"46058db2-6589-4470-9a09-a55ced046510"@en . "CONTENTdm"@en . "Prism international 30:4 / Summer 1992"@en . "http://resolve.library.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/catsearch?bid=1215619"@en . "Prism international"@en . "Prism international"@en . "2015-08-10"@en . "1992-07"@en . "https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/prism/items/1.0135398/source.json"@en . "87 Pages"@en . "application/pdf"@en . " nn.\n\W\ninternational\n SUMMER 1992\nContemporary writing from Canada and around the world $4.50 (plus G.S.T.) J\7U international JVAJ international\nEditor\nRodger Cove\nExecutive Editor\nPatricia Gabin\nFiction Editor\nFrancie Greenslade\nPoetry Editor\nVivian Marple\nAdvisory Editor\nKeith Maillard\nAssociate Editor\nMurray Logan\nEditorial Board\nTerry Armstrong\nRita Davies\nElizabeth Drumwright\nJames Farenholtz\nZsuzsi Gartner\nPatricia Jones\nShelley MacDonald\nFran Muir\nShannon Stewart\nLaurel Wade PRISM international, a magazine of contemporary writing, is published four times per year\nby the Department of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver,\nB.C. V6T 1Z1. Microfilm editions are available from University Microfilms Inc., Ann Arbor,\nMichigan, and reprints from the Kraus Reprint Corporation, New York, N.Y.\nContents Copyright \u00C2\u00A9 1992 PRISM international for the authors.\nCover art by Van Newcomb\nOne-year individual subscriptions $16.00, two-year subscriptions $24.00, library and institution subscriptions $22.00, two-year subscriptions $36.00, sample copy $5.00. Canadians\nadd 7% G.S.T.\nAll manuscripts should be sent to the Editors at the above address. Manuscripts must be\naccompanied by a self-addressed envelope with Canadian stamps or International Reply\nCoupons. Manuscripts with insufficient postage will be held for six months and then discarded. The Advisory Editor is not responsible for individual selections, but for the magazine's overall mandate including continuity, quality, and budgetary obligations.\nPayment to contributors is temporarily $20.00 per page plus a one-year subscription.\nPRISM international purchases First North American Serial Rights only.\nOur gratitude to the Canada Council, Dean Patricia Marchak, and the Dean of Arts' Office at\nthe University of British Columbia.\nWe gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Government of British Columbia,\nthrough the Ministry of Tourism and Ministry Responsible for Culture.\nSecond Class Mail Registration No. 5496. July 1992 Contents\nVol. 30, No. 4 Summer, 1992\nFiction\nKaren Connelly\nJohn Isaacs\nChristian Petersen\nGayla Reid\nMary Walters Riskin\nJerry Saviano\nA Bowl of Yellow Flowers Stains\nthe Canvas 31\nGeorgie's Habit 73\nHeart Red Monaco 58\nSister Doyle's Men 7\nThe Sign 40\nToothpaste and Monkey 25\nPoetry\nSean Brendan Brown\nRichard Exner\ntranslated by William Cross\nRichard Harrison\nC.E. Hull\nCatherine Hunter\nJoan Lennon\nOscar Martens\nAlison Touster-Reed\nAlice Tepexcuintle\nMouse and Boa 24\nPassion 47\nAugust 6, 1981 49\nAt The Hockey Hall of Fame I saw 71\nAn African Hockey Story 72\nin-drought 53\nout of town by 7 o'clock 56\nmy skeleton visits the casino 51\nafterlife (3 52\nEve Aging 21\nWarning to Motorists 22\nBrazil 34\nTaxidermy 23\ntoxic WHAT 68\nSo nobody told you 69\nVan Newcomb\nCover Art\nDesert Isle #6 (Water colour)\nContributors 86 PRISM international\nwishes to congratulate\nEden Robinson,\nwho has been nominated for the $10,000 Journey Prize\nfor her story \"Traplines,\" which first appeared in\nPRISM international, Vol. 30, No. 1 Sister Doyle's Men\nGayla Reid\nIn this photograph my mother is on horseback. Behind her, there is a\nrow of hills. Gums are tossing in the wind. (They look like gums, anyway.) The horse has its head turned sharply. I suspect she is holding\nthe reins too tightly.\nThis is, as my mother's handwriting on the back of the picture says,\n\"somewhere in New Guinea.\"\nAt one corner of the photograph you can see the shadow of the person\nwho is holding the camera. You can make out the shape of the hat. It's a\nslouch hat, pinned up on one side.\n\"Who's that?\" I ask my mother, pointing to the shadow.\nThere is a slight pause. Then she says, \"One of the men.\"\nMy mother is wearing trousers and a shirt. It is wartime.\nMy mother grew up in Sydney's eastern suburbs. \"Where on earth did\nyou learn to ride?\" I ask her.\n\"You learned,\" she says. \"You learned fast. All sorts of things.\"\nIt is a black-and-white photo, of course, but the contrast is sharp. \"The\nhills look very green,\" I say.\nMy mothers looks at the photo again. \"I was green all right,\" she says.\nShe laughs. \"You can say that again. I'd only been there three-and-a-half\nmonths when that was taken.\"\nI wondered why she mentioned the months, and so precisely.\nMy mother was a sergeant in the AAMWS, the women's wing of the\nAustralian Army Medical Service.\nMy father was in the Seventh Division. My father was a Rat at Tobruk.\nWhen Australia's Prime Minister Curtin brought the Seventh home my\nfather was promptly sent to New Guinea, where he was involved in the\nfighting around Lae.\nMy father told no war stories, kept no war souvenirs. (Unless, as my\nbrother says, you want to count Mum.) But my mother spoke of the war\noften, which, given her work, was not surprising.\n\"He brought them home,\" she'd say, of Curtin. \"He was determined\nthat Australia would not go. He gave those Poms what for, he did.\" When I was a child I thought everybody knew about the Seventh, how\nthe Prime Minister brought them home.\nMy mother met my father in Moresby. They got married right away.\nSix months later, I was born.\nAs adolescents, my brother and I consider this story. I am horrified.\n(What if the nuns find out?) My brother, on the other hand, is much impressed. \"The sly old goat\" he says. \"You've got to give it to him.\"\n\"What was she like when you first met?\" I ask my father.\nHe says the usual things: good looker, always one for a laugh.\n\"No,\" I say, \"what was she like, really?\"\nI should know better.\n\"Oh, things were at sixes and sevenses, in those days,\" my father\nsays.\nMy father is one of those old-style Australians who guards his personal\nlife with a wildly unwarranted tenacity. My father gives nothing away.\nMy mother's secrets are safe with him.\nWhy did she choose my father? My brother and I decided it was because he had come through unscathed. Both in the Middle East and in\nNew Guinea my father was what he calls one lucky bastard. My mother\nknew she was going to need one undamaged man in her life.\nFor somewhere in the green hills of New Guinea, my mother became\nacquainted with death. Despite her seamless, unspoiled husband, despite\nthe clamour of her two children, she did not return to the house of the living, not completely.\nMy mother was Sister Doyle.\nSister Doyle was in charge of the ward in Rhodes Repat. where they\nkept the men who had been wounded in the war and who would never recover. Those men, still breathing but in essential ways already dead,\nwere her life.\nFor a child in my mother's house, certain appearances on that ward are\nmandatory.\nThere is the Christmas party, held in mid-December. We sing away in\na manger, no crib for a bed. We pass out gifts: magazines, books, lollies,\ncigarettes. These last for those who still have lips with which to suck, to\nsmoke.\nThere is the afternoon of Christmas Day itself. We go from bed to bed\nwith trays of fruitcake, with glasses of port and Scotch with straws in\nthem. We take our presents to show the men. We are not the only children summoned to Sister Doyle's ward. Her\nmen are to have music, the sounds of children, singing.\nThe Catholic kids sing \"God Bless Our Lovely Morning Land.\" The\nstate school kids sing \"Old King Cole\" and (in possibly dubious taste) \"I\nAm a Happy Wanderer.\" The choirs do not go right into the ward, as we\ndo. They stand at the milder end. If they are lucky they do not even notice the odd small lumps further down the ward. They do not see the\nbeds at the far end.\nThese beds have mysterious hoops in places where faces usually are.\nAdults come, too, to entertain. On New Year's Eve the local pipe band\ncomes to pipe out the old and in the new. They march up and down the\nward, these pipers. But they are grown up. They know when and where\nnot to look.\nThe Scout Master comes to our house with money from the bottle\ndrive.\n\"That will go towards a very fine Easter hamper, and I know you know\nhow much it means to the men,\" my mother tells him, appreciative. He\nblushes.\nThey all come\u00E2\u0080\u0094the Rotary blokes, the Lions, the Masons, the St.\nVincent de Paul\u00E2\u0080\u0094my mother makes no sectarian distinctions. This is the\nearly Fifties and they wear the little Returned Services League badges in\ntheir lapels.\nThey are, all of them, returned men.\nI learned that phrase naturally, without thinking. Later it seemed to\ntypify the to-hell-and-back theme\u00E2\u0080\u0094which had great currency at that time.\nFor the men on the ward, who did not really return, it seemed especially\nfraught.\nWhen my mother sits with the returned men in the lounge room, they\ntell war stories. These stories are exceptionally vague, innocent, featureless.\nHere's one: There was this anti-aircraft gunner in Darwin. Name of\nBluey. Anyhow, Bluey, he had this sulphur-crested cockatoo. When the\nair-raid siren went, the cocky said: \"Time to get under the sink, Blue.\"\nI did not understand why they found this amusing. But how they\nlaughed.\nConversation grows a little more interesting when there are other\nnurses there. They talk about the tents they used as operating theatres.\n\"Oh, the mud,\" my mother says. \"Oh, the stench,\" the other nurses say,\nhappily. If I were asked to construct a portrait of somebody in my mother's position at that time, I would certainly make her a monarchist, a believer in\nreligion, and a conservative in politics. But my mother was, curiously,\nnone of these things.\nShe saw religion as having its uses, however. She favoured Anglican\nfunerals. \"They give the best send-off,\" she said. \"The flowers of the\nfield.\"\nHer interest in politics cut off at 1945. She was not in any sense a cold-\nwar warrior and in that embodiment of Fifties stodge, Australia's Prime\nMinister Menzies, took no interest one way or another. The Fifties, for\nmy mother, meant Korea. And Korea meant two new men on the ward.\nMy mother worried they wouldn't fit in. They were younger.\nAs a young adult I would say that my mother was, at heart, the universal soldier. (And she really was to blame.)\nThere was this man on the ward, Teddy. He'd been in my father's unit.\nCame from the bush, out Walgett way. Used to ride in all the shows before the war, my father said. A crack shot, too, was Teddy.\nThat was how my father met my mother\u00E2\u0080\u0094Stan had gone to the hospital in Moresby, looking for his mate Teddy.\nTeddy could not move. His spine was a write-off. He couldn't speak,\neither. He could move his eyes from side to side and that was about it.\nTeddy got totally messed up in New Guinea. Over the years Teddy improved, gradually, until he could manage to talk a little. To the outside it\nwas just gobble-gobble, but Sister Doyle could decipher every word.\nThis is what Teddy said: \"I'm in this and I'm doing the best I can.\"\nWhen my mother liked someone, when she considered them to be her\nfriend, she'd tell them about Teddy. When she repeated what Teddy\nsaid, she never used the third person. She always adopted the first person:\n\"I'm in this and I'm doing the best I can.\"\n\"How's Teddy?\" my father would ask my mother.\n\"He's a battler, is Teddy,\" my mother would say. And her voice would\nbe full of something heavy, like love.\nI think now of how Stan met her when he went to Moresby.\nShe walked down the corridor towards him, listening to the floorboards\ncreak, her stomach in a knot. (Outside, through the louvres, the green\nhills.)\nHe figured it out soon enough, he realized how things stood with her.\nAnd his face barely moved a muscle.\nThat would have reassured my mother, she would have decided then.\n10 On Christmas Day, when I am eight, this happens:\nWe are in the ward, and I am sitting at a window. It is a quarter to five,\nthe end of the afternoon.\nEarlier, we were all here, my father and brother as well. My brother\ngot a cocker spaniel puppy for Christmas, named Queenie\u00E2\u0080\u0094this is the\nCoronation year. A boy should have a dog, my mother says. Queenie was\nbrought in to show the men.\nNow my father has taken Queenie and my brother home. My father\nand my brother are already besotted with Queenie. They take turns carrying her with excited tenderness.\nThe men, those who could reach out, felt Queenie's soft round head,\nstroked her ears. Those who could see looked into her brown eyes.\nQueenie was a big success.\nAround afternoon-tea time there was a full-blown high summer thunderstorm. (My mother hurried to the men who whimpered.) Then the\nfurious rain. Now, it is over and the ward is filled with a peculiar golden\nlight. My mother has thrown open the windows and the smell of rain\nrinsing through the hot earth, the smell of fallen gum leaves fragrantly\nrotting, fills the room.\nMy mother is sitting on a chair between two of the beds, and everything is calm. She has brought her men through the fracturing demands of\nChristmas Day, with its forced cheer. She has given them her children,\nand Queenie. She has stood by them in the thunderstorm, and now she\nhas for them this coolness, this relief.\nI look at my mother and with a piercing clarity, I see how she is resolute and obsessed. And I am her daughter. As she is, so I will become.\nI am suffused with this fact; I am magnified\u00E2\u0080\u0094not by joy but by a terrible\ncertitude. And I am really very frightened.\nI look away from my mother. I inspect my presents from the other\nnurses. My favourite is a wooden pencil box. It has two stories. You\nswing out part of the top layer and there is a secret second layer, beneath. I slide my finger into the farthest recesses of the pencil box, in\nthat second layer, beneath the place for the rubber. I plan what I will put\nthere.\nIt is so quiet I can hear the clock ticking at the end of the ward, near\nthe entrance. Instead of numbers it has the words, Lest We Forget. The\nsmall hand is on the E, the big hand has just passed the G.\nMy mother was always so busy that it took me a long time to realize\nwhat her main burden was: the slow grinding of time, its absolute refusal\nto pass.\nSister Doyle knows all their birthdays. A good six weeks before the\n11 birthday of Shorty or Curly or Jacko (they keep their boyish wartime\nnicknames) my mother writes to his family. In recalcitrant cases, she\ntelephones. Trunks please, she asks, her voice serious. I wish to place a\ntrunk call.\nAs you know, she says, when the call goes through, Shorty/Curly/\nJacko has his birthday coming up. Can we be expecting a parcel? As you\nknow, he's quite fond of Capstans/Winning Post Chocolates/Pix or Post.\nAnd it has been some time, let me see, three years, hasn't it? I'd just like\nto let you know how very welcome you'd be, if it were possible. At all\npossible.\nThe parcels arrive\u00E2\u0080\u0094from Dubbo, from Grafton, from Condobolin\u00E2\u0080\u0094\ndrawn by the strength of my mother's will. Sometimes the people come,\ntoo.\nApart from the holidays, Christmas, New Year, Easter, there is\u00E2\u0080\u0094of\ncourse\u00E2\u0080\u0094the big day itself, the one day of the year: Anzac Day.\nMy mother knows which division each of her men was in. She has the\nward decorated with the appropriate emblems and colours and mascots.\nRadios are laid on, and, in later years, television sets. Nobody is to miss\nout on the dawn service and the march In the afternoon, there is rum\nand Bonox.\nSo they inch forward, Sister Doyle's men.\nAt the end of the road, there is the funeral. And if only a handful of inattentive relatives can be rounded up (thank God that's over), there is the\ninexpensive solemnity of the last post. And there is, from the priest or\nminister, these words: They gave their lives. For that public gift they received a praise which never ages and a tomb most glorious\u00E2\u0080\u0094not so much\nthe tomb in which they lie, but that in which their fame survives, to be remembered forever, when occasion comes for word or deed.\nI'm not sure where that comes from. It's something I absorbed from\nmy mother, much as other daughters learn to sew a frock or cook a cake.\nMy mother is never completely off duty. We are walking down to Central to catch the train. My mother points out to us\u00E2\u0080\u0094my brother and me\u00E2\u0080\u0094\nthe plaque on the overpass at the Chambers Street end: Past this point\nmarched THE MEN WHO WENT. In Martin Place, at the cenotaph, we\nare not permitted to giggle and fool around. If there are wreaths\u00E2\u0080\u0094and\nthere often are\u00E2\u0080\u0094we are to read them quietly, and with respect.\nAt school I learn how the Spartans put their children out to die. That\nreminds me of my mother. If we disgraced her on the ward, I tell my\nbrother, she would put us out to die.\nShe would be capable of it.\n12 I am making my mother seem formidable. She was that, indeed. But in\nmany ways she was a permissive parent.