggled fingers attached to legs, one whose torso was backward turned away and gave me a hug. The twins, fused at the ears, smiled a bizarre double grin born from three chipped and blackened teeth.

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Jay Chaffin Lost Causes and Human Walruses

I’m sitting at Lillian’s Bar next to Unger, gelatinous and fragrant in a suit that looks to be squeezing the sweat from his body. He’s in the middle of telling me how the citizens of Hungary kicked him out. Not the country, though. Hungary, Rhode Island: a one-stoplight town which he claims was recently annexed by rogue Nova Scotian whalers. He then points to a scar on the side of his face—a fading henna tattoo that looks like a winding ladder— and explains how his neighbor, a sleeper cell for the Nova Scotians, had mistaken him for a retarded inland baby whale and harpooned him in the face. This was his big news. This was why he wanted me to meet him ASAP. This is also why I do not drink. Unger, my fat slob of a former coworker, is my cautionary tale. He’s one of the few people I keep around to act as a reminder of what not to do in life. I’ve also been tasked to fire him. Why not at his favorite watering hole? Ironic, considering the man is higher up the corporate ladder than me. But I’ve got to be subtle about this. It’s my first firing. Gotta be sensitive. Feeling good about the situation, I tell him he looks nothing like a whale. Rather, with his thick handlebar mustache, sagging jowls, and a terrible combover on his speckled gray head, he looks more like a walrus in disguise. A secret agent sea-dweller. “And walruses,” I add, hoping he’ll finally shut up about his weight, “are absolutely adorable. Nobody would harpoon a walrus. It’s bad luck.” Unger shakes his head and orders another scotch, which he tips back and gulps down so fast that some of it trickles down his chin and onto the counter, adding to the puddle made from his previous scotch. He wipes his chin with the sleeve of his suit jacket and manages to get some of his mustache tangled in his cufflinks. After my drink arrives (a bottle of water), a grandmother in ratty fatigues and hair so oily I can wash my hands in it leans on the bar beside me and says, “You must be Wes. Can’t imagine anybody else sittin’ in my seat.” Her voice is hoarse. The bartender, a bored looking fellow in his fifties, smirks and tells Unger to watch my back. The woman chortles and lights a cigarette with a rusty Zippo lighter. She sits on the stool beside me, and when she takes a drag from her cigarette, I notice that half of her pinky is missing. “You, my dear, are digestible,” Unger tells her, and then he laughs and places his meaty hand on my shoulder. “How long you been sittin’ there? Wes, other side. Sandwich me.” Wait, who is this? We’re supposed to be alone. Along with the cigarette smoke, her perfume strangles my eyes and it’s all I can do not to spontaneously combust. Her smell, Apple Spice Overload, combined with Unger’s Vinegar Sweat, creates an atmosphere so volatile to my sinuses that I feel an infection coming on, a new plague born of a stench both natural and fabricat- ed. “Somethin’ wrong, Sugar?” Granny Spice asks. She lays her hand on my other shoulder. Her touch is frail, as though her skin is paper thin and her

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bones marshmallows. Houston, we’re go for panic in 3 . . .2 . . . 1 . . . . “Sandwiches,” I tell her, trying not to stare at her mangled digit. Blastoff. We’re go for orbit. “What’s that? I can barely hear you.” She leans into my air space, her perfume elevating to lethal doses, her skin a grid of lines, tiny hairs, and flakes of dried makeup. “Don’t you know it’s polite to humor the person drinking next to you?” I glare at Unger and whisper, “Who’s this?” I don’t want this aberration near me. I try to lean back in the stool, but the legs beneath me are wobbly and the stool gives, topples over, and I fall back to the floor, arms pinwheel- ing, my bottled water landing on my chest and emptying all over me. “Whoopsie daisy!” Granny Spice says, picking back up the stool and setting it down. “You okay?” “Wes!” Unger says into his empty glass. “Get up! I needs my wingman. I needs you to fly me into this bonnie lass.” Then he rises and sits on my stool, slams his empty shot glass down and starts rambling to this genuinely interested interloper about his time in bartender school, which is a lie. He also tells her that Foster’s is not only Australian for beer, but it’s also German for sternum honey. Which is also untrue. I groan, the air in my lungs immolating from the overwhelming odor still whirl-winding up my nose. I decide to remain on the floor, where I’m safe from the toxic air and the close proximity of two people I find revolting. Then I begin thinking about all the dirty shoes that have stepped where I’m lying. I think about spit and grease, and I curl, suddenly nauseated. I slowly stand back up and dust myself off. The front of my clothes is wet. My shoes are wet. My slacks are sticky. Meanwhile, Unger is slurring a speech about how he once debunked a popular myth about the North American honeybee. He swears that he once participated in a honeybee gender reassignment procedure at UCLA, and how the procedure provoked an existential crisis about the nature of human reflection and the hive mind. Then he tells Granny Spice how he mainlined the population of a single bee- hive. She’s fascinated, absolutely thrilled with what she’s hearing, and her hand wanders along his knee, and I look away, disgusted and annoyed with the both of them. Obviously, her perfume doesn’t bother Unger. Granny Spice shoots me a sideways glance and wiggles her fingers at me. She wants me to skedaddle. Now. I slide my thumb across the front of my neck and then gesture for her to take a hike. “Unger, I really need—” “I hope it isn’t weird to be hearing a walrus talk,” Unger says while waving his empty glass in the air for another refill. “I love walruses,” Granny Spice says, coyly giving me the finger before digging it inside her ear. “Course you do,” I murmur, and in the mirror behind the bar, I see the reflection of a couple who strike me as freakish. The woman’s neck is long and covered in birthmarks, and her bony face is attacked by freckles that look like a hundred frozen fleas. I imagine her mother being raped by a bug- eyed giraffe, getting impregnated, contemplating and then foregoing abortion, and then committing suicide after seeing what she had wrought

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unto the world. Her boyfriend, dressed in a plain shirt and sandals and white socks pulled to his bony knees just inches below cutoff jean shorts, snaps a photo of her with his cell phone. I imagine him as a wildlife photographer who has just wandered into the realm of the rare, elusive Girlraffe. The Girlraffe does various poses for him while he snaps pictures and smiles, and it just dawns on me how tall she is compared to him. At least a foot taller. A country-style remake of “We Built This City on Rock and Roll” plays on the bar’s many speakers, and I cringe, it’s such an awful song. Even worse than the original version. “Nooooo,” Unger moans. “Not STYX. Leave STYX alone! They ain’t done nothin’ to no one to warrant this, this...thievery.” “It’s not STYX’s song,” I tell him, turning around to watch the mis- matched couple enjoying themselves. “It’s Jefferson Airplane.” “Starship, sugar,” Granny Spice says. “Airplane’s made up. I once dated a back-up bassist for ‘em. Got his photo somewhere.” I’m too polite to tell people to butt out of conversations that don’t involve them. I look down at my dirtied work shirt, see the arrangement of freshly added stains, and after an unwanted image of my mother pops into my head, I ask myself: What am I doing here? Here I am, wet and sticky, my back dotted with dust and debris from the floor. Granny Spice makes a comment about Unger’s graying chest hair poking out from the top of his work shirt. He loosens the top two buttons and pushes his chest out, and she playfully flicks a couple of strands. If it’s true that the company you keep defines who you are, then I must be a lost cause. Unger is the only person I ever associate with, and even our time together is sparse. I’ve no aspirations to be a whale, or a walrus. Tonight, I’ve been tasked to harpoon the man. “You’re cute,” Granny Spice tells Unger after buttoning his shirt back up. “Fancy that.” “And married,” I say, but nobody’s listening. I shrug and make my way across the bar floor to the restroom, which is heavy with lemon cleaner. When the door closes behind me, all is quiet. The restroom is small, only one stall and a urinal and one big mirror above a sink still slick with cleaner. I sway, reach out and grab the sink, try to hold steady. I’m drifting and no matter how hard I try to stop, I float, float, float, and the world blurs, my head spinning with sudden nausea, and I let go of the sink and barge into the empty stall and close, lock the door behind me. I look down at my wet clothes and then inside the bowl of water, which is blue. I lean over, hands on my knees, think for a moment as my insides settle, as my head stabilizes and my eyesight clears, and then nod. Gotta talk to Unger. Gotta let him know that work fired him. Gotta take initiative. I exit the stall and look at myself in the bathroom mirror, which is lined with multiple cracks. The top corner looks as though someone had recently punched it. I look at my broken reflection and then turn on the faucet. Cold water. I lean forward and let my forehead rest against the cold glass, splin- tering it further. Tiny glass crystals fall to the counter.

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Who am I kidding? I think. Unger doesn’t care. He’s off in another land, hitting on women and thinking he’s a whale. I need to stop thinking about this, and the best way to do that is for me to bump my own forehead into the cracked mirror again. I do so, but only hard enough to make more splinters. To rummage loose a few shards onto the counter. To slice my forehead just enough to make it bleed a little, but not too much—I just want a wound worth noticing. Something to break Granny Spice’s spell on the walrus man. Unger can’t stand the sight of blood. The man goes catatonic around it. If I have to open an artery in front of him to get his attention, I will. I wash my hands in the sink. I splash my face with cold water. I wad some wet paper towels and smash them on my forehead. I count to ten and then let go and stare at the mess I made. I look at the small amounts of my own blood and then look away, saddened from the sight. Then I look again, by accident, and whimper. We’re each of us a lost cause in our parents’ eyes, I think, and I need to stop thinking about this. Stop thinking about reflections in busted mirrors. Stop thinking about stained glass. About how stained glass windows are made from broken pieces of glass. Something pretty and sturdy, made from plain, broken parts. I return to the stall with the missing toilet seat and vomit hard in the toilet. I try not to fall to my knees. Despite the heavy lemon odor of cleaner, I doubt these floors are sterile.

My Plan to Be Noticed (Take One!)

When I return to the bar, Unger is livelier and chatting it up with Granny Spice. As the bar empties (the Girlraffe and her stud have already left), I walk around and collect empty ash trays to stack at my seat while I half listen to their conversation. Granny Spice’s first name is Lillian, though the bar wasn’t named after her, and she seems to be enjoying his story about Nova Scotian whalers with laser-tipped harpoons. He even shows her his scar, his fading Henna tattoo. At the first gap of silence, which is after I’ve collected seventeen red and white ash trays and made a leaning tower with them, I tell Lillian that someone vandalized the men’s room. Broke the mirror. I point at my forehead and ask her if I’m bleeding. She shakes her head and then says, “Not my problem,” before turning her attention back to Unger. Of course it isn’t. Bitch.

My Plan to Be Noticed (Take Two!)

“Of course it isn’t,” I whisper, feeling the pooling warmth in the center of my forehead. “Are you sure I’m not bleeding? I feel like I am.” Unger motions for Lillian to lean closer, and he whispers into her ear. I have no idea what he’s telling her, but now I’m so involved with massaging my cut forehead, agitating the slice and getting my fingertips red, that I am unable to dwell on it. “I am bleeding,” I mumble. “Great.” Lillian giggles and I hear my name come up. Unger is talking about me,

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telling her something about me. No doubt exaggerating. “Unger, I’m bleeding. Can’t you see?” He glances, nods, shifts in his stool. An obvious sign that he’s at least a little unnerved. I make sure there’s blood on the tip of my fingers and tap on his hand. “We need to talk. In private. It’s about work. Private work.” He swats my hand away, places his on my chest, and pushes me back. “Can it wait, Wes?” “I didn’t know you were the son of an actress,” Lillian says, and I think, What? Unger, just what exactly are you telling her? “I’m not,” I grumble, pushing Unger’s hand away. There’s a thin line of my drying blood on his thumb. He regards it with disgust, but then Granny Spice takes his hand, grips his thumb between two fingers like a cigar, places it to her lips. She sucks his thumb into her mouth. When she pushes it back out with her tongue, the blood is gone. She lets go of it and then winks at me before mouthing the words “Go away.” I rub my forehead some more and mouth “Blow me” to her, and then say, “I think I’m gonna need a doctor. Unger, we gotta split. I need medical attention ASAP. Also, I need to tell you about work—” “Space Wench Nine does sound familiar,” Lillian says, tapping her chin and thinking. “Yeah, I think...no, wait.” Wait...what? “Work?” Unger says. “Ha! Boyo, I’m done with that place. Done struck gold and I ain’t gonna be working no more. Ever.” I stare at him in disbelief. “Explain.” And then Lillian says, “You know, I have seen Space Wench Nine. What did you say your momma’s name was...?” “Ohm!” Unger moans while rushing a mouthful of scotch down his throat. “Maggie. No, Sara. No, that’s not right.” He finishes his scotch and slides the empty glass aside. “Is it Jill? Rachel? Agh, now I can’t remember.” I grab Unger by the shoulders. “Unger...explain.” He looks me square in the eye, blinks, and says, “Wes...you’re bleeding.” “Wasn’t she in Finger Dreams?” Granny Spice mentions. “Hmm . . . maybe?” I tell Unger that yes, I am bleeding, and that he isn’t expected at work tomorrow. Or the next day. “If you catch my meaning,” I add. He shrugs. “The reason I haven’t been in all week is because Carrie got a promotion. Her pay’s gonna triple, son. Why else am I out celebrating?” Ah, I see. Carrie is Unger’s wife. She works for an investment firm. From what I gathered from Unger in the past (I’ve only been to their house maybe four times since I’ve long known the man), she’s the breadwinner. Unger’s paychecks were just play money. “We should have a private party, you know that?” Lillian asks, and she nudges me back and regards me with disdain. “You’re bleeding, Wes. You need to get that looked at.” Unger puts his back to me. “God, Wes, I can smell it. Just go already.” Lillian giggles and strokes the back of his neck lovingly. Her entire atti- tude is a public journal of intentions for the whale tonight. Either she

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doesn’t know that he’s married, or she doesn’t care. Another look at Unger, in which I try my best to burn the phrase CAUTION! DANGER AHEAD! into his mind with my eyes, and it appears that he’s just as lost in the moment, indifferent to whatever consequences may arise. Once again, I’m invisible and agape, with a throbbing cut and a red smear on my forehead like poorly applied war paint. But this time, I’m okay with it. No more trips to the bathroom to get sorted out. “I’ll leave you two in peace,” I mutter. Mission accomplished! I exit the bar alone and find my motorcycle lying on its side and splattered in egg yolk. There’s even the distinct smell of urine. Across the street, a group of kids screech excitedly and scatter in all directions on tiny bicycles and skateboards. “Can’t catch us, queer!” one of the boys, a straw-haired kid in a sleeve- less shirt, shouts. The leader of the pack, maybe. I notice that he’s also a slow pedaler. Probably because he’s wearing baggy jeans that show the top of his ass. I pick up my bike. Scratches and dents, and egg splatter, of course, and a broken speedometer. The damage is superficial. The bike even starts good. Smells like piss, though. On the way home, I picture Girlraffe and her young stud going at it like rabbits, being filmed documentary style, howling and laughing and genuinely enjoying each other’s company, finding no flaws with their bodies, and feeling lucky. Lucky and loved. Thinking about their ugly nirvana leaves me feeling despondent so I start imagining Lillian, Grandmother Spice, taking Unger home and ravishing him on his doorstep. Swallowing his tongue and fumbling with his pants as he tries to undo her bra underneath her shirt. Telling him that she was once a man. Him telling her he once fucked a man. Encouraged by my pessimistic nature, I picture Unger’s wife opening the door, dressed in a nightgown, waiting for Unger to come home. I imagine candles, rose petals on the floor, words of sweetness on a 3x5 note card. An end-rhyme poem. Awkward, but meaningful attempts at a spontaneous romantic evening with her husband. I picture her expression, her confusion and disbelief, upon seeing Unger’s hand half-hidden in the cleft of Lillian’s ass. I imagine Unger being so drunk that he doesn’t realize the severity of the situation, his wife sob- bing and thinking how happy endings are lost causes where ever-afters are concerned. She slams the door. Lillian leaves. Unger is alone, on his porch, wondering what went wrong because don’t all men think that? What went wrong? Morons, the lot of them. Present company included. That’s why I don’t date much. Men, knights in shining armor? Even armor can rust. Riding off into the sunset? The sun doesn’t shine all day. But somewhere in this town, a giraffe lady and her king of fashion-disas- ter geekdom are just fine with life, with each other. Resigned to their peaceful, blemish-free fate. While idling at a stoplight, I gently touch my forehead and feel a small streak of dried blood. I wonder if there’ll be a scar. (excerpt from a novel-in-progress)

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Open 24 Hours Michael Battram Quotidian

They took the tumor, she got to keep the breast, her life. Meanwhile, a health scare just for me: a red-hot bowling ball inside my chest— the doctors called it “stress, anxiety,” after eight thousand dollars’ worth of tests. We got a glimpse of our mortality, our lives regained, too precious now to waste; a real crash course in maturity at fifty-plus, and all that could be lost, new fears of pain, decay, metastases. But, here we’re back, still wandering through this place called life, where most days are the same, thank God, except for some infrequent terrors, and odd small bits of half-assed luck, we now call grace.

Michael Battram The Descent of Management

“We think of ourselves as fallen angels, when in reality we are risen apes.” —Desmond Morris, on the human species.

“Even a monkey could do that guy’s job.” —a manager I knew, on one of his employees.

Each day we rise, from beds in rented rooms, Long before you start your day’s commute, The “monkeys” who clean your offices and homes, Prepare and serve your meals, and press the suits You wear, that cost more than we earn in months. You don’t see us, but we’ve watched you at work: Presenting like a chimp for new accounts, Then raging like an alpha silverback At clerks and janitors. Superior? A risen ape? Not far—don’t make us laugh. What kind of “angel” do you think you are? Tomorrow, after lunch, just ask yourself: Who smiled and filled—four times—your coffee cup? Who wanted to, but didn’t, spit in your soup?

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Phoebe Athey Damned Mexicans

“And send me another dozen Mexicans!” was the demand tacked on to the spring plants, shrubs and mulch order I overheard the Colonial Gardens owner shout into his cell phone. That “another dozen” didn’t sound politi- cally correct somehow. Shouldn’t he have stipulated quality Mexicans, or board certified Mexicans? He had been more specific about the shrubs. Saw them as individuals. The day has come I too am partial to an all Mexican workforce. Since I am not seeking a Supreme Court nomination and don’t intend to run for public office, why not? The contractor for my house renovation hired his highly skilled foreman’s half-brother, the amazing and legendary Geraldo, whose claim to fame was he could stack more corn boxes per hour (400) than any other man at the farmer’s produce depot in Atlanta. Let’s see those bench pressing pansies at the health club top that! The foreman himself had strolled up here to Owensboro when he was only sixteen from down near Guatemala. Thus fully staffed, my renovation went smoothly and speedily until I received this sad news: “HAIR-AWL-DOUGH, he no working today.” “Porque?” I asked in my fluent Taco Bell Spanish. The answer: there had been a death just this Saturday night of two hamsters. I had not taken Geraldo for a sensitive sort to attend a hamster funeral. Actually, Geraldo had choked them to death. They belonged to Tiffany or Courtney or Whitney or Chastity or Ashley or Epiphany or whatever elegant aristocratic name is so evocative of Geraldo’s great big old fat white girlfriend with three babies none obviously produced on Geraldo’s watch securely set up in a welfare motel apartment near the bypass 7-Eleven and Laundromat. But why was Geraldo so put out with Tiffany or Epiphany that he squashed these harmless hamsters? Upon arriving in Owensboro, Geraldo had immediately fallen head over heels for Tiffany, a single mom of three who being of the Baptist faith shared Geraldo’s Roman Catholic anti birth control especially anti uncomfortable condom views relying solely on the natural method of Highway 431 South fast food obesity which had not kicked in until she was comfortably situated with three babies securing her a tenured position on the public assistance rolls. Geraldo was in bliss finding a woman with a steady government income. Geraldo had housing! Out of nowhere, though, Tiffany delivered an ultimatum: “Get out. It’s over. The thrill is gone!” complaining he always came home drunk, having spent his paycheck hanging out with the whores at the Cadillac Motel. Finding himself locked out, Geraldo drove the unlicensed, unregistered and uninsured 1994 Dodge Dakota truck borrowed from his half-brother over to his amigo Cowboy’s in the trailer park where he was to benefit from Cowboy’s wise counsel and relax, taking time to gather his thoughts over a suitcase of beer. Then he did some meth to add insight and focus. Not to say that Geraldo was normally a meth user, but in his spare time he had

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endeavored (bless his heart!) to learn some of the language and customs of Kentucky white folk. A few days later, visitors to my house began inquiring about an indefin- able odor emanating from a 1994 Dodge Dakota pickup parked in front of my house. I called my contractor and put the question to him: “Why is Geraldo’s truck parked in front of my house, and why does it smell so of death, of vomit, of putrefaction, of rotting fish and stale beer?” The contractor explained that he had left it there as he had had to get Geraldo’s truck out of impound. Geraldo was in jail being held without bond. “But we need Geraldo Monday!” I exclaimed. “No way will they let me bail him out.” “Why is Geraldo in jail?” “He was in a bad wreck.” “The truck looks fine to me. It just smells bad.” “Have you seen the front of that damn truck?” Then he told me that Geraldo had busted out a window in Tiffany's welfare motel apartment confident she was not there as he just had left her and the three kids at her mother’s way out in the country. He claimed first all the sentimental gifts to himself by Tiffany such as the big 24 carat gold cross and coordinating chain link necklace she had bought as a Christmas gift with money she had so sacrificially saved from her meager welfare budget. Then there was the amazingly discounted Rolex watch she had given him for his birthday. He filled a big black garbage bag with all of the steaks from the freezer, the shrimp platters, and the Tommy Hilfiger clothes. In a final gesture of revenge, he grabbed Tiffany’s two pet hamsters and their cages and threw them in the passenger’s side of the cab with the remains of the suitcase of Milwaukee’s Best. In a righteous hissy huff because Tiffany wouldn’t answer his cell phone, Geraldo determined to drive out to her mom’s for a romantic confrontation. As he drove, the cell phone not responding to his demonic dialing, he accel- erated his hold one by one on the throats of her twin pet hamsters with one hand, a can of Milwaukee’s Best snuggled in his crotch, cell phone nestled under his chin, and with his other hand changing the CD to his big brass mariachi and tejano accordion sounds, steering with a knee or thumb or some oddment of genitalia. Instead of going back on the major highway which he knew was very busy and prone to have a police presence, he went on a back road where he rear-ended some hapless lady sitting after her mid- night shift job at an intersection near a railroad track looking both ways before proceeding into the intersection out in the middle of nowhere. She escaped death or injury, pain or suffering being protected equally by God and her securely fastened seat belt. Though there is an archaic auto crash legal convention which stipulates in a rear end collision that the colliding party is at fault, Geraldo argues to this day that his case was an exception; the fault lay with the damned fool white lady. “If a loco white lady stops in the middle of cornfield at stop sign, does police to care? No one around. Why she stopping?” Geraldo’s truck air bag had deployed, and a white talcum meant to lubri-

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cate deployment covered Geraldo from head to toe. He must have blacked out because the next thing he remembered was hearing people yelling “Call the cops!” The crash had flung open the driver’s door next to a cornfield, so he opportunistically took off through what turned out to be a two mile cornfield. His “just do it” Nike’s were quickly lost, but he kept running barefoot—cut up by cornhusks but never losing his favorite Corona ball cap. Geraldo didn’t know where he was when he came out of the cornfield, but it turned out to be a major highway. He was walking barefoot along the shoulder “Night of the Living Dead” zombie fashion when a kindly county CHER EEF, as Geraldo referred to him, pulled alongside and said, “Hey, buddy! Need a ride?” To which Geraldo replied, “Take me to friend’s in trailer park.” The sheriff, after seeing Geraldo situated at the trailer park in a deep slumber, took a back road toward town and encountered an ambulance and most of his fellow fraternal order of police hunting with flashlights through a cornfield searching for an apparently ejected and possibly seri- ously injured or dead body. They feared the worst as a cage with two hamsters sitting on top of the remains of a suitcase of Milwaukee’s Best on the passenger side seemed not to have survived the impact. They did- n’t mean to be profilin' but they had come to suspect with the flag of Mexico decal on the back of the truck, the Baby Jesus and cross dangling from the rear view mirror and Mexican accordion and mariachi music CD still blaring (Aiy! Aiy Yaiy Yaiy!) that they might just be looking for a male Hispanic. “Damn,” declared the cher-eef, “I just put the sonofabitch to bed at his friend’s in the trailer park!” At once, the Daviess County Sheriff’s department and KY highway patrol broke camp in the cornfield and sped to the trailer park, a helicopter searchlight pointing the way like the star of Bethlehem, and Geraldo was returned to the squad car, this time in cuffs. Now, I consider myself a citizen of the world, in favor of letting the Mexicans in and keeping the insipid boring ass Canadians out, but should not a law enforcement professional at some point have considered depor- tation as a consequence for Geraldo’s actions, or had it just not occurred to anyone in law enforcement that Geraldo—wearing his map of Mexico souvenir T-shirt with a big red star hovering over Chiapas down near his bellybutton—might just be an illegal alien? Incidentally, I also have a problem with community service as a pun- ishment for Mexicans. Community service is what they do! They already set, chop and strip all the tobacco around here. What the court did with Geraldo was make him stop chopping tobacco and, of personal signifi- cance to me, stop carrying drywall up three flights of stairs into my house. The poor man was made to sit for two whole months in jail in quiet contemplation of his felonies and misdemeanors: hit and run, leaving the scene of an accident, driving under all kinds of influences, hamster homi- cide.