\nMy brother and I are allowed to have comics, and she never checks to\nsee if we are doing our homework. A lot of the time she isn't there. She's\nat work. It is my father who is nominally in charge.\nMy father, the unscathed survivor, came home from the war and got a\njob as a clerk at the lotteries office. At five sharp he takes the train home\nand retreats to his shed. In the shed he keeps all his carpentry tools, his\nworkbench and his radio. He also has two old lounge chairs (it's a good\nsized shed). In one of these chairs he sits and smokes his pipe. The other\none is for Queenie, and us kids when we come to watch.\nMy father builds things.\nIn the Fifties my father undertakes two projects that see him through\nthe decade. First, he puts a second story on the house. This is a posh,\nunusual thing to do in the ordinary Sydney suburb of West Ryde. Then he\nbuilds a whole bunch of built-in furniture. Built-in furniture, in highly lacquered wood, is the very latest thing.\nMy brother and I each acquire rooms of our own on the top floor, with\nwindows that look out on the ironbark. In my bedroom my father builds a\ndressing table that has a bookcase in one side. I can put my hand out and\nselect a book without even getting out of bed.\nIn the kitchen he constructs a breakfast nook: a round pink Laminex\ntable, with a high banquette, just like in a restaurant. But his tour deforce\nis in the lounge room. There a combined china cabinet-sideboard-\nradiogram dominates one wall, a triumph in blond wood.\nIt is an extraordinary home. It could look like something out of House\nand Gardens, only mother doesn't complete the effect. In my bedroom I\nhave some second-hand curtains she picked up at the hospital fete.\nMy brother's friends love the house. Not for its furniture, but because\nit is always in turmoil. Constantly, one room or another is uninhabitable,\nowing to the construction work.\nMy mother is not in the least put out by this. Quite the contrary. \"We'll\njust have to make do,\" she declares, and her voice is girlish and gay.\nThe kitchen is an uproar and my brother's friends are staying to tea.\nMy mother takes the toaster into the lounge room. We have toast and\nsardines and listen to Pick-a-Box.\n\"The money or the box?\" asks Jack Davey.\n\"The bbox, the box,\" the boys shout, their eyes shining, eager for\nwhatever life will throw at them.\nThey are always around, the visiting boys. There is the marvellous\nchaos and what's more the place is reliably provisioned. My mother goes\n13 to cakeshops and buys lamingtons, sponges, biscuits.\nThis is a shady thing to do, in the Fifties\u00E2\u0080\u0094store-bought cakes are\nlooked down upon. \"I simply don't have time,\" my mother says, firmly.\nMy brother's friends help themselves to the rest of the lamingtons and\nwatch my father working. When they've eaten those they can get some\nMinties from the shed. My father keeps boxes of Minties down there.\nMinties have cartoons on the side of the box: a fisherman has just reeled\nin a pair of ladies' corsets.\nI don't get in the boys' way (they're just little kids, really, so boring).\nI'm upstairs, staring out at the ironbark.\nI'm reading books about girls' schools with no nuns.\nI'm looking in the women's magazines, examining the Meds ads. No\nbelts, no pads, no pins. No odour.\nMy father, Stan Doyle, had been brought up in a Catholic orphanage.\nHe had left school after sixth class and had learned, as my mother put it,\n\"to turn his hand to anything.\" Had we lived in the bush, Stan would have\nturned his hand to sheep and cattle. In the desert, he'd have known exactly where to find water.\nThat a man of manifold skills was putting in his days at the lotteries office was never remarked upon.\nAfter the orphanage, Stan was caught up in the depression, and after\nthe depression he went to the war. Yet Stan is a calm man, sweet and\npeaceable. A man to turn to in time of crisis.\nMy mother had to sign papers to say she'd have the kids brought up\nCatholic. And sign she did.\nOff I went to the nuns. When it comes time for my brother to go to\nschool, my mother puts her foot down. He could go for religious instruction. He could make his first communion and all that baloney. But he was\nto attend the state school and get a real education.\n\"The nuns are good enough for girls but they won't do for boys,\" my\nmother says.\nStan doesn't argue. He isn't an arguing man. But it makes him nervous, I can tell.\nWithout ever putting it in words, Stan lets me know precisely what he\nthinks of nuns and priests: a dangerous, slightly looney lot, but powerful.\nBest to keep on their good side.\nHard lessons, from his own childhood.\nAt Sunday mass, my father sidles in just before the end of the sermon\nand sits, ill at ease, near the door\u00E2\u0080\u0094poised for easy and early escape. He\nlooks just like one of those dumb kids at the back of the classroom.\n14 I am the only one in my class who comes from a \"mixed marriage.\"\nThe nuns know.\nWhose family isn't saying the daily rosary?\nI have to put up my hand.\nOn the way home from school we exchange insults with the state\nschool kids.\nCatholics, Catholics\neat snails and frogs.\nWe reply with the more esoteric:\nProddies, Proddies\nfall off logs.\nIn this way I learn that one side needs the other, even for the completion of a rhyme.\nSometimes in these roaming bands of state school kids I see my\nbrother's friends. My brother himself.\nI wait for the question: \"Isn't that your brother?\"\nWe are driving over to my aunt's house. We are in the Holden. As we\napproach the house we can see all the cars, already lined up.\n\"The football team's out in force,\" says my mother, signalling disapproval. Her sister's husband comes from a vast family. They dominate\nthese gatherings with a beery, self-congratulatory clannishness.\nMy aunt, unlike my mother, leads an ordinary life. She stays home.\nShe makes elaborate desserts: rice pudding and jelly layered in tall clear\nglasses.\nI wish my mother would learn to do things like that.\n\"How's the house going?\" my aunt asks my father. He is a fool, her\ntone proclaims, to squander all that upon my mother, who has not eyes\nwith which to see.\n\"Stan's got a real showplace,\" my aunt tells one of the football team.\n\"It could be a real showplace, you know,\" she says to my mother. (If only\nyou were prepared to pull your weight.)\n\"Humm,\" says my mother, bored. \"What a delicious dessert. I don't\nknow how you do it. Really I don't.\"\nBut when we drive home my mother is in a good mood. The visit to the\nrelatives is behind her, one more time. \"That wasn't too bad,\" she says.\n\"Wasn't too bad, Stan, was it?\" She's stuck it out and now it's over. She\ncan get on with things. She can get back to the ward.\nI look out the window of the Holden and see our ridiculous, extravagant house poking up above all the others. I know we are not a normal\nfamily.\nWe are weird.\n15 My father, who had no childhood family, isn't much of a patriarch. You\ncould say he never developed the knack. But we learn from him, my\nbrother and I. We sit in the old lounge chair in the shed, chewing on\nMinties and playing with Queenie, and, without even know what we are\ndoing, find out how to use a padsaw, a mitre block.\nWith my father, I have no quarrel.\nIt's a different story when it comes to my mother. There are scenes.\nIn this particular scene we are fighting, my mother and me. We are\nshouting at each other, we are choking out sobs and insults. We are in a\nuproar.\nJust as Anzac Day is a big day on the ward, it is a big day in our family\nlife. Each year, my father gets out his medals and goes to the march.\nEach year, my brother and I go with him, to watch and wave and pick him\nout and feel important. At the end of the march, a photographer takes our\npicture: my father, my brother and me, standing together in Martin\nPlace. In early years, there were always street photographers on hand.\nIn later years my father takes his own camera and asks one of his mates\n\"to do the honours.\" When the picture is developed, it stands on the\nmantleshelf in the lounge room, where it stays until the new one takes its\nplace.\nIn this way (I wrote in my diary) our lives are measured out in Anzac\nDays (three exclamation marks).\nThis year I'm refusing to go.\nI've been to see the play, The One Day of the Year. This play\u00E2\u0080\u0094which\nwas, I am convinced, written especially with me in mind\u00E2\u0080\u0094portrays a\nyoung man exposing our celebrations, our observances.\nAnzac Day turns out to be so much drunken jingoism.\nI came out of the Palace Theatre and vomited into the rubbish bin at\nTown Hall station.\nSo I won't go to the march, and what's more...\n\"This place is a madhouse,\" I tell my mother. \"You've been ramming it\ndown our throats all our lives. It's crazy. It's sick. I have a life to get on\nwith, in case you haven't noticed.\"\n\"The war happened,\" my mother says, sharply.\n\"You could at least stop glorifying the bloody thing,\" I return.\n\"I do not,\" she declares, offended to her soul, \"I do not glorify anything.\"\n\"You do, you do,\" I reply, going for the upper registers. \"You do, you\nrub our noses in it.\"\n\"I do not glorify anything,\" she repeats (I have really scored, there).\n16 \"Except courage, courage in the face of pain and loss and despair.\"\nThis is as close as I ever come to hearing my mother's apologia for her\nwork.\nI flee to the shed, to enlist my father's support.\n\"You have to stop her,\" I inform him. \"Show her.\"\nHe is quiet and mild and he exasperates the hell out of me. \"Show her\nwhat?\" he asks, refusing to be drawn in.\n\"You're both hopeless,\" I shout. \"The pair of you.\"\nAbout this time my mother has a big row with my brother, too. About\nTeddy.\nMy brother and I joke about Teddy, but most secretly. It is utter blasphemy. My brother is keen on gymnastics, and practises every evening.\nHe stands on his head and he says, for our mutual pleasure: \"I'm in this\nand I'm doing the best I can.\"\nWe laugh and he tries his best to keep from toppling over.\nMy mother catches him at it. She chases him through the house, trying\nto grab him and hit him. He speeds out on to the road and my mother\u00E2\u0080\u0094to\nmy surprise\u00E2\u0080\u0094does not pursue him. Instead she sits down in the breakfast\nnook and begins to cry, in a hoarse, windy kind of way.\n\"You kids don't care about anyone except yourselves, do you,\" she\nsays. In her voice I hear the beginning of an appeal. I leave the room in a\nhurry.\nEventually my brother creeps back into the house. For about three\nweeks my mother treats him as if he doesn't exist.\nMy brother and I hold whispered, mutinous meetings in my room. We\nbrim with righteous solidarity.\n\"She should never have taken us to the ward when we were just little\nkids,\" I say. \"Doesn't she realize we were scared.}\"\n\"Dad's just as bad,\" my brother says.\n\"He just lets her rip,\" I agree.\nEven as we speak we can hear him. He is hammering away on the\nstairs, replacing a baluster.\nOne day my mother comes home early from work. This is a shocking\nthing, without precedent. I'm at home because it's a big feast day\u00E2\u0080\u0094the\nFeast of the Assumption\u00E2\u0080\u0094and the nuns have given us the day off.\nThe nuns are always giving us the day off, or so my brother says. It's a\nwonder you ever learn anything, he says.\nI go downstairs to find out what's going on. Is she sick?\nShe takes her hat off and puts it on the kitchen table.\n17 \"Teddy's gone,\" she says. \"Teddy. He begged for it,\" she says. \"For\nages and ages. Nothing else. Just that. After all these years. I had to give\nhim what he wanted, you know. I had to.\" Her voice sounds automatic.\n(Does she know who she's speaking to? Does she even know she's\nspeaking?)\nShe takes a chair and goes outside to the back patio that my father built\na few years ago. She's still got her overcoat on. It is the kind of grey, still\nday you get once or twice in Sydney during August. A low day.\nShe's still there at a quarter to six when my father gets home. He\ntakes her a rug and a cup of tea. She pushes away the rug and ignores the\ntea.\nShe sits out there in the dark.\nMy father goes out again, this time to persuade her to come in. I can\nsee him talking to her and I can see her not even turning her head.\nHe comes back in and he's got a funny kind of embarrassed look on his\nface, as if he's been caught doing something foolish.\n\"Let's have beans on toast, eh?\" he says.\nI make the toast, my brother puts the jug on. My father lights the gas\nand gets the beans going. We huddle together in the breakfast nook, the\nthree of us, and Queenie.\nAs last she does come in. My brother and I are in my room. We are\nsupposed to be asleep by this time. She goes up the stairs and into their\nbedroom. My brother and I creep along the hallway and listen for voices.\nNothing.\nWhat did he say to her?\nWhat did she, finally, say to him?\nIt is the late Sixties and my mother has cancer. She is in Rhodes Re-\npat. , so she is, in her own way, at home.\nThey are fooling about trying to decide which parts of her to cut out.\n\"I've told them to get on with it,\" my mother says. \"Chop, chop.\" My\nmother has a nurse's cheery crudity about such things.\nNow, of all times, she isn't going to let her men down. She calls for a\nwheelchair. \"They've seen tons of people in their dressing gowns,\" she\nsays. \"Might as well see me.\"\nOff she goes to the ward. I wonder if it distresses the men, to have her\ngrowing thinner and more determined by the day.\nBy this time there is another war, about which I have come to hold passionate views. (It has given me a glimpse of what my life might be, what I\nmight become.)\nMy days and nights are full of organizing against the war. Our country's\ninvolvement in this war has to end, the war itself has to end. So many\n18 other things have to change, and fundamentally. There is everything to\nbe done. I go about in a state of euphoric fatigue.\nThese visits to the hospital are really very difficult to fit in. It takes two\nbus rides and a change of trains just to get here. And I have vital work to\ndo.\nIn my mother's presence I scrupulously avoid all mention of the war.\nShe's the one who brings it up.\n\"I was reading in the Herald,\" she says, \"they can bring boys home\nnow that they wouldn't have been able to before.\" She says this in a puzzled voice. \"They can get them out so quickly, and the know-how is so\nmuch better.\"\nHow can the Vietnam boys (the MEN WHO WENT) be worse off than\nthe men on the ward and still be alive?\nShe looks at me\u00E2\u0080\u0094to me\u00E2\u0080\u0094for an answer.\nMy brother has been conscripted, but has disappeared into Western\nAustralia instead. Wisely, he does not write.\nOfficials knock on the door. Plainclothes men, and, on one occasion,\nthe military police. They come to the house. They come to my flat in\nBondi.\nWith my father they are polite. With me, contemptuous, hostile.\nNo, he's not here. No, I'm not expecting him. No, I don't know where\nhe is. No, no, no.\nWhen my mother is dying, when she is rambling, out of it on morphine,\nand there is no more question of her ever getting up and going anywhere,\nshe calls out their names: Curly, Joey, Teddy, Blue, Jacko, Stan, Teddy,\nShorty, Rusty, Teddy.\nWith the endless need of the child, I listen for my name, and for my\nbrother's. And when she does not call them, I am affronted.\nMy father is left alone in the big empty house.\nThese days Stan lives with my brother. When I go back to New South\nWales, I stay with them.\nMy brother, who runs an orchard on the Murrumbidgee, has an old-\nfashioned home with big verandahs. At the weekends the place is often\nfilled with friends (the visiting boys).\nAt the back of the house Stan built what he calls a grandpa flat. There's\na small workshop down there. Although he is now in his eighties, he is\nmaking for my brother a desk out of stunning dark Tasmanian sassafras.\n\"Lovely, lovely,\" my brother says, stroking the wood with his hand\nand looking in his father's face.\n19 \"It'll see me out,\" Stan says, of the grandpa flat.\nMy brother writes to me, he keeps me up-to-date.\nWe were sorting through some old snaps the other day\u00E2\u0080\u0094my brother\nwrote\u00E2\u0080\u0094and we came across a really early one of Mum\u00E2\u0080\u0094in her nurse's\nuniform, on what looked like a troopship.\nBoth arms around some strange young man, a soldier. And smiling.\nSmiling to beat the band.\n\"Where did that one come from?\" my brother asks Stan, \"I don't remember ever seeing that one before.\"\n\"Oh, that'd be Teddy's,\" Stan says, easily. \"Used to carry it everywhere with him.\"\n\"Teddy's?\" says my brother.\n\"Teddy's,\" Stan says.\n\"Used to carry it everywhere with him?\" my brother says.\n\"That'd be right, I reckon,\" Stan says slowly, evasive now. \"Before.\nBefore he. You know. Got messed up.\"\nThen\u00E2\u0080\u0094my brother wrote\u00E2\u0080\u0094the old coot gets up and pours himself a cup\nof tea. Stares off into the middle distance, as if bored.\nWhen I come home they drive up to Sydney to meet me: Stan, my\nbrother and his wife.\nWe go to visit my mother's grave.\nShe has a small bronze plaque. The rising sun of the Australian Infantry\nForces is in the top right-hand corner.\nI put my arm through Stan's. I look over at my brother.\nStan looks down at the grave, at Sister Doyle's name.\nI don't say anything.\nStan lifts his bony face, sniffing the air. He turns to my brother.\nHe says: \"When I get completely buggered I'll go down the back paddock and you can shoot me.\"\n\"Oh Dad,\" says my brother's wife. \"You mustn't talk like that, not\nwhen we love you so. It isn't right.\"\n20 Joan Lennon\ntwo poems\nEve, Aging\nHe is gone again to tinker near Eden\nhandling the latches\nhoping for myrrh\nNo need not to trust him.\nEden's young as ever, sure\nbut Adam isn't everything he once was\nand they keep a careful watch upon the gate.\nWhen we were young as anybody could be\nEden wasn't good enough for him.\nOh, he wanted me then, badly\nmore than other things that burgeon.\nBut now\nAdam is gone to tinker round Eden\nknocking at the gateway\ndreaming of dew\n21 Warning to Motorists\nFocusing on the moth\ninside her windscreen\nshe failed to notice the car in front\nhad stopped.\nThe moth was reborn a poet\nwithin whose opus\nthe words\n\"in car\" and\n\"incarnadine\"\nappeared with a peculiar frequency.\nBy some celestial quirk\nthe woman became\na grain of sand\nin a well-known and prosperous quarry.\nShe was later transmogrified\ninto a replacement windscreen.\nIn neither instance did the events\nraise comment.\n22 Alison Touster-Reed\nTaxidermy\nHe stopped by the taxidermist's,\nLee New's, to stuff the wings\nand the body. The mists\nof the eyes and the bluegrey etchings\nin the beak\u00E2\u0080\u0094these he would save\nfor himself. He might build a cave\nfor the bird, or stand him on a board,\nor nail him to the tree that stood windward\nfrom his house. Mr. New stopped\nin his stuffing some old cropped\nred-bellied head and said, \"Now, see here.\nI don't have the time to take on\nthis one. He is ordinary, eye to ear.\nHe has no special markings on\neither beak or tail. I cannot take the time.\"\nHe drew the bird under his shoulder\nlike a package, took the dime\nferry crossing, walked two miles, feeling colder\nwind as he neared home. Children\nlaughed at the beak sticking out\nhis back and at the crazy hem\nof his pants and at the feathers falling out.\nFinally, he got home and hurried to his bed.\nHe took the bird and laid him gently down,\ngot a cup of tea, a bowl of brown\nrice, a patchwork quilt, and a pillow for his head.\n23 Sean Brendan Brown\nMouse And Boa\nShe is angled smoothness\nthe colour of wallets\ntwisting past her pool of water\nand driftwood ornamentations;\nShe is pale brown isolation\nmarked with deadly isosceles\nfascinating, repulsive,\nfalling on the mouse at 3 o'clock-\nits white delicate ankles\nand sparrow feet convulsing\npast her rippled hinges:\nthe mouse a mass the ribs move\nfrom behind the boa's neck\nto her midsection, her eyes lidded,\nsleepy, tongue flecking aquarium\nglass as my son stares with livid\ngreen disbelief.\n24 Toothpaste and\nMonkey\nJerry Saviano\nYou thought of a dream while driving on 1-85. A dream you started\nmaking up after passing Thomasville, a dream where you walked\npast your father and forgot about the Master Sergeant's uniform\nhe had on, or his whistle from the back porch or the Jim Beam at the dinner table. A dream more about forgetting than anything else.\nNow you are at your father's condominium.\nWhen you knocked on the door, from behind it he yelled loud enough to\nalmost hear him forever. You definitely have your father and no other.\nOnce inside, he explains to you that he's been working on the porch: you\nsee he's wearing shorts, this is a little unusual. You stare at your father's\nlegs. They strike you as pale and you think almost ghost colored. Old\nman legs. You may imagine the day when you'll notice that yours will resemble this. And then you think about other things, like how he buys\ntoothpaste now, four and five tubes at a time. How his bathroom cabinets\nare full: six deodorants, four cans of shaving cream, six toothbrushes rest\nin the rack on the wall. In the shower, you think about having to choose\nbetween four bottles of the same shampoo. He lives alone. You remember that you confronted him once.\nYou said to him that he has enough hygiene products to last both your\nlives.\n\"You know me,\" he replied. \"I buy things.\"\nSo you sit in a lawnchair on the back porch of your father's condominium. You take your fingers and dig at the webbing coming unglued from\nthe aluminum. The man who lived here before him decorated it in some\nsort of aquatic motif, with little bridges, steps, and portable windows. A\nwhite and blue life preserver hangs on one wall. Your father unfolds the\nchair leaning against the wall and sits beside you.\n\"Look,\" he says, pointing to one of his bird feeders. You see that a bird\nhas landed on the left bucket and is bending its head inside. He's taken\ntwo cheap plastic buckets, hung them and now fills them with bird seed.\nYour sister bought him what she called an art-deco bird cage, and it hangs\nbetween the other two.\n25 \"What is that? A finch or jay? I've been meaning to bring my book out\nhere,\" he says.\nHe straightens his hair and puts his cap back on. He closes his eyes and\ncrosses his legs at the feet. You put your feet on the end of the porch.\nSome of the wood has rotted and falls on the concrete. For a few seconds, you stare at the wood, then remember how you and your two\nbrothers used to plan to kill him.\nIt was your oldest brother who talked the most about doing away with\nhim. A few times at night in the room you shared, all of you discussed the\npossibilities.\nYour two older brothers suggested different methods, usually plastic\nexplosives or radiation. Sometimes they argued whose plan was best.\nYou were at a disadvantage, being the youngest and stuck on hand grenades and bazookas. Your inputs were usually ignored, but you scored a\npoint once when you suggested surprising him during Sunday yardwork,\nand crushing his skull with the shovel. Most of the time you were told to\nshut up.\nThen you wonder how the haircuts fit into this. The Saturday mornings\nin the concrete back driveway, behind the egg-coloured split level bought\nwith the Veteran's loan. He would start with your older brother. He\nwould wrap the plastic apron around the shoulders, then fasten the snap\nthat dug into the back of the neck. He used an electric razor he kept in a\nshoe box at the top of his closet. You remember how it buzzed, felt warm\npressed against the head. How the hair felt, falling on your face and neck.\nHe gave you crew cuts.\nWhile waiting your turn, you would watch your neighbours, the Mat-\ntoxes. The two Mattox boys stood at the mesh fence that separated your\nback-yards, giggling and mimicking the expressions on your faces.\n\"Ignore them,\" your mother would say.\nThere are a few photographs left today. Your father is smiling and\nstanding over you, holding the razor over either you or your brother's\nhead. The three of you are surrounded by plastic and scowling. Your ears\nstand out like suitcase handles from the sides of your square heads. One\nof these pictures your father has framed and hanging upstairs in the guest\nbedroom of his condominium.\nOne morning you watched him walk slowly up the asphalt of your\nstreet, towards the neighbour's house where you were visiting. You remember listing the possible offences you might have committed. Did you\nleave the tools out again after he warned you? When he reached the\nneighbour's fence you saw his face, pale like some National Geographic\nwar mask. You ran to him. When you reached him, he pointed his finger.\n\"Listen,\" he said. \"I just cut your brother's hair. And I messed up. You\n26 laugh, I swear to God I'm going to cut yours the same way. Do you understand. \"\nWhen you got back, your oldest brother was almost bald, except for a\nband of fuzz snaking up from the sides of his skull. His eyes were swollen. He was walking around the back yard almost in a daze. And your\nmother sat in the reclining lawn chair glaring at your father.\nYou see that right now he's asleep, whistling through his nose. His cat\ncrawls out from under the desk and runs into the tool closet. You watch it\neat the dry food from its bowl and you think about travelling to Warner\nRobbins, Georgia, where the Air Force stationed him. On the way, you\ncame upon a complex of trailers and loud billboards of a roadside zoo.\nSince children were admitted free, your father gladly paid the admission\nfor himself and your mother. The first animals you saw were a few goats\nchewing on the feed scattered on the ground of their pen. There was a tiger asleep in a small pen, a thin chain was fastened to the worn leather\ncollar around his neck. You and your brothers thought he was dead at\nfirst, but your mother pointed to the slight rising and falling of his chest,\nreassuring everyone of his health.\n\"He's not dead at all,\" she said. \"He's just got the right idea. In this\nheat, that's what I'd do. Sleep.\"\nStill you felt cheated. To get his attention, your brothers screamed for\na little while at the tiger. You stood far away and tossed rocks. He ignored you and all of you went to the monkey cage.\nThey were small and loud monkeys with teeth they bared back and\nforth at each other. They sat on thin wooden platforms, damaged from intermittent chewing. Two of the smaller ones chased each other around\nthe cage. The largest one occupied the cage's only shade, picking at his\nfur, stroking his penis. The closest one to you, a medium sized brown\none, sat on his perch staring. Your mom bought some peanuts and you\nthrew them at him. Each time you threw some peanuts at him, the monkey attempted to catch the ones tossed nearest him.\nYour older brother kept missing the monkey with his peanuts. And because he was thin enough to slip most of the way through the bars, he\nwanted to retrieve the peanuts so he could toss them again. Most of the\npeanuts were beyond his reach, and your brother stretched further into\nthe cage. The monkey reached out his hand and grabbed the stubble of\nyour brother's head. The other monkeys started screaming. You\nlaughed, but seeing your mother's face, you got scared. Your oldest\nbrother grabbed a branch and tried to pry the monkey's fingers loose\nfrom the small stubs of hair he was clutching. Your mother was upset.\nWanting to do something, you ran between the compound trailers searching for your father. You saw him come out of the men's room trailer, wip-\n27 ing his hands on a paper towel and zipping up his pants. You watched him\nhear your brother, start with a trot and then run towards the cage. Sticking his arm in the cage, he grabbed the back of the monkey's head and\njerked him off the perch. In the same motion, he drove the monkey's\nhead against the cage bar. It released your brother. Your father slammed\nits head a second time into the cage bar. He dropped him and the monkey\nlay moving just slightly at the bottom of the cage. The other monkeys\nwent to the far corner of the cage. You and your oldest brother screamed\nwith delight. The zoo's owner ran towards your father, but retreated a\nfew steps from him when he got close to him. You saw that he was a fat,\nnervous man with a long lit cigarette, and he demanded to know why he\nhad attacked the monkey cage. You stared at the zoo owner's dark red\nshirt which hung untucked from his pants. Sweat in large even puddles\nswelled under his arms. Your father started shouting. Your mother ordered all of you back into the car. As you were walking away, you heard\nyour father say \"fuck\" for the first time. He said, \"I don't give a fuck. I'll\ndo it again. Watch me.\" You had heard the word before. Your brothers\nwould say it when you were alone in the bedroom. You listened to hear if\nhe would say it again. But before you walked out of earshot, you only\nheard him tell the zoo-owner that he would be lucky if he didn't kill the\nrest of the monkeys.\nYou climbed into the car, beside the rescued brother who sat quiet\nagainst the window in the back of the car. In a few minutes he walked to\nthe car, stopping to pick up a soda can and toss it in the trash. Your brothers and you cheered. He smiled and you watched the monkey killer climb\ninto the Volkswagen. At the next stop, you went to a Howard Johnson's\nfor ice cream. You had neapolitan. Your father had pistachio.\nNow you stare at the bird's feet perched on the bucket and you watch\nthe way its claws grip the feeder. You shift your position in the chair. The\nchair moves, making a metallic noise against the concrete. The bird flies\naway.\n\"You scared him,\" your father says, \"You've got to learn to be quiet.\"\nMaybe you think about your oldest brother leaving for good when he\nwas seventeen. His hair was long, and your father tried to punch him\nwhen he refused to have it cut. He put duct tape all over his boots and\nwore an old flight jacket with McGovern pins on it. \"I don't want a haircut, \" he said. Your father went right for his jaw. Your brother stepped\nout of the way, and your father broke his hand on the wall. Your brother\nmoved in with his friend's parents. A week later the rest of you went on\nvacation. You remember that as the week your father wrapped his cast in\na bread bag so he could teach you to swim in the motel's pool. Five years\nlater, your other brother told you he had gotten laid twice that week. At\n28 the motel's gift shop, your mother bought a photo-biography that was on\nsale. The Kennedys were her favourites. She would stuff the family photographs in the pages of these books, write the page numbers in the\nback.\n\"We might think about history when we think about us,\" she explained\nonce.\nIn this one, on the page where Jackie is smiling, standing beside the\nPresident at his inauguration, there is a photograph of your father waving\nto the camera, holding his cast wrapped in the bread bag away from the\nwater. In another one, that she bought at a yard sale in the neighbourhood, is your oldest brother's graduation picture, with his shoulder length\nhair and moustache. The picture occupies the space on the opposite page\nfrom Robert Kennedy, who is dying on the floor of the Ambassador.\nYou remember him saying \"fuck\" in front of you for a second time\nwhen you were twelve. He said it more and started going out for beers in\nthe evenings. He retired from the Air Force, got a degree in counselling\nat the community college, and forced you one summer to read Aristotle.\nIn 1978, he bought a cowboy hat. He wore it, along with his boots and\nbelt buckle, in the house one afternoon. You remember watching him as\nhe turned sideways in the mirror and placed his hands on his hips. You\nstared at his hook nose and saw that he was staring at it too. You\nlaughed. So did he.\nIt was his time to leave when you were fifteen, and you no longer\ndreamed of killing him. The day he left you helped him load his Toyota.\n\"Your mother and me are having problems,\" he said.\nYou stood at the garage door for a few minutes. Your hand rested on\nthe string that pulled the door shut. He sat on the toolbox. You went and\nleaned against the car. You remember that he told you that there are always two sides to every story. You agreed and suggested turning the\nbox containing his cookware diagonally, so you could fit his laundry basket in the trunk as well. You closed the trunk and he went away. As his\ncar was pulling out of the driveway, you wanted to know that if everybody had a father that killed a monkey, would this make a difference.\nAt his condominium at the bottom of his steps, electric blankets are almost being thrown at you.\n\"I got more electric blankets than I know what to do with You sure\nyou don't want one?\" he asks. \"What about sheets? Do you need any\nsheets? I got a lot of sheets. C'mon. Take a set of sheets.\"\nYou choose the blue ones. You tell him the electric blanket he gave you\ntwo years ago still works fine.\n\"That's because I read Consumer Reports,\" he says. \"Your old man\nknows the score.\"\n29 He stands at the door and hands you a grocery bag, tells you that it's\nlittle stuff he picked up at the base. And he says if you don't need any of it\nthen just keep it anyway.\nInside there are bottles of Mr. Clean and Janitor in a Drum, a few\nspeed stick deodorants, some carpet cleaner, a packet of chewing gum,\nand a box of chocolate bars. He tells you he has always believed in you\nand then shuts the door. You stop your car at the end of the complex's\nparking lot, dig through the bag and unwrap a chocolate bar. You watch a\nboy drive a remote control pick-up truck in circles outside the fence at\nthe tennis courts. You think about coming up with a dream that might\nsomehow take everything into account. Where the same man who threw\nHo Chi Minh's poetry into the antique mirror hanging over the television\nnow mails cans of soup across the country to yoa But you understand\nthat for your life this dream has always been beyond you, and after a few\nseconds, you take a bite out of the candy bar, and realize that eventually\nyou'll have to drive away.\n30 A Bowl of Yellow\nFlowers Stains the\nCanvas\nKaren Connelly\nHere is a broad stone wall flicking alive small green flames of\nlizards. The wall is low: I sit on its back, watching the road that\ncurves around the wet blue belly of the sea. The sea is always\nitself, restless, forever altering its colours like a sad eye; the road itself\nnever shifts; the squat wall I balance on is like the tough arm of an old\nfisherman. It keeps children and old women from dancing off the cliffs.