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Open 24 Hours Patrick Reninger Why I Refuse To Sign Up For Direct Deposit.

I possess an unconventional need to wait in line, mistrust any reward bestowed without the presence of Muzak and fake paneling.

And I am euphoric when my personal banker charts the growth of my money market account with long flowing lines that climb like mountain peaks.

The steel poles and the blue velvet ropes used to herd customers toward the teller windows delude me in imagining Clark Gable and Rita Hayworth processing my check.

When a man in a black windbreaker brings two bourbon bottles full of coins to be counted and jams the machine with a safety pin,

when ahead of me in line, a goateed 19 year old screams in a silver cell phone berating his ex-girlfriend,

I realize that captivating theatre is often inspired by the forced gatherings of ambivalent bystanders.

In my 30 years of banking, I have patiently waited in the lobby envisioning sex acts with nearly 300 female employees.

While most of these couplings occur behind an office door, once or twice a year we wait until nightfall, unlock the vault and roll around naked across a blanket of fresh bills like newlyweds in a leaf pile.

If my bank visits could be calculated through cost-benefit analysis, if I could quantify the squandered leisure time, wasted fossil fuels and deleted G.N.P affected from this antiquated errand,

I would likely benefit if my meager earnings migrated across cyberspace to their FDIC insured spawning ground.

Yet, I prefer to be old fashioned, to enter familiar rooms and take my place among strangers, my moments deposited in small yet immeasurable sums.

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Ed McClanahan Horsefeathers: Stories from Room 241

An Introduction

“I call my poem ‘Football,’ because that’s the title of it.” —Mr. Wimple, “Fibber McGee and Molly”

In Palo Alto way back in the late 1960s, Gurney Norman and I and our hippie peacenik comrades Jon Buckley and Fred Nelson were co-editors of a lovely little short-lived butterfly of a publication called the Free You, which had begun life as the newsletter of the Mid-Peninsula Free University, itself a somewhat evanescent institution. The free university movement was a thing unto itself in those times, and I won’t attempt to describe it here except to say that restraint had very little to do with it. Nothing at all, in fact. Indeed, the operative editorial policy of the Free You was that we never, ever turned anything down. Our magazine was to be an open forum, available to all. Yes! The Voice of the People, liberated and gender-blended and cranked up to the max! Every man the captain of her own ship! Every woman his own editor! Free you! Free you! I’m probably overlooking something (and if I am, please don’t remind me of it), but to my knowledge the Free You was the first contributor-edited publication since the King James Bible, which makes it a latter-day ancestor of desktop publishing and Wikipedia and the blogosphere and all their multitudinous unseemly electronic spawn, not to mention all their misbegotten little print-on-demand progeny such as this very book that you hold in your hand at the present moment. But this particular book has yet another illustrious progenitor: a remarkable—albeit truly, tee-totally awful—novel called Caverns, by one O.U. Levon, an author never heard from before or, mercifully, since. There’s a backstory, of course: In the fall of 1988, my noted and notori- ous old friend Ken Kesey began the only college course he ever undertook to teach, a year-long graduate class in the creative writing program at the University of Oregon, his alma mater. Now, as Mater should’ve known, Ken (never trust a Prankster) wasn’t going to be your everyday peda- gogue. There were thirteen graduate writing students in the class, and Ken’s idea was that they would devote the entire school year to writing a novel together, a collaborative novel, plot to be determined. Ken and his wife Faye lived several miles south of Eugene, but it happened that they owned a house on the edge of the OU campus. At the beginning of the fall term, they moved into that house … and so did Ken’s thirteen students! Well, not literally. But they were underfoot pretty much full-time for the next nine months, a veritable infestation—there’s one, behind the fridge!—, yet by the end of the school year, under the benign guidance and direction of a guy who had so much charisma he really could have herded

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cockroaches, they had absolutely produced a genuine, certifiable novel, a dog of a novel to be sure but a novel withal, and a novel well on its way to publication, at that. In the next publishing season, Viking Penguin (a publisher with whom Ken had, it must be admitted, more than a little influence) brought out a nice high-end paperback original of Caverns, by the mysterious O.U. Levon, whose name, spelled backward, just happens to say “novel, University of Oregon.” So okay, the novel wasn’t all that hot; a committee will write a good novel about as soon as all those theoretical millions of monkeys get around to typing Shakespeare. But that wasn’t really the point anyhow; the point was to give everybody in the class a taste of the unique literary experience of conceiving and writing and publishing a novel. And I’m pretty sure that, as pedagogy, it succeeded admirably. Thirteen talented and dedicated writers set aside their own work for a year and willingly threw themselves into the thankless task of writing a book they probably knew no one would ever really want to read—, and I daresay not one of them regrets a minute of it. Nowadays, of course, self-editing and self-publishing are as easy as technology—and self-importance—can make them. Nowadays—as that annoying upstart undergrad reminds his whiney professor in the once- ubiquitous TV commercial—“everybody can get published.” Free you! Free you! Which brings us back to this very book that you hold in your hand at the present moment. Horsefeathers (I’ll explain the title in a minute) is a by- product of the unholy union of Caverns and the Free You, with me as midwife (if you can picture that) in my capacity as Temporary Executive Big Cheese of English 507-001, a University of Kentucky mostly- under- graduate creative writing workshop. I hadn’t taught a regular college creative writing class since 1989, and because I’d long since stopped enjoying the work, it was my firm inten- tion never to teach another one. But when the opportunity to do it one more time suddenly presented itself last summer, I couldn’t resist. Maybe, after twenty years, I could finally clear my palate. The class meets in Room 241 of a squat gray concrete colossus called White Hall Classroom Building, a utilitarian relic of creeping Stalinism in Bluegrass architecture of the late 1970s. Re-entering the building, I experienced a familiar sense of dread; I hadn’t liked being in here before, and I probably wasn’t going to like it now. And I knew that, like every other classroom in this stupid upside-down building wherein students and fac- ulty alike trudge up the stairs as though they were going down into the mines, Room 241 would be a sort of coal-cellar in the sky, an upstairs dungeon with windows. And so it was, and so it is. But when it comes to classrooms, it’s the class part that matters. In Room 241, I found thirteen (uh oh! thirteen!) people who, for thirteen different reasons, I immediately liked. I won’t describe them individually

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here, because in this book they‘ll be introducing themselves, via their work; but they seemed to be an amiable lot, so I liked them accordingly. And as that initial meeting proceeded, we continued to hit it off: I’d prepared an embarrassingly stuffy syllabus—“the primary business of the art of writing,” I harrumphed, “like that of every other art, is the pursuit of truth”—in which I posited my old-fashioned notion of a creative writing workshop, wherein the students read their work aloud and we talk about it, and they allowed that that would probably be satisfactory. Then I read them a few selections of my own deathless prose, and they never threw the first rotten vegetable at me. And finally, I asked my thirteen likeable bozos to send me, as a warm-up exercise, a little sample of their writing before the next class—specifically, I asked them to recall a moment in their own lives in which they’d been intensely engaged with one other person, and to write a brief account of that moment, in the first person, from the other person’s point of view—and they didn’t visibly recoil in horror at the prospect. After class several of us walked over to Pazzo’s for a social hour or three (higher learning goes down easier, I have found, when it’s lubricated with a drop of ignorant oil), and I enjoyed their company to a borderline- unseemly extent. I eventually toddled home thinking, hmmm, y’know, this might not be such an ordeal after all. It so happened that, over the following weekend, the Free You was very much on my mind, because a longtime friend had just posted an online archive of the salty, high-spirited old rag, and I was cruising it with great delight; it was like taking a weekend outing in a time machine. Which set me to thinking about other latter-day visionary, irreverent publishing ven- tures, such as (notably) The Whole Earth Catalog or (almost invisibly) Ed Sanders’s Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts. And of course the list included Kesey’s old kitchen-table literary journal Spit in the Ocean, with its themed issues and rotating guest editors—and thinking of Spit naturally reminded me in turn of Caverns, perhaps the most quixotic endeavor of them all. [I should mention here that, after Ken’s passing in 2001, I edited the seventh and final issue of Spit in the Ocean, a tribute volume subtitled All about Kesey, dedicated to the memory of its founder. Spit 7 was published by Viking Penguin in 2001.] Then, over that same weekend, those warm-up exercises began coming in, and suddenly, as though I’d unexpectedly hatched a brood of rowdy chicks, there were thirteen small, shrill, insistent voices chirping thirteen fascinating little two-page stories at me. They were arriving on my com- puter about as fast as I could read them—I don’t do Twitter, thank heavens, but in my imagination it must be something like this—, and as I read I was naturally associating the stories with my snapshot recollections of their authors from our brief meeting of a few days earlier, so that it was like browsing through a picture album with a rambling, disjointed text. Or like reading an eccentric but oddly fetching little—uh-oh!—book.

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So it occurred to me to print out these first truncated efforts slap-bang up against each other and copy them front and back, more or less as they might appear in, say, some tiny, struggling literary pennypaper, just so the authors could sorta groove on what it might feel like to publish in, say, some tiny, struggling literary pennypaper. And of course every proper pennypaper ought to have a title page with its very own proper name prominently displayed … which somehow (perhaps inevitably) brought back to mind the exuberantly improper Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts. But even though I could safely assume that no one but my thirteen hatchlings and I would ever see it, calling their lively, earnest, promising contributions Fuck You did seem a bit … crass; so instead, on a last-minute impulse, I titled our little in-class pennypaper Horsepuckies: A Journal of the Arts, printed out fourteen copies (one for me) on the English Department’s dime, and—voila!—suddenly the world of literature had to make room for a new-hatched covey of Published Writers. Shabbily published to be sure, but as every unpublished writer knows, ya gotta start somewhere. By this time, as you may have guessed, I was entertaining certain “why not?” thoughts. After all, this was probably the very last class I’d ever have at my disposal (as it were), so why shouldn’t we do something a little out of the ordinary? Not a novel, certainly—much as I appreciated my new best friends, a pestilential invasion of them such as the one Ken endured would have been greeted at my house by my personal bodyguard, Ortho the Orkin Man—, but why not some more modest undertaking, like … hey, why not an anthology of themselves! That’s the ticket, a contributor-edited anthology, just like the goddamn King James Bible! Free You! Free You! Well, why not? I don’t know the first thing about desk-top publishing, but surely one of those smart-ass young whippersnappers in my class (the oldest whippersnapper is 65, but from my perspective she’s in the bloom of youth) would know all about it. So when we met on Thursday, after I’d presented them with their very own personal copies of that instantly-rare and—who knows?—priceless first and final issue of Horsepuckies: A Journal of the Arts, I revealed my little scheme; and although I can’t say they rose up in one body and carried me around Room 241 on their shoulders in jubi- lant celebration, I could definitely see their aspiring little literary ears perk up. Then there was the matter of how we could pull this whole deal off. My influence with my publisher wasn’t quite as extensive as Ken’s had been, so we’d have to get resourceful. I’d been assuming that all students these days were perfect masters of everything techno, but it soon became apparent that my whippersnappers didn’t know a bit more about desktop publishing than I did, which was reassuring on the one hand but, on the other, not very promising. Maybe, I mused aloud, as a part-time untenured éminence grise in the English Department, I could weasel my way into the department office some quiet Saturday afternoon when nobody was looking and commandeer a Xerox machine and run off a few quick stealth copies …

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But before we settle for that homeliest of alternatives (says I, brighten- ing visibly), just let me ask my avuncular friend Charlie Hughes, resident grand panjandrum of Wind Press, publisher of select print-on-demand books of every description, whether he has any ideas that might be of service to us. Long story short (as we’re all so very fond of saying nowadays), I did consult Uncle Charlie, and the handsome volume that you hold in your hand at the present moment (if you’ve read this far) is the result. I won’t trouble you with the particulars, but Charlie and I agreed that in the spring of 2010, Wind would publish our book as a genuine paperback original, in a sure-to-be-priceless-someday limited first edition, in num- bers sufficient to provide each contributor with a nice little stack of keepsakes. The contributors themselves, I told Charlie, will choose their own stories—nine pages minimum, 12 pages max—, and I promise to personally copy-edit the billy hell out of their selections, and to write an eloquent introduction (as the attentive reader may have noticed), and we’ll call the book … uh … By this time, calling it Horsepuckies had already come to seem almost as crass as calling it you-know-what, so maybe (I suggested to the class at our next meeting) we could call it … aw, what the hey, Woody Allen and the Marx Brothers won’t mind, let’s just call it … Horsefeathers. And if anybody wants to know why, just remind them of the ancient joke about Col. Parker, the marketing genius who, long before he gave us Elvis, gave us the patent medicine Hadacol: “Why’d he call it Hadacol? Well, he hadda call it something, so … ” Of course, the iron logic of my argument carried the day; after all, that’s why they call me … the Big Cheese. But the real point here was that, for a gathering of the work of thirteen utterly various writers—ranging in age from about 22 to 65, five women and eight men, who are, by some happy accident of natural selection, about as diverse, ethnically and expe- rientially, as any random group of thirteen students on this campus could be—the only title that made any sense was one that made no sense at all. Thus, by some mysterious biological process that I won’t even pretend to understand, did horsepuckies metamorphose into horsefeathers. In short, we hadda call it something, so … Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking about the lessons I’d like these lovely folks to have learned by the time it’s all over. There are only two, and actually they’re one and the same: Care and Attention. What you write— your language—is like a garden; whether your garden is a thousand-acre spread (War and Peace, anyone?) or a tiny nosegay of poems in a window- box, the more care and attention you lavish on it, the more grandly it will flourish, and the greater will be the reward for your labors. And—to stretch my metaphor to the breaking point—this language garden, in order to thrive, requires fertilizer, lots of fertilizer—which is to say it requires horsepuckies and plenty of ’em, in their purest and most unadulterated form. Which is to say … stories, stories, stories! Open 24 Hours 30 0p2410.qx 3/12/10 11:57 AM Page 31

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A HORSEFEATHERS SAMPLER

The farmer left the farm and crawled underneath the hill where his corn once grew as tall as a young poplar, and he dug the coal, and he crawled out bloody, ragged, and poor. And when he couldn’t—for all his broken bones and weeping sores and blackened lungs—when he couldn’t dig the coal out from under the hill fast enough, well, then the hill had to go.

–from “The Moon and Page Cut-Off,” by Scotty Adkins

Frank stopped mid-swallow. The hunk of chicken felt as big as a football in his throat, and he swallowed half his drink trying to clear it. In his mind, Frank saw Nancy Anne as he remembered her that first day in junior high— her long, glossy black hair, her bright blue eyes, her slender legs and dainty, rounded ass that swung at him every time she caught him looking at her.

–from “Frank Tolliver,” by Ann Watson

See, despite his general horniness and his success in the world of women, my brother has never understood one basic thing about the human condi- tion: We’re all here to get laid.

–from “By Any Other Name,” by Daniel Kelley

There, under the light of the fading sun, they would sit down to their picnic. Appu would sip tea from the thermos and chain-smoke Charminars. Amma would read—Dickens, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Kafka, the poems of Rabindranath Tagore. Monkeys cavorted nearby; flocks of raucous birds flew overhead. The air carried the musky scent of cooking fires fueled by flat grey cakes of buffalo dung. The orange light of the setting sun spread like marmalade over the enormous surface of the lake.

–from “The Blank Slate,” by Ajay Mehra

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Bringing the Body’s Breath

“I felt a brightness of ease, and optimism in my being, something familiar to me like a drive with my family on a dark night in spring on the two-lane winding road among trees in the big, heavy peach pit of a Hudson looking for Mister Rabbit to cross in the headlights for love and goodluck.” John Hay, p. 33

“This paper is not about the Chekhov, or your Chekhov (probably the gloomy consumptive old goateed creature who wrote plays), but rather about my uncle and his Chekhov, our Chekhov.” Jesse Mountjoy, p. 50

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Open 24 Hours John Hay Exile

My father stepped out of the Delta DC-7, last as always, and as always held himself very still at the top of the steel steps which had been folded out. He looked at the sky with interest and inhaled deeply the Kentucky air. A red and blue and gold Afghan rug hung over one shoulder. As he came down the high, steel stairway, I walked out on the concrete runway to the foot of the steps to greet him. Walking with ease on the steps, he would stop halfway down and gaze out at the horizon, even on a dark, cold night. And this night, too, with a scattering of snow, he stopped and gazed out, a gaze that held tremendous intent. The edges of his broad-brimmed hat – soft, light gray, elegant – would lift or turn down in the strong gusts of wind. He still dressed in the suits and coats and ties that he wore in the 1930’s and 1940’s, though now it was 1956. He looked very fine in them. On him they had charm. He was six foot, broad in the chest. Interest sparkled from his eyes. He wore what was called a greatcoat that came almost to his ankles, unbuttoned and flying open. It was light gray with a long fur collar that blended with the gray winter sky. His tie was of a light blue silk, the color of his eyes, hand-painted with the shadow of a lithe woman dancing, kites soaring in the sky above her. The pale blue tie lifted and turned in the breeze. His eyes were pale blue and steady and shown either kind or cold depending on who you were looking into them. His off-white linen suit had wide lapels. His loose trousers fluttered against his legs. His nose was prominent and straight. His face was broad and his light brown hair combed back. When he stood still, he engaged the earth. And always there was the piercing quality of kindness, involvement with his entire being in any place he found himself. His brilliance of eye made it so that no tiger or anxious person would aggressively engage him. Yet as his son I knew he was not so formidable. He, too, was a man who was growing up. He had inherited an empty mansion in disrepair with many debts. He worked three hundred and fifty miles away, and my mother and I lived in the massive home. She slept in a bedroom with a dresser and a bed. I slept on a second story porch with windows all around, freezing in winter, in summer a thick heat with the wondrous chanting of the katydids and crick- ets. In the tall fireplaces we burned wood and now and then chunks of coal the size of grapefruit. With an eye for beauty, a tender sense of what a thing must feel like to uplift the human spirit – a chair, a table, glass, canvas, carpet – he went hunting for what had that power to his eye and what he could afford with his limited means. In the Chicago Loop, the heart of the city, near his work, he found an auction house that specialized in selling the possessions of the great estates of the wealthy. “Time passes, men and women die, and what they did on earth begins to scatter,” my father said one night as he handed me a fine, hand-crafted, ivory handled dagger he had bought for a few dol-

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lars from the estate of a man who achieved greatly in a business that improved the lives of many. “So learn, and enjoy yourself, Son; it moves on,” he said. “I buy these things. Sometimes I go months and buy nothing, yet now and then there is an opening. It is late maybe and no one wants some object that is beautiful, and I can buy it. Each person who owned it last is dead, and I bring it home for us. The beauty of what is hand-made by a sensitive craftsman carries something with it. The man who died probably once cared for this little dagger, and now it is yours.” On the blade was an inscription in Persian. The auction house had it translated, and the paper was attached to the knife with a string. It read: “Death is a small thing hidden in the grass, and you are walking there in spring. Choose wisely.” He was not so taken by objects. It was the impact of the wood or the glass, the painting or the cloth that charmed him, material finely wrought for a purpose. It was the impact of the universal that he felt in those objects, what he wished to intensify in the depth of his being: the invisible force that is established and free, and the fine lady with the kites on a sky blue tie might lead him onward by dancing in the wind. He handed me the Afghan rug from his shoulder, leaning it down to me from the steel step. It was not too heavy. It measured five feet by nine feet and not too thick. It was folded so the colors shone brightly. “Welcome home,” I said. He smiled and hugged me with his free arm. “Hello, Son. It’s good to see you. How is your mother, and the farm?” “Very good,” I said. She stood quietly at the open metal gate against the runway. She wore a close-fitting wool coat, bright blue and gold, woven in the blanket design of Joseph, the Nez Perce chief. The chief who fought bravely, and yet braver still, vowed to fight no more. Her eyes were bright and dark. Who was she, I wondered? Who was this romantic woman? An arcane force was around her always; she was cheerful or concentrated, giving nothing to complaint, ever. I felt it in the way she swept the stone walk, the way she would smile standing at a window at sunrise. “Son,” she would say, “it’s a new day!” What did she see? What did she understand? Of this sort of love she had never spoken. Affectionately my father kissed her and then tenderly he spoke. “How are you, Ruthie? It is good to see you and be here in Kentucky with you and John.” On the way to the car he walked swiftly and noticed everything in his path. The road that led through Franklin and Woodford counties to the airport was narrow, and it rolled through the low hills. The trees were huge and fantastic, and the fences were plank or wire – some rough, some fine. The air would smell of honeysuckle or hay or the drifting from the distillery of the odor of the mash, a mysterious odor on a hot summer night. There were skunks and possums and rabbits and raccoons and cats and stray dogs for a child to watch for in the headlights. In the air were owls and stars. Thoroughbred horse farms nestled against it. Small farms with cattle and crops and the tiny homes of those who worked the farms were scattered Open 24 Hours 34 0p2410.qx 3/12/10 11:57 AM Page 35

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along the way. The Hudson we drove, a heavy automobile, was shaped like a peach pit – cozy, secure – the night air ruffling through the open windows. Flowers, hay, rain soaked fields, a horse in the moonlight – whispering around our shoulders. We swung into the big curve at the edge of our farm where a low, gray, fieldstone wall flickered in the sweep of the lights. In the curve, a tall, slender, wooden sign advertised the movie theater in the little town of Frankfort. Love Me Tender and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were the double fea- ture. A new broadside was pasted to the sign weekly with a long-handled brush. I caught a glimpse of the singer in the headlights. He had on a blue shirt and held his guitar. He seemed quiet. Why would he want to be in a movie, I wondered. Why would he want to pretend he was someone else? I forgot my family riding in the front seat. I thought of his songs and my playmate in her soft moccasins until the sign was well behind us. “How is Spirit, son?” my father asked as we drove slowly under the canopy of trees lining our long avenue. The wind was gusting, and the big limbs shook and dipped toward the car. “Her hoof seems to be healing. I didn’t ride her today or yesterday.” “Are you still riding bareback?” “I like bareback.” “You’re a fine rider, Son, but be careful.” “I will.” In the living room by the great wood fire blazing and sparking from the logs we had heaped on, my father rolled out the Afghan carpet to the smooth, ash floor. The wooden floor was over a hundred and sixty years old, as old as the carpet itself. He reached for the antique dagger with the ivory handle, the one with the inscription on the blade in Persian speaking of springtime and death. He cut the tag from the corner of the Afghan carpet, and now it was home. The Afghan carpet could make almost anything seem impressive if that thing were sitting on it, even a person of unkind intentions. In beauty among fine things is where charlatans, too, might place themselves. Yet in the ways of our little family we looked into every artifact for its impact, for a finer meaning, never to impress, never to imagine that possession made us better. “Son, tell your mother what Johnny Rains told us about the design, the Stranger as you sometimes call him. Tell her about the clouds.” _____ “Sir,” the Stranger said. “You have purchased a very fine Afghan carpet, rare in its beauty.” He hesitated, looking at us both, and added, “At many levels.” “Yes,” my father said. “It is a fine carpet. Yet I didn’t know it was Afghan. Sometimes I am here at the auction late at night, like this, and I can get something fine, pleasing to my eye, for little money.” “Yes, that is a good way to find,” said the Stranger. Moments before, the man had walked through the tall glass door of the Chicago auction house. There was a richness of fine antiques, wood, glass, iron, stone, jewels, and the light sparkling from many bright and heavy chandeliers, a treasure from The Thousand and One Nights. I had seen the 35 0p2410.qx 3/12/10 11:57 AM Page 36

man walk swiftly toward the front, but he was a moment too late; the auc- tioneer’s hammer hit the wood with a crack, and the rug was knocked down to my father. I could not then explain it, but when the man walked through the door, I named him the Stranger. It wasn’t because I did not know him, but there was a presence, a focus that made the whole room shift as if a thin veil had suddenly lifted. It was a force strangely visible as if a filter on a fine camera shifted with a soft click. “My name is Johnny Rains,” the Stranger said, and extended his hand to my father. “I’m John Williams, and this is my son John.” The Stranger turned to me and looked into my eyes closely, smiled warmly, and shook my hand. His eyes were blue, steady, expressive. He looked forty, younger or older it was hard for me to tell. He had an easy warmth in his piercing and unrelenting attention. Calmness and certainty never left his voice. His face was lean and he was lean, and he was six feet tall, the height of my father. He wore his hair brushed back. He was a handsome man with a smile which made me feel easy and confident. Yet, when he did not smile, some other force was there that made me pause. It was the look that my father could have. Where had these men been, what had they had seen, from what places had they come? “Hello, John,” he said. “Hello, Sir,” I said. “I am pleased to meet you.” “Call me Johnny,” he said. “We have the same name.” The Stranger smiled. “I am from Kentucky.” “We are from Kentucky,” my father said. “We have a farm there.” “I have a farm there, too,” the Stranger said. My father knew of his family and knew the farm. They spoke briefly of the country and the richness of the soil in the rolling hills and the beauty there and the horses and the crops they raised. The stranger smiled and turned to where the Afghan carpet lay. The auction was over, the room empty except for the owner with a green eye shade going over accounts. Chandeliers for sale hung above us shimmering with light. Johnny Rains spoke with certainty. I won’t call him the Stranger any longer. He is a man with a name. To me in my youth he was a mystery. His pale blue eyes, like my father’s eyes, were kind and fearless. It was as if they pierced into the heart of the moment – nowhere else they wished to be. There was a kinship of humility between the two men. It was not the humility of deference, it was not piousness or a posture of being humble, but a secret hidden in the fact. It was the humility of an unassuming force, a force invisible like the weather, yet represented by every word and move. “You are a writer, Mr. Rains,” my father said. “Yes, sometimes I tell stories.” He said it quietly. I felt a shift in the space. “We tell stories, too. It seems to come naturally in Kentucky. Many of them are about battles.” My father smiled. “And do you know something of this carpet? Maybe it has a story.” “Yes, it has a good story.” “You could tell my son. He would like to know.” Open 24 Hours 36 0p2410.qx 3/12/10 11:57 AM Page 37

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I could sense something in the air about giving. Maybe it was that Johnny Rains, like my father, did good things quietly so that no one but himself would ever know. “Yes sir, Mr. Rains,” I said, “I would like to know about the carpet.” “Call me Johnny,” he said. He put his hand gently against my shoulder, and the three of us walked together to a hidden corner of the massive room. Only the owner was still about in his green eye shade. Johnny Rains knelt by the rug, so I knelt also. I felt strangely at ease for a shy boy of eleven. “Our farms are far away,” he said. “Far away from where? Never imagine distant places or distant people to have more than you have at home.” “I think I see,” I said, though I did not really see. “Well, your father knows. He knows of warriors, and I imagine he knows of the finer teachers and the peacemakers, too.” “A few,” my father said. “It seems to me that your family protects their thoughts,” Johnny said. Then he turned to me. “Do you like stories?” “Yes, I like them.” “Then I’ll tell you one. It’s very old. Not my own. And yet I have made it my own.” “Thank you.” “Once upon a time in Kentucky, or in one of those places far, far away, or it could have happened right here in the Shore Gallery, four people who spoke different languages were traveling together, by chance it seems. They had a disagreement. Each was saying how to spend the small amount of money they had pooled expressing his desire with a word from his native tongue, and, of course, each word was different. An argument ensued, each shouting in his own language, until someone who knew all their languages arrived and overheard them. He settled the dispute by revealing to them that each of their words, though in different languages, had the same meaning: pomegranates. And they were happy. They all had wanted pomegranates. They were arguing, yet their desire was the same: pomegranates.” Johnny smiled and looked closely at me. “Thank you,” I said. “I can remember it.” Yet I needed time to understand. We were kneeling at the edge of the carpet. Johnny Rains rolled it out. He lifted the edge and softly felt the wool between his fingers and indicated for me to do the same. “This wool is from Northern Afghanistan.” He offered it to me to touch again. “The sheep are healthy and strong there, and this carpet is made from their fine wool.” I touched the wool. “And this,” he said, “is a cloud. You and I know it does not look like a cloud, and yet the design makes an impression in the mind and you could say: like a cloud.” He looked at me intently. “What does a cloud do?” “It moves,” I said. “Good. What else?” “I’m not sure.” “It changes as it moves.” 37 0p2410.qx 3/12/10 11:57 AM Page 38

“It changes?” “Yes, it doesn’t fight the situation, and it is moved by something.” “The wind,” I guessed. “Yes. Very good. Yes. The wind. And you cannot see the wind. What else?” I tried to think. “I don’t know.” “A cloud has an essence, and a possibility waiting.” He lifted his hands as if he had made a great discovery and smiled. I smiled brightly, forgetting again my shyness. “So there is a possibility in the cloud,” he said. “Rain,” I said. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Rain is a good way to say it, and yet, who knows?” He spoke of the influence in the carpet’s design of the people who peeled off from the Mongol armies and settled along the way. For design after design he would lean and run his hand across the carpet and talk. I remember him speaking of breath. And I can remember the word “presence.” Yet, I cannot say again all he said. The carpet was of the deepest reds with shades of blue and gold and green. In it were the geometric clouds. It reminded me of the color and light at sunrise rolling across the green fields of Kentucky. There were omega’s bent and twisted into S’s which met at the apex. I became aware of my father, his rapt attention. There was a central design, geometric, curved and uncomplicated. Johnny Rains spoke of this design as having a connection to thoughtful, like-minded people scattered across the world. Sometimes a name is attached to these people, he said, but a name is only useful in order to speak of those of that ilk and their efforts, not for defining them. He said that naming did not have to include structure or ritual, and that in the ways of these seekers, their effort was only to understand life as it is and what can be achieved in it. “Sir, how do you know so much about carpets,” I asked. “What little I know is a skill I acquired. You could make the effort to learn new skills in your life. They will add interest for you, and the effort itself can lead to a deeper understanding than knowledge of carpets or any other passing thing.” He stood up quickly and waited for me to face him. “The design in the center is derived from no outside meaning. To look at it under the right con- ditions is an exercise that can encourage a meditative state of mind, could help a person develop the intuitive. Do you know what intuition is?” “I guess, sort of, not really.” “Well, you could make that your homework.”

My father had been listening, and when I glanced up, he was looking into the center of the carpet – testing its impact, I imagined. His full frame took a breath, his chest lifted, his eyes gave me their brightness. My father was wearing an off-white linen suit with wide lapels, and a soft, flowing tie of blue silk. On the face of the tie were beautifully wrought golden cranes in flight, their legs a geometry of script, shapes of encouragement against the Open 24 Hours 38 0p2410.qx 3/12/10 11:57 AM Page 39

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sky. “Sir, my son and I appreciate your deep understanding of how this carpet was made and why. We will remember it.” Johnny Rains smiled with a playful brightness. That smile made me feel that life could be a joy if I wished it, that there was no reason on earth for worry or tension in the heart. “I am the manager of a hotel here in Chicago,” my father said. “I live there between trips to our farm in Kentucky.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “My son is visiting on his spring vacation. Would you join us there tomorrow for dinner?” The carpet was in the past for Johnny Rains, and we could feel it. He was interested now in my father and me only, nothing for himself. He had the same unrelenting focus that made my father seem fierce to some. Yet behind that keen attention was kindness, with the courtesy and presence that is sometimes spoken of in Kentucky as characteristic of a gentleman. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “But I fly early in the morning to the farm. When you return, please be a guest in my home.” “And you in our home,” my father said. Recognition among us had allowed Johnny Rains an ease to express to us those strong and unusual thoughts; otherwise we would have received the polite courtesies of a stranger. “Remember,” he said to me. “Feel what the carpet could say to you. And think carefully of the story again. You have a fine father. Listen closely to what he says, and then make your way. And don’t forget to play and enjoy this exceptional world.” I felt a brightness of ease, an optimism in my being, something familiar to me like a drive with my family on a dark night in spring on the two-lane winding road among trees in the big, heavy peach pit of a Hudson looking for Mister Rabbit to cross in the headlights for love and good luck. ______The Afghan carpet was rolled out on the living room floor. The smooth, golden-colored boards of the ash wood were one hundred and sixty years old, and the carpet lay across them. The wool carpet and the wooden floor were the same age. Our tall Scottish deerhound, lying on the hearth, resting by the fire, had her head raised majestically and seemed to be looking into the carpet. Maybe she was thinking of the groundhog whose neck she had broken earlier in the day while on the run; with a sideward snap of her jaws and a lift, the groundhog was dead. Or maybe she was in a great sense of peace and ease. The tall, trim and confident hound with the kind, brown eyes rose quietly to her feet. Her rough, gray coat shown crystalline in the firelight. She stared out beyond the Afghan carpet as if into a far distance, as far as the universe might go. I was lying there by the fire, too, next to her, thinking on those things. ______

The airport was almost empty. I moved on toward the runway. I could drive now. I had driven the old Hudson to pick up my father coming in from Chicago. I was not ready for what I saw. He walked off the plane early. Why would he leave the plane early

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unless something was on his mind? He did stop at the top of the metal stairs and take a breath of the night air and look into the distance as always. That was a good sign, settling. Yet something was different, and suddenly I saw what it was. He wore a small dark hat with a thin brim that looked like a joke hat above his powerful frame. He wore a non-descript dark gray suit with narrow lapels. His tie was narrow and thick and heavy and could not catch the wind. It looked as if the thin tie were nailed to his shirt. Yet he still walked down the steep metal steps as if the steps were laid out for him and that he could never fall. He came across the concrete just like the other passengers, dressed in the styles of the day: no broad-brimmed hat and flowing tie with golden cranes flying, no full trousers fluttering in the wind, no greatcoat flying open. “Hello, Son.” He seemed as he always was, yet I was not expecting the clothes. “How is your mother? How is the farm?’ Another plane had unloaded its passengers meshing with ours to go into the small terminal. And there was Johnny Rains. Though years had passed since seeing him in the Chicago auction house, earlier in the week he had called my father to ask us to visit him while he was in Kentucky. Their schedules would not allow the visit, yet my father had found a plane to arrive near the same time as Johnny’s plane so we all might meet briefly. “Isn’t that the man who knew about the carpet?” I said. “Yes,” my father said. “But he no longer lives near us.” Johnny Rains looked at my father, seemed not to recognize him, and then smiled. The three of us broke from the moving people and stopped by a pinball machine, quiet as a sculpture, with softly blinking red and gold lights. We stood under an iron rendition of a galloping buffalo. On the wall almost as large as the wall itself was a framed photograph of a thoroughbred mare rearing high in the air against a red sunrise in a wide field of bluegrass. Each object I saw took on an unusual clarity, as if each were a finished poem of the kind that is sweet and clear and immortal. “So good to see you,” Johnny said. We shook his hand. He was dressed casually in wool slacks and a collared shirt. He carried a well-worn, leather suitcase. “You remember my son,” my father said. “Of course I remember.” He looked at me intently. “Are you now an expert on fine carpets?” he asked with an unsmiling directness. “I remember your story,” I said. “And I have looked at the carpet in the way that you told me.” “Yes, you remember. Yet don’t hold forever to staring at a design. What is useful in life in order to learn is useful for a time, and when it is no longer useful, through repetition it becomes ritual, and that is most often useless.” I smiled, and I must have looked a bit puzzled. He laughed. “Yet the center of the carpet has a greater thought implied. We begin at the edges, don’t we, and move in?” He smiled, looked at me, and laughed again. “The understanding will be there for you if you desire it.” I felt that wonderful optimism I had felt from him years before, as if good fortune would follow if I were alert to the clarity that is always calling, as if I had just spoken to Mr. Rabbit to feel the romance and freshness Open 24 Hours 40 0p2410.qx 3/12/10 11:57 AM Page 41

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around me of all I might wish to become. “There is another story about a flying horse,” he continued. “Someday you might hear that one, too.” It had been five years since meeting him in the Chicago auction house, and he remembered everything he had told me, and so did I. He was quiet just for a beat or two. Those moments told that he was leaving the rest of it up to me. He had offered his joy, his calmness and the intensity of his focus for me to observe. He turned to my father. My father spoke. “We all know that the Interstate highway went through your part of the country. Did it touch you?” “Yes, very much. My land and home were taken by the highway. It was a great disappointment. My young children may never live or work in such a place.” “It is the trees,” my father said, “the sky, the work that is done there that we honor.” “You say it well,” Johnny Rains said. Then he turned to me. “Yet we can go deep in the country, as it were, wherever we are, can’t we, John?” He looked at me with that intense force that was only broken ever so slightly by his smile. “Change, yes, that’s it, always change,” my father said. “I have tried to find a way to work here in Kentucky and move back to the farm with my family. There was a business I was going to buy that would have brought in enough for us with my skills, but it sold at a price I could not afford. I will work in Chicago to support the farm and visit my family as I am visiting tonight.” He looked at me with confidence. This moment had opened for him to tell me this heart-breaking news. “Are you sure?” My voice was breaking, and I did not want to show it. “I think this was my chance.” “I’m sorry,” I said. And I hugged my father. My father hugged me to him. “We’ll be all right, Son.” “Yes, Sir.” Standing there under the gallop of the iron buffalo by the ecstasy of the leaping horse, the three of us – hearing my father’s resonant, fearless voice, I did not feel fear, nor did I sorrow long that night for him or myself or my mother. Standing there by the flash and ring of the pinball machine, which a child was now playing as I once did, I sensed something new begin to move itself in me, as if it were in the preparations for a new life. My life. That trip I would take with so many there to carefully help me on. Johnny Rains, like my father, seemed to me to come from a land of dreams, fantastic and truthful dreams not so far away. He smiled and spoke to my father. “We must be cut from the same cloth, as they say. I live a life I never expected, yet I am free to choose and learn and do what I must do. Like you.” “Yes, it is like that,” my father said. “And I have made a change in the clothes I wear,” he said with a playful smile. Johnny smiled back. “I notice a change,” he said. “My job requires that I dress in a coat and tie. I have worn the clothes I have had for years. They were not worn out, yet maybe a little worn, but 41 0p2410.qx 3/12/10 11:57 AM Page 42

they were comfortable, and I was accustomed to them, and why change?” “Yet you changed.” “Just yesterday, when I found that I could not borrow the money I needed to move to Kentucky to work, I thought I should dress like the people I am around, those in that community, those I work for. It is a courtesy, really. My home is Chicago now. My son’s home is Kentucky.” He looked at me with kindness, and he put his hand for a moment on my shoulder. “What do you think about the clothes, Son?” He smiled broadly, as if at some mischievous joke. The mean little hat seemed to me to shrink even smaller on the top of his head. I grimaced at the hat and smiled shyly as I still felt tears not far away, that I might cry for something I could not understand. My father refused to hold on to that great disappointment in his need to live apart from us. He kept his focus lightly with the clothes, a thing we both knew made no difference to us at all. “I think the suit is rather fine,” my father said pulling himself up and grabbing ahold of the tiny lapels. We all laughed. “We are free,” the Stranger said. “And yet we must follow, too.” Something was bothering me. I wanted to say it. I wanted to see what they would say. “You are both kept from living in the places you want to be,” I said. “Why are you so calm? Why aren’t you angry?” “Son,” my father said very quietly, “your life is new. Think about our friend here, and our family if you wish, and maybe you can answer the question on your own some day.” “Your father is right,” Johnny Rains said gently. “And remember your homework. Remember the stories and the center of the carpet.” My father and Johnny Rains stood there like sentinels of peace. I could hardly believe I was in their company. I felt like an island looking at them. I was an island, and I could not see the island that I was, but only languish in it. In them, in my father and this unusual friend, I felt I was seeing a great and accessible knowledge I would never achieve. ______Months later my mother was snapping the long, green beans I had brought from the garden. She pushed some forward over the kitchen table for me to string and snap. She was wearing a red sweater with a string of lapis beads. To my youthful eye she was starlight, all beauty within and without, all freshness. The breeze was running from window to window with the scent of green leaves and rotting leaves and new flowers. There were ripe tomatoes and green onions spread in disarray across the table. Out the windows, the branches of the trees would lean and lean again. I began to talk to her about Johnny Rains and my father who had just telephoned long distance from Chicago to ask news of us and the farm. In his wonderful voice, in that soft song of encouragement that will live forever, he had asked, “How is the farm? Your mother? Is she on the porch? Have you had rain? Have you been riding? How is Spirit?” “I don’t understand,” I said to my mother. “Why do they accept their situation without anger? Johnny Rains is displaced by a road. Why would he not be angry? My father is far from us living in a hotel. How can he accept Open 24 Hours 42 0p2410.qx 3/12/10 11:57 AM Page 43

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that?” She pulled the strings from the bean she was holding and broke it with three quick snaps. Her smile was easy and encouraging. And then she said the most unsettling thing. “Son, your father and Johnny Rains are exiles. In you is a deep desire to know what that means, though you don’t yet know your own desire. I sense that you will look for and find the experiences to teach you. With that knowledge you will know who your father is, and Mr. Rains, and you will know yourself. Remember the thought written on the silver dagger. Springtime is the essence of that thought.” She stood at the round table to string the beans. She shook out the rest of the beans from the brown paper sack into a pile on the table and turned to me again. “Son, what you must understand is that you are an exile, an exile of the most exacting kind. You are an exile forever, no matter where you are, or where you are able to go.” “Why? Why I am I an exile?” I exclaimed. It was a disturbing thought. It shook me. The anger I thought the others should surely have, a type of fear, seemed to be in me. And then she spoke again, her words very much like the afternoon breeze coming in the window and on the breeze the wild red roses from the garden. “You are an exile for having known them, for being the man you are, listening, thinking in their path. They have exiled you, and you do not know it. You have watched them, heard their voices and their stories, and you will travel wherever it takes to understand the mystery. You are exiled from the trivial and the overwrought, pushed into the country of seeking. You seek a self that may someday linger easily within you, like the charm and freshness in this Kentucky evening – an eternal loveliness in which to live.” In that moment my thoughts went back as if I stood quietly beside her again in winter, sensing her, standing with her at the small, lonely airport, waiting at the edge of the wind-swept concrete runway in a scattering of snow, the wind in her soft, brown hair, her colorful Nez Perce coat snug around her, holding in its red and gold the elegant impact to my heart of Chief Joseph’s words, “I will fight no more forever.” And holding, too, the red shine in the pomegranates of the Stranger’s story, pomegranates repre- senting love, that deepest love that drew them – these people near to me – to go inward for seeking it. Her eyes were shining. An exile, hidden like all the rest.

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Annette Allen Learning to Talk

Rather than speak of that moment when sun lengthens long pines or of the sadness scarred under a hairline, we talk of the poet’s fears that deeper needs are lost to lists for bread and wine,

that world greed blankets the bright flame we reach for in life’s burn.

Few can live in such fire, though some do and we try, bringing the body's breath to speech under these trees shouldered together, as if to comfort us.

Perhaps all we can count on is this glen, wood fern, and the land’s green swells.

We have words for fear, for the lost, the gone, but where light falls faintly, touching us and the moss-covered stone, we know what lies within our reach is found.

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Teresa Roy Up Until Now

our moon at this new house has shown first across the road, then arced its globe over winter-fingered trees before sinking like a coin into daybreak’s murky water.

I am old enough,

have witnessed decades of this self-same moon’s coming and going, caught its act from more exotic, less familiar destinations than this common street.

Why, then,

am I startled as an ancient to find it there—adrift over the garage, exposing only a pale underbelly—a tiny boat loosed from the logic of its moorings as if broken from a whole.

I should know this one—

the simple puzzle of east and west, how earth keeps time in seasons, in strict perimeters, how it never fails to wind the clock so we might hold our bearings. The world is pocked by ignorance,

a pit of which, is mine;

and I am humbled to my knees before that brace of minds who untangled a universe, plumbed lines to lock on planets, plotted dynasties from constellations—

marvel

they found time when there have always been clothes to launder, mouths to feed.

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Alice Driver “Mackanan”: Lost in Translation

On the island of Mabul off the Eastern coast of Sabah Malaysia, a young boy used his finger to push the small animal off the cardboard and onto the ground. I stood in the shade of the dock next to him, looking at the soft gray fur of the tiny creature. It was so small it took me a moment to realize that it was a baby mouse. The boy ran down the shoreline in the opposite direction and came back with another baby mouse on the piece of cardboard. Meanwhile a little girl was poking the first baby mouse with a stick. Every time the mouse cried, the girl laughed and poked it more. The boy dropped the second mouse onto the ground from above his head. Feeling sorry for the babies, I tried to stop the girl from hurting it by taking the stick away. She picked up another stick and shoved it in the mouse's ear. At that moment I noticed a cat prowling. Worried, I pointed from the cat to the mice and said "mackanan" ("food"). I repeated the word “mackanan” with intensity, sure that I was communicating to the children the danger posed by the cat. I thought I was warning them to save the mice from the cat, but they ran over excitedly, grabbed the orange and white tabby cat and put it down in front of the mice. The cat studied one baby, pawing it softly. Then in one big gulp it swallowed the creature. I stood by feeling betrayed and sad. The kids threw the second mouse into the ocean, laughing as it struggled to swim. As it began to drown, I took the cardboard from the boy's hands and scooped the mouse out of the water. I placed it on the sand to dry, but looking up I saw at least 15 village cats waiting expectantly to eat it. Some of the cats were playing with or eating other mice. I watched as the kids fed the wet mouse to another cat. This incident reminded me of when I was young and my brother and his friend Ben would torture grasshoppers. They would make obstacle courses in the sandbox, and then tear the legs off the grasshoppers before putting them through the course. I would plead, "Just let them keep their legs!"

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Dori Howard Five Spot for Phillip

For so long, he’s been a telephone voice piped into your ear from a different city every night, but now he clings like static to drunk and dizzy bar smoke and holds your willing form to his tired frame between sets. You are surprised to remember he has a face, he has a body, but here it is and there you are, and this is how you want to remember him when he goes again. Without telephone interception, conversation is stunted, and his presence sews words like buttons to your tongue, but he unfastens them one by one by one as the clock swallows the minutes until the interstate reclaims him.

Two o’clock and he’s gone, and barflies empty the floor, leaving lonely and jilted puddles of abandoned beer and exhausted cigarettes and you.