\nHere we are, los domingueros, the Sunday people, drunk to exhaustion\nwith light and the dusty scent of African wind. The bright blue benches\nbehind me are soft with the bodies of old people, tense with the knuckles\nand knees of young lovers. The old people wait patiently for the farther\ndarkness, the young for the closer one. They sigh anxiously, almost painfully, glancing in happy anguish at each other's fingers and chins.\nIf you sit on a bench, the wall cuts the landscape in half: you cannot see\nthe road below or the little restaurant on the beach where black guard-\ndogs sit on the roof, glaring at customers. From a bench, the landscape is\npicturesque: you receive the sea rising up like a mirror to the sky, slow\nships sweeping the harbour like women in evening gowns, the grand old\nmansions reigning the far cliffs.\nIf you sit on the wall (but no one else does, for sun, olives, and wind\nunbalance, and the drop would be lethal), you get a wider angle. The\nback-arch of the waves stretches towards you, warm as a cat begging\nhands. There is something about the sea that makes you want to reach\nout... Below, the beach is speckled with people, scurrying with energetic crabs and children and dogs. The dogs are bounding through sand,\nbarking, pleading with stones to come alive and throw themselves into\nthe air. The dogs see, blissfully, with their noses. They are enthusiastic\nabout dead squid. From here, it looks clean: children tumbling playfully,\ndoll-limbed, the people (featureless, really, at this distance) fine and\n31 strong, leaving well-formed footprints behind them. But you also recall\noccasional smudges of tar, the condom-scatter of spent Catholic boys on\nSaturday mornings, the shredded glitter of dead fish. Still, from the wall,\nthe scene gleams, glassed-over, lovely.\nBut the view includes the road, which I watch in amazement. The thud\nbangs in my own bones as I realize what I've seen. A child and a car have\ncollided with the grace of birds; it was choreographed, her skipping down\noff the path and the black swoop of metal speeding around, catching her\nat the waist. Her scream is mistaken for a seagull's. There are thirty\npeople behind me, oblivious as I watch a shadow dyeing the road (it does\nnot even appear red\u00E2\u0080\u0094simply dark, like dirt spilling from a bowl of yellow\nflowers, her head).\nThere are shouts below, the single wail of a woman, but still no one\naround me hears this, no one leans over to look. I wonder if I am imagining all of it. I blink away sunlight and the cracked body remains down\nthere, utterly still. The people around me (half-hearing the female cry)\nthink only that the beat of the waves has changed.\nThe old people are gazing at the cliffs, ignoring the white threads of\ncataracts, seeing perfectly the greenness of other lives, other decades,\nthinking of the ancient lime trees towering beyond them\u00E2\u0080\u0094they were\nsmaller once. I hear serious talk about green beans and rose gardens, the\ncost of carrots. The laughter of sparrows rings from the trees as always,\nand the young men and women listen to it, imagining their hearts are\nbirds. A girl with hair the colour of clean straw is staring at her watch,\ndesperate for time to slide open. Her hand flutters at the boy's silk-brown\narm and I can see what her fingers are thinking: There has never been\nflesh this warm. Their hair is tangled and heavy with dropping light. The\nsun rolls down the hill like bleeding fruit.\nAnd on the road below (all I do is swivel three vertebrae in my neck)\nthe scene changes, a world bursts, the magic shadow spreads like a dark\nangel stretching its wings under people's feet. The bowl of yellow flowers\nis a rust-red brown.\nWhile above, in the little town, old women gossip, girls touch lipstick\nlightly to their mouths, men grunt at the government, and I sit on the\nwall, watching all of it, looking back and forth like someone at a stunning\ntennis match, trembling (remembering all the newspapers I haven't read,\nremembering the world itself, the wars in the back pages of atlases,\nwhole countries spreading with shadow).\nThis is where you are now. Then you turn your head away and you are\nsomewhere else. The only truth is that there is none: it moves when we\nblink. The trick of seeing is not seeing everything. If you see everything\nand feel all you see, you unravel the wrinkles of your brain like a ball of\n32 kite string. You drift off and disappear. It is easier to be blind if the choice\nis between blindness and madness. Learn to see with one eye or both\neyes half-closed. I look at the lovers, the lavender-haired old ladies. I\nlook with great concern at my bony feet. Absurd tears there, gems of\nwet salt sliding towards my toes.\nBecause, below, a child drains. The moment was a pebble-brained\nshark, and her life a bloody tear in time's soft belly. Now an ambulance\nclangs everyone awake, the people, even the lovers, crowd to see the\ncrowd below, to glimpse the broken doll, the shadow. A shattered body\ncollapses in my eyes, but I look beyond it. I examine the elegant web of\nveins on the backs of my hands. (You must look beyond.) I see the Bay of\nBiscay. I slide off the wall and walk towards a new place. The blood on\nthe road will be gone at dawn and perhaps I'll forget I've written this.\nHere are the pastel hues (skylight, sea, warm green eyes, pearled\nskin). And here are the dark oils. And here is your life. This is the only\ncanvas they'll sell you. Do not just paint what there is. (You'll be dust before you've done that work.) Paint what you want to see.\n33 Oscar Martens\nBrazil\ni.)\nOn a street in Manaus\na man grows out of the sidewalk.\nHalf a man, begging there\nand twice the man I am\nfor having the courage to live\nhalf a life in half a body.\nTwo limbs,\nuseless in the air,\nwill not take him to the bridge\nor into the path of a bus.\nI could guess\nthat his legs were blown off\nby an industrial revolution.\nOr he has been here for hundreds of years,\nunable to move out of the way of progress,\nthe city streets built around him\nup to his waist.\nA gutter dog,\nbald from disease,\nsprays hot urine on his back\nwhile he waves his useless limbs in the air\nlike a furious tree.\nHis brother returns from the factory\nto carry him home on his back.\nIn the morning\nhe will stand him in the sun\nlike a shrivelling raisin\nwaiting for the relief of afternoon shade.\n34 2.)\nIf my Portuguese were better\nI could explain to the driver\nthat we are in no hurry\nto kill anyone.\nWe are in no hurry.\nYet the cab parts people like dirty water\nmissing them by a thin cushion of air.\nPeasants, experts in the art,\nplant exact steps across the road\nchecking through the sides of their eyes\ntrajectory, velocity,\nwords which they would not understand,\nmovements which they live by.\nA skinny dog, another expert\ndrops out of sight\nunder the hood,\nbut as I brace for the thump\nit reappears at the back unharmed,\nalready sniffing a buddy's shit.\nOn our way to the boat\nthere is no reason to rush\nthrough this slum of low-lying shacks.\nI could scream a warning\nfrom the open window\nbut the experts in survival\nneed no help from me.\n5.)\nInstead of worms we use steak.\nEven a small piece of gristle\nis not acceptable.\nIt seems that blood thirsty fish\nare fussy eaters.\n35 We splash our rods in the water\nto attract them\nand they begin to snip off meat\nwith razor teeth\nlike they have done to the tails\nof slow alligators.\nThey bite everything,\nincluding the knife that cuts away the hook.\nAnd as they make that thin wheezing sound,\ntrying to breath without lungs,\nit makes me very happy\nthat fish have no limbs.\nIn the middle of this river\nI take new interest in the design of this canoe,\nthe way the boards join,\nhow the nails creak when I shift my weight.\nIt has been a comfortable life\nhere at the end of the food chain.\nI tell my friends not to rock the boat.\nI am not eager to change\nthe order of things.\n6.)\nwithout the noisy Germans\nwithout my group of red-skinned travel pals\nwithout these two guides already bored\nwithout the uncertain wooden bridge over this swamp\nwithout the white combi that carried us all here in darkness\nwithout flashlights that scan for the red eyes of alligators\nwithout any other modest statements against nature\nI would be standing hip deep\nin primordial soup\nwhere I could enjoy a sky full of stars\nand a night that saves heat for the next day\nuntil the life around me began to move\ntoward my naked body\n36 an easy meal after all\nwithout my civilization\n8.)\nsteal my shoes,\nthey want to steal\nmy white Nike hightops\nbought for this trip,\nnow dusted red\nwith Pantanal soil\nI did not know\nmy sixty dollar shoes\nwould turn me into a mark,\nmake someone want to rob me\nthey watch my feet\nat the markets,\nin the stores of Manaus.\nI wear one set of originals\nin a city stacked with fakes\none boy makes me nervous\nwith his shameless inspection,\nhis desire\nto walk in my shoes\n9.)\nMy crude camera adjusts to a sunset\nwhich will not lie easily on film.\nI know I will stare at my failed photograph\nand wonder what it is.\nTwo yellow rings\nas seen through welding glass.\nAt the end of a Brasilian summer day\nwe stalk through the field of scrubby grass\ntoward a flock of Blue Macaws.\n37 I use a glass eye to see them,\nhigh in the giant tree,\nwhile through their natural lenses\nthey have sensed us\nbut are not threatened.\nWe have come to gather images on film\nlike paper gravestones,\npale markers of the past.\nI walk toward the perfect shot\nand stumble on my bones in this field.\nMy foot crunches the bones of a capivara\na piglike dog\na doglike pig\nwith teeth like a beaver.\nI take a picture of my own death\nand back away\nwhile the field tells me to lie down.\nThe field tells me to lie down among my bones.\nThe field tells me to lie down among the bones.\nThe field tells me to lie down.\nThe field tells me\nTo become a provider\nI should lie down with my pig dog friend\nand wait for the first sharp teeth\nto claim my warm meat, fresh blood,\nthen the beak to pick flesh\nfrom those awkward spots\nbetween the joints,\nspearing my eyeballs like cherries.\nInto the night\nthe mouths get smaller.\nInsects, the worms\ndemand that I surrender all my protein.\n38 My bony fingers,\nfree from any button or lever,\nmake a chewy meal.\nA million mouths take me\nin every direction.\nI cling to a linia with tiny claws.\nI swim after a bleeding tail.\nI lie half submerged in this swamp.\nI expand into this territory\nconsumed and consuming.\nThe animals that I have become scream\nand macaws scratch their way\ninto the face of the sky.\n39 The Sign\nMary Walters Riskin\nThe night when Rosamond's husband left was the night which followed the day when the butterflies lay with their wings spread flat\nalong the ground. The children, not knowing that Joseph was\nabout to go, lifted the butterflies by their wings and flung them into the\nair, but they drifted back down to settle on the pavement and the grass.\nThe children tried not to step on them.\nThe night when Rosamond's husband left was the night before the day\nwhen the men in white noticed that Rosamond was living in the third floor\nsuite. She'd been there six months by then, her fatness draped in bright\nscarlet and turquoise dresses which she washed in the men's room sink,\nher gold-plated jewellery ringing and clicking as she walked from floor to\nfloor, urging her silent children from doorways and alcoves and out into\nthe incessant sunlight. Her eyes were dark, and glittered.\nJoseph was small and silent, and he went about his business\u00E2\u0080\u0094which\nwas mending shoes\u00E2\u0080\u0094from early in the morning until long after the others\nin the building had slipped their money into small grey drawstring bags\nand gone to sit through the long bright evenings with their wives and families.\nJoseph had come alone in March from the sunlit street to speak to the\nbuilding supervisor about the space to let. The supervisor was a tall thin\nclothing designer who called himself Antonio and wore a gold ring through\none ear. The men in white\u00E2\u0080\u0094a barber, a denturist and a chiropractor-\nsaw Joseph pass their doors without looking in, and all of them saw the\ncoolness on him despite the heat in the old building.\nAntonio warned him about the light that poured into the window of the\nthird floor suite, but Joseph pressed the deposit money into his slender\nhand. Antonio told him that the third floor suite was bad for business\n(he'd had it once himself): his customers would never find him there.\nJoseph shook his head. \"I have a sign,\" he said.\nIt was the only time the people in the building ever heard him speak.\nThe sign came on the morning of the following day. It was covered in\nflecks of silvered sequins, thousands of them that shimmered with the\n40 wind, and his name was on it, and his business, in strands of tiny coloured\nbulbs that formed the script. Joseph Fanon, Shoe Repair. The words\nwere hard to read in all that sunlight, but no one who saw the sign could\nfail to imagine how it would look at night.\nThere were two men with Joseph in the cab of the pickup truck that\nbrought the sign, and the men in white came outside to watch where they\nwould put it. For a long time, Joseph's companions stood in the back of\nthe truck, while he stood on the sidewalk looking up at the brick face of\nthe building. At last he nodded and the three of them went to work with\nladders and screws and wires, and when they were finished the sign was\nimmense above the door, as though the whole building were Joseph\nFanon, Shoe Repair.\nThe men in white went in to phone their wives and after discussing it\nfor a time, they did nothing. After all, their signs, small neatly lettered\nblack on white beside the door, had not been hidden.\nAs soon as the sign was up, Joseph went upstairs to unpack the two\ntrunks of shoes which had been under the sign in the back of the pickup.\nBy the middle of the afternoon, the smells of leather and boot polish had\nreached the office of the denturist, and he glanced up from the neat rows\nof headless teeth on his work bench to glimpse the scarlet hem of\nRosamond, who was gliding past his door.\nIn time, the rich smell reached the street and the halls were full of\npeople carrying shoes, following the smell past the chiropractor's office\nand up the stairs to the second floor where Antonio watched them, raw\nsilk and scissors in his hands, and up again until they found the third floor\nsuite where the scent was fullest. The procession grew, bearers of heel-\nless slippers and broken-soled shoes standing patiently in line, talking to\none another about the things they'd read in newspapers and seen on television. The whole building buzzed with their quiet waiting-talk, and the\nair grew thick with the smells of waxes and creams.\nAnd all the time the small children watched the people silently, listening, until Rosamond drifted through and sent them out into the sun.\nThe chiropractor saw that his own clients had to sidle past the line for\nJoseph Fanon, and that sometimes they became entangled in it and took\noff one of their shoes to wait the wait and talk the talk and smell the\nsmell. The chiropractor had to go out and remind his clients about their\npinched nerves and their spinal realignments before they got too far into\nthe building. Once they were past the designer's door on the second\nfloor, they would not come out of line no matter how he begged them.\nHe sent his wife up there one day, all the way to the top, for he could\nnot go up there himself and leave his own business unattended. He nodded only briefly at her when she reached the place in line that passed his\n41 doorway. When she came back down much later she told him that Joseph\nFanon had shaken his dark head at her evening shoe and handed it back to\nher. There was nothing, his expression had suggested, that could be\ndone for it.\nOthers in line had told her that if you watched his hands while he was\nworking, sometimes you didn't hear when people spoke to you, and Joseph had to push your mended shoe into your hands to wake you up. She\nwanted to try again with her day shoes, but the chiropractor shook his\nhead and gave her a little money, and told her to go home.\nRosamond's children heard the men in white talking about the line of\npeople, about Joseph, and wondering if they should complain to the authorities about the sign. But the sunlit days went on and on, one after another, and the line continued to be there every morning after Rosamond\nhad washed their feet in the men's room sink and put their shoes on and\nsent them out into the sun, and the authorities did not come.\nIn October, there was that day when the butterflies came down.\nRosamond went to urge the children away from the line, the alcoves, and\nthe doorways, and she found they were not there. She went out into the\nstreet and saw them stepping over nymphs and emperors and tossing\nmonarchs into the air.\nRosamond in a dress of vermilion and turquoise, in silver slippers with\nstraps across the arch, crossed into the square and lifted a purple emperor into her hands, bending so close that her earrings nearly touched\nits trembling antennae. She looked up into the empty trees and placed the\nbutterfly on the grass again, and then she stepped carefully to the edge of\nthe square where she stood for a long time, looking at Joseph's sign.