And what if he had stayed? Would you not have shut yourself in a room to pray as he listened on bended knee through the keyhole, and cracks in the door, hearing only faint traces of his name. The rest nothing but the edges of whispers, jagged and sharp with the isolated sound of heaven failing.

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Erin Barnhill Time Capsule

At first, time moved like a caterpillar steadily forward on the hundred legs of time. You hardly knew it was creeping up on the long branch of your life on which you were attached like a tender leaf.

When it learned to spin its silken threads, you got inside. You could see in all directions: branches of the past, earth of the present, sky of the future— everything, excitement and change and it spun itself a fine cocoon, a capsule for time.

Then in the dark when no one was looking not even you, time grew wings and when time got out, which no one ever sees, it flew.

But in the mirror of a pond you saw the secret of its blue shining wings, fluttering shimmering gift to the future, and you knew, you knew what it must have been like to live back then.

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Mark Williams Hitler, the Pigeon

in memory of Gerald Forcum

Who would have thought, sixty years after your father found a young pigeon trembling in the corner of the Saint Boniface belfry, sixty years after your father removed his favorite hat, placed the bird inside the brim and moved slowly down the spiral staircase to make a nest of straw and shredded rags in the shed behind your house on Virginia Street

where throughout each spring and summer the pigeon would leave his roost to follow your father as he walked a half-mile to the community gardens, where the bird would pester other gardeners to the amusement of your dad, who gave a certain three-note whistle when it was time to return on Harmony Way;

who would have thought that sixty years after your mother named a young pigeon Hitler and climbed the attic stairs to find the Great War helmet so she could hang laundry on the lines behind your house— undisturbed by Hitler’s pecks—

that after sixty years, old friend, as you lay last week in pain, this story you told me once would bring you some small pleasure there, in the little room where you sought rest, where I saw you faintly smile, where I saw your eyelids flutter?

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Open 24 Hours Jesse Mountjoy A Friend of My Uncle

For R. E. Palmore, Jr.

My uncle has an old friend, who became my friend, and who may become an acquaintance, even a friend, of my sons. All of these friend- ships past, present and future are independent and distinct. None of us in my family is like another, and each of us is certainly unlike the friend of my uncle. My uncle was a hard, loud, robust farmer living almost on the Hart and Barren County line in south central Kentucky. He struggled with a freshman year at the University of Kentucky and with Coach Rupp before he quit the formal education and the basketball team. He owned an undivided one-half interest in two mules (which some of you may remember from my first original paper) with my grandfather, and he owned roughly an undivided one-half interest in whatever it was that made me into whatever I am now. My uncle was a partisan Republican who served as Deputy Commissioner of Agriculture for Kentucky under then Governor Louie Nunn, relishing the firing of Democrats, which was his principal duty. In spite of his first year at the University of Kentucky and maybe because of his loss of formal education, my uncle read a lot, mostly fiction, mostly by Russians. Now, contrast that with my uncle's friend. He was a small-town doctor, non-political, thoughtful and soft-spoken, but full of laughter and kindness with a phenomenal sociability. He wrote short stories and plays. How he and my uncle got together is a mystery, probably insoluble now, because both my uncle and his friend are dead. I think you look at photographs of dead friends closer than you do those of live ones. This is true of my uncle's friend. We have a few photographs of our friend. There is one photograph taken shortly before his death. He is standing (if that's the word for it) and leaning wearily on his cane in a flowering garden with a long black overcoat buttoned at the top and a black hat pulled low over his eyes. He's sickly and dour; he looks like he just has been sniffing horse radish. My uncle hated this photograph. My uncle never forgave me for sending him a New York Review of Books with David Levine's caricature of our friend taken from this photograph, showing our friend as an elongated, gloomy, black tapeworm. It was, I believe, because of such photographs that my uncle disliked his friend's plays. The photograph of our friend in the garden, right before his death, reminded my uncle of his plays, and for that matter, vice versa. Both media of the photograph and the plays reflected, at least to my uncle, gloom, frustration and melancholy. When the Horse Cave Theatre produced a play by our friend, my uncle refused to attend. On the other hand, my uncle enjoyed our friend's short stories and, probablyOpen 24for theHours same reason, the photographs of our friend as a young, 50 0p2410.qx 3/12/10 11:57 AM Page 51

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even middle-aged man. My uncle's favorite photograph shows our friend 30 years of age, broad-shouldered, about six feet tall, surrounded by his family who were living with him as they did all of his life – his mother, his father, his brothers and sisters. Seated in the front of the photograph is our friend with a clear lucid gaze into the camera. His look imparts energy, common sense and mischief. Our friend did not like conversations on lofty ethereal subjects. He was wonderfully simple and loved everything simple, real and unaffect- ed. He had his own unique way of making other people simple and of making an issue or subject simple. His enemy was banality. He was a master of the art of finding banality everywhere and showing it up. He had melancholy gray eyes with a delicate mockery playing in and about them. But at times, his eyes would grow cold, piercing and hard; then his normal melodious voice sounded harsher, and you knew then that this gentle unpretentious man, my uncle's friend, if he had to, could stand up and resist any hostile force. Our friend was a talented writer of short stories. In these stories, our friend dusted and cleaned every eave and cornice, every nook and cranny of human activity – of people in situations – farmers and businessmen, doctors and lawyers, soldiers and bankrupts and wives, bureaucrats and prostitutes, husbands, school teachers and artists. My uncle read our friend's stories thoroughly, over and over again. My uncle was neither intellectual nor literary. He simply knew what he liked, and he liked his friend and his friend's stories. My uncle even read his friend's notebooks and reread his letters. I remember one book by our friend in my uncle's library titled The Black Monk and Other Stories. I read it from cover to cover one Saturday night at my uncle's house in 1958. I was 15 years old. The names were hard to remember. My uncle told me to change the damn names if I wanted to – “... just remember the people and the story." Years later, my uncle and I searched his house for this book, but we couldn't find it. I like books. I like lost ones even more – rather the quest for a particular lost book – not what's printed, but how, when, where and by whom. In other words, a particular edition of the book – the sibling of the book I had read. At the Junior League Rummage Sale in 1983, I found the book. Like me, the book had aged since 1958, but it still was the same book – blue- black cover, gold title and author, same edition – "Printed in Great Britain by William Brendon and Son, Ltd., Plymouth" – 1916 – with an additional inscription – "Miss Lucy Green, 25th December, 1918." Since then, I have envied Miss Green for getting such a wonderful present (my lost book) for Christmas. For those of you obsessed with such irrelevancies as dates, let me allay your confusion. My uncle was born in 1923. I was born 20 years later in 1943. My uncle knew our friend for roughly 65 years by the time of his

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(my uncle’s) death in 1998. I have known our friend over half a century. My lost book of stories by our friend was published in 1916, seven years before my uncle was born and (to be chronologically nauseous), two years before Miss Green's Christmas. And to carry this exercise further, Miss Green could not have known our friend as early (or as late) as 1918 because our friend died at age 44 in a rented room in the Sommer Hotel in Germany's Black Forest, far from home, in 1904. My uncle never did like the book The Black Monk, particularly because of the translator, R. E. C. Long. My uncle preferred the translations of our friend's writings by Constance Garnett, the Englishwoman who translated Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. My uncle’s shelves housed thirteen volumes of her translations of our friend's stories published by MacMillan and Company in 1917 and reissued in 1944. And so, another irrelevancy – which is that the friend of my uncle (my uncle who voted for Dewey, Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan) – the friend of my uncle was a Russian. Hopefully, to end the irrelevant once and for all, is the last irrelevancy – the name of our friend. I will paraphrase what my uncle told me years ago, talking loudly from a haywagon up to me under the hot roof of a barn, punctuated by bales of hay that he pitched to me: "There's a 'T' in front of the 'CH', but it's not written down; it's just there. Do you understand that? (Punctuated by a hay bale.) “You don't say 'checkers'; you say 'Tcheckers' from the roof of your mouth down. (Another hay bale.) “And the 'OV' is really an 'OFF'. Don't ask me why that is. “So, it's 'Tchekhoff', even though it's spelled 'Chekhov'. “‘Anton Pavlovich Chekhov' – because his father's name was Pavel, and the 'ovich' means 'son of', as in ‘bitchovich’." (Another hay bale.) In some ways, those of you who have heard of, or maybe read, Chekhov are at a greater disadvantage than those who have no idea of who Chekhov is. This story is not about the Chekhov, or your Chekhov (probably the gloomy consumptive old goateed creature who wrote plays), but rather about my uncle and his Chekhov, our Chekhov. The facts won't seem so strange to those of you ignorant of Chekhov. There was an aging, big, brusque tobacco and grain farmer who lived and worked in Barren County, Kentucky, (my uncle), who, between bouts with family, weather, soil, farmhands, broken combines and Democrats, had a friendship disparate in space and time with a dead Russian writer of short stories. He loved this Chekhov. He studied this Chekhov. He traversed many times the human landscape of thirteen volumes of Constance Garnett's translations of the stories of Chekhov. He strived (rather unsuccessfully) for, as someone said, Chekhov's balance of sensibility and sensitivity and of supreme objectivity and gentleness. To paraphrase Nabokov (another Russian writer), as a good reader of Chekhov, my uncle was one of Chekhov’s best characters. Open 24 Hours 52 0p2410.qx 3/12/10 11:57 AM Page 53

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You must understand that these are my words, my characterizations. For my uncle was not bookish nor intellectual nor literary nor romantic. He was a practical man, impatient with dreams and ideas. He was, in other words, much like his friend, Chekhov. Let me tell you something about our Chekhov, the way my uncle told me. Our friend is born in Taganrog, on the Sea of Azov, in 1860. During the last four years of his life (age 40-44), he lives at Yalta on the adjoining Black Sea. In between youth and death, he lives in Moscow, making a living. His father, the local grocer, bankrupts when Chekhov is about 15 years old. The whole family moves to Moscow for work, all except Anton. He stays in Taganrog to finish school and to supervise the bankruptcy. At age 19, Chekhov receives a scholarship to the University of Moscow Medical School. In Moscow, he uses the scholarship to get his family out of hock. For five years, he attends medical school and supports his family by writing short stories, sketches, one-act plays, jokes, law reports, one-liners and half-page tales for small press magazines like The Dragonfly. His father and older brothers defer to him. He heads the family. He keeps it together. This continues until his death. Our friend becomes a doctor and works as an assistant to a district doctor in a small provincial town. He continues to write to bolster his income. He says that medicine is his wife and literature is his mistress. Over time, the roles reverse, but there is always medicine and writing. He is a good general physician. During a cholera epidemic, he works all alone as a district doctor, taking care of 25 villages. A whole book can be written about Chekhov's work in Yalta as a member of the Board of Guardians for the Visiting Sick. A great kindness pervades his medical practice and his literary work, not of program or message, but simply the natural coloration of his talent. Our friend publishes two collections of short stories in 1886 and 1887. He is acclaimed by the reading public. From that time on, he belongs among the leading writers and publishes stories in the best periodicals. He tries, but never succeeds, in writing a novel. He is a sprinter, not a long distance run- ner. Chekhov buys Melikova, a small estate near Moscow. He moves his whole family there. He is inexhaustibly active. He writes, practices medicine, and plays pranks. Construction work fascinates him. He founds Moscow's Clinic for Skin Diseases. He organizes the Museum of Painting and Fine Arts in Taganrog. He starts the Crimea's first biological station. He collects books for schools on the Pacific Island of Sakhalin (the Tzar's prison island). He builds three schools for peasant children, and a belfry and fire station for the villages around Melikova. He builds another school in Yalta. Chekhov still writes and publishes stories, and now, plays – The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard. His tuberculosis becomes worse. He moves south for his health to Yalta on the Crimea. He commutes 600 miles to Moscow to work with Stanislavski and the Moscow

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Art Company about staging his plays. He's dying from consumption at age 42, and he marries Olga Knipper, an actress, age 20. It is not a happy marriage. He goes to Germany for a cure, and he dies there. His body trav- els back to Russia in a railcar marked "Fresh Oysters." He is buried in Moscow. When I am one year old, General George Marshall and Ambassador Averell Harriman room together at Chekhov's villa in Yalta during Roosevelt's meetings with Churchill and Stalin. When I am 15 years old and reading The Black Monk and catching hay bales, Olga Knipper gives her final performance of The Cherry Orchard for Krushchev in Moscow. I grew up with my uncle and Chekhov, knowing each of them through the other. My uncle rarely talked about himself or his thoughts or ideas. However, I discovered that I could learn of both Chekhov and my uncle by getting my uncle to talk of Chekhov and his stories. Then, my uncle would open up and talk about all sorts of things – religion, ideas, women, bore- dom, hopes and sanity – all within the context of Chekhov and such stories as "The Lady with the Dog," "Ward No. 6," "In the Steppe," "The Black Monk," and "The Duel." My uncle once told me about Chekhov's (and probably his own) impa- tience with philosophies and ideas. What I remember most is how he told me. He showed me two photographs that I knew. One was of Chekhov visiting Tolstoy at Gaspra in 1901. The great writer Tolstoy has a flowing white beard, wears his peasant clothes and looks like some fiery prophet out of the Old Testament. The other photograph was of Chekhov (at his house in Yalta) in 1900 with Maxim Gorky, the Soviet writer, then a young revolutionary just out of the Tsar's prison. In both photographs, Chekhov looks like a small-town doctor with his black three-piece suit, felt mid- brim hat, pince-nez and goatee. In fact, he looks like my great-grandfather at a medical meeting in Tompkinsville, Kentucky, around 1900. Pointing to the pictures, my uncle said, "And here's Chekhov visiting old Tolstoy. When Tolstoy was young, he screwed every woman he could find and gambled away his estate. Now, he's old in this picture, and he's found God and non-violence, and he's preaching here to Chekhov about all of these great ideas that he has – God, religion, non-violence and how great the simple rural peasant life is, and you know what Chekhov is doing? Chekhov is listening. And, here we have Chekhov with Gorky. Do you know what Gorky is telling him? About social protest, revolution, all of these great early Bolsheviks that he just met in prison, and the higher, political purposes of literature. And do you know what Chekhov is doing? Chekhov is listening. And do you know what he does? He uses these ideas, just like I use my hay baler." There is no end to this story of my uncle and Chekhov and me. After all, the three of us are very much alive and well. But I will give one final scene to a chapter. It is Thanksgiving Day, 1982. I am just back from a trip to Russia. Our family sits around the dining room table at my grandmoth-

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er's house in Horse Cave. Years ago, my grandmother gave her son (my uncle) the book The Black Monk. Like most of our family, she neither knows nor cares about its author. Everyone is silent as my uncle asks me questions like "Did you visit Melikova?" and "Did you find his grave?" I tell about my search for Chekhov's grave in the old cemetery at the Novodevichy Convent in Moscow. I walked in the new section of the cemetery where all of the Soviet politicians are buried who don't make the grade to the Kremlin Wall behind Lenin's tomb. Krushchev is in this cemetery. I noticed behind Krushchev the old section of the cemetery, rather overgrown with the ironwork in disrepair. I spent a good half hour rummaging among the old graves until I found our friend Chekhov, between the graves of Gogol and Bulgakov. As I recite these names to my uncle and he nods and responds, our relatives at the table glimpse something of my uncle they did not know before. And so, what are the points of this story? First, it tells a strange but rather simple story about a friendship of two men with probably no point to it, no resolution, no message. It is a story (albeit a bad one) that Chekhov could have written. Second (and both Chekhov and my uncle would wince at this), it may give you some inkling of my belief in the immediacy, vitality and practi- cality of literature. Good teachers teach more than they know – so it was with my uncle who gave me Chekhov and who taught me about the immediacy of and the absolute need for, his stories. Third, and finally, it illustrates an idea of another writer, Jorge Luis Borges, that reading a book is as creative an act as writing one. The writer and the reader are creative artists relative to the book and to each other. Chekhov's act of writing recreates and nurtures my uncle. My uncle's act of reading recreates and nurtures Chekhov. And so it goes with writing and reading, with Chekhov and my uncle, with writers and their best characters.

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Open 24 Hours Rusty Smiddy We Lived On The Street That Led To The Dump

Every weekend —before there was a Walmart— we lined up like Walmart customers the day after Thanksgiving waiting for the cars and trucks to open and throw away their junk, debris of someone’s past affection. Chipped china glazed with cracks graced the cupboards. Our mothers, knee deep in someone’s abandoned possessions, burrowed for antiques, bringing them home, finding an empty table, another teetering—slipshod city floating in a dim room. Summers, our parents forgot us and we roamed the neighborhood in people’s old dress clothes, wild hats. My boyfriend Raymond combed Crisco through his hair every morning. He was bad-ass, bullet-proof— black patent leather head shining beside me. We counted on our fingers the things we would have when we became millionaires—cars mostly, Cadillacs. Darkness, we were gathered in, counted, smacked or loved, whose ever child we were, inspected for tears, loose scabs, whatever might need salve. My husband cannot understand my need to rummage through another person’s things— one more potholder, a clock I might fix, a lamp’s fixture hanging down like a bird’s broken neck. Everything needs more love than we can give. So I leave that part to myself, about summers when the ice cream man rolled down our street to dump his melting merchandise. Our mothers, who could smell something free

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ten miles away, were already there fighting over Eskimo Pies, Popsicles, Orange Pushups. We rushed home stuffing what we could into small metal freezers, eating the rest; cracked bowls under our chins to catch this accidental sweetness, mothers near with wet rags, ready to snatch and grab. But we wriggled away from their soapy embraces, intoxicated, sticky, banking off walls, furniture, touching everything, blessing all our broken pieces.

Laurie Doctor This Work

My friend, the poet, asked me what I was doing. I said, you know, the visual form of mumbling, the verbal version of stumbling. Leaving my hands to their own devices, closing my eyes, transforming vices into color and verse. Saying this work is my prayer.

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Jordan Overby Role Playing

In the coffee shop, they only take cash, only have six choices on the menu, and never have an empty seat. We are leg deep in the recession, yet the small luxuries have remained untouched by the spotlight of budget and the hounds of economy. I believe it's because we are still hoping to find love here, and by we I mean me, though I think my generation was sold a bill of goods, the notion that every romantic comedy could be used as a blueprint for our lives, that the Meg Ryan character might join us on a cross-country road trip and demonstrate convincingly how gullible and egocentric men are in the middle of a crowded diner in the middle of Ohio. Yet I'm pretty sure no woman has ever faked an orgasm with me. I imagine it will go something like this: I'm writing on my late-model macbook when a beautiful brunette sits across from me at the shared table. We both look over our laptops to spy, looking for some direct memory of the other, from a dream or a movie, that could serve as password to our heart because we both know that words can never be trusted because they have always lied in the past. And when she casts her hair behind the anchor of her ear I know this is no different than a 13-year- old kid rolling a 20-sided die in the basement of his grandmother's house. It's Friday night and the Dungeon Master has it out for my Elf: It is fantasy based only on chance. Still, though . . . all this possibility for a $3.50 latte.

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Open 24 Hours Kelly Lee The Melody of Her Words

Around the corner a loud woman speaks Quick Spanish to the telephone. I listen to the rolling sounds, Her excited intonation, a litany of “ce”s While the unheard voice responds. Eavesdropping, I occasionally Recognize a word, learned and Forgotten in high school Spanish classes. Relishing the rhythmic melody of her words, I envision enjoying my own language Without connotation, but simply As fine music free of meaning.

Laurie Doctor A Place Beside the Sea

I want a little bowl of everything with plums and pears and pomegranates covered in cream. A place beside the sea with blue umbrellas and crystal glasses filled with Chardonnay. Where moon undresses over the far horizon where sand is soft and fluted shells are found, with little crabs that move them all around. Where I can give myself to night and dreams and watch the slow descent of Venus in between. I want to know the sandpipers and petrels the avocets, phalaropes and oyster catchers. And taste what you said to me the other night, eating strawberries dipped in chocolate and moonlight. I want to read Andre Breton and Ferlinghetti and paint the stars glimmering in your hair. And draw your hands and feet and face and take long walks where we forget our way.

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“’The Miraculous Healing of Chad would surely be the top social event of the summer, or the most discussed, at any rate.” Lynn Hardesty, p. 67

“For starters, they all swallowed their chaw of tobacco and commenced to gagging and spitting on everything, including each other.” Todd Autry, p. 77

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Rey Ford Visiting Kentucky in Late Spring

The damp green of everything— such a fertile earth to swim in.

Everywhere the moisture and honeysuckle lick each other

until the sweet smell fills the great pond of all imagination,

until just past sunrise when a thin blue heron settles in the water in front of me and tucks his wings away, and waits so quietly, watching for anything that moves below the surface as if his life depended on it, as if all our lives depended on it, as if in this silent moment the breathing of the entire world balances so perfectly on his thin legs.

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from Rare Bird: Sonnets on the Life of John James Audubon

Richard Taylor Innovation

Putting stride back into the paralytic art of animals—poses in profile that, like tomb art of the pharoahs, lacked a third dimension (as though some god had cursed their kingdom into stone or stamped them into coins), Jay Jay brought animation to the art of birds, put nature on the wing. Life-like, life-size, his subjects swooped & swallowed, squabbled, soared. They preened & seemed to flutter off the page, restored from caricature to individuation with something close to personality as they cooed & twittered. They had blood & color, breathed. So red was his nature in tooth and claw, one patron had his predator banished from her wall.

Richard Taylor Henderson

In this frontier outpost raftsmen recognized as Red Banks, Jay Jay learned the hard way that his business wasn't business but birds: the colossal mill in which he sank his savings a colossal bust. Add to these misfortunes a broken hand, an infant daughter buried, a box of 200 drawings home to a menage of Norway rats, a steamboat he was swindled out of, a team of oxen boosted by emigrants he'd hired to log 1,200 acres. But here he found domestic joy, with Lucy swam the Ohio, even said to dive a steamboat's length underwater to demonsrate his joi de vivre, the sky above a major flypath, raining birds.

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Linda Neal Reising Congregation of Crows

(Many scientists have shown that some of the larger corvids have the ability to count to seven. —Ardastra Gardens, Zoo, & Conservation Center)

Seven crows jab at the stubble in the corn field, wearing their preachers’ suits and counting out sets of kernels, like alms collected for the poor. They know the symbolism of seven, Hebrew for complete or full.

The first recalls the days of creation and rests with his seventh seed.

Another tries to accept the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, but he’s never learned to fear the Lord as much as he has the crucified stranger in a nearby garden.

His brother practices the seven virtues, leaning heavily toward Prudence, turning his lacquered head from side to side, cautious.

Another one dreams of seven seas, skimming the wave crests like an ink-stained gull, leading Noah home,

while the other three forget their religion and succumb to the seven vices loudly accusing one another with gluttonous, gaping beaks.

Steven Skaggs Nesting Instinct

Surround me with the twigs of every life others inhabit

Retire from your foraging nervous enterprise

Roof me with the warmth of your soaring breast

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Joe Survant Owl

The owl glides in on secret wings, silent as leaf flush. He knows the quick motives of chipmunks, the intimacy of mice. A cloud of clacking crows follows full of anger and fear. They blow around him like ashes from a fire. Why do they hate his loneliness? I have come too far today. The paths of deer have deceived me with thicket and briar. I strain to hear the whine and tear of their intricate message. Stormy crows rise up to wheel and jeer at my quietly brooding owl.

Missy Brownson-Farmer Relearning the Alphabet

You and I are two letters separated by angle and curve and a continent of consonants. We languish, like long vowels do, and reveal our pleasures slowly, oooooohs and ahhhhhhs dripping from our mouths. I ask how and when and sometimes why but, more often, why not.

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George Fillingham On The Britmart Road

“ . . . lost to your desire, at last Ravish the waste for what you cannot know.” Edgar Bowers

Sunday morning, crisp with spring, No one but me on the Britmart Road; The green trees tinged with yellow blaze, The clear blue sky, the serpentine gray movement As I drove the morning mad with newsprint. The shrubs beside the road explode in commotion. Two male orioles are fighting for the chance to mate; They crash to the shoulder of the road, all claws and beaks, Grabbing and stabbing, clinging and screaming; The victor flies off in a black and yellow bolt; The one left panting rights itself, chest heaving, gripping The street, panic and frustration driven. It flies Back to the trees again, seeking the second chance To mate, hungry from the love embedded spring, Stirred by the whirring of leafy green fires, Begging for love and the intimate future in love, The creations of love in the high hung, woven nest of love, The generations of love, the mysterious shell, The yolk and the white of love, the silver and gold And the deep blue flowers of wisdom in love, The potent, godlike, egg-seed-sex of love.

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from Advice to Young Poets: A Sonnet Sequence Tom Hunley P.T. Barnum

It’s wrong to trifle with a human soul. He said as much in 1865. But he employed a midget boy – age five – to smoke cigars, drink wine, and play a role

in making him a rich man. When he warned that human beings can be perverse, he meant the suckers every minute being born, not the albinos, Siamese twins, and giants

who made his show the greatest one on earth. When he went bankrupt, Emerson, that lout, said, “God is visible again.” From birth

to death his head stayed in the clouds. His motto, to improve upon the truth, attract and please – but never dupe – the crowds.

Tom Hunley Babe Ruth

How do you make it to the Hall of Fame? How do you get away with punching umps and booze it up without an ounce of shame? It helps if you can hit home runs. That trumps

the penalties that other men must pay. You make more money than the president. "I had a better year than him," you say. When soldiers from Japan are sent

across the front lines shouting "Ruth must die!" you know your flag has been unfurled. When you go in for stomach surgery, it's dubbed "the bellyache heard round the world."

Make sure to give a girl's name to your bat, and don't let anybody touch your hat.

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Lynn Hardesty Faith Like Fields

Chad was in an accident the summer I turned fourteen. He was on his ATV, riding down Cemetery Hill Road. He topped the hill and ran head-on into a pickup. He hasn’t been right since. Chad was seventeen when it happened. You could ask me about him, but I couldn’t tell you much. I didn’t know him personally. I don’t know if his laugh sounded more like a bark or a hiss. I don’t know if he preferred country music or Southern rock. I don’t know how he felt about high school. All I really knew was that he worked at the local pizza parlor. I only knew that because it was in the paper. The owners of the place changed their sign out front after what happened. Instead of listing specials, it read: GOD BLESS CHAD. It’s been that way since. I guess you could say it wasn’t fair what happened to Chad. My momma would tell you life’s not fair. After that summer, I dropped “fair” from my vocabulary unless it’s dealing with a carnival or someone pale. I have always been fair – in the pale sense of the word. But I also think it’s important to be fair – as in equal treatment for people. So you could say I am both. My hair’s fair, too. It’s so blonde that it turns white in the summer sun. People always have something to say about it. Like the cashier at Lee’s Market. I strolled in there one day that summer looking to buy a bottle of Jones’ soda. “That’s some curious hair you got there.” The hefty cashier popped her gum. She sounded like a smoker. I plunked some change on the counter. “You wanna donate something to that Chad boy?” She waved a fake finger- nail in the direction of a beat up Mason jar. It had a weathered message taped to the front. Anyone who got the county paper had already read about Chad’s accident and the costly surgery he was supposed to have in Nashville. “Where’s he going? Vandy?” I asked. The cashier shrugged, smacking her gum. That coin jar probably didn’t have but three dollars total. Not even a drop in the bucket compared to what that surgery would cost. She handed back some change. “Here you go, baby.”

I took the bottle outside. The cold glass felt good in my palm. The air was so hot I felt like my eyeballs were roasting. It took me a second to see Eggy. She was sitting on a parking stop, picking at the paint. I handed the bottle to her. She grabbed it without saying a word and started to twist it open. “You’re welcome,” I huffed before starting down the road. Eggy is just a couple years younger than me. She’s my sister and what some people might call a strange bird. Talking to people, for example, isn’t real high up on her 67 0p2410.qx 3/12/10 11:57 AM Page 68

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priorities. I could hear her flip-flops scraping the blacktop as she caught up to me. She mumbled something like “Thank you,” but I just kept my head forward. Our Aunt Nor’s winding driveway spits you out directly across from Lee’s. It was her gravel road we walked. We spent a lot of time working there in the summers; all the cousins did. Our male cousins worked in the fields. I mostly worked in the barn with the horses. Nor owned just two, but her boyfriend Donnie had six, so we always had our hands full. I caught sight of the horses soon enough. Their pasture stretches the length of the driveway. I saw Zacchaeus rocketing down the hill, tossing his head. He was a wild one and by far the tallest in the stable. I had trouble reaching his back while grooming. I clucked my tongue at him, but he just flew past us. He loved to run more than anything. When we got up near the barn, I saw Donnie stepping out into the sunlight. Donnie’s a giant with a shiny bald head and leathery brown skin like Nor. I like his skin. Anybody who looks at him can tell he’s worked hard for an honest living. He cheats at cards, but we love him enough to let him get away with it. He trains horses. Donnie raised his huge paw-like hand in greetings. When Donnie talks, his words sound like molasses. They drip thick and slow and heavy. “Jodeen’s coming over soon. Bring in Zacchaeus, Hannah.” I sighed a little as I walked to the barn. Jodeen is our cousin, and she thinks she’s God’s gift to the world or something. Her dad died when she was little, and because of it no one ever wanted to say a harsh thing to her. It did her no favors. I like the tapping sound my boots make when I walk in the barn. It sounds smart and crisp like a businesswoman in heels but tougher. I grabbed a halter and lead line and turned. The large square door to the barn was fully open. It framed the land. I wish I could paint that exact image you can see out the barn door: all the rolling hills and trees and farther off the train tracks. Goliath Coal Mine is about twenty miles up the track. The rum- bles and clacks of the train and the lonesome holler of its horn are welcome sounds. Pop says that when the train runs, times are good. I haven’t seen a day when it didn’t pass through. I walked to the front pasture and unhooked the gate. Zacchaeus had calmed down and was grazing nearby. I clicked my tongue for him. He wouldn’t come. I plodded over to him, praying he would be good for me but knowing he probably wouldn’t. I ran my hand over his flanks, tight with muscle. He looked at me with that look that said he knew what I wanted but he wasn’t about to do it and he would like to see me try. Holding the halter in my left hand, I put my arm under his head and wrapped my hand around his nose. I tried to bring the halter to his muzzle. Zacchaeus reared his head up and out of my grasp. He about jerked my arm out of my socket; he was that strong. I reached up to pull his head back down, but he was too tall. I stood on tip toes. He turned his head away.

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I heard someone snickering near the gate. I turned and saw it was Jodeen. “Hold on, Hannah,” she said. “I’ll come help you.” She was so conde- scending. It was like she was talking to a little kid. We were only a year apart in age. Jodeen looked so smart, walking up to me in a new pair of jodhpurs with shiny black boots. What was she trying to prove? She looked like she was about to compete in a show. Jodeen rarely worked at the farm. Anytime she was at Nor’s, she was practicing riding. She was an aspiring horsewoman and she was pretty good, but she liked to push it. By that I mean she’d rub in your face every little new trick she learned, and she thought herself much better than she really was. I stood there looking like an idiot or a little kid, with the halter hanging in my hand. Jodeen struggled to bring Zacchaeus’s head down, but she eventually got it. She dug the heels of her boots in the soft earth and gruffly scolded the horse as she grappled with his head. You have to show horses that you’re the boss, and that’s why I’ll never be as good a horsewoman as Nor or Jodeen. You’ve got to be assertive, or they’ll just take you for a ride. Jodeen smiled at me when she had got the halter on. She was very pretty with her straight no-nonsense nose that ties her face together. In spite of her being spoiled, I did like her most of the time. I felt my irritation slipping away like a cool breeze. “Your hair’s getting white,” she said, thrusting her chin toward my head. “Your accent’s coming back,” I replied. Jodeen had spent the first half of the summer visiting her dad’s family up north. She laughed. “Yeah, I lose it when I’m gone for awhile, but sure enough, I always seem to slip back into it.” As we led Zacchaeus out of the pasture and up to the barn to be groomed and saddled, I saw Donnie’s old truck lurching down the road like it was having a seizure. The closer we got, the better we could hear Eggy and Donnie’s shouting match. The gears ground as Eggy’s high pitched whine flew out the open windows. “Not that pedal!” Donnie hollered less than a second before the truck flew a few feet off the road and into the high grass. I squeezed my molars together in embarrassment. Donnie shouldn’t have let her drive. I could have told him it would end up bad like this. I’ve memorized all of Eggy’s buttons. At first it was to know which ones to push to get a rise. Now it’s to keep other people from pushing them. I have to be the shield between Eggy and the world. I suspected Donnie would be in a bad mood the rest of the day. The look on his face said I was right as his long legs propelled him forward. “Midge’s stall needs to be cleaned out, not just mucked,” he said. “Those mats are gonna need to be dragged out to the center.” Jesus. The work never stops at that place. I was thankful to conceal my embarrassment of Eggy in the cool shadows of Midge’s stall. The mats were thick things with no good place to hold on to. Moving

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them from the stall to the center of the barn was like wrestling with the devil. When I was finally finished, I slumped against the wall. I noticed a bruise blooming on the underside of my forearm. I guess I bashed it while pulling the mats out of the stall. The muddied purple stained my pale arm. I touched it lightly. It made me feel queasy and weak. I hate feeling weak.

Later that afternoon, I sat in the stiff grass outside the corral with Nor. Jodeen practiced side-passing while Donnie leaned up against the railing. “Push that leg, push that leg,” he urged. Jodeen’s lips pressed into a thin line, and her eyebrows bunched up. She’d manage to get one good step before Zacchaeus would turn into a tight circle. Nor was leaning against the horse trailer, smoking. “Donnie and I were planning on going down to that healing tonight.” She was talking to me, but she kept watch on Jodeen. “Would you want to come along?” I remembered seeing something in the paper about that. One of the small local churches was having a revival that week. Church of the Living God of the Fields or Most Holy Blood of the Shepherd or something like that. They really play up Farmer Jesus in the country. I doubt that would fly in the cities which is maybe why they’re so ungodly up there. Up there they talk about Hangs Out With Prostitutes Jesus. Most churches around here usually brush over that part of his life. It’s not real decent to talk about. I’m not much into religion particularly. Nor really goes in for it, though. She’s that good kind of Christian – the kind that love you just for getting out of bed in the morning. I can deal with that kind of religion. I figured I might as well go to the revival. There wasn’t much else going on in town. The Miraculous Healing of Chad would surely be the top social event of the summer, or the most discussed, at any rate. Maybe not as well attended as the fair, but surely much more talked about. I was brought out of my thoughts by the sound of Jodeen hollering and landing on the ground with a soft thud like a sack of flour being dropped on the table. Jodeen’s left foot got caught in the stirrup on the way down, twisting her knee. “Serves her right,” Nor said, calmly rolling a cigarette between her fingers. “Momma always said ‘Don’t trust a horse you can’t walk under.’” Still, Nor turned and left the site only to return with a rolled bandage and a pack- age of ice. She kept the cigarette clamped between her lips as she swiftly and skillfully wrapped Jodeen’s knee. I don’t know how you can trust a thousand pound animal with wild habits. That’s about as easy as trusting that this omnificent disembodied something was going to fully heal Chad tonight. I guessed trust just wasn’t my thing.

Donnie drove us out to the revival that night. Nor sat shotgun and I sat behind her. Eggy was beside me in the back. Donnie had driven Jodeen over to Mamaw’s after she got all fixed up. She was all propped up in a sea of

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pillows in her guest room, looking sorry for herself. I was slightly glad that she wouldn’t be with us but jealous that she’d be getting more spoiling from Mamaw. The sun was just starting to go down. All these clouds were piled up on one another, and they were putting on the most fantastic show for us. And for free, too. Can you imagine? They were all sorts of colors you wouldn’t even think about seeing in the sky. Like purple and pink and gray and blue and yellow and red. I might have even seen some green. I didn’t want to stop looking at it, but we were finally in the far reaches of the county surrounded by a whole bunch of nothing. There were already a bunch of cars and trucks lined up in the high grass. The church was a small squat thing, but in a real homey way. I figure most people who aren’t used to that stuff – and hell, even some people who are – would make fun of it and call it hick and poor and backwards. But I don’t feel that way at all. What I saw was this genuine little white church resting in the middle of pas- tures with the Technicolor sky as a background, and that says home to me. And I guess that says God to me more than a cathedral with flashy towers and colored windows. Nobody could make stained glass to mirror that sky.

We slunk in and sat near the back. I was afraid someone might find out I wasn’t one of them. They might see it on my face. I didn’t want any prosely- tizing or Bible thumping coming my way. The church itself made me feel good, though. It was all warm and holy feeling, like being wrapped up in a hug by Jesus or God or Mamaw or something. The whole back wall was this mural of a river – the kind of place you’d like to dally in a while. The whole mood was almost enough to make me want to forgive those pushy churchgoers. It was a piddly place, but it was about filled to bursting that night. There was a stale breath of summer around us – a mixture of dirt and sweat and leather. It hung in our faces and pressed on the back of our necks. Nor sat on the aisle looking straight ahead with this Jesus-y glow about her. I think she gets a contact high from religion or something. Donnie was between me and Nor. He looked tired from working all day. It was a peaceful sort of tired, though, like that feeling you get when you’ve toiled all day and then you take a good shower and eat a good dinner and plop down in bed. On my other side was Eggy. She didn’t seem to care if we were here or not. She just twiddled her fingers some and looked around at the congregation. Some people whispered greetings, but you just got this feeling that it was too good in here to bring your fallen human self in. We didn’t have any time to chat anyway because the preacher got up soon after we came in and started the revival proper. He started off fine enough. He looked pretty normal in a white button down shirt with the top couple buttons undone and sleeves rolled up in a manly “Hey, I’m a worker, too” way. But before too long he started coming off like he was rabid. “Folks,” he said, licking his top lip, “we’re havin’ a healin’ here tonight.”

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The congregation fanned themselves and answered him with Yessuh. Ummmhmmm. Praise Him. The preacher continued, “I say we’re havin’ a miracle!” The room was getting antsy, like horses in their stable right before they get fed. Feet were stomping; heads were swaying. “Believe in his POWER.” He was really hollering now. “ASK and ye shall receive. Y’all just gotta KNOCK and that door’s gonna swing OPEN.” People were on their feet, lifting their hands. The choir started in on a raucous hymn. The preacher started hopping and dancing around on one foot while whooping like an Indian. He’d stamp his foot and contort his face. He looked like he’d been bit by something. Between the hooting and hollering, he’d breathe heavily some “amens” and a “yes, sweet jaysus.” He was like a young colt – full of piss and vinegar, prancing and bucking and swinging his head around. His high forehead glistened as the sweat caught the light from the bare bulbs, hanging low. In the midst of all this chaos, they had wheeled Chad up to the preacher. I couldn’t really see him because of the crowd. The preacher was pretty dis- tracting anyway. From where I stood, he appeared to be riding on a sea of waving arms. “I see the power and the glory of the Most High! And I see Chad walking, running through the fields of righteousness,” he shouted, shivers racking through his body. He raised his hands and turned toward Chad, working his miracle cure, I guess. The tent burst forth in a new song – a haunting tune about God’s glory. The preacher’s singing sounded like barking. In the middle of this huge emotional hurricane, I saw a man standing like a mighty rock. He captured my attention away from the rollicking preacher. He must have been Chad’s father. He stood over the wheelchair protec- tively. He had his arms stretched out like he was on a cross. His head was tilted heavenward with his eyes screwed shut. I thought I could hear his booming voice from across the ringing crowd. It was a sight, seeing him so at peace. Glorious – I think that might be the word to describe his luminous face. It pained me. His son wasn’t going to get better. There wasn’t going to be a miracle. I wanted to walk up to him and tell him that. I didn’t want him having any false hope that would surely hurt him even more. Part of me wanted to shake him out of it. The nicer part of me wanted to put a hand on his arm, gently pull him aside and whisper the truth and rub his back. That always makes me feel better when things get unbearable. The truth can be an awfully ugly thing, but they say it sets you free. You know what they also say? Ignorance is bliss. I like that one more. The people who say otherwise aren’t learning everything. They must just be learning pretty stuff because knowledge makes for confusion, complications, and heartache. If you want to love anything, you’ve got to be prepared for heartache. That’s what Momma told me when I got my first kitten. I understood what she meant, but I didn’t realize it applied to people as well as pets. Here was

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Chad’s dad getting his heartache that summer and for probably every year after. God let Chad have that accident, and now his whole family was going to be living differently for the rest of their lives. I had trouble trusting that that was supposed to be a part of a perfect plan.

Nothing happened with Chad. They wheeled him away, and the preacher did some wrap up prayers and stuff. I didn’t see Chad or his dad. They blended into the rest of the crowd. We all had our windows rolled down as we drove home. I listened to the whispering rustle that the cornfields make at night. I think that must be what the ocean sounds like. The breeze that lifted my hair was the kind you only get at night – cool, no matter how hot the day was, and gentle, but powerful. I kept thinking about Chad and his dad, God and miracles. I thought about Eggy and why I had to be the one stuck with her. I felt slimy and sticky inside for thinking it. My heart was dipped in tar and dripping black, sticky goo. I could feel it dripping slowly inside my chest. But then I thought about fate and how all of us are screwed up, really. You can’t go saying “What if?” about the things that already are. And then I had an epiphany or revelation or something. There’s this quote that says either everything in life is a miracle or nothing is. Well, maybe it’s the same with mistakes. Either everything in life is a mistake or nothing is. And I’m choos- ing to believe there are no mistakes. I just kept thinking that while I hung my head out the window, listening to the fields sing. The sky was black black black. There’s no way to describe it other than that. The show we had seen earlier was long gone, but the stars were following up with a pretty great encore. Donnie started singing along to Tom Petty on the radio, softly at first. Nor joined in with her high and lonesome voice like a cowboy or coyote. Even Eggy bobbed her head to the music and sang a little under her breath. I smiled and started singing, too. It felt good. It felt like everything was going to be okay no matter what. And that was good enough for me.

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Tom Raithel Fog

Nothing is real in the park anymore. A mist consolidates into a tree. A park bench disperses in cloud. So a pale shape will congeal into a man, pass by, and dissolve in a haze. Some air is opaque as rock.

I had a friend who would laugh through a downpour, wring smiles from the damned, and extend the hand of a generous love to all who would step within reach. One night he emptied the bore of a shotgun into his skull, leaving no note, no laughter.

Within an hour, the sun will revive, the wind awaken, and the day throw back its vapory curtains. But we will continue to walk through fog, moving past shadow that thickens to substance then melts into shadow again.

John Beemer Orchid

You sat at the escritoire, your back gleaming with sun; I touched the vein of your forearm— you did not notice— traced, as I would, the stem of an orchid from your wrist to the crook of your elbow— and inside along the mounding muscle,

but then the vein descended beneath the fibrous layers, into the caverns beneath skin, sliding between sinews, running along the flat muscle-fields. Open 24 Hours 74 0p2410.qx 3/12/10 11:57 AM Page 75

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I touched the tunnels, knowing they led to a hidden, beating font— to a flower that opened, budded white.

I traced the tunnels like my mother’s hands touched the stems of her garden’s white orchids.

Ashley Boswell Potato Peeler

On a sleepy Sunday afternoon, We gather in the kitchen – Each woman attending her place. I hover over the trash can, Watching brown skins and eyes Flutter into the bag, A serf peeling potatoes – A task no one cares to take. I ignore the room’s gossip and banter, Trying to perfect the quick movements To shave between the good and bad parts. My grandmother takes the knife from me And robotically peels the potatoes, The knife an extension of her hand – An old friend. She tells me when she was young She believed she could live off Love and fried potatoes – sometime Before her second child was born And her first husband died. This collaborative feast shows her success – Her peeling is the phoenix Of her failures.

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Open 24 Hours Adria Nassim Welcome to Tractorville

In Tractorville, there’s Taylor Swift with her You Tube hits, And gum chewin’, tobacco spittin’ college kids, Military salutes and cowboy boots, And fishin’ in the creek, And turn the other cheek and everybody Who’s anybody’s been to Nashville, Tennessee, And my mom drivin’ down the road with the radio Yellin’ at me to “Turn that crap off!”

Everywhere’s Walmart sales and Summer hay bails and Dead whitetails on the side a the road. ATVS through mud and trees, And all God’s people said Amen.

Come spend Friday nights drinkin’ Miller Lights Till you throw up in the back a the truck at 2:00 a.m. And see homecoming queens in faded blue jeans, With enough Southern twang To make my momma say, “Dammit, why can’t Beyonce Get on here and sing?”

We’re full of small towns and hoedowns, And rowdy bars and rusty cars, And Dixie Chicks and politics, And Medicaid and underpaid Workers tryin’ to get somewhere Other than where they are.

We go to Sunday school to learn the golden rule, Shoot the vodka and Red Bull; You’ll be gettin’ so high you think you could fly,

There’s birth and death and resurrection, And teenage kids in the smokin’ section, And my mom whispering to me that All country ever is Is music to the tune of conservatism.

We love John Deere, and senior year Is spent dancin’ in a dorm room To Rascal Flatts “Here”

And singin’ Kenny Chesney Over the phone, and every time I call home She asks, “Where did my firstborn child go?”

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Open 24 Hours Todd Autry Ol’ Hosscat

In the third year of my college education I began using my feet, instead of a greyhound, to get home. It began when I hitchhiked home for Thanksgiving that year because of some bad luck I don’t care to tell about. Short of it is I found the walking suited me. Even when I marched along at a speedy clip, I noticed things about the countryside I never had before. Like all the different reds, yellows, and oranges the trees show off in the fall. By the time I reached home, my pockets were full of leaves with colors even the women of the family couldn’t name. When Christmas came around, I just set out walking. I hitchhiked only when my feet began to ache or when the cold became unbearable. I walked home for spring break. And again at the end of the semester. I began my senior year by walking and hitchhiking the hundred miles to school. I didn’t have to, and my grandfather thought I was lame-brained for it. “We had to when I was a youngun,” he said. “You don’t.” I didn’t say a word because at eighty he was quick to wind up, which he did when I started walking home some weekends. Against his wisdom, I continued to make the trip back and forth by foot. I’d grown up on a farm and didn’t know a whole lot about what lay beyond my home. It’s been said that a man shouldn’t let his schooling interfere with his education. I suppose I had done just that. By the end of my senior year, I’d long exhausted the known routes between school and home and had purchased a map and begun taking out- of-the-way roads. It took longer to get home, but I was content. That last day of the last week of school, when I packed up and headed home a college graduate, I knew I was going to take the longest route ever. It was a first rate, May day for walking, and I made the most of it by taking my time. About halfway home, I came upon a blacktop, two-lane road that wasn’t shown on the map. Despite the risk of getting lost, I couldn’t resist. Around noon, I stopped at a general store for a bite to eat. On the front porch, four old men sat on wooden benches whittling and spitting tobacco juice out into the dust. They nodded when I came up the steps. “Howdy,” I said as I opened the screen door. I reverted to colloquial language for the sake of the old men, “howdy” being informal and such. I didn’t want them to think that I thought my new college degree made me smarter than them, although I probably was. Inside the store, an older lady, who was cleaning the counter with one hand and fanning her face with a Farmer’s Almanac with the other, cleared her throat and spoke. “Can I help you?” “Ham smells fine,” I said. “Think I’ll take a sandwich of that, please, Ma’m.”

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“Want anything on it?” she asked. “Mustard, please.” She prepared the sandwich while I walked over, reached in the soft drink cooler and found myself a soda. I drank a long swallow. There on the wall behind the cooler hung a framed, black and white photograph, somewhat faded, of a man standing waist deep in a muddy creek straddling a log. I started to think on this, but the burning sensation of the soda in my throat stopped me. I squinted and waited for the discomfort to pass. The lady finished my sandwich, so I paid and walked outside. The old men had not budged. “How ya’ll doin’?” I asked. They nodded. No vacant seats available, I sat at the top of the steps and tried to enjoy lunch. A mangy, yellow dog sauntered out from between two outbuildings across the highway. It slunk across the road and gravel lot and slipped under the store’s porch. A number of growls greeted it. A dogfight was warming up, but when the men stomped, the growls died away. The old men were a sight. Tobacco juice was at all times flying from one of them or another. Some of it splattered onto the edge of the porch where the wood was stained brown. But most of their spittle cleared the porch, and the ground there below reminded me of the hog lot back home. As for their whittling, each man had a pile of shavings between his feet. When the pile grew about ankle high, the man stood and kicked it off the porch. Then he would be back at another stick, and like snow, the shavings would drop to the floor. Having taken to the porch’s shade, and feeling at liberty to laze, I decided to strike up a conversation. “How ya’ll doin’?” As before, they nodded. “Goodness, that sun is bright.” Again they nodded. I paused, bumfuzzled. “That sure was an ugly old dog went under this porch.” Again, they only nodded, and I set to studying how I was going to rouse them out of silence. I mulled over a number of ideas before I remembered the framed photograph in the store. “You know, that fellow in that picture on the wall in there sure does look like an idiot.” I had heard about folks having fits, but I’d never seen one. I’d never have guessed a bland statement like mine about a photograph could send not one but four men into what I felt certain would qualify. For starters, they all swallowed their chaw of tobacco and commenced to gagging and spitting on everything, including each other. One got juice in his eyes. Blinded, he stumbled toward the edge of the porch. The others noticed what was about to happen and reached for him, but they must have forgotten the knives in their hands. Not a single hand came out of that mad grab without at least a good knick or two. And so the rescue attempt was foiled, and the one teetering on the edge of the porch did fall. I knew pre- cisely where he was going to land from the moment his body leaned out

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and he began to flounder. Sure enough, he grunted as he landed smack dab in the middle of all that tobacco spit and wood shavings. When he tried to scramble out, he slipped in the mess. His legs and arms were flip-flying in all directions until he finally rolled over into the dry dirt, which stuck to him like cockleburs. His three buddies rushed down the steps to his aid. They helped him up and commenced to beating him all over in a vain attempt to clean him off. They didn’t stop when he whooped and hollered that they were hurting him, so he started punching back. The brawl had me rolling on my back in a fit of laughter. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the storekeeper charge out the door and down the steps with a broom held high over her head like one of those Japanese swords. The blows she rained down on the old men’s heads thud- ded loud enough for me to stop laughing for I knew they had to be painful. The men ceased punching each other and instead used their hands to shield themselves from the broom. “Doggonit, Sue, stop hittin’ me with that thing!” “Orville...Shelton...Jake...Roy..., if ya’ll can’t act no better’n heatherns, go home! It’s where you belong anyway!” She turned and huffed her way back up the steps and into the store. From inside she yelled, “You heard me. Go home!” In the aftermath of the melee, the men gathered and winced as they rubbed their heads and felt the bumps. “You all right?” “Yeah, you?” “Yeah, I’m all right.” I couldn’t help sniggering, and they heard me. Their faces all turned to me, the one who started the whole fiasco. The look in their eyes erased any smile that might have lingered on my own face. “What was ‘at you said about that picture?” asked the hefty, half-bald one. “I...uh...well, uh, it just looks peculiar,” I stuttered, “to see a man in a creek on a log.” “Log? Did he say ‘log’, Roy?” another one, tall and lanky, asked. “Yeah, Shelton, he said ‘log’. Hey, boy, you know it ain’t respectful to come into a town and start pokin’ fun at its most famous citizen.” They all muttered something and then stared at me for a reply. “Sir, I apologize. I didn’t....” “Son, do you know who that is in that picture?” “No, Sir, I don’t, but I’m terribly....” “Son, that is none other than Jack Gatlin, this town’s very own. You sure you haven’t heard of Ol’ Jack?” “No, Sir, I haven’t. Listen, gentlemen, I didn’t mean to start trouble. I’d better just be on my way.” “Well, now, since you didn’t know about Jack, we accept your apology, but we see it as our duty to tell you about Jack, so’s you’ll know next time not to say nothin’.” “I appreciate that, sir, but I really need to....”

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“Boy, we insist. You owe us that much. Just sit down and get comfortable and listen.” I sensed the futility of trying to leave, so I sat down. The broom lady must have heard because she came stammering out of the store again. “I thought I told ya’ll to go on home.” “Now, Sue, this boy here don’t know about our Jack Gatlin, and we see it fit to tell him so’s he don’t be startin’ no more ruckus.” “Why, Roy, this young man don’t want to be bothered with that ol’ bunch a hogwash.” “Hogwash! Sue, now this is the town’s history we’re talkin’ about here.” The broom lady shook her head and turned to me. “Young man, if I was you, I’d be gettin’ on home. You don’t want a hear these ol’ coots ramblin’ about somethin’ that happened thirty years ago.” But the old man’s eagerness to share his town’s history impressed me, not to mention I had become somewhat curious about their prize citizen. “It’s all right, Ma’m. If it’s okay with you, I’ll stay, for a little while.” “Makes no difference to me. It’s your own time you’ll be wastin’. Don’t say I didn’t warn you about these scoundrels, though.” She stepped back inside after smirking at the one named Roy. “Boy, don’t pay her no ‘tention. She just can’t appreciate ol’ Jack’s accom- plishments.” “Well,” I said, “enlighten me. It’s ‘Roy’, right? Roy, I really do need to be on my way. I just graduated from college, and I’m on my way home.” “Easy, now, easy. See ol’ Jack was a noodler. You know what that is? Don’t answer. See a noodler’s a man what wades around in creeks and catches fish with his bare hands. He feels around under water around logs and holes in the bank or where ever else they might be a catfish. And Jack Gatlin was the best there ever was at it. I only wish he was here to tell you how it’s done, but he’s been dead now ‘bout ten years. But he was the best, and if he was here, he’d tell you so. “He’d tell you how his daddy taught him to noodle, how he noodled his first flathead before he spoke his first word. Oh, and he’d show you how he could hold his breath for ten minutes.” I had to interrupt Roy there. “Wait a minute. It’s not humanly possible to hold your breath that long.” Roy laughed at me. “You might be right and you might be wrong ‘cause some folks swore Jack wasn’t all human, said he was part fish. If Jack was here, he’d take you around back where there’s a barrel full a rain water, and he’d duck his head for ten minutes and make you a believer. “Now, about twenty years ago, when Jack was at his prime, Old Caney Creek was full of big, big catfish—channel cats, blue cats, and especially flatheads. They’re the granddaddies of ‘em all. You might a heard ‘em called yellow cats. There were stories about them catfish, stories about cats and dogs disappearin’ whilst they was crossin’ the creek. Some even talked about young calves bein’ lost. Every time somethin’ came up missin’, people said one of them big yeller flatheads got it.

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“After a while we all quit noodlin’ ‘cause we was afraid a gettin’ a holt a one. But not Jack, no siree! He kept right on noodlin’, said he weren’t afraid a no fish. “Everybody kept tellin’ ‘im, ‘Better stop noodlin’, Jack. One a them big uns is gonna get you someday.’ But Jack didn’t pay ‘em no mind. Kept right on noodlin’, and catchin’ ‘em, too. By ginnies, every week he’d bring a few big ones in out a them bottoms. They weighed fifty, sixty pounds apiece, even brought in an eighty-seven pounder one time. You should a seen it. He had it over his shoulder, and its tail was draggin’ the ground. “Anyhow, Jack started tellin’ about this particular stretch of creek out in those bottoms that was real deep. He said he’d been seein’ fish the likes of which no one ever saw. Said he was only gettin’ glimpses of ‘em now and then, like they was real easy to spook. “Now, nobody ever doubted Jack’s tellin’ about these fish ‘cause everybody had seen pictures of big catfish taken from Green River that weighed over a hundred pounds and was five feet long. But one day Jack came in from the bottoms, all huffin’ and a sweatin’, jabberin’ all crazy-like about a flathead he’d seen along that deep stretch of the creek. He claimed it was at least eight feet long and must’ve weighed at least three-hundred pounds. “Well, this is when people started to question ol’ Jack. Accused him of hittin’ the bottle too hard. That was the worst thing ever could’ve happened ‘cause ol’ Jack didn’t take too well to bein’ poked at. And to make matters worse, when he got upset, people started laughin’. So Jack got fightin’ mad. He was ready to take on the whole lot of ‘em. They was all jeerin’ at ‘im, and he drawed back ready to let ‘em have it. Would have been bad if Sue in there hadn’t told Jack to pipe down and prove himself. “Everything got all quiet, and Jack, who couldn’t never back down from nothin’, told the whole town where to go and said he was headin’ for the bottoms and weren’t comin’ back ‘til he caught that hosscat fish he’d been ravin’ about. “And just like that he was gone. Stomped off to the bottoms. “Now, since it weren’t nothin’ for Jack to be gone days at a time before comin’ out a those bottoms, no one was concerned when he didn’t show for a couple days, didn’t get too overly worried when Jack hadn’t showed up after four days, but when a week had gone by and no one had seen hide nor hair of ‘im, people started to talk. “After the eighth day, me, Orville, Jake and Shelton here decided we was goin’ a go check on Jack. As much as we hated those bottoms, we figured somebody ought to go see about ‘im. “We didn’t take nothin’ with us but a bite to eat, a jug a water, a carbide light, and a rope in case we needed to drag somebody out. “When we finally reached that stretch of creek we knew Jack intended to noodle, we didn’t see nothin’ strange ‘cept the creek was awful muddy, but we didn’t think much of it ‘cause noodlin’ around in the water always stirs up the mud. “So we took off up the creek lookin’ and listenin’ for Jack. The goin’ was

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slow as molasses. Creekbanks had thickets a snake couldn’t slide through. “A half a mile and several hours later it started gettin’ dark, and we started gettin’ worried wonderin’ if we was ever goin’ to find ol’ Jack. We switched on our light and went a little further up the creek, and then we thought we heard splashin’ ahead of us. I was in front so I shined the light in that direction. Couldn’t see a thing. I think it was Orville here who said it must’ve been a beaver or a muskrat, so we started walkin’ again. I’m tellin’ you, we hadn’t took more’n a step or two when we heard it again. I threw up the light, and what I saw I ain’t ever seen the likes of since.” “What?” I asked. “Get this. Jack was cruisin’...up that creek...with his arms wrapped around...and ridin’...on the back of the orneriest lookin’, ugliest thing you ever laid eyes on.” “What? What was it?” “Why, it was that big ol’ Hosscat Jack had been tellin’ the whole town about. There it was, just like he said. And here Jack and that fish come, right by us. They was both petered out and gaspin’ for air. We started screamin’ at Jack, but he was too weak to even lift up his head. All he could say was, ‘Ya’ll want a help me with this thing?’ “Well, we didn’t know what to do so we just started racin’ back down the creek tryin’ to keep up with Jack and that ol’ Hosscat. Then one of us thought about the rope. I hollered and told Jack we was going to throw it to him, but all we heard him say was, ‘That’s a good idea.’ “So I rared back and gave it a toss. I suppose it must have been Jack’s lucky day ‘cause do you know that rope landed right up on that ol’ Hosscat’s back a few inches in front of Jack’s nose. But Jack was afraid to let go with his hands to grab the rope for fear a losin’ his grip on that fish. Instead, he bit the rope with his teeth and let the ends slide down its sides to his hands. When he had both ends, he tied a tight knot just behind those two, sharp, spike fins that stuck out at least a foot on each side a that fish. “But when I saw what he did next, I almost fell over backwards. He waited for that Hosscat to gasp for air, and when it did, he rammed that rope down its gullet and out one side of its gills. I wasn’t sure what he was tryin’ to do until I saw him pull it tight, and lo and behold he had made himself a bridle. He leaned back and put his weight into it, and after jerkin’ and thrashin’ for a minute, Ol’ Hosscat was broke. I mean he was busted like a bronc. Jack only had to keep the rope tight and lead it over to the side of the creek where we was waitin’. He threw us the loose end of the rope, and we tied it off to a tree, and that was that. He slid off its back and struggled to the bank where we got a holt of his arms and pulled him up to dry ground. And that’s where he lay for an hour ‘fore he could muster up enough gumption to move. “We finally got it out of ‘im that he’d been ridin’ that fish up and down that creek for three days. Said he’d been prayin’ somebody in town would get there before he gave out and had to let go. Thanked us and said if it hadn’t been for us four, nobody would ever have believed his tellin’ about

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that fish, and he’d a had to stay down in those bottoms for the rest of his days tryin’ to get a holt a that fish again. “And that, son, is how Jack Gatlin came to be famous around here! Now, ain’t you glad you stayed and let us tell you about ‘im?” Roy and his buddies waited, clearly expecting me to answer “yes.” I just looked from one of them to another. “Gentlemen, do you really expect me to believe that...that bunch a...how did she put it...hogwash? You know, I was going along with it until you came up with that part about riding a fish. You....” “Now, wait a minute, boy! Are you sayin’ we ain’t bein’ straight with you? Are you callin’ us liars?” “Sir, I don’t believe in nobody riding a fish anymore than I believe in Santa Claus or the Easter bunny. You all should be telling this stuff to little kids who might believe it, instead of college graduates like me who are edu- cated enough to know better.” “Well, Mr. Big Britches college graduate, you don’t have to believe us. You saw the picture, the proof, right in there on the wall.” “What? You think that picture is supposed to make me believe you? An old picture of some man, who could be anybody, straddling a log in some creek?” “Oh, but we think you might oughta take another gander at that picture of a man straddlin’ a log in a creek.” “Come on, boy, take another look-see,” the one named Jake said. I was starting to get a bit peeved at the old men, so I said, “You all are crazy. I don’t have the time nor the inclination to....” “Hey, Sue,” Roy shouted, “bring that old picture of Jack out here for a minute! Big Britches here wants to see it.” “You come and get it yourself,” she returned from inside. “I don’t know why I even leave it hangin’.” “Now, Sue,” Roy said as he stood and went inside. “You know how much that picture means to this town.” “No, but I do know how much it means to you,” Sue said as Roy came out the door holding the picture. He held it out to me. “Here. Take a close look at it this time.” I held the picture up but noticed no new details. The old men were sure a revelation was about to come to me. They surrounded me and pressed me to look even closer. I was more than a little miffed by now, but the men’s eyes glimmered, so I breathed in deep and focused on the picture. I studied it. I searched it. I scrutinized it. At first I attributed what I saw to the quality of the photograph, it being black and white, and old and faded; however, the longer and more intently I stared, the greater I was convinced that the man was not straddling a log but, in fact, was sitting astride something that was most certainly alive. I began to single out details then. Though small and beady, there were two eyes. I determined a long black cavity in front to be a mouth. And what

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I had initially identified as branches eventually I found to be fins. Whiskers were visible. And I finally gathered that the man, with the hand he wasn’t waving, held a rope that came from the mouth of this creature. I was deep, deep in scrutiny of minute details when I heard over my shoulder, “What kind a log would you say that was?” Completely confounded, I turned my head and raised my face from the picture to see the old codgers grinning with a glow or redemption. I was speechless. No two ways about it. I glanced from one of them to another before settling a defeated gaze into Roy’s smiling eyes. I would recall those eyes, and that photograph, the remainder of the day as I completed my journey home. And I recall them still.

Jason Rhodes I Was Eight Years Old

there was a microcassette in our RCA answering machine the thing was black and woodgrained and whirred and wound and rewound and stored the voices of people who used to give up after five rings one modest LED told us we had a message one Halloween it became a glowing eye in daddy's wraith costume he gave me the tape and it fit in my palm and impaled on a pencil I wound and rewound it the woodgrain sticker had peeled the motors were old and the gears slipped thin and tired the tape broke after its billionth spin and we exorcised the memories with a magnet

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Irene Mosvold About Last Night

when I backhanded your wife with words: she was out of line, beyond insulting, far past vile; I apologize. To you, for my question to her: Are you a borderline?

in response to her endless dagger and thrust, I'm not a pincushion or the ice queen but flesh and blood and this is business, not play this is serious stuff, our talk, she tries

to undermine, like a siren waiting for a seachange, pouring poison from her lips to mine and anyone else who happens to be in range; she is petty, her concerns mild

until, like the infected mosquito she bites, psychic vampire, sucking the life out of conversation, leaving a black hole in its place. Painter, she claims she is; painter, my ass;

she's turpentine, a paint stripper, and failing that, thinner, strong diluter of intent, a malingering malcontent, jealous of your success and those you promote.

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Curving with Life

“After 50 years of silence, the mirrors were speaking to her again.” Clayton Galloway, p. 87

“My father was a stranger whom I saw less than I saw my reclusive neighbor and knew less than I knew my band director.” Sagan Sette, p. 104

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Open 24 Hours Clayton Galloway Shatters

Emily Fulkerson gripped the edges of the pad beneath her and stared at the concave enclosure above her as the machine pummeled her body with magnetic pulses. Covered in striped, knee-length toe socks, her feet protrud- ed from the thin sheet draped over her small frame. Her auburn hair fanned around her head in a fiery halo atop a crumpled pillow. Despite the aroma of disinfectant mingled with floor wax, Emily’s stomach grumbled; her appointment had been scheduled for 11:30 a.m., and she had missed breakfast. Closing her eyes, she folded her hands across her waist and focused on the music streaming through the small overhead speaker rather than on the cool vinyl pressing against her flimsy hospital gown, the incessant vibrations of the equipment surrounding her, or her empty stomach. As with many children who have confronted a life-threatening illness, Emily had developed an exceptional imagination. During the past several months, chemotherapy had decimated her immune system, requiring her to spend most of her time indoors to reduce the risks of airborne infections. She was home-schooled in order to avoid her potentially virulent class- mates; one uncovered cough or sneeze could send her to Kosair Children’s Hospital for a three-night stay. Deprived of the company of children her own age and isolated from the outside world, she often sought refuge within and escaped the confines of her frail body through vivid daydreams. As the first notes of Hannah Montana’s “Rock Star” began, Emily’s mind drifted far from the sterile environment of the radiology clinic. The soft light of the room faded into darkness; the throb of the MRI unit transformed into the rhythmic chant of thousands of fans packed into a stadium. Neon strobe lights swept the crowd, and enormous projection screens burst into life as the band played the introduction to the song. The audience screamed and cheered, waving their arms and fluorescent glow sticks. Silhouetted behind transparent screens on opposite sides of the stage, Emily and Hannah danced in shadow and sang the first verse in unison. As they approached the chorus, the screens ascended, and dual spotlights revealed both superstars dressed in glittering striped blouses, frilly sashes, black Capri’s, and knee-high black boots. The cheers swelled as the girls met in the center of the stage and then ran the length of the catwalk extending into the crowd. Dazzling pyrotechnics announced their arrival to the elevated platform at the end of the catwalk. Linking their hands and holding them above their heads, they danced in the middle of the floor audience and.... The tinny voice of the technician interrupted the music from the speaker. “Are you ok, Emily?” she asked. “Yes, ma’am,” Emily said. “Try to be still for me, okay?” “Sorry. I was just singing.” “Your legs were moving too, hon. We don’t want to have to start over, do

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we?” “No.” “Alright, here we go,” she said. “We should be done in twenty minutes or so. You sure you’re okay?” “What time is it?” “It’s just after noon.” “I’m hungry.” “I’ll go as fast as I can, sweetheart,” she said. The speaker clicked, and the music resumed with the thump of the machine. Just after noon, Emily thought. Less than nine hours before bedtime. She suppressed a shiver of terror as she contemplated the diminishing hours before nightfall and the isolation of her bedroom. Three years ago, she first suffered crippling headaches in the early morning accompanied by vomiting; next, she experienced persistent lethargy regardless of adequate sleep. Her coordination deteriorated, and then her vision doubled frequently. Her family physician recognized her symptoms as well as his inability to treat her. After an initial exam and a small battery of tests, he referred her to Kosair. Dr. Matheson, the chief pediatric neurosurgeon, reduced the size of the tumor through surgery, but he had been unable to completely extract it. Intensive radiation and successive rounds of chemotherapy followed, as well as steroids for swelling and anti-seizure drugs. After Emily had suffered two years rife with pain and despair, the tumor stopped growing, and Dr. Matheson declared it benign. Today, her MRI marked her first annual checkup to confirm that the tumor was still benign, though it would always be there, accompanied with the uncertainty that it might rise from dorman- cy and kill her. Her health was not the source of her distress, however; nor did she fear the night or the creatures alleged to inhabit the darkness. From infancy, she had slept alone, and she had passed from the crib to her own bed without a transitional stage of seeking solace in her parents’ bed. She abandoned her nightlight prior to her second birthday, and she insisted on sleeping behind a closed door. Because of her illness, she respected the limitations of the physical world, but she discredited fear of the intangible. Until a week ago. On Saturday, June 13, she had celebrated her ninth birthday; that night, she had discovered a new threat, a horror which, unlike her tumor, would not kill her but seek to keep her alive. * * * Detective Scott Campbell stood amid the peanut hulls and lunch patrons in the busy foyer as he surveyed the nearby tables and bar for his wife, Karen. Not seeing her in the immediate vicinity, he jostled through the bustling crowd and tantalizing aromas of grilled steak and onions toward the hostess station, mindful of the dozen yellow roses he carried. Fifteen years earlier, mutual acquaintances had orchestrated a blind date for them at Texas Roadhouse. Fresh from the state academy, Scott was the most recent addition to the city’s police department; just out of law school,

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Karen had started her career with the local firm of Goffinet and Tyler. Both shared a passion for the law and a zeal for justice. Surrounded by Willie Nelson memorabilia and fresh rolls, their apprehension about the date dissi- pated as they discovered similar ideals and interests. Absorbed in their conversation and each other, they did not notice the gradual disappearance of chatter from the other diners or the closing activities of the employees. Reluctant to end the date, Scott asked for a second one as he held the restaurant door open for her. She accepted as she took his hand and led him across the deserted parking lot to her car. They embraced with the comfort of old friends and married less than a year later. Karen had called yesterday to discuss school expenses for their daughters. Rather than risk a protracted argument over the phone, Scott had asked her to lunch today. He suggested the steakhouse with the hope of rekindling a spark between them, or at least allaying the tension in their strained relationship. “Hi. How many?” the hostess asked. “Two,” Scott replied, “but she may already be here.” “What’s the name?” “Campbell.” She scanned the seating chart in front of her. “I don’t see that name. Do you want to wait a few minutes?” Scott checked his watch – 12:05. Karen loathed tardiness; her profession demanded punctuality, a quality that permeated her personal life. He removed his dark brown fedora, smoothed his goatee, and suggested another name. “Try McCallister.” Karen’s maiden name. “Ah, yes, here it is.” The hostess turned to a petite blonde who couldn’t have been much older than his eldest daughter. “Please show him to 114.” He struggled to suppress a rising tide of fury as he navigated the aisle behind his guide. The blonde glanced over her shoulder. “How are you today?” “Fine, thank you.” “Have you been to the Roadhouse before?” “Yes, several times.” She appeared to notice the roses for the first time. “Is this a special occa- sion?” she asked. “I hope not.” His response and demeanor flustered the girl into silence. He rounded a corner, past the Willie Nelson section and the booth where he had discovered his wife all those years ago. He glanced toward the back of the restaurant and spotted her in the corner booth. Karen faced the front of the restaurant with her back to the wall, but her cell phone held her attention, and she did not see his approach. Her brown hair, though naturally curly, was straight and parted on the right side; it swept across her forehead and partially concealed her left eye. Her eyes were bright blue, as shiny and reflective as the ice chips in her glass. Her small, straight nose and cheeks were freckled, and the effect was intensified by her dark tan. Always glossy, her lips were parted in a half smile, revealing perfect ivory teeth.

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Scott checked the collar of his pink polo, one of Karen’s favorite shirts. “Hello, counselor,” he said, sliding into the booth opposite her. “Detective.” Her smile disappeared as she glanced up with irritation. “You’re late,” she observed as she slipped her phone into her Coach purse. “Yes, sorry.” He offered the bouquet. “How about a truce?” She accepted the roses without comment. “How is work?” he asked. “Good.” “No partnership offer yet?” “No, not yet.” “How are the girls doing?” “You just saw them on Wednesday.” “I know that, but I miss them every day.” “They’re fine, Scott.” “Have you ordered? I’m starving.” He reached for a roll and cup of butter. “I haven’t decided if I’m hungry yet.” “Oh, come on, this is one of our favorite places.” She smiled, but the smile fell short of her eyes. He said, “You look great. Is that a new suit? I don’t think I’ve seen it before.” “Listen, Scott . . . .” He paused with a wad of butter balanced on the knife. “Karen, please.” “Please, what?” She had such a piercing blue gaze, an attribute con- ducive to courtroom victories but less amenable to reconciliation. “Please,” he continued, “let’s just enjoy our lunch.” He smothered his roll with the butter and savored a bite. “Mmmmm . . . . best rolls in town. Want one?” He offered the basket. “No, thank you.” He indicated the metal buckets near the edge of the table. “No peanuts?” “No, I’m fine.” An uncomfortable silence ensued until their waitress arrived. “Hi. What can I get you folks to drink?” “I’ll have another water, with extra lemon, please,” Karen said. “For you, sir?” “I’ll just have an unsweetened tea,” Scott said. “Are we having an appetizer today?” Scott looked at Karen and shrugged his shoulders. “It’s up to the lady,” he said. “No, thank you,” Karen said. “Those are beautiful roses.” “Yes,” Karen replied, “they are.” “Ok, are you ready to order?” “Give us a few minutes, please,” Scott said. The waitress hurried from the table. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” he said. Karen pulled a plain manila folder from behind her purse and slid it across the table. “No, this is as good a place as any. Perhaps the best place,

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all things considered.” Stunned, he placed his hand atop the folder without opening it. “I thought you wanted to talk about school supplies? Or clothes? What’s this?” “We both know this has gone on long enough,” she said. “Karen . . . .” She held up a perfectly manicured hand. “Scott, don’t start.” “But I thought we were making progress.” “We have been, in separate directions.” “What about the girls? This will devastate them.” “They’ve been ok for more than a year. I think they’ve adjusted well.” “I haven’t.” “And I am truly sorry about that, Scott.” “Bullshit.” “Scott . . . .” “This is going to kill my mother.” “It’s been hard for everyone.” “You don’t seem to be taking it especially hard. You’re using your maiden name already. You’re still my wife, Karen, and I’m not letting you go.” She stood and gathered her purse with the roses. “A contested divorce will only make things worse for everyone involved. I’m not threatening you, Scott, but we both know who is better equipped to handle a prolonged legal battle.” “No, I don’t think I do. I may not be an attorney, but I am married to one, and I’ve picked up a few things over the years. And in case you’ve forgotten, I enforce the law on a daily basis, so I think I’m acquainted with certain aspects of it.” “I think you’ll find my terms more than reasonable.” “Do you recall the term ‘til death do us part’?” “Yes.” “Well?” “Just read the petition and call me soon.” “This is not going to happen.” She sighed. “Thank you for the roses. I’ll send the girls your love.” Scott did not turn to watch her leave. He grabbed a handful of peanuts and began to shell them, discarding the husks on top of the folder. He felt caught in a nightmare from which he could not wake. He sat for several minutes, shelling, plopping nuts into his mouth without tasting them, until the folder had almost disappeared beneath the pile. He swept the entire mess to the floor. * * * Millicent DeVille traced the raised dots on the bingo card in front of her with her left hand; with her right, she peeled a roll of chewy SweetTarts. Finding a valid number, she covered the slot with a plastic marker and tucked a piece of the candy in her mouth. Most of the other residents of Burglen Heights were absorbed with the game; Millicent was absorbed with the other residents. She had completed a bingo with the previous number, but she preferred to continue the game

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and allow someone else to win. Blind for nearly seventy years, she had never married or raised children. She enjoyed her afternoons in the recre- ation room, listening to the idle conversations from nearby tables amid the drone of the television mounted on the wall in the corner and the occasional page over the intercom system. Without a family of her own, she shared in the lives of strangers. She sensed an approach from behind before she felt the plump hand on her right shoulder, and she recognized the cloying perfume before she heard the loathsome voice that accompanied the hand. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Trinkle,” Millicent said. “Come now, Millie. How many times have I asked you to call me Lisa?” With the compassion of a prison warden, Lisa Trinkle supervised resi- dential care of the assisted living facility. “At least as many times as I have asked you to call me Miss DeVille,” Millie said. “My friends call me Millie.” “I’d like to think we’re all friends here.” “Yes, I suppose you would.” Mrs. Trinkle removed her hand but maintained her composure. “How are you doing today?” she asked. “Very well, thank you,” Millie said. “Are you sleeping well? No more headaches?” The bingo caller announced the next number from the bin. Millie scanned her card with her hand but did not answer. As if to ward against Mrs. Trinkle’s cool gaze, Millie pulled her knitted shawl tighter across her shoulders. “Miss DeVille? If you’re still having problems, we may need to schedule an appointment with Dr. Mann.” “That will not be necessary, Mrs. Trinkle.” “Maybe not, but perhaps . . . .” Millie grabbed her sonar cane resting against her left hip and stood. She pocketed the remainder of her candy in the front of her dress as she turned to face the head nurse. “Mrs. Trinkle,” Millie said, “I appreciate your concern. If you will excuse me, I think I have lost interest in the game.” Without waiting for a reply, Millie left her winning card on the table and entered the hallway toward her suite. Though she could have navigated the T-shaped corridor without benefit of her cane, she preferred to use it as a consideration for others. Burglen Heights catered to the upper-class elderly or disabled; Millie qualified on both counts. Though her lack of sight prevented her from fully enjoying the affluent ambience, she appreciated the privacy of her large apartment, the plush carpet and rugs throughout, and the crisp bed linens that were changed once a week. Her apartment featured a card entry system much like those found on hotel rooms; she inserted her card and removed it quickly, turned the handle after the lock disengaged, and slipped inside. She paused in the small entrance hall and breathed deeply, savoring the scent of Febreeze on the drapes and hazelnut candles burning on the kitchen counter. She inserted

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her cane into an umbrella stand located just inside the door and removed her slippers. She placed her shawl across the back of a maple rocking chair in the living room. Sunlight filtered through the drapes and heated the spindles of the chair; she lingered, resting the tips of her fingers against the warm wood. She proceeded through the hallway toward her bedroom. She stopped in the bathroom to brush her teeth and then walked into the bedroom to turn down the chenille spread in preparation for a nap. She hadn’t been sleeping well, and she knew she would need her rest for the trouble that lay before her. After fifty years of silence, the mirrors were speaking to her again. (excerpt from a novel-in-progress)

Annette Allen On The Day Before I Was Born

You must have turned to him, your eyes slowed by the October sky halfway to winter, your quickening body shadowing his, curving with life before the window light.

My father must have wanted you then, all the way back to the early years when long curls swept your face at each turn of a swing. He must have said so, stretched his failing frame toward life, his hunger for your breasts deep as mine would be the next day.

In your arms you rocked him backward past the moment I was conceived, plunged back to your own birth, the hour when you first learned the language of the body, each touch changing you from newborn to lover and back again in the place where beginning is end.

The moment enfolded you, held you both on course with a cord that measured his life in six months. Yet you would live another twenty years, mother, and I still have not surfaced in this life. My birth and his death pulled us forever out of the womb.

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Open 24 Hours Jim McGarrah The War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City

Fenced in by tanks and defused fuel air bombs, we snap photographs of other tourists as they wander in and out of tiger cages and interrogation rooms, the tools of death

we build in life. Why do we hold sacred the refuse of war? My son asks this question with unbloodied innocence as we stand before the barrel of a rusted Howitzer

beneath the yellowed palms in Saigon. Maybe it has to do with hope, I tell him, not the violent awful faith in one god’s power over another’s

or the belief a lottery ticket will cure the disease that drives its purchase or the expectation of immortality flooding his youthful vigor, but the desire in a sequoia seed

as it rises skyward, the craving of the Joshua tree as it sends its roots along the waterless desert, a longing that prevents all but the most cynical of us from slashing our wrists.

Maybe it’s a vision of the future only found in the past, the dream of surpassing our nature by viewing its limits. Katerina Stoykova-Klemer To the Bugs Still Drowning in the Pool

Unsaved by me You kick Kick Kick With all your fuzzy feet Sticky with surface tension

The tension between You and me Grows with every gulp of water You inhale Under the drooping tent Of your chlorinated wings

Stop staring at me With these disco-ball eyes Stop waving at me With these antennae to the sky

I only came here to swim

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Open 24 Hours Katie Beyke y Reawakened Sisterhood

When Joey asked me to go with her, I knew it wasn’t because she wanted to spend time with her older sister. She didn’t want to share her spirituality with me or bond before I left for college. She just didn’t want to go alone. I knew that, even though Joey pretended to be bold, she was still shy around strangers—especially when those strangers were the pagan women’s group our friend Tabitha led each month. Joey was excited to finally have an outlet for her unconventional religion, but she was also scared of a group of grown-up Pagans judging her for her fledgling beliefs. So Joey invited me to the women’s retreat to be her support—an oasis of familiarity among the unknown heathens. I wasn’t particularly interested in discovering my inner goddess or communing with the spirits of nature, but I welcomed the opportunity to understand Joey better by experiencing her spirituality for myself. The morning of the retreat, Joey obviously regretted her decision to invite me. She refused my attempts to help her braid her hair or zip the back of her skirt. She scoffed when I suggested a paler shade of lipstick, and she left the room when I asked her to help me pick out a suitable dress. I was used to being pushed away. Since I had moved into my own bedroom four years earlier, Joey had become more distant. She was so determined to be a grown-up that she had no room in her life for the sister who used to play Barbies and watch The Lion King with her. I tried to close the gap between us. I asked her questions about her reli- gious practices and her new interest in Goth make-up, but Joey never answered. She would just huff and leave the room as if to show me she had no time for my ignorance. I didn’t react well to her lack of respect. I became my older sisters: I teased her and called her heathen and hussy. I pretended I didn’t care what she did or who she was becoming. As we walked out the door that morning, I let Joey know she looked like a whore. The insult didn’t make me feel any better, but I didn’t know another way to retaliate for her disregard. We drove silently through the three towns between our house and Tabitha’s. I didn’t dare touch the radio because picking the music has always been Joey’s domain. I didn’t roll down my windows or adjust the air conditioning. I just sat back and let her drive. When we finally pulled into Tabatha’s driveway, we were fifteen minutes late, but we were still the first to arrive. Tabatha ushered us into the empty house next door that she and her husband had bought for storage. It may not have had electricity, but it had a lot of floor space. Joey and I sat and watched as Tabatha whisked our plate of poppy seed muffins into the kitchen and left us on the floor to wait for the other guests. I rearranged the folds of my skirt. Joey picked at the dry skin at the side of her hand. Slowly other women breezed in with their bright fabrics, unbrushed

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hair, and vegan dishes. Our two-some on the floor became an eight-some and then a ten-some as the other women sat—automatically creating a wide circle on the dingy carpet. The women chatted for a while. The wind outside knocked the screen door against the stone toad holding it open. I played with my skirt. Joey scratched at her hand. Finally, Tabatha rushed back in and we began. First we split into groups to help each other awaken our chakras. Then we contorted ourselves into yoga poses to release our energy. We ate. We danced. We invoked the four winds. Through all of this I was hesitant. I clung to the walls and tried to remain in the shadows, but Joey opened up to the other women. She joined in their conversations and even led part of the ceremony. I was so proud of her. Before we disbursed, Tabitha said she wanted to try a free chant to relax us and help us rid ourselves of any negative emotions we had been storing. I was skeptical but willing to try anything to understand who Joey had become. We stretched in a circle with our feet toward the walls and our hair mix- ing in the center. Each of us pressed our palms into the grey carpet, our fingertips touching those of the women beside us. We started slowly, each woman vocalizing softly—not quite comfortable with what we were doing. But as we got caught up in the emotion, we grew bolder. Our voices strengthened, and we started expressing our emotion with unintelligible syllables—chanting words that no one recognized but everyone understood. With no fear of judgment, we let ourselves make the noises that our bodies longed to make. Keening, wailing, sighing, singing all mingled in the space around us. Rhythms and melodies rose and fell naturally. We harmo- nized without effort. One by one we cried out any words of anger and blame people had thrown at us over the years—words that broke us down or tore us apart. Some of us spoke in halting whispers. Some in screams of frustration. I can’t remember what any of the other women said. I can’t remember what I murmured to that audience of strangers, but I remember the one word Joey almost couldn’t say. Whore. I was stunned. I stopped chanting and just listened to her sobs. I was surprised that she wasn’t angry. She was hurt. Something I said had broken through her tough exterior and hurt her. I realized then that Joey hadn’t distanced herself because she didn’t respect me; she had distanced herself because she was afraid I wouldn’t accept her. In my attempts to connect with her, I had actually been pushing her away. I squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back. We looked into each other’s eyes and made a silent promise to try harder to be sisters instead of strangers in the same home. As we drove home that evening, Joey turned off the radio and asked me if I had any questions about her beliefs.

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Open 24 Hours Julie Marie Wade The Follower

Because Simon said so, and Simon was always right, and if you didn’t do as Simon told you to, you could be cast out of the circle and left to fend for yourself like birds estranged from their South-flying flocks, birds that—not knowing better— had eaten the berries that Simon warned you about, smashing their bright red bodies against the window glass, once and again, delirious from the bright red berries on the prickly bushes with leaves that were shaped like stars.

Simon, in his infinite wisdom, had cut back such bushes from the side of the house, exposing the brick, its red dust and soft white stubble. But he could do nothing about the stray birds nesting in the chimney and the attic crawlspace and the overhead grates where you could see the tiny tendons of their feet clutching the bars and their yellow beaks pecking down into the vacant, slipshod dark.

Oh, how they scattered when Simon came after them, despite his cooing, despite his striking emulation of their own exceptional sound. You thought it strange the way humans also backed away from him as he was talking— more subtle than the birds, but not so different in the way obedience resembles a kind of shrinking, a camera pulling back slowly so the objects in the foreground are diminished—though, in this version, the people were the camera and Simon stood like a tripod (two legs and a cane), unmoving, as the birds receded and the humans also, and his aperture trapped only feathered light and fragments of bodies that did their living beyond the furrowed reach of his sight.

But Simon said so, and you had to listen, even when you didn’t believe a word anymore; even when he insisted the birds were carrying terrible messages scrolled under their feet and homing devices from double agents across the globe; even when he lamented the loss of flowers in the ransacked garden (ransacked, he called it, though it was plain to see that winter itself had done the ravaging); even when you recounted the tale of Hansel and Gretel—longing in that moment to be fabled and lost—and Simon said, “Don’t you see? They never found their way home again because the birds had eaten their foolish trail of crumbs….” 97 0p2410.qx 3/12/10 11:57 AM Page 98

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Amy Tudor Overheard: The Father and the Earth

January 13, 2010

The father sits on a broken stoop, his forehead against the heel of his hand. The striped shirt he wore to work the day before is open. Two small keys dangle from the breast pocket's flap. The daughter, 10-months-old on the day of her death, lies tossed among the bodies in the city square.

Her back is curved over a woman's breast. The woman is not her mother. The daughter's white shirt is caked with dust and pulled up over her swollen chest, her eyes slits in her smooth face and her mouth open, a dark O.

The father says to the daughter: I am sorry, my little girl, that I was away from you when the ground began to shake, as though his strong hands could have shielded her from this world, this fate.

The daughter says nothing. Only dark flies, their bodies like green metal, leave her lips. So the father says to the Earth: If you’re finished with her and the rest, then take them, damn you. Finish them, and me, and all of this.

For a long time there is silence. The daughter's mouth grows darker as the father stares into it. It is like the father is being lowered on a thick rope into a bottomless well. The sky fades from bright gold to a deep bloody rust. Then, beneath him, the father feels the ground shiver and rise for one aftershock, one deep shake.

In that sound, the Earth answers: Father, I do what I do, it says, What I have always done despite all of you: what I must.

(for Lionel and Christian Michaud)

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Open 24 Hours Mary Welp Roasted Root Vegetable Soup

In the old days the question was, What the Sam heck am I supposed to do with the rest of those dang vegetables down in the root cellar? At least that was the question for Granny Clampett. And, I might point out, it was before the invention of the food processor. These days the question is, How can I persuade the persnickety yet demanding eaters in my life that root vegetables really are delicious? I have a friend (let’s change the first part of her name from Ang to Resist and call her Resistela) who, at the very mention of the words root and vegetable in the same sentence, will wrinkle her nose the way other people wrinkle their noses at rodent carcasses lying in the gutter. I have a son who would rather eat the wrapping from a pack of Oreos than so much as look at a turnip or, God forbid, a beet. He wouldn’t eat home- made soup if it were spoon fed to him by Megan Fox. The solution, of course, begins with roasting. Regular readers of this column, if there are any left now that my mother has gone to her reward, may remember that I am quite fond of roasting almost any foodstuff in order to enhance its natural flavors. Recall that I will happily eat cold leftover roasted Brussels sprouts for breakfast, except there are never any left over. Anyway, let’s look at this little fact. I once got Resistela to slurp up the soup in the recipe below by tricking her and telling her it was made from tomatoes. At first, in classic fashion, she said, “But I don’t liiiiike tomato soup.” I said it was not actually tomato soup (true) but that it was made from tomatoes (false). She wrinkled her nose. I said, “Stop being a baby,” and handed her a spoon. Then, as if coaxing a toddler, I added, “See? It’s got parsley and chives on top, and you love sour cream.” I didn’t say the words “crème fraiche” because I knew this would only cause another ruckus and further delay in the digging-in process. At this point, I should probably confess that I am one of those cooks who refuse to believe not only in people’s food aversions but in their tested and verified food “allergies.” I have served buckets of ground nuts to grown men claiming to be allergic to anything in the nut family, and I have found at least 139 ways to slip dairy products into dishes lapped up by the so-called lactose intolerant. Thus contrarians such as Resistela do not get on my chef’s last nerve as much as the allergy-suffer- ers do. Resistela is at least upfront with the nose-wrinkling, rather than trying to hide it behind “my internist’s directives.” Reader, I know you want to dash off a tongue-lashing email to the editor, only you can’t because Louisville Magazine doesn’t have that kind of technology available. I feel your pain. So let me save you from your urges and swear to you that I am kidding. But only marginally. I really did get Resistela to eat the soup. And she loved it. After one bite, she knocked off the nose-wrinkling routine. She began to snarf it up. When she got to the bottom of the bowl, I said, “You’ve just been eating root vegetables, Madam.” A look of sheer panic and terror blazed

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from her giant, dark brown eyeballs. “You lie!” she practically growled. “I do not lie,” said I. “But you lied!” she insisted. And with this, I could not argue. I’ve made versions of this recipe over the years from African and French cookbooks, from cookbooks specializing in Southern food, and even from some old hippie vegetarian Mollie Katzen tomes. But recently I found an especially good one at a really nifty web site called The Daily Green (http://www.thedailygreen.com/). As you might infer from its name, The Daily Green is not just about food, but the recipes it has are chock full of things that are good for you, inventively tasty, and simple to make. I did experiment with the recipe on offer at the web site. I added garlic to enhance the Asian flavor leanings already in the other ingredients, and I added herbs at the end to balance the warm spice flavors. I also added a few carrots to make the final product an even brighter orange. But the dried apple component is pure genius on the part of the Daily Greeners. Plus, walnut oil is exactly the right complement to these particular fruits and vegetables. Now my next mission is to convince my son that the soup really came from a Campbell’s can.

Roasted Root Vegetable and Apple Soup

2 sweet potatoes, peeled and diced 8 parsnips, peeled and diced 8 baby carrots, diced 2 onions, peeled and diced 3 large cloves of garlic, peeled 2 apples, peeled and diced 1/4 cup walnut oil 1/4 cup honey 2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary 1 teaspoon five spice powder 2 teaspoons salt 1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper 4 cups of chicken or vegetable broth 1/2 cup Marsala wine or sherry 2 ounces dried apples 3/4 cup creme fraiche chopped fresh parsley and chives

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place the diced vegetables and fresh apples on a baking sheet and toss them with the walnut oil, honey, rosemary, five spice powder, salt and pepper. Roast the vegetables, turning them often, until they are softened and lightly caramelized, 30 to 35 minutes. Combine the chicken or vegetable broth, the wine, and dried apples in a large saucepan over medium-high heat, and simmer until the mix- Openture is r educed24 Hours by one-third, about 20 minutes. 100 0p2410.qx 3/12/10 11:57 AM Page 101

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Working in small batches, puree the roasted vegetables with the reduced liquid in a food processor or blender. Transfer each batch to a saucepan. If the soup is too thick, thin it with hot water or more broth. Adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper to taste. Ladle the soup into bowls. Drizzle a little creme fraiche over the top of each serving and give it a swirl. Top with the fresh herbs. Serve immediately. Serves 4-6. (first published in Louisville Magazine)

Chris Tiahrt Status: Three Years (a Writer’s Block)

for Hazel Because I am a poet, I begin with words – with the syncopation of consonants and paper and the hope of rhyming truth and beauty. Because I am a philosopher, I know limitations – every definition circularly dependent upon other definitions, ‘though it’s hard to deny a circle for its lack of beginning. Because I am a mathematician, I measure my symbols – testing them for precision, for clarity, for elegance; proving myself in their consequence. Because I am a cartographer, a historian, a teacher, a husband, an engineer, a Kentuckian, a theologian, a swimmer, an architect, even a chef (if I have to be), I am bound by names and voice. And because I’m a reader, I know you wonder what any of this has to do with either the status of a child at three or the writer’s block promised by my title.

So because I am a taxonomist, let me turn to the folder of your milestones, past first sit, first smile, first steps, to first words – an entry still empty but for a half-dozen miss-tries: “mommommommom” at six months (probably just babble); “backpack,” clear as a bell at 15 months, but mere echolalia and gone by 18; “b-b-bal-ball” sputtered through demons in a Walmart aisle when nearly denied your desire; “rainbow”on that one glorious day at 2 1/2 when mere crystal transformed the light to its myriad facets – one day never repeated; or the try dearest my heart, “Poppy” uttered with a playful tumble into my arms just a month ago. (To think, in a different universe, I might have preferred “Daddy.”) And now, because I’m a dramatist, I know it’s time. Because I’m a realist, I know it’s unavoidable – the Label:

Autism

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And as a symbologist, I know the power names can give – even if the label is little understood, even if the label is just a tool, even though the label is not you. As a minimalist, I would focus on the space around the label. As a father, I should have started with the miracle that is you: a lover of books – even books with no pictures; a master of jigsaws; an avid colorer; a little girl who drags a chair to turn on a light to find your mom’s beads to sort by color, or align in rows; a girl who spontaneously giggles, gazing past my left shoulder at angels I can not see (‘though I see them in your face). And because I am “Poppy,” I love the you that is.

Yet because I am a chronographer, I know you cannot always be three and I fear how the world will hold you. Already, at the playground, I see backs turn when you don’t give your name; heads shake as you grind teeth and ignore directives; ires rise while you stand aloof, obstructing a slide. Because I am human, I know what it is to be an infinite being in a finite domain, what it’s like to stare at a horizon, to play a cog in the wrong machine, to beg for a change one cannot make. Because you are you, I would be there if I could: always your umbrella, your translator, your chocolate truffle, arms when you need them, a voice when yours is weak. But I cannot always be there – even now. Just this morning, for instance, I needed a frantic search of three rooms to finally find you asleep in the crack beside the bed.

Because I am neither prophet nor psychic, I do not live in the future; so I want to tell of the now: of the fear, yes; but more, of the joy. Of the radiance of your smile and the bounce of your being: of my life and thoughts just as your dad, of my perceptions of your world at three. And here is my handicap: because I am a scholar, I am aware of clichés: of the word value of a picture, of the volume actions speak. Still, when I talk, I talk in words; when I think, I think in words; when I dream, it is through words; and when I pray, I pray words.

This poem is about you. It’s also about me. But it is for you, with hope you’ll understand. It’s only words.

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Rey Ford It Is Silly

Sitting here, awaiting the birth of words, wondering it they will catch their breath or be still born, I was hoping, maybe, you and I, just for a minute, could hold hands. And, if you wouldn’t mind, maybe, we might could lean, ever so slightly, toward all the fear and hope that bubbles between us and earth every time this happens.

I know. It is silly. But at least we would be together, at least our hands would be warm.

And who knows, maybe this time, if we are quiet enough, if we can just lean far enough, if we can be patient just a little longer, then who knows, maybe this time we might hear the swelling cry of a newborn messiah, we might feel the chugging heartbeat beneath all that is, we might….

I know. You’re right. It is silly. Yes, I can remember all those times, sitting here, just like this, holding hands and leaning, doing everything we knew to do, and only hearing the dead silence that turns us back on ourselves.

I know. It is silly. But who knows, maybe this time….

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Open 24 Hours Sagan Sette Broken Gingerbread Houses Taste the Same

Gingerbread houses are stale and hard. They’re a waste of gum drops and gum balls and good holiday candy. I bought a gingerbread house kit my first Christmas home from college. A simple do-it-yourself affair with the walls ready to go up. I wanted a Christmas event. I wanted icing on my fingers. My mother wanted the walls straight and the roof to set overnight before I applied the candy. She wanted the icing to look like snow. She called me artsy and meant for the name to hurt. She wanted me to make a replica of the house on the box. I wanted something unique. My building experience with my mother was an attempt to recreate the only other time I’d built a gingerbread house. Two years earlier and two days after Christmas, I was in Alabama and eight hundred miles from my mother. When I had awakened on Christmas morning, I ignored any gifts. I focused, instead, on making sure my suitcase was packed for when my father picked me up. And Christmas night I rode with him to his home in Alabama. Most kids have a universal sense of joy on Christmas morning; well, maybe just the Christians. But my feeling each Christmas wasn’t due to toys or cookies or Christ; it was caused by knowing that I would see my father, sometimes for the first time since the Christmas before. At seventeen I still grew excited over seeing my father. My parents “separated” when I was two. They lived together until I was eleven. But my father was in the military and away from home the majority of the time, including most Christmases. Even though I was sel- dom under the same roof as my father, I always lived with the idea of my father. My imagination spread further than his actual love for me. And that is why after just hours of being with my father I would lose my joy for him. I would be reminded of his character almost immediately. In the way he hugged me hello, I felt his substance of a man. He has a weak substance; I mean he has no feeling behind his self. His hugs never meant anything. On my second day with my father that Christmas, we were out shop- ping and I saw a pre-made gingerbread house kit. I begged him for it. In my mind I saw us gathered around his dining room table laughing and squeezing icing onto each other’s noses. I have an incredible imagination. My father bought the kit, like he would buy most anything I ask for. And that very night we began to build it. I made snowmen out of gum balls while my father secured the roof. We chattered like friends and enjoyed each other. I forgot my hesitation toward him. I felt like I was spending time with my father. The father I dreamed of at night, every night. Six months later on that same table I spread out my senior photos. We were making my graduation announcements. They were actually just Open 24 Hours 104 0p2410.qx 3/12/10 11:57 AM Page 105

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blank cards with a picture inside. I didn’t have real announcements like the ones the school sold with the date and time of graduation etched into the paper with a self-addressed envelope inside for the recipient to send money. I didn’t buy those announcements because they were expensive. I thought I wasn’t going to send announcements. Everyone I cared about knew I was graduating, and I didn’t want my family to send me their money. But my father decided I needed to send announcements, to everyone. I addressed forty envelopes to “cousins” that I had never met and then wrote in blank cards about my graduation. In each letter I placed a photo. After I had done this for nearly an hour, my father checked my work. He opened four and then stopped. I thought he was satisfied. Then he said, “What’s wrong with you? Do you think these are done?” I needed him to explain what was wrong. And then explain again. He said I hadn’t written on the back of my photos. He said I was supposed to write messages on the back. He called it a common courtesy. After writing in the cards, I was then supposed to write on the photos? He picked up the card I had written to my grandfather, a man who knew I was graduating in June and who was already proud of me. He knew I loved him. But in the card I still told him about my graduation, and I sent my love. “You have to date your photo,” my father said. So, I did. “You have to sign it,” he said. “But it’s a picture of me. Grandpa knows it’s me.” “You have to write him a note on the picture and sign it.” I did. Then my father told me I had to do that for all the pictures. I asked why. I told him it seemed pointless. I was smiling. But then he said, “It isn’t pointless.” “I raised you better than this,” he continued. “Why don’t you care? You’re being selfish.” I cared about my grandfather. I cared that I was graduating. But I didn’t care if my “cousins” knew about my life. I didn’t care for these people because these people still sent letters to my father and addressed them to Joe and kids. My father has kids, but his kids have never lived alone with him. That day my father got angry with me because I wouldn’t sign photos. That same day he got angry because I told him the truest statement I could think of: “You didn’t raise me.” I didn’t care when he threw my cards on the floor or banged his fist against his table. I didn’t care when he looked at me with disgust and told me how sad I was making him. One day when I was ten, my father had become angry at my mother. He picked her up by the top of her arms. He shook her, and looking into her eyes he called her selfish. At ten I called 911. At ten I knew he was wrong, that my mother wanted to leave him

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because she was afraid, not selfish. And at eighteen when he said I was selfish for not loving strangers, I also knew he was wrong. I told my father I wanted to go home. He told me he would think about it. A week later I was home. I remembered making the gingerbread house with my father, and how much I wanted to be happy like I was that night. How I wanted to pretend that every day with my father was like that. I also wanted to pretend I loved him. I wanted to hold on to the stupid excitement that seeing him always gave me when I was young. But the excitement I felt was artificial. The idea I had of my father was made up of images I saw on television and things I heard from friends. My father was a stranger whom I saw less than I saw my reclusive neighbor and knew less than I knew my band director. And my father knew less about me than that. He forgot my birthday. He forgot how to pronounce the name of the college I had been accepted to. But I tried. I tried to love him up to the last day I let him yell at me. I signed the back of my photos to try to make him love me. I built a gingerbread house to make memories. But the edible house didn’t create the home my father denied me as a child. And no matter how hard I tried, I could no longer convince myself I loved him, or he loved me. I told my mother we needed a gingerbread house for Christmas. It was the first Christmas I was home from college. I already wanted to leave home after a few days and return to college. I loved college, and my mother was testing my nerves. She was taking my money. She was going out with friends and complaining about everything I did. But I thought a gingerbread house would make me feel better. I wanted a Christmas memory. But I couldn’t build the house right. My walls were crooked and my candy decoration was sporadic, not orderly and straight like the picture on the box. My mother refused to help. She wouldn’t even sit at the table with me. And before I had decorated the house completely, my mother told me to throw the house away. She thought it looked bad. And it would attract ants. I always loved my mother. I thought of her as a victim of my father’s anger. I thought of her as a survivor. I looked at my gingerbread house. It was a mound of hard candy and harder gingerbread. It was cracking down one wall. I knew then that making a memory during Christmas at nineteen wouldn’t make up for the Christmases before then. A gingerbread house wouldn’t make me forget the Christmas my father threw my mother over the arm of the couch and slapped her until she stopped crying. I also knew that next year I would spend Christmas without my mother, and I would be happy.

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Ellyn Lichvar When Your Husband Lost His Arm

What did you do when you first saw it, sawed off, swirled with purple and red, the gauzed and elbowless ending?

You probably wanted to sew it, the pit of your stomach longing to fix his fray, your hands trembling, aching to fetch your picnic basket full of needles and thread.

And what was the first task you helped him with? The chicken’s feed bucket was probably too heavy for you to lift on your own, but I bet he carried it in his good arm, the still-whole arm hefting the burden, your delicate white hand reaching in and out, the seed cascading to the earth like soft rain on a tin roof, the sound rousing the chickens into a dance around you.

And how did you tend to him that first night when he lay awake fighting the pain, his tears dampening the rustled bed? You drew him a bath. I can see you filling your prettiest pitcher—stone white, tiny blue flowers—with warm water and carrying it to him, his body slumped as a swayback horse sitting naked in wait.

You pour it so delicately, the heat spilling slowly over the lip of the pitcher, down the length of his legs, splashing his chest and you, a lady, pretending to avert your eyes, pretending that you don’t see what is happening below the deepening water. His hand on your small wrist is a welcome pull, for

it is all he has left and you give in, let your weight fall onto him. Your thin white nightgown soaks up the water and clings to his skin. You will never again feel his arms wrapped around your body but you will remember how to do this, how to breathe life, how to take up the pain.

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Patrick Reninger Two Weeks After

More than two weeks have passed, and my grieving is reduced to nostalgia.

Last Monday, death still burned like an angry slap and sorrow pressed hard upon my shoulders making it difficult to tie my shoes or to brew my morning coffee.

Last Wednesday, your ghost hobbling in a blue nightgown followed me over stained carpets, offered advice on preparing pimento cheese, and critiqued my bed-making technique—orange comforter and blue blanket a rumpled landscape of neglect.

Two Thursdays ago, while eating a barbequed pork chop, I heard your faint drawl recalling the smokehouse on your family farm and the time as a young girl you were required to wring a chicken's neck as preparation for Sunday supper.

Now, two Saturdays since that 1:30 AM phone call, 336 hours since I gently shook your lifeless limbs in your hospital bed, you seem more absent than ever.

There are moments after the third glass of port when I attempt to weep. Reduced to sniveling, I welcome your firm embrace and tomato soup for eternity.

Yet, as each day passes, the weight of loss lightens.

Thoughts of you lie hidden behind drifting fog competing with the stern stare of my father, the promise of cold beer, or the bare thigh of a bus stop blonde.

Your voice, scolding me in the kitchen or sweetly cackling over the phone, registers only in intermittent bursts like radio signals to an aircraft in distress.

You really do seem gone now, your memory sealed behind the plastic of a photo album, your spirit sinking into my marrow until I am once again whole.

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Contributors

Annette Allen, director of the humanities Missy Brownson-Farmer, a former Brescia Ph.D. program at U. of L., has two poetry col- creative writing student, is enrolled in the lections, Country of Light and What Vanishes, as MFA in creative writing program at Murray well as scholarly articles on Sylvia Plath, State U. She recently returned to Owensboro Mary Oliver, and others, and has been award- where she is the assistant director of Skill ed four state Arts Council awards. She reads Train at OCTC. This is her 9th appearance in at 3rd Tuesday, and this is her 8th appearance Open 24 Hours. in Open 24 Hours. Jason Chaffin is a wishful novelist and a 2009 Phoebe Athey, an Owensboro native, said her graduate of Brescia with a degree in English lifestyle ranges between Marsha Norman’s with emphasis in writing, and he is the recipi- Mother Night and that of Edie and Big Edie in ent of Brescia’s 2008 award for Achievement Grey Gardens but ending with the joy of in Fiction Writing. He is also an absurdist Auntie Mame in her final “new phase” as she who values optimistic pessimism and lengthy is now 66. This is her 6th appearance in Open confabulations of an anthropomorphic nature. 24 Hours. This is his 3rd appearance in Open 24 Hours.

Todd Autry teaches language arts at Ohio Laurie Doctor, whose home is in a nature County Middle School. He recently published reserve outside Louisville, is a painter and cal- his second book, Monroe County: Volume II, ligrapher with work in collections in the U.S. and he and his brother have released their and Europe. She teaches and creates sponta- first bluegrass cd, Walkin’ Jerusalem Ridge. He neous performance art at Naropa U. as well as reads at 3rd Tuesday, and this is his 4th offering workshops and lectures international- appearance in Open 24 Hours. ly. She has read at 3rd Tuesday, and this is her 2nd appearance in Open 24 Hours. Erin Barnhill, who lives in Lexington, is a long-time poet who has started writing fiction and is enjoying the process. She has read at Alice Driver, a Ph.D. candidate in Hispanic 3rd Tuesday, and this is her 6th appearance in studies at U.K., has travel writing in To Open 24 Hours. Vietnam with Love and To Thailand with Love. She has read at 3rd Tuesday, and this is her Michael Battram, who lives in Evansville 3rd appearance in Open 24 Hours. with his dear MaryAnne and enjoys being a grandfather to Jacob, has published over 150 George Fillingham loves and writes poetry poems and short prose pieces. He reads at 3rd and reads at 3rd Tuesday as often as he is Tuesday, and this is his 12th appearance in able. Currently he works in conjunction with Open 24 Hours. social services to aid families in crisis. This is his 4th appearance in Open 24 Hours. John Beemer, from Hartford, KY, is a junior English major at Brescia. He usually writes Rey Ford, from Owensboro, lives with his poetry by first imagining a scene and then try- wife, Laura Minks, near Boulder, Colorado, ing to relate it in words, and he is keeping an where he mostly is painting and writing. He open mind about possible careers. This is his received Brescia’s 1989 award for 2nd appearance in Open 24 Hours. Achievement in Poetry Writing, and his poet- Katelyn Beyke, from Carterville, IL, is a ry has been appearing in Open 24 Hours since junior at Brescia majoring in English/profes- 1987. sional writing and math. She aspires to be a professional playwright and lifetime employ- Clayton Galloway, an aspiring novelist, is a ee of McDonald’s, and this is her 3rd 2010 Brescia graduate with a major in inte- appearance in Open 24 Hours. grated studies. He also is the recipient of Brescia’s 2010 award for Achievement in Ashley Boswell, who graduates from Brescia Fiction Writing. This is his 3rd appearance in in 2010 with a major in English, is the retiring Open 24 Hours. editor of The Broadcast, Brescia’s weekly student newspaper. She also is a music lover and regular attendee at the annual Bonnaroo music and arts festival. After graduation, she will enter the Peace Corps.

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Joey Goebel is a 2002 Brescia graduate and Ed McClanahan’s latest book is O The Clear recipient of Brescia’s 2002 award for Moment, a “fictional memoir” published by Achievement in Fiction Writing. His three Counterpoint Press. He and his wife, Hilda, novels have been published in 13 languages. live in Lexington. He has performed at He also writes screenplays and essays and Brescia and 3rd Tuesday, and this is his 12th performs at 3rd Tuesday, and this is his 10th appearance in Open 24 Hours. appearance in Open 24 Hours. Jim McGarrah’s poems and essays have Lynn Hardesty grew up in Madisonville, KY, appeared most recently in Bayou Magazine, where she spent a great deal of time day- The Café Review, Hamilton Stone Review, and dreaming and checking out too many books North American Review. He is the author of from the library. She is a 2010 Brescia grad two award-winning books of poetry and a with a major in speech pathology and audiol- memoir of the Vietnam War, A Temporary Sort ogy and an interest in creative writing. of Peace. He reads at 3rd Tuesday and appears regularly in Open 24 Hours. John Hay lives on a farm in Frankfort, Ky. His stories that first appeared in Open 24 Irene Mosvold won the 2005 Fool for Poetry Hours have been reprinted in The Kentucky international chapbook competition in Cork, Anthology, The Kentucky Humanities Council Ireland, and she has received two profession- Magazine, and The Legal Studies Forum Journal. al arts awards in non-fiction from the KY Arts He reads at 3rd Tuesday, and this is his 9th Council. She reads at 3rd Tuesday, and this is appearance in Open 24 Hours. her 4th appearance in Open 24 Hours.

Tom C. Hunley teaches English at WKU and Jesse Mountjoy, who is fond of Flaubert’s has poems forthcoming in upcoming issues assertion, “Every lawyer carries within him- of New Orleans Review, Rosebud, The Writer, self the debris of a poet,” is a lawyer whose The Great American Poem Show, and Margie. writing has appeared in many publications, He also reads at 3rd Tuesday, and this is his including The Legal Studies Forum, Southern 3rd appearance in Open 24 Hours. Indiana Review, and Exquisite Corpse. He reads at 3rd Tuesday, and this is his 12th appear- Dori Howard, a 2006 Brescia grad with a ance in Open 24 Hours. major in English, received Brescia’s 2006 award for Achievement in Fiction Writing. Adria Nassim, a 2010 Brescia grad with a She also is a poet, Beatles junkie and wanna- major in English/professional writing and be world traveler. This is her 6th appearance minor in Spanish, aims to work with children in Open 24 Hours. with developmental disabilities, whom she uses as material for her writing, along with Kelly Lee lives with her husband in Mt. her experience of growing up with Aspergers Washington, KY, where she spends her time Syndrome and epilepsy. She received loving her new baby, growing sunflowers, Brescia’s 2008 award for Achievement in and working as a marriage and family thera- Poetry Writing, and this is her 3rd appear- pist. She received Brescia’s 2004 award for ance in Open 24 Hours. Achievement in Poetry Writing, and this is her 9th appearance in Open 24 Hours. Jordan Overby graduated from Brescia in 1998 and is a book editor in San Francisco. Ellyn Lichvar, assistant managing editor of When not writing, he plays guitar in the San The Louisville Review and Fleur-de-Lis Press, Francisco band Boot. His amp goes to 11. This holds an MFA in writing from Spalding. She is his 8th appearance in Open 24 Hours. received a grant from the KY Foundation for Women to produce a book, Reservoir, with Tom Raithel, who retired from a 30 year artist Carolyn Kimball celebrating the career as a newspaper reporter, lives in extraordinary lives of everyday women. She Evansville and reads regularly at 3rd also reads at 3rd Tuesday. Tuesday. His poems appear in Southern Poetry Review and Poetry East, and this is his 3rd appearance in Open 24 Hours.

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Linda Neal Reising writes poetry and fiction Tuesday, and this is her 3rd appearance in and has taught English for over 30 years. Her Open 24 Hours. writing has been published in Southern Indiana Review, The Comstock Review, Fruitflesh , and Joe Survant, Kentucky Poet Laureate from Know This Place, an anthology of Indiana writ- 2002-2004, has poems in the new anthology of ers. She reads at 3rd Tuesday, and this is her KY poets, What Comes Down to Us: 25 6th appearance in Open 24 Hours. Contemporary KY Poets. A native of Owensboro, he retired in 2007 from teaching Patrick Reninger earned a degree in English at WKU. He reads at 3rd Tuesday, and this is from Brescia in 1987. He lives on the his 13th appearance in Open 24 Hours. Northwest Side of Chicago, works in a call center for an Internet based retailer, and plays Richard Taylor, Kentucky Poet Laureate from harmonica in a band based in Waukegan, 1999-2001, is teaching this year and next as a Illinois. This is his 6th appearance in Open 24 visiting writer at Transylvania U. His collec- Hours. tion titled Rail Splitter: Sonnets on the Life of Abraham Lincoln was published recently by Jason “CUBA” Rhodes lives and works in Larkspur Press. He reads at 3rd Tuesday, and Owensboro, where he devotes himself to pas- this is his 10th appearance in Open 24 Hours. sionate retailing and emceeing and performing at 3rd Tuesday Writers. This is his Chris Tiahrt, a professor of mathematics at 2nd appearance in Open 24 Hours. Brescia, is associate editor of Open 24 Hours in which he has been published since 1993. He Teresa Roy, a member of the First Mondays lives in Owensboro with his wife, two young Writers Group from Evansville, prefers to rest daughters, a fistful of pets, and a bottomless on her laurels. She has participated in 3rd jumble of words. Tuesday Coffeehouse readings since she was a debutante, and this is her 12th appearance in Amy Tudor’s A Book of Birds won the 2008 Open 24 Hours. Liam Rector First Book Prize for Poetry. She also has published fiction, non-fiction, Sagan Sette, a junior at Brescia in and photographs and received grants from the English/professional writing, is working Virginia and Kentucky arts councils. She is toward spending the rest of her life in college completing her Ph.D. in humanities at U of L, enjoying mac-n-cheese, bad music, and crazy and she reads at 3rd Tuesday. parties. This is her 3rd appearance in Open 24 Hours. Julie Marie Wade has received several literary awards and six Pushcart Prize nominations, Steven Skaggs, a typographer in Louisville, and she is the author of two collections of has calligraphic writings in the Sackner lyric nonfiction, Wishbone: A Memoir in Archive of Visual Poetry in Miami, the Fractures and In Lieu of Flowers. She is a doc- Klingspor Museum-Frankfort/Offenbach, and toral student and graduate teaching fellow in the Akademie der Kunst, Berlin. His Poems Humanities at U of L. She also reads at 3rd from Elsewhere was published in 2006. He Tuesday. reads at 3rd Tuesday, and this is his 7th appearance in Open 24 Hours. Mary Welp, a 1979 Brescia grad, is the author of the novel The Triangle Pose , and she writes Katerina Stoykova-Klemer is the author of a monthly food and wine columns for Louisville chapbook, The Most, and a bilingual poetry Magazine. In addition to being a food fanatic, book, The Air Around the Butterfly, and her she is addicted to walking, reading, and hang- poems have appeared in The Louisville Review, ing out with her dogs. Her writing appears Margie, and elsewhere. She also hosts Accents: regularly in Open 24 Hours. a Radio Show for Literature, Art and Culture, and she reads at 3rd Tuesday. Mark Williams is the token male member of First Mondays writing group in Evansville. Rusty Smiddy, a member of Evansville’s First His writing has appeared in Hudson Review, Mondays Writers Group, began collecting Indiana Review, and The Southern Review, and images and stories for poems before she knew online at Able Muse. He reads at 3rd Tuesday, how to make words. The result is a textured and this is his 7th appearance in Open 24 collage of personal history woven into poems Hours. with a universal thread. She reads at 3rd 111 0p2410.qx 3/12/10 11:57 AM Page 112

Creative Writing at Brescia

Creative Writing at Brescia is much more than classes; it is a far-reaching program that includes a regional writers group, a monthly coffeehouse, visiting writers, opportunities for publication, workshops, scholarships, and more. Creative Writing has been a part of the English program at Brescia since 1968. The University uses writing talent scholarships to recruit promising high school writers, but all facets of the program are open to any interested student or non-student. The result is a rich mix of active writers. The Brescia Writers Group, which includes anyone who is in any way affiliated with the Creative Writing program, is a multi-purpose organi- zation that offers a variety of activities and opportunities. Some members of the Writers Group meet to critique each other’s writing. Other members produce the monthly Third Tuesday Writers Coffeehouse at a downtown Owensboro cafe. Still others present creative writing workshops in the schools and for community groups as well as on the Brescia campus. The Brescia Writers Group also publishes the annual edition of Open 24 Hours, and it produces “After Hours,” the creative writing page of Brescia’s weekly student newspaper, The Broadcast. Over the years, numerous nationally known writers have visited Brescia and worked with the creative writing students. The list includes Robert Bly, Stephen Mooney, William Stafford, Ruth Whitman, Sandra McPherson, Mark Harris, Sena Naslund, X.J. Kennedy, William Matthews, Jim Wayne Miller, Gurney Norman, Ed McClanahan, Terry Bisson, Joe Survant, Kathleen Driskell, and Brescia graduates Mary Welp and Joey Goebel. In addition to Creative Writing, Brescia offers an English major and minor with an emphasis in professional writing. The curriculum includes journalism, professional and technical writing, creative writing, and practicums. The major prepares students for careers in journalism, public relations, and communications. The minor is designed to prepare students for graduate school and to complement other career emphases, from business to science. For more information, contact Dr. Craig Barrette, Coordinator of the English program, or David Bartholomy, Director of Creative Writing.

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