\nThen she crossed the hot street and went back into the building.\nIn the morning the butterflies were gone and so was Joseph Fanon.\nThe men in white were pleased when the procession dwindled and the\nleather-polished smell began to dissipate, but they soon tired of going out\ninto the hall to tell the people with the shoes that they needn't bother to\nclimb the stairs because Joseph Fanon had gone.\nThe children were always in the hallways now. Rosamond no longer\ncame to send them out because, although the sun still shone, the air in\nthe streets had grown very cold since the day of the butterflies. When\nthe men in white asked if their mother was in the third floor suite, the\nchildren nodded, and the barber and the chiropractor and the denturist\nclimbed the stairs past the designer with wool and scissors in his hands,\nand they knocked on Rosamond's door.\nShe opened it, and they saw the sun which poured in the window of the\nthird floor suite and struck rows and rows of shoes against the opposite\n42 wall. With the light behind her, the men could see the outlines of\nRosamond's fat thighs through the carmine and turquoise of her dress.\nThey saw that her bare feet were firmly planted on the wood floor, far\napart. She was holding her silver slippers in her hands.\n\"Your husband is gone,\" the barber said.\n\"He is looking for better shoes to fix.\"\n\"But people are still coming.\"\n\"He says their shoes are not worthy of his talent.\"\nRosamond's voice was deep and slow, so that her earrings barely\nmoved when her words came out.\n\"Then the sign should be taken down,\" said the chiropractor.\n\"It's up to Joseph to take it down.\"\n\"Is he coming back?\"\n\"He has always come back,\" she said. \"Each time, it takes him longer,\nbut he has always come back for the sign.\"\n\"And what about you? What about your childrea?\" asked the denturist.\n\"You have nothing here.\" They looked around the room. \"No stove. No\nbeds.\" They looked through her skirt at the outlines of her thick bare\nthighs. \"You have no warm clothes, and winter has arrived.\"\n\"But I have shoes,\" she said, tossing her head at the opposite wall so\nthat her long hair swung around her shoulders and her fat bare arms, and\nher jewellery jangled. \"When we found Joseph, none of us had shoes.\nNow we have two hundred shoes.\"\nShe carried the silver slippers to the wall, and put them in the space on\nthe top shelf.\nThe men in white went back down the stairs and told the building supervisor that the sign must be taken down so that the people (one went\nby just then and the barber had to go out in the hall and tell him that\nJoseph Fanon was gone) would stop coming. The dress designer said that\nas soon as he'd finished with the seam binding, he would take care of it.\nThe authorities came the next day, three people in blue uniforms: a policeman, a by-law enforcement officer, and a social worker who shook her\nhead at the silent children. The men in white stood at the foot of the\nstairs and watched the authorities go out of sight at the second floor landing. They smiled at one another.\n\"The authorities will take care of it,\" they said.\nWhen the dark began to come, early now that it was winter, the people\nin blue came back downstairs and walked past the offices of the men in\nwhite.\n\"Is it taken care of?\" the barber called, snipping hair from the neck of\nthe chiropractor.\n43 \"We told her the children would be taken away if she did not keep their\nfeet clean,\" the social worker said, her voice echoing through the building.\n\"We told her we'd take down the sign,\" called the by-law enforcement\nofficer, farther away, \"and she'd have to pay the costs.\"\n\"We told her we'd evict her,\" the policeman shouted, \"if she didn't pay\nthe rent.\"\nWhen the men in white came out of the building, they saw that the policeman had put canvas bags on the heads of the parking meters in front of\nthe building.\n\"They told me that if I got Joseph to mend their shoes,\" Rosamond\ncalled from the third floor window, her hair falling over her face and her\nbreath turned blood red in the winter sunset, \"they wouldn't do any of\nthose things.\"\nIt was soon after that when Rosamond began to dance. The denturist\nlooked up from an improvement he was making to the second molar in his\nhand and saw her whirl past, jewellery flashing, bright fabric and dark hair\nspreading through the air around her as her bare feet moved down the\nhallway. She danced only a little that morning, her children watching\nwide-eyed and silent, and then she climbed the stairs to the third floor\nsuite. But as the winter went on, she danced more often, longer, and\nswung her children around with her until they learned the way, and then\nall of them danced together or alone from the morning to the night.\n\"When will Joseph come?\" the barber called as she whirled past.\n\"When he has found what he is looking for,\" she said into the door of\nthe chiropractor and added to the denturist, breathing hard, \"then, he will\nneed the sign.\"\nWith the lineups gone and winter here, there was no need to prod her\nchildren out into the sun and she whirled for the joy of all that leisure\ntime, gold and red and blue and skin through the empty halls of the building. She spun with the children up and down the stairs, hugging them\nclose to her, and their laughter clicked and shimmered like the sequins on\nthe sign.\nRosamond, the men in white discovered as she swung past in February\nand her skirt flew up to expose bare thighs, was dancing herself thin. The\nchiropractor looked over the back of the barber, to whose spine he was\nmaking an adjustment, and said to the denturist, \"Now, no one comes. It\nwas better with the lineups.\"\n\"How much longer can she dance? She'll have to stop eventually.\"\n\"When Joseph comes, he'll put a stop to it. He will make them put their\nshoes on.\"\n44 \"The children's feet are no longer clean. They're black, from all that\ndancing.\"\nThe barber said they should come in the middle of the night and take\nthe sign down, in order to save their businesses.\n\"But if the sign is gone,\" the chiropractor said, \"Joseph may not find\nher.\"\n\"And then what will she do?\" the denturist said. \"She has nothing but\nthose shoes.\"\n\"The authorities will take care of it,\" the barber said. \"That's what authorities are for.\"\nThey met at the church in the darkness, but even from that distance\nthey could see that the light from the sign was shining up the sky. As they\ncame closer they saw that the square was filled with people, hundreds of\nthem in parkas and scarves and mittens, all of them looking toward the\nbuilding. The huge sign sparked and glittered and shivered and shone,\nthe coloured lights that said Joseph Fanon, Shoe Repair illuminating the\nthousands of shining sequins. And under it, on the pavement where the\nheat of the sign had melted the snow, Rosamond danced barefoot on the\npavement.\nShe danced and danced until the men grew so tired from watching her\nthat their eyes glazed over and they forgot why they were there. They\nwatched her bright colours spin and twirl, and they watched her leap so\nhigh that she became a silhouette against the sign. When she was done,\nmany hours later, there was a long silence and then she made two corners of her skirt and lifted them, and the people from the square crossed\nover to drop money in the pouch that she had made.\nFor a while the men in white tried to keep busy with the dentures and\nthe alignments and the haircuts of one another and one another's families,\nbut there was no money in it. And so, instead of removing Joseph's sign,\nthey took down their own and they went home to spend their remaining\nyears with their wives and their grandchildren. This soon bored them and\nthey found themselves sleeping late in the mornings to cut short the\ndays, which left them wide-eyed as adolescents when midnight came.\nThey took to meeting in the square to watch the silent dance of\nRosamond, to watch her slim bare thighs when her skirt flew up, and her\nblack hair brush against her slender arms. Behind her in the building,\nAntonio cut through silk and wool and silk, silk with all manner of butterflies printed on it, and he watched her sleeping children, and in the morning while Rosamond slept he washed the children's feet in the men's\nroom sink.\nThe winter came again and the men withdrew money from their banks\n45 to buy white goose-down parkas, and they dropped the change into\nRosamond's skirt. They wished that their wives would dance.\nOne night in February, when the dance was ended and the people had\nall gone except the men in white, when Rosamond was putting her money\ninto a grey canvas drawstring bag, a pickup truck with three men in it\npulled up to the hooded parking meters. Joseph Fanon got out and looked\nat the sign and glanced at Rosamond. But he didn't know her thin, and he\nwent past her into the building and up the stairs and the men in white saw\nthe light in the third floor suite come on. Joseph lifted the rows and rows\nof shoes, and packed them out of sight, even the silver slippers. At last\nthe light went out.\nJoseph came back down and nodded at his men, who began to take\ndown the sign with ladders and wire clippers and screwdrivers. Afterward they went and got the trunks of shoes from the third floor suite, and\nput them in the pickup.\nRosamond stood in the shadow where the light had been and watched\nthem work. They loaded the ladders and the big dark sign into the back of\nthe pickup truck, their breaths white as ice and coming fast from the effort. And then they drove away.\nWhen all sound was gone, the men in white watched Rosamond. She\ntook a step, and then another, spinning and twisting until she lifted herself right off the ground. The doors of the building opened, and\nRosamond spun laughing down into the street, and gathered her children\ninto the air with her.\nThe men sighed and lay back in the snow, too tired to find their black\nand white signs and put them up again.\nRosamond ran into the square and danced over the men in white. She\ndanced barefoot across the snow, her feet never quite touching ground,\nand disappeared into the darkness of the trees\u00E2\u0080\u0094her children dipping and\nfluttering like butterflies behind her.\n46 Richard Exner\ntwo poems translated from the German by William Cross\nPassion\nfor Ingrid\nThe entire lake aglitter\nfrom shore to shining\nshore beneath a waning\nmoon, and above\nthe mist which makes indistinct\nthe still-open blossoms\nthat will be gone by morning.\nAll this I give you\nfor just the nod of your\nhand.\nEverything I learned\nfrom the smiling Angel\nand the eternity-\ncrazed windows in\nChartres, the castle\nwith its steep plunge into\nthe sea, and the filtered\nsun on the floor smashed\ninto colours in the streaming ark,\nAquileia, where like\nnever before I was walled in\nalive within infinity's\nbelly:\n47 Take all this quickly\nout of my sight, it's\nyours. Let your outstretched\nhand run over me gently,\nwithout hesitation, lightly,\nwhile my eyelids are closed,\nalready quavering,\njust before waking,\nhold all of me.\n48 August 6, 1981:\nfor Heinz Piontek\nThe arrival this time\nsmooth and\nvery bright,\nswans on either\nside of\nthe pier,\nthen the recognition,\nquick, light\nand sure,\nrunning just above\na squadron of\nfishes.\n2\nReflectively bright\nday. Clocks still.\nNo ticking.\nAnd no trace\nof the scythe.\nNot even between\nsentences.\n3\nDifferent than before.\nWords and glances\nmet up. We\ncould almost have done without\nthe other.\n* (Translator's Note) The anniversary of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima.\n49 An entire eight hours.\nNaturally, no talk of\naging. Few words about seeing\neach other again. And of death:\nnot a word about its anniversary.\n4\nBefore night came\nwe were once more\nalone. Complete\nand fragmentary.\nA chapter from\nlife.\n5\nOn the seventh\nthe wind shifted.\n50 Catherine Hunter\ntwo poems\nmy skeleton visits the\ncasino\nthe roulette table is a small city,\nhopscotch and coloured parking lots,\nlopped-off chimney stacks, a brass rail\nlike a railway track\nmy skeleton gambles the contents\nof its begging bowl, nightly\nthigh like a pool cue, leaning on the green dark felt,\nhip like the handle of a crutch, merely leaning,\nand whether advisable or ill-advised, it clacks\nthe chips against each other, taunting the other players\nfor what they lose, they can lose\nonce only, while the skeleton knows\na delicious repetition of loss\nover by the slot machine\na woman rolls a cigarette with one hand\ncounting up lemons and cherries, her lips\nflecked with tobacco, she looks out the window\nthere in the sky is her last dime\nripe and waiting to be spent\nthe one coin she can never quite\nget rid of\n51 afterlife (3\non the third day my skeleton sadly discovers\nit has not shed everything\nrain water gathers in the wide scoop\nof the pelvis, and the birds\nstill have more wings than humans do\nI have not paid the ferryman enough\nor else I disembarked too early\nthe earth persists, a memory scuttles\nlike a mouse in the blank skull,\nthe skeleton turns its brittle neck\ntoward home\n52 C. E. Hull\ntwo poems\nin-drought\n1. arrival\nthere is nothing much on the coolibah road\nexcept sheep pubs & petrol stations\nthe hot smell of in-drought &\nrotting foxes\nrotting pigs & kangaroo\ncarrion in dust hit by trucks that\nonly travel at night\nan emu chick trips in dust & the moon is\nochre reflected from dust\na pile of wild goats like shag pile carpet\npushed together in a heap even the glutted\nblack crows cannot penetrate\nin-drought ribs protrude & breathe\nwithin the living corpse of misery\nkangaroo come into bre to feed on r.s.l.\nlawns to drink from plastic water bowls\ni drive into town with a broken exhaust my\nspirit broken my\nfacial skin ochre stretched across bone\nin-drought\nvisions of dying wheat wool & meat i try\nto find some spirit of place\nbut everyone here is already drunk\n2. township\nten years ago i came back to live in bre\nwas sober/ in love with the stillness/\nthe river country/ a local koorie shouted\nme drinks at the bowling club/ now\nthe aboriginal fisheries are crushed brown\n53 glass/ reflected on the skin of our eyes/\nlocals drift from house to house/ drunk &\nstoned/ all trying to save a few extra dollars\nfrom their pensions/ the first night i stayed\nin a house/ weatherboard & close to the past/\nan inland wind shrieked in me/ the people who\nknew me cooked yabbies/ shrieking & boiling\ni died in the pot/ the second night they gutted\ncod/ during the heat of in-drought afternoon\nthey talked of killing heifers/ killing time/\nthis is the slow death of the outback town/\ngateway to the miserable west/ the polluted\ndarling winds slowly down to south australia/\nthere is no relief from the big crop duster/\nin-drought no-one leaves their houses &\nthe safety of inside air conditioners/ only\nat night to fish to death the polluted rivers/\nten years on this town is a heartbreaker/ in\ndrought the wild flowers/ snatched from the\ngrave of this dying land/ the blood of an angry\nculture/ still fresh on the claypan\n3. departure\non the road out of brewarrina the red dust\ncovers us in hellish blankets my\nfather waves to me from its midsts his\nface hard & red from grog & sun & dust\ni drive away from death too fast i\nsee him as reflected in my rear\nvision mirror i see him as first my\nfather & a man & a stranger & a dot\nof karki almost as red & olive & brown\nas the tired trees that thirst\nin-drought\nhe walks slowly back into town\nthongs stepping over the carcasses of\nrotting fleece\nhe disappears from the face of the present\n54 into his own world his own life chosen\nin-drought\nin bre he is happy but i feel i have\nlost him like a coin in the dust\nthe cattle grids thunder beneath\nme the hot wind shrieks in me i will\nleave my past to die here my\nfather to live in the cemetary\n55 out of town tonight by\n7 o clock\nim quick to slip a few clothes into\na suitcase\ni can be out of this city in a few\nhours no questions\nyou cant trace a name through a\nghetto blaster\nyou cant trace a name through stolen\nno. plates from s.a.\nespecially since youve been living in\nv.i.c. for 6 months\nliving on the smell of a smith family\ndishcloth\ni smashed up a taxi im not insured\nanyway my mother used to say you cant\nget blood out of a stone\nin 48 hours im getting out of this\ntown dont tell no-one\nid tell my friends if i had some\nif a few would come with me/ on the\ndole/ to look for work in q.l.d.\nif that doesnt stick im pleading\ninsanity\nthey call invalid pensioners the\nuntouchables\nmost well get paid for something\ntakes 6 weeks for the estate agent\nto get you through the tribunal\nit takes an hour for me to slip\na few boxes into an e.h.\nthats with a roof rack\nit takes a tertiary institution 12 mths\nto trace a false tax file no. to s.a.\n56 from victoria\nreturn to sender/ no fixed address\nim pretty good at getting out when the\ngoings tough\nim tough there right along with it in\ntwo seconds i split\nthey cant touch what they cant see i\nwear dark glasses for invisibility\nand runners\nthe s.e.c. never question your name\non a new account neither does gas\nphone home on a friends phone try\nreverse charges first\nalways live alone as ive said im\nout of town tonight by 7 o clock\nsometimes i get tired & forget my\nown lies\nthey would repossess my head if it\nwasnt screwed on\n57 Heart Red Monaco\nChristian Petersen\nHe yanks the night back as if it were a ragtop. The splintered\nwindshield is tinged with chlorine light, dawn of the third Sunday\nin July. We speed over the steel beam bridge, above the green\ncurrent, through the river mist and mill steam. As the car growls up the\nhill south of town stars are just fading in the rearview mirror, way back in\nthe purple black west of the Nazko country.\nThomas whispers, \"I'll sleep when I'm dead.\" He grins, half a cigarette\ngently clenched between ivory teeth Then he squints his dark eyes at\nme and casually with his left hand rips the old car screeching off the highway, down through the scarred log arch entrance to the rodeo grounds.\nThe Monaco crowhops in the dirt ruts, raising a flurry of dust. Muscled\nquarter horses stand tethered to aluminum trailers, curtains are drawn in\nthe cowboys' campers, and the pickup trucks wear wry chrome smiles.\nHe cuts the headlights. We approach the warped backside of the wooden\narena, and the corrals where the circuit bucking stock is held, the long-\nhorn bulls and the broncs. There is an overrich focus to this, lingering\nchemical static in my blood, sporadic shooting flares of hyper green joy,\nthen icy fear, joy, fear. In my jean jacket I slouch against the passenger\ndoor, shiver slightly, rub my knuckles in my eyes as the silent tires press\nover the turf. In draughts through the car vents come scents of trampled\nbluegrass, fresh-cut sawdust and horseshit. Thomas exhales spicy\nsmoke of his Winstons. A sort of rinsed mind is what I feel, an awakening, and along with it the steady arousal that comes from any night spent\non fast miss psilocybin.\nSix feet from the corral fence the wide red car halts and the V8 idles\nquietly for just a few seconds. I watch his hand brush the steering column\nand turn off the key. Silence rushes the windows. Thomas searches the\nfloor and finds the J&B, very last of it. No, I can't drink, can't keep up to\nyou, crazy fool. He downs it himself, then drops the empty green bottle\nover his shoulder, thuds behind the seat. His anger suddenly fills the car\ninterior and I have to get out, open the door, swing my boots in the\ngrass. I stand and lean against the unfailing body of the car, slide myself\nforward, haul up and sit on the hood with my back against the windshield.\n58 The cooling engine ticks twice. The drugs are wearing off smoothly and\nthe sky is now precious silver. Don't change, don't ever go away. After a\ntime Thomas joins me there, our legs stretch out down the hood of the\nMonaco and the big light at the end of the rodeo arena makes our boots\nshine. His are made of lizard skin.\nThe animals are quiet inside the corral, a faint steam rises from their\nbroad warm backs, the bulls have settled in deep sawdust nests and the\nbroncs doze neck to neck. The horses are roughened and musky. Just\none is wide awake, curious and stepping forward. He's a dark buckskin,\nwith a black mane and tail, black legs, and his thick neck arched attentively. Thomas lights another Winston, the quick flame startles the\nhorse. He swings his head and mane, his muscles roll and the line of his\nstrong flank deepens as he wheels away.\nMy father was a bush pilot. On the afternoon of October 12, 1979, he\ngot caught in a freak snowstorm and crashed his floatplane while trying to\nset down on the Blackwater River. The accident made headlines, mostly\nbecause his two passengers happened to be the manager of one of our\ntown's largest mills and the representative of a Japanese company looking\nto invest big money. All three were killed, and some people suggested\nthat my father was at fault, for flying in bad weather.\nAt school that following winter I stuck to myself, spent lunch hours in\nthe library, and pretty much lost touch with the friends I'd had. My studies became an escape, I suppose, from the stupid sort of attention I got\nafter the accident, and from different questions I didn't want to face. But\nnever did I doubt my father's skill or judgement, I'd like to make that\nclear.\nQuesnel was a small place. Rumours ran like stray dogs there, rarely\nworth much, but sometimes troublesome or mean. And for the rest of\nthe time I spent in that town, the spring of my final year at school and the\nsummer after graduation, it seemed that I lived with different rumours\nconcerning myself. Perhaps we always do, and I was just becoming\naware of this. Anyway, rumours first involved my father, as I've said,\nthen my mother's seeing Harold Nelson, and finally they got to my own\nfriendship with Thomas Ross.\nThe memories of Thomas are what I'm dealing with now\u00E2\u0080\u0094they are disordered and somewhat crazy, as we were then. But certain moments we\nshared, and words he said, have stayed with me. The time between then\nand right here seems only as long as one hard screaming all-night drive,\nthough it has been more than ten years, and I can't say anything about\nwhere Thomas Ross might be now.\n59 There was another weird rumour going around that spring, which was\nthat a volcano had erupted out west. Somewhere way off in the endless\njackpine, not simply another fire, but an honest-to-god volcano. About\nforty miles out the Nazko road, someone said, past Puntchesacut. Apparently from there you could see the smoke. I imagined the cone rock lip,\nrising white ash, orange lava.\n\"Listen man,\" I said to Thomas, while chalking my pool cue, \"you and\nme could be the first to actually see this thing. This is like a big chance.\" I\nplaced my fingers on the green felt, slid the stick excitedly against the\nrail, and missed a straightforward shot at my last highball. Thomas then\nsnapped the black eight in the side pocket, and dropped his cue down on\nthe table. He smirked, \"Yeah right. Nothin' else to do, I guess.\"\nWe climbed into the Monaco, Thomas swung by the Billy Barker Hotel\nand I galloped into the bar to buy a case of beer. We were just nineteen,\nand being able to do that still seemed a terrific deal.\nThomas was not as keen as I was about looking for that volcano. Whatever that country offered he took for granted, even mention of white\nbears, wild mustangs, or spirits that inhabited the canyons and springs of\nthe Itcha mountains. None of that surprised him, and he seemed to know\nof stranger secrets. His mother was a Carrier, and as a kid he had lived\nfor a time out on a reserve. He knew that road. Top down, we blasted\nout of town and our music mixed with the wind. After a fast hour he\npulled over onto the gravel shoulder, shut off the engine, stuck out his\nhand for another beer. He took off his mirror glasses and glanced up the\nsteepness of the mountain. Then he gave me a look which said\u00E2\u0080\u0094This is\ngoing to be a real hike, and it better be worth it.\nIt was slow going because we were half-drunk and the smooth leather\nsoles of our western boots slipped backwards on the fine speared grass\nthat grew beneath the pines. Already the ground seemed unbelievably\ndry, yet the slope was shining with that wild grass, blue juniper, and\nwaxy, thorny Oregon grape. Thomas was a ways behind, crisscrossing\nup the slope with a beer in one hand, and sidestepping the rocks so he\ndidn't scuff his beloved lizard boots.\nUp ahead, wisps of white smoke rose from a blackened crust of rock\ninto the sharp blue sky.\n\"I see it!\" I yelled back excitedly. His expression didn't change.\nThere were no splashes of lava, but there was a queer smell. My steps\nhad slowed as I got closer, Thomas caught up and stood beside me as I\npeered over the lip.\nHe laughed, \"You're right, this was some big chance, to see a cave full\nof smoking bat shit.\" He laughed harder then than I had seen him laugh\nbefore. And I laughed with him. He hurled his beer bottle into the cave. A\n60 second passed, then the echoed shatter came out like the cave's own guffaw. My foolish attention had been so focused on the volcano that when I\nturned around the view nearly knocked me backward. Thomas turned\nand grew silent. Vast pine green country swept out before us, countless\njagged valleys, and in the distance blue peaks that stretched away like\nlifelong promise.\nThomas had a hard leaning to violence. He was as physical, as contained as a cougar, and usually he was that quiet. But you could never be\ncertain what would set him off, and if something did, then he was dangerous. From the time he was sixteen no one in town had nerve to fight him.\nWhenever any guy got close to it, Thomas would stare at him and softly\nsay, \"D'you wanna bad time?\" A teacher tried to guide him forcibly out of\na grade ten gym class. Thomas dropped him on the floor. The man's collarbone broke, and Thomas was expelled.\nBy then I knew him by reputation, but how we first met was like this.\nHe lived in a house-trailer, in a dumpy sort of trailer court not far from\nthe senior high school, and he sold dope. The trailer was owned by his\nuncle or someone who was never there. One lunch hour Jimmy Gillam\ntook me along to this place to buy a quarter ounce of grass, and then, he\nsuggested, we'd leave in a hurry. Thomas was unfriendly and stared at\nme when we went in the trailer. But we smoked a joint, and he and I got\ntalking. Turned out we were both Bruins fans.\nAfter a bit he looked right at me and said, \"Your old man, he was in that\nplane crash?\"\n\"That's right,\" I replied. A chill crept up my neck and I straightened in\nthe chair. Jimmy was watching me closely and I knew he'd got a bit\nscared suddenly. What I felt was a mix of tested pride and readiness, because of my father. \"He was the pilot,\" I said.\nQuietly Thomas said, \"Nobody coulda known that storm was comin'.\"\nI watched my own hands on the table, traced the grain in the arborite\nwith my little finger. Jimmy Gillam was nervous with the silence, and he\nkept checking his watch, then looking over at me. I paid him no attention.\nThomas started to roll another joint, and as he licked the paper his dark\neyes held mine for just a moment. He said, \"Jimmy, you're gonna be late\nfor school.\" Jimmy Gillam picked up his baggie of dope, looked at me curiously when I made no movement, then he left the trailer. Thomas lit the\nsecond smoke and passed it to me. Then he put a record on his stereo\nand took a bottle of Southern Comfort out of the cupboard. As he poured\nthe liquor into coffee cups he said, \"Least you know who your old man\nwas, that's more than I do.\"\nThat first day was probably in March I remember sunshine and wind,\n61 with silver ice still thick on the windows of the trailer. The only furniture I\nrecall was the pool table, bought by his uncle from the hotel. The felt was\nratty, wood finish gone, and we had to stick quarters in to get the pool\nballs back, but it was most of our entertainment. There was a small tv\ntoo, and I know the Bruins got to the quarter-finals that year, but I do not\nremember who won the cup.\nIt was around this same time that Harold Nelson began visiting my\nmother. He sold real estate and sat as alderman on the town council. Although I can see that situation somewhat differently now, at the time I did\nhold certain mean feelings for my mother, and I had no use for Harold\nNelson. He bought a new car every two years, and he thought that was\nsome big deal. And he seemed to think I needed guidance, which maybe\nmy mother encouraged, I don't know. However they saw it, my view was\ndifferent. It became simplest to avoid much time at my mother's house.\nThe last few months of high school I somehow lost the interest I'd had\nin my studies and began spending more time with Thomas. Often I left\nschool at lunch hour and spent the afternoon at his trailer. The guys that\ncame to buy dope were puzzled to see me. Supposedly I had been a real\nschool boy, but there I was standing in the kitchen with a can of beer,\nwhile Thomas divvied up the skunk weed on the table and took their\nmoney. They were afraid of him. They saw the two of us as pretty different, which we were I guess, though it didn't always seem like it.\nBut magic mushrooms or LSD, for instance, were things I had not\ntried until I met Thomas. Two paper hits: extremely soon the trailer begins humming like a microwave\u00E2\u0080\u0094what day what time is it? Tuesday,\n1:43,44pm\u00E2\u0080\u0094white clay sun\u00E2\u0080\u0094turquoise aluminum windowsills\u00E2\u0080\u0094rusted\nsink\u00E2\u0080\u0094creased cracked brown fake brick linoleum\u00E2\u0080\u00943:14,15,16pm\u00E2\u0080\u0094\nplease, let's sit on the April rain soft cedar steps\u00E2\u0080\u0094breathe the textured\nair\u00E2\u0080\u0094cartoon salamander eyelids\u00E2\u0080\u0094my palms sweat glass\u00E2\u0080\u0094wash my shaking fingers in the honeycomb snow in the shade of the decomposing\ntrailer\u00E2\u0080\u0094see new subdivisions' gravel crossroads encroach on the muddy\nFraser\u00E2\u0080\u0094water flat and fierce\u00E2\u0080\u00945:35pm see fear, flood, suffocation\u00E2\u0080\u0094\nurgently Thomas says, \"Hey it's okay man, this is the peak right now,\nyou can ride it out from here, just ride it out.\"\u00E2\u0080\u0094but I feel naked and\nstrapped to an alien velocity\u00E2\u0080\u0094crawl into the silent Monaco\u00E2\u0080\u0094curl up on\nthe seat like a child\u00E2\u0080\u0094stare fixated at the red vinyl dash and dials of the\nDodge Music Master\u00E2\u0080\u0094moocow coming down along the road\u00E2\u0080\u0094spring pink\nsundown in the mirrors\u00E2\u0080\u0094ride it out...\nOne afternoon, when I was not there, two patrol cars pulled up at the\ntrailer. According to Thomas the police were not polite. When he resisted their search one of them winded him in the guts with the butt of a\n62 shotgun. But they did not find the marijuana, which was stashed in the\nCheerios box sitting right on the counter.\nThomas and I really did not talk a whole lot, but when we did the topic\nalways seemed important\u00E2\u0080\u0094like different girls we knew or whether the\nMonaco could make it to Cape Horn, the availability of Dodge parts in\nSouth America, or the way to properly pass and catch a football. Thomas\ncould be stubborn. He would insist on teaching me things he figured I\nshould have known, how to catch a football, for instance, no matter what\nI thought. And he could be funny too, though he did not often intend to\nbe. In a very straightforward way he sometimes asked questions which at\nfirst made me laugh, because they were impossible to answer, yet he\nclearly expected a reply from me. As if I knew anything. As if I knew one\nway or the other if there was a God, or what time really meant.\nThe old Texaco garage up from the BCR tracks had been converted\ninto the town's first nightclub, and we often ended up there on a Saturday\nafter midnight, because we had nowhere else to go. Music hammered\nagainst the glossy painted walls, and coloured lights flickered at the edge\nof the dancefloor. We tended to kick off with tequila, to try and get in the\nmood, and then drank a mean succession of beers. Always we grabbed a\ncorner table, out of the way, but Thomas still drew a strange amount of\nattention. People were wary of him, his cutting eyes like wet chips of\nshale, his sullenness, and occasional violence. Yet they seemed impelled\ntoward him too. Led by nervousness, they would show up at the table.\nThe guys wanted to talk about hockey, or bush work or buying dope,\nanything just to talk with him it seemed. Girls would come and ask him to\ndance, which was not a customary sort of thing in that town. It was certain that none of this impressed Thomas. Sitting there, across from him, I\ncould sometimes feel invisible. And I enjoyed this because it allowed me\nto look at people more freely, to study them a bit, especially how they responded to the charged quality in Thomas. For their part, they only\nseemed to wonder why I now was his friend.\nAs the snow melted and mild breezes carried into the nights, on any\nweekend there was commonly a party on the outskirts of town. It was often at the stockcar track. Or it happened in a field or a gravel pit where\nthe cops were not likely to appear. Someone would have stereo speakers\nset out on the roof of their pickup and the volume cranked full. One or\ntwo roaring bonfires formed the centre of the gathering, and there might\nbe hundreds of people. Drunken faces ringed the fire. Bottles were\nhurled into the flames where they whined, hissed and exploded. There\nwere always fights going on. It was at these parties, well before I knew\n63 him, that Thomas made his name. Rumbling vehicles came and went,\nwith just their parklights peering through the dust. Now and then somebody passed out in the grass and got run over. Once a young girl was\ncrippled this way, but I don't recall that anyone was ever killed.\nOne green evening in June we sat on the steps outside the trailer, looking across the new town development to the bank of the Fraser and its\nmuddy highwater. The sun just hung around. We'd been stoned and\ndrinking half the day and now faced another aggravated night in town. It\nwas bronze light in the whorls of the river current that made Thomas\nthink of the hotsprings, and he decided we should drive out there. So we\nyanked the top down and cruised by The Billy for a case of beer.\nJumping into that car always gave me the great sense of doing something. This was partly, I believe, because at that point in my life I really\ndid not know where I was going. But once in the heart red Monaco any\ndirection we headed seemed all right. Plus, with a tailwind that old beast\ncould do a hundred and ten miles an hour.\nThe hotsprings were a fair distance southwest of town, and the rough\nroad slowed us down so by the time we arrived, though the air remained\nwarm, the sky was dark. We were not too happy to see the light of a\ncampfire. A new four-wheel-drive was parked in the trees, and two couples sat by the fire. They did not leap up to greet us either. We were bent\nout of shape, of course, but still eager to be soaking in that sulphury hot\nwater. Weaving around, we managed to tug off our boots and strip and\ntiptoe grinning into the steamy pool. I had not been out there before, or\nto any springs, and it was wild to lie back drunk in warm bubbling water\nand watch the first stars revealed above the jackpines. The water filtered\nup between the bed stones, and rippled against the pads of my feet. As\nthe current reached the surface it became visible, faintly traced with silver light. On my tongue the taste was like warm coins and I took a sip of\nbeer.\nWanting a cigarette, Thomas turned his shoulders, looking for his shirt\nwhich lay just out of reach. He leaned out of the water and stretched his\narm toward his Winstons. The sight of his wet body startled me. I had not\nseen him naked before, not close like that, and I had not really imagined\nit\u00E2\u0080\u0094though physically, as I've said, he always made himself felt. Now in\none breath I was more conscious of myself, my own body. First came a\npanic that nearly made me shake. Suddenly those rumours were whispering again, bitterly in my mind\u00E2\u0080\u0094maybe others had seen something all\nalong that I had just not figured out, or had the guts to face? But right\naway an even stranger rush of faith pushed this aside, as if my fear were\nunimportant. Thomas' body was chiselled and corded with muscle, ex-\n64 tended only for a moment while these things passed through my head.\nThen he settled back in the water holding the lit cigarette in one raised\nhand. I was staring up at the stars, aware of him watching me now, as if\nhe might have read my senses. Our hair was curly damp and our faces\nhad begun to sweat.\nBefore long we were too hot and both pulled ourselves out onto the\nsmooth stony bank to cool, leaving just our lower legs submerged. I still\nfelt his gaze. Finally he said, \"D'you know, I got a question for you...\"\nThen, right before he asked whatever it was, a woman appeared silently between us at the edge of the spring. It occurred to me that I might\nbe hallucinating, but I shifted forward about to duck into the water when\nThomas stopped me with a taunting jab of his dark eyes.\nThe woman was somewhat older than we were. She waited half a moment, almost as if to get a power over us, which she did. She said something, I don't remember what she said. Then she dropped her hiker's\nshorts, pulled her t-shirt over her head, and, murmuring softly, she lowered her body into the pool. Her breasts swayed and shadows caressed\nthe curve of her belly and thighs. I was breathing through my mouth, and\ncould feel the pulse at the back of my knees against the smooth wet rock.\nShe had long coppery hair which she held up with one hand at first. Then\nshe snugged her neck against the stone rim of the pool and there could\nkeep it dry. In the heat her lips expressed a deep-lung sigh. Her white\narms circled gently through the water. They folded under, lifting her\nbreasts while the water lapped between and into the hollow of her throat.\nShe moved beneath the water, her leg pressed to my own, and within me\ncame a sudden fierce stir.\nA breeze parted the steam rising from the spring, and with it drifted\nthe spicy pitch smoke of the fire at the edge of my vision. Light scampered like spirits bent on mischief in the pines. Thomas was leaning toward the woman with his weight on one rigid arm, and a perfectly calm\nsmile on his face. He looked strong, but not at all threatening at that moment. The woman arched her back, so that for a moment my eyes\ntouched her breasts, then fastened on the stem of her throat. She was\nsmiling too. Gradually I caught my breath and then I tried to smile\u00E2\u0080\u0094it appeared to be the thing to do. All my nerves were keen and focused, and\nbriefly it seemed that I had a grasp of some mystery, but then of course\nshe slipped away.\n\"Barbara? Barbara?!\" A man's loud voice, angry and very drunk, intruded on the night. Thomas turned his head, I saw the violent glint in his\neye and I thought\u00E2\u0080\u0094oh Jesus.\nThe woman in the water had a look on her face that seemed uncertain.\nMoments passed. And they passed too slowly for me now, because the\n65 thought of her husband confronting Thomas had me frightened. We were\nout in the middle of nowhere. Finally she stood. We were watching her\nclosely. Her skin had flushed with heat. The water on her body ran with\nstarlight. And no trouble did occur, thanks to Barbara, who had the sense\nto put her clothes back on and return to her husband. She left us her\nsmile.\nDawn of the third Sunday in July\u00E2\u0080\u0094Thomas lights another Winston, the\nquick flame startles the horse. He swings his head and mane, his muscles\nroll and the line of his strong flank deepens as he wheels away.\nI shift my back, still reclined against the windshield. Thomas turns his\nhead, toward me but not far enough to meet my eyes. The edge has gone\nfrom his mood, or the anger has been replaced by another feeling that at\nfirst I can't recognize, not coming from Thomas. His profile is highlit by\nthe big light at the end of the rodeo arena.\nHe asks, \"D'you ever wonder what's gonna happen later, like, from\nnow on?\" Then he looks right at me, and I nod yes. It is fear. He too is\nfrightened. He says, slowly, \"D'you know, what's gonna happea?\"\nHe keeps looking at me, and all at once seems so much like a young\nbrother, also without a father, almost innocent\u00E2\u0080\u0094not a tough guy, and\nsure not a guy with much idea of a future. I want to touch his hair, put my\nhand on his shoulder, but naturally I don't. More than that I want to tell\nhim that whatever happens it might be okay, the future, but I can't do\nthat either. I look down at my fingers splayed against the warm red metal\nhood of the Monaco.\n\"No,\" I say. \"I don't.\"\nThomas stares out at the horses. That buckskin bronc is frisking\naround with the first rays of light, twisting its meaty neck, glaring at us,\nbut most of the bunch are still dozing. Thomas says, \"Fuck it anyway.\"\nThen after a moment his face flashes with a grin, a devilish sort of look.\nHe says, \"Hey man, I got an idea.\" He hops off the hood of the car,\nswings over the rails of the fence, and walks in his shiny lizard boots in\nthe soft sand and sawdust inside the corral. Just like a fool he goes over\nand opens the gate. And then starts walking right at that crazy buckskin\nand waves his arms. Horse bolts and kicks. He walks around behind the\nbunch clapping his hands. \"Gdyap!\" And he chuckles.\nHe moves with a sort of strut, but grace as well. And for all his cowboy\nboots and jeans and Bruins hockey sweater he looks like some damn\nComanche in an old western movie, running off the cavalry's mounts. I\nlaugh aloud. Then I whoop, jump the fence and join in the chase. We run\nthose knot-headed horses helter skelter through the gate. They throw\n66 their heels, they whinny and snort, and their hooves pound as they gallop\nover packed dirt of the parking area.\n\"Heeyeeeeeah! Heee! HEEYEEOOOAHEE!!\" Thomas shrieks and\nhowls, while I laugh with each stride, I stumble and reel from laughing,\nand it seems my laughter bucks along with the freed horses.\nCowboys and women step out in their underwear from the doorways of\nthe campers. Their legs are much whiter than their arms, and their hair is\nall askew. They express an irritable wonder at what the hell is going on.\nNow Thomas and I are hightailing it for the car.\n67 Alice Tepexcuintle\ntwo poems\ntoxic WHAT\ntoxic WHAT air pollution so you cant\nbreathe if the air is all plugged up\nwith carbon monoxide fumes OH NO cars\nand motorbikes do it WHAT pollute like\ncrazy wish i could drive one now but\nsome people might get mad SO WHAT\nriding a motorcycle is a lot more fun\nthan breathing anyhow dont ask me to\ngive it up please and smoking cigarettes\nis great too i like doing it right\nin the middle of gas station puddles\nWOW psychedelic colours look so beautiful\nswirling on the pavement i cant wait\nfor them to EXPLODE yeah bits of\nmetal scrap flames and the smell of\nburning rubber black smoke filling the\natmosphere looks like i dig it and\nthe noise pollution too is my favourite\nloud explosives pieces of machinery\nscraping the pavement and sparks shooting\neverywhere is totally cosmic yeah\nsmashed gas tanks smoldering sending up\nbig filthy clouds of exhaust so\nTOXIC i love running thru it and\nbreathing deeply delicious my head\nreeling i cant bear the responsibility\nof my addictions QUICK get me back\nto the seventies when it was still okay\nto drive fast\n68 So nobody told you\nSo nobody told you kid the summerjunk makes you an addict\nhead home head home kid thru the huckleberry crush\nso nobody knows you kid lay down the hucklegrass\nyer veins feel the summerjunk push\nso nobody told you kid thought you could hold the hucklerush\nyer small blood delinquent yer red stained dress\nbetter head home head home collect yer summer spoils\nyer nowhere kid the summerjunk fools you\nstay too long in the bitter sun better\nhead back to where you lose inspiration\nthe cool summer love dwindles to a seed\nThis wild dirt knows yer foot print\nthe huckleweeds swish to cover yer head\nthe trucks fool past this is the honey kid\nyer heart black pulling you the vacuum cleaner wind\nthis is the honey the hucklejunk thirst\nyou force forward against the sidewalk scorch\nyou make this pact with the purple darkness\npull yer honey down drink like\nits the last time kid yer nowhere just\ncaught red handed in the ramshackle bush\nbetter lay down lay down kid let the\nhuckledrug hit you dont remember anything just\nyer red stained dress yer red stained dress\ntestimony to the first summer killing\nBut sometimes you cant get it sometimes you cant\nfind the trick no bush to ransack in the twilight august\nall the huckles crushed so you cant\nlose it kid you cant forget\nthis summers crash landing in the primitive dirt\njust the shock the sudden realization you wont\nbe getting off the huckletrain the buck stops\n69 here the late summer finds no fix\nthe huckleweeds swish grab you dream you cant\nwash the huckleblood from yer hands\nyou dream the thick guilt the criminal\nred yer dress forever witness you cant\nlose it yer bones remember the summer massacre\nthe dust in yer lungs the dust in yer lungs\nyer mind blown to seed you can only\nlay down lay down kid pull the night around you\nlike a shroud nobody to save you from this\nwasteland of longing\nSo you finally blew it kid you finally lose\nyer passage thru the summers tangled bush\nyer eyes grow deluded so the bulldozers\nfooled you thought you could\nhang around summerlong freeload the huckledrug\nbirds dont flap like they used to\nthe flowers push down blow yer soul to seed\nyou taste defeat now the flavour of gasoline\nthe grass blades cut you dont care you just\nhang around an empty bottle nobody to fill\nyer veins running restless across\nthe bulldozer shadows\ngetting larger now plowing you watch the hucklebush\ngo down crash scintillating yer dreams squash\nall yer summer squalor turns to dust\nwell you lose kid yer scooped up the bulldozers\nknow you cant last one clean season\nyer red stained dress brands you stand exposed\nyer body needs the hucklejunk like oxygen\nbetter go home go home kid better go back\nto where you ramble the twilight august\nto where you hit the infinite hucklerush\nthe lawless horticulture of yer\ndesperation\n70 Richard Harrison\ntwo poems\nAt the Hockey Hall of Fame\nI saw\nthe Russian sweaters from '72: they were homemade and eccentric-\nwool with tiny felt letters sewn on, the letters curled from the wool, like\nthe bits on the costumes my mother sewed for the school Centennial play\nwhere I was a boy transported 100 years into the future, to the Canada\nI'd never see: smooth-running, and prosperous and completely English,\nlike the school. Above their old clothing, the players move in ways only\nskating can offer: hips extended, heads leading, the hands forging a perfect circuit with the stick and the padded shoulders, legs together to the\nside, an angle only speed delivers from falling.\n71 An African hockey story\nWhen the manager of the art gallery in the Hotel Ivoire sees the flag on\nmy pack, he tells me he loves my country and he plays hockey on the rink\nthat lies chilled like a pie in the middle of the hotel on the equator where\nleaves rot as they grow and the air is sweet as apples with their dying. I\nsay What positkni? He says Left wing. I say Like Bobby Hull, and\nBobby's name makes it: he draws his hand up and it smiles at the end of\nhis arm: This is The Shake, the one that begins with the slap of palm\nagainst palm, the one between men who've found enough between them\nto confirm the world for the day and go on. Tomorrow I will skate on this\nrink like the pros back home, way ahead of schedule and nature; I will tell\nyou I touched the ice and I could be any boy in love.\n72 Georgie's Habit\nJohn Isaacs\nMy mother was a collector of volume ones. Her shelves were\npacked with free first volume tomes that didn't quite make it to\nthe letter \"b.\" She knew all about allotropes and antelopes and\nAnchorage, Alaska. Ask her about baboons or zeppelins and she\nfrowned. Yet her fascination with the \"a\" section was diversion enough to\nprevent her from investing in a complete Rand McNally, Funk & Wagnall\nset.\nShe was on \"attic\" the day she found my things. It was attic conversion\nday, a useful idea she had gotten licking her way through volume one of a\n\"do-it-yourself\" encyclopedia. She had this notion of turning the attic into\na playroom, complete with red cedar ceiling and skylight windows and\ntongue-and-groove subflooring that would prevent my little brother and\nme from crashing through the ceiling of my room. I was twelve then, but\nthat's not what stopped her. She scrapped the idea when she found the\nhabit I had put in the attic.\nShe climbed up and down the attic ladder four, five times before calling\nher sister-in-law, the sister, on the kitchen phone. Buzz and I came out of\nhiding to listen on the upstairs extension. We put our ears together and\ndid our best not to laugh at Mom's voice. She changed it so when she\ntalked to Sister Georgeanne. It was softer, milder, cherubic, but we\ncouldn't tell Mom this without her raising it and proving us right.\nMom went on and on about the habit. \"It's as if Nate wanted me to find\nit,\" she said in her soft telephone voice. \"He knew I was going up there!\"\nSister Georgeanne promised she'd come to the house sometime the following week\u00E2\u0080\u0094sooner if she could get a break in her teaching schedule-\nto have a talk with me. She was the closest thing to God Mom knew.\nMom stopped going to Mass the day Dad died. She never told her sister-\nin-law this; instead, she told her how Buzz and I went to St. Sylvester's\nevery Sunday and obligation day. Mom made sure we did.\nEvery so often she begged Sister Georgeanne to come over and put\nGod back in me, something my mother had always relied on my father to\ndo. That's why she called Sister Georgeanne after she found what I put in\nthe attic. Sister Georgeanne calmed Mom down and assured her there\n73 was nothing that serious to worry about (Georgie was good that way).\nWhen Mom had finished talking to Georgie, she called me into the den\nand made me stand in front of her while she checked her references. She\nselected two home medical encyclopedias and thumbed her way through\nthe volume ones.\n\"Why would you take that?\" she pointed. We both looked at the habit,\ndraped on the sofa, looking like Georgie's shadow. \"And from your Aunt\nGeorgie! She's so good. She's been so good to us.\"\n\"I know,\" I said. And I meant it. Georgie had always been special to\nus, even more so after my father died. She had a strength, a vitality, that\nrubbed off on Mom, my little brother Buzz, and me.\nMy mother pulled me closer to her and rubbed my scalp like she was\nlooking for something. \"You never took anything of mine, did you? A\ndress? A blouse?\"\n\"No,\" I said, and that seemed to ease her a bit.\n\"What else have you taken?\"\n\"Lots of things,\" I said.\n\"Like what?\"\n\"I took some of Dad's things you wanted to get rid of.\" I was sure she\nknew this already.\n\"What else have you takea?\"\nI looked away from her.\n\"Answer me.\"\n\"Once I took a frog's liver from school.\"\n\"Have you even taken anything else from Georgie? From your friends?\nFrom me?\"\nI didn't answer her.\nShe raised my eyelids with her thumb, placed the back of her hand on\nmy forehead, then flipped her way through the volume ones. \"Look what\nyou're doing to me,\" she said, closing her books, bothered that she had\ntried to find something in the \"a's\" to explain me.\nMom didn't say much about the other things I put in the attic. There\nwas Dad's pocketwatch and protractor and corporal stripes with black\nthread still looped around the edges, and a girlie magazine and three\npacks of lubricated Trojans I found in his sock drawer one day. Mom just\nmentioned these things like she was reading them from one of her books.\nAll she cared about was Sister Georgeanne's habit, and what it was doing\nin the attic.\nI took Georgie's habit one summer week she stayed with us between\nteaching semesters. Georgie taught voice at an all girl's school just\ntwenty miles from our Pittsburgh home. She never wore her habit during\n74 her stays, just when she arrived and left. She had her own special wardrobe, suits and skirts, mainly; strong twilled fabrics with diagonal ribs for\nwinter, and over-the-knee, over-the-elbow rayons and cottons for summer. Once in a while I saw her in one of Mom's things, and she smiled\nand blushed when I told her how nice she looked.\nHer habit was easy to steal. I just went into the guest room the day after she arrived and took it from the closet. She didn't miss it till the end of\nthe week, while she was packing to go back to the convent. It was black\ngabardine, belted and pleated at the waist, with a big white collar that\nlooked like angel wings. Georgie had also brought a simple black bonnet\nwhich tied under the chin. I took this also. Mom and Buzz had searched\nthe house, but Sister Georgeanne looked at me and said it would show up\nsooner or later.\nMy mother sent Georgie's habit to the cleaners the day after she found\nit. She made it clear to me that I would pay for my sin\u00E2\u0080\u0094first in the confessional, then at the cleaners. I did what she said, but not exactly. The day\nthe habit was ready to be picked up, I went to the cleaners first, then carried the habit four blocks to the supermarket, where I bought a pack of\nbaseball cards and a volume two that was on sale before I went to St. Sylvester's.\nThe priest was finishing up morning Mass when I walked into the\nchurch. I found a pew and watched him work. He wore a loose fitting\nouter garment over his sleeveless chausuble. Both looked white and\nclean, though I suspected he was sweating holy water under all those layers. But he didn't appear flushed at all; rather, cool and reverent with a\nsilk embroidered band about his neck and a short stole hanging from his\nwrist. The way he moved in his vestments made me think of Aunt\nGeorgie, how her habit brought out the best in people. She had said so\nmany times\u00E2\u0080\u0094people behaved when they saw her in full habit. My mother\nalways laughed at this. Georgie's habit may have brought out the best in\npeople, if only for a while, but it was Georgie herself who always brought\nout the best in Mom.\nI thought about the weekends and holidays Georgie spent with Mom\nand Dad and Buzz and me, gutting fish in the summer, fingering the piano\nand spinning records in the winter. During Christmas, Dad often asked\nher to sing for us, and he and I sang along. Dad was flat and I was loud,\nbut somehow Georgie made our trio sound good. Mom was always too\nembarrassed to sing, but she liked to slow dance with Dad when Georgie\nsang a capella. I felt bad for Georgie then, while she sang alone, watching\nMom and Dad in each other's arms. I'm not sure why I felt that way\u00E2\u0080\u0094\nGeorgie looked so happy and content. She usually talked me into dancing\nwith her, and after a while, we'd cut in on Mom and Dad.\n75 I liked to watch Mom dance with Georgie. They taught each other the\nlatest steps, spinning and tapping and waltzing and dipping, finally flopping onto the sofa, all teeth and giggles. Mom laughed a lot then, with\nDad at her side, Buzz and me in the chorus, and Georgie in the house, orchestrating it all.\nI stopped daydreaming when the priest said the final prayer and walked\npast me on his way to the confessional box. I practiced what I would say\nto him, how I would tell him about my mother, but I thought too long, and\na line of people got ahead of me. The longer I waited, the more I decided\nI didn't need to confess anything. I ran out of church and down Sycamore\nhill, the cellophane over the habit rustling in the breeze.\nWhen I got home, the first thing my mother asked was if I went to\nchurch. I nodded and handed her the habit. She was checking it over\nwhen the telephone rang.\nBuzz answered it. He pulled the cord away from us as far as he could\nand mumbled something into the mouthpiece before hanging up and running upstairs to his room.\n\"Buzz!\" Mom yelled. \"Who was that?\"\n\"No one,\" he answered. \"It was for me.\" Mom and I knew he was lying. Buzz was only six. He never got phone calls, though he liked to make\nthem. Mom had tried masking tape over the dial and no television for a\nweek, but that didn't stop Buzz. He liked to see who he could get by picking ten numbers.\nMom got out her telephone index and dialed a few wrong numbers before she screamed out my name. \"Get in here,\" she said. \"And bring\nyour brother.\"\nI ran upstairs and pulled Buzz out from under the bed. \"Nate,\" he said,\n\"it was that same man. He asked for Mom again. I hanged up like you told\nme to.\"\n\"Good work,\" I said. \"Now come downstairs. Mom wants to yell at us.\nNo snitching.\"\nBuzz ran down the stairs. When he got to the bottom, he put his hand\nup to his mouth and zipped his lip.\n\"Which one of you has been playing with my telephone book?\" Mom\nasked. She looked at Buzz and he pointed to me.\n\"Nathaniel!\" she said. \"This has to stop. The phone bill is out of sight.\nAndyow!\" she said, pointing at Buzz. \"Keep your fingers off that dial.\"\n\"But I'm trying to get Dad!\" he said.\n\"Oh, Buzz,\" Mom said, squatting down in front of him. \"You're making\nMommy poor. You just can't call heaven. There's no telephone pole up\nthere.\"\n\"Are too,\" Buzz said. \"Nate said so. I can get through if I try real\n76 hard.\" Buzz glanced at me then ran upstairs and slammed his door.\nMom turned her back to me. \"I don't know what's gotten into you,\"\nshe said, flipping through the Yellow Pages. She dialed then put her hand\nover the mouthpiece. \"Go check on Buzz,\" she said. \"He's too quiet.\"\nI knew Buzz was all right. When Mom wasn't looking, I took her directory to my room and thumbed through the pages. She got a new directory each year, adding and deleting names, addresses, numbers. I was\namazed how different Mom's directory was from the year before. There\nwere the schools and Georgie and both sets of grandparents, but most of\nthe names I didn't know. Mom was always updating, redecorating,\nthrowing away the old. But I recognized Dad's work number on page\none, a spot it had in all the directories I could remember.\nSome of the numbers I changed, turning threes into eights, ones to\nsevens and fours. Others I changed to Georgie's number.\nAfter she had finished her call, Mom came upstairs and took the directory away from me. \"What did I just say?\" she yelled, waving her phone\nbook in front of my face. She carried Sister Georgeanne's habit over her\nshoulder with two fingers curled around the hanger.\n\"You keep it nice for her,\" she said, handing it to me. I hung it in my\ncloset. \"And you better apologize to her when she comes to get it.\"\n\"When is she coming to get it?\" I asked.\n\"Hopefully, by the end of the week,\" she said. \"And I think she deserves a damn good explanation.\"\n\"She can't come sooner?\"\n\"No,\" Mom said, squinting hard. She walked to the doorway, looked\nback at me, then shook her head all the way to Buzz's room.\nGeorgie's habit rocked gently on the hanger. The collar was stiff and\nturned up at the bottom\u00E2\u0080\u0094too much starch, Mom had complained. But it\nlooked pretty to me, flapping against the black gabardine, white and fresh\nand clean.\nAll I knew were the sounds of the night, and they told me that Sister\nGeorgeanne wasn't expected early next morning. There were the whispers, the giggles, and before that, the rattle of a car, the click of the front\ndoor. And later, not much later, the squeak of the stairs, the rhythm of\nold springs.\nThere were other sounds too, one that frightened Buzz enough to\nseek the protection of my covers.\n\"Hey, Nate,\" he said, shaking my shoulder, \"that man was peeing in\nour bathroom.\"\nI had heard it too. I knew it wasn't Buzz. His was a spray, a trickle in\nthe middle of the night. What I heard was the product of a bigger bladder.\n77 \"It's OK,\" I whispered. I picked him up and sat him next to me. He put\nhis head under the pillow, and I went under with him. \"He'll be gone before breakfast,\" I said. \"You'll see.\"\nBuzz slid closer to me. \"What's he doing here now?\"\nI took the pillow off our heads and put my arm around him. His breath\nsmelled sweet, like new bubblegum. \"Mom let him use it,\" I said. \"His\ntoilet's broken.\"\nBuzz laid on his back, thinking over when I told him. \"Couldn't he stay\nhome and use a can or something?\"\n\"Oh no,\" I said.\n\"Can't he fix it?\"\n\"He's not like Dad,\" I said. \"Dad could fix anything.\"\n\"Even toilets?\"\n\"You bet.\"\n\"He didn't even flush.\"\n\"Dad always flushed.\"\n\"I don't think he washed his hands good.\"\n\"Dad always washed his hands.\" I told Buzz about Dad then, the way\nhe fixed things, things Buzz wouldn't have remembered. He was only\nthree when Dad died.\nWhen I thought he was asleep, Buzz tapped me on the back. \"Why\ndidn't he pay someone to fix his toilet?\"\nI rolled over and thought hard. \"He's too poor,\" I said. \"He can't afford\nit. Can't even pay his water bill. Ain't got a drop of water. That's why\nMom let him use our bathroom.\"\nBuzz covered me with the sheets, and I left them on, although it was\nwarm in my room. \"Poor man,\" Buzz said. \"Can't even afford jammies.\"\nHe covered himself with the sheets and turned his head.\nJust then I felt the need to tell Buzz something, something real, something true, but he fell asleep before I could articulate it. I tossed and\nturned, thinking about the man in Mom's room. Then I thought about the\nnext day, and how it would differ from the Labour Days we celebrated\nwhen Dad was alive.\nMy father had taken legal holidays seriously. He always complained\nthere weren't enough of them. But he believed that commemorating the\nsame person every year (always male, usually president) or the same\nevent (usually war related) was a redundant practice that displayed a national lack of imagination. Dad insisted that the actual commemoration\nwas not as important as the family celebration, and he went out of his way\nto give us days we would always remember.\nSundays were common law holidays around our house. No one was allowed to work. Labour Day, when my father was alive, was the ultimate\n78 Sunday. We'd take a trip on a liner up the three rivers, or spend the day\nin the dark of a movie theater, or just get in the car and take a long drive\nto the country.\nDad never drove on these trips. He sat in the back of our VW, pointing\nout sights of interest while Mom kept her eye on the road. I sat next to\nher, the map spread out between us. Mom didn't read maps well, and she\ncounted on me to tell her where to turn. That was my job, Dad told me.\n\"Make sure your mother doesn't get lost.\"\nMom was a good driver, and she had a good, preconceived idea of what\nroads she should take, but once she got behind the wheel, things flashed\nby her too quickly, and she needed me to point her in the right direction.\nDad pointed at cows and cornfields and places here and there that\nmight be good stops for homemade country grub, but Mom kept her eyes\nstraight ahead. \"Tell me what it looks like,\" she said. Dad described\ngrasses with dark red grains, silos and cattle I could never see, and the\nway the sun reflected off the ponds, making them appear as smooth as\nice. Mom had this thought then, I was sure\u00E2\u0080\u0094how Dad's eyes could be\nbad enough to have her drive, yet sharp enough to see detail roadside and\nbeyond. Mom never articulated this thought to Dad, at least never in my\npresence. I hoped she had figured it out, like I had.\nOur country trips stopped soon after Buzz was born. Buzz was a restless traveller, and the smell of field fertilizer and Buzz's diapers was not\nDad's idea of holiday celebration. Dad's blood sugar had been fluctuating\nthen also, to the point that he had to tell Mom to pull over two or three\ntimes a trip so he could get out his little vial and reagent strips and check\nhow sweet his urine was.\n\"Dad was sweeter than the man in the bathroom,\" I whispered to\nBuzz, and he turned around and put his arm around me.\nIn the morning, my mother made me go to church again, and she told\nme to take Buzz along. She insisted Labour Day was a holy day of obligation. The morning was hot and sticky and I didn't feel like dressing up.\nBuzz was still toddler enough to get away with shorts, but I had to slip on\nmy Sunday pants and stiff shoes, which meant socks, something I wore in\nthe summer only when I went to St. Sylvester's.\nMom cracked ice from a tray. She rubbed the cubes over her neck and\nforehead. She did this slowly, in little circles, her lips parted and eyes\nshut. She slid two cubes between her lips to let me know the subject was\nclosed.\nI told her I didn't think Labour Day was a holy day, but there was no arguing with Mom when she wasn't arguing, which meant she wasn't sure\nshe was right.\n79 \"I hope Georgie's coming over today,\" I said. Mom bit down on her\nice. \"If I didn't know better...\" she said, then she pushed Buzz and me\nout the front door.\nThe walk to St. Sylvester's was ten minutes up Sycamore. Buzz ran up\nthe hill and waited for me outside the church door. He stopped next to\nthree pews before he found the one he liked. He flattened his palms\nagainst the seat and pressed himself up and down.\n\"Sit still,\" I whispered. \"You got a bug up your shorts?\"\nBuzz motioned for me to come closer, and I lowered my head. \"I got\nTexas yesterday,\" he said, curling his dialing finger. \"He was nice.\" I put\na finger to my lips as Mass started.\nBuzz tapped me on the shoulder. \"How far is heaven?\" he asked.\n\"It's far,\" I whispered. \"Now be good.\"\n\"It's too far, isn't it?\"\nI slid closer to Buzz. \"No way!\" I said. \"You just have to keep on trying. It's like a game. You pick the lucky ten numbers, then you can talk to\nDad.\"\n\"But Mom says I ain't allowed,\" Buzz said. \"She says I'm making her\npoor.\"\n\"She doesn't care about the money, Buzz! She just doesn't think you\ncan do it. She doesn't want you to be disappointed. It takes a clever fellow to pick the right ten numbers. I don't think Mom thinks you're smart\nenough to do it.\"\nBuzz's eyes lit up. \"You think I'm smart enough, don't you?\"\n\"You're Einstein. Now shut up.\"\nI had a feeling this Labour Day was starting off wrong. I missed those\nLabour Days when my father was alive and healthy. He started Labour\nDays off with a bang. He'd always have something planned for us.\nGeorgie spent few Labour Days with us. It was usually a busy day for\nher, preparing for the first day of school.\nOur last Labour Day with Dad was spent at home. It was a rainy, dark\nday spent sprawled out on the living room floor around a Monopoly\nboard. We kept an eye on Buzz so he wouldn't put houses and hotels in\nhis mouth. Dad rolled the dice and told us about the squares he landed on,\nPennsylvania Avenue and Park Place and jail, like he had been to these\nplaces many times, though we knew he never had.\nMom never won at Monopoly. Dad teased her about this. She was\nquite fastidious about the rules though, and whether Dad and I had followed them or not. I think she suspected some sort of conspiracy, but\nthe truth was Mom was a lousy player. She was better as a partner,\nwhen she teamed up with Dad against the Quinns and O'Reillys.\nOnce I saw her sneak a few extra houses on her property, but she put\n80 them back after looking at Dad, who hadn't noticed, I was sure. Mom always settled for less, Baltic and Mediterranean, Connecticut and Vermont and Oriental, instead of fighting her way around the board and trying for bigger, better things. She gave up easily too, hinting we should\nstart over again when the dice weren't rolling her way. And when Mom\nlost spirit, she'd take herself an extra deed or two, only to put them back\nwhen Dad went on about Marvin Gardens and B&O Railroad and other\nspaces on the board. Dad was a player, and he never did lose spirit, even\nwhen it rained and we were stuck in the living room, listening to the\ndrops splattering off the barbecue. I think that's what Mom loved most\nabout Dad, needed most, and what I missed too, especially on Sundays\nand Labour Days.\nThere were noises in the night again, and I jumped out of bed and saw\nthat car in front of our house. I heard music downstairs as I checked on\nBuzz. He was asleep under his bed, already hiding from the morning, his\nfirst day of school.\nAs I tiptoed to my room, I heard that deep voice downstairs. I grabbed\nmy flashlight in my sock drawer and opened the door of my closet. The\nplastic shimmered as I slipped the habit off its hanger. I tiptoed into\nMom's room and spread the habit over the pillows, sitting it up against\nthe headboard. I heard that deep laugh. The habit wasn't enough. I found\nmy father's picture in my mother's drawer and laid it on the habit. The\nmusic stopped playing and I ran to my room.\nMetal scraped against the staircase railing, a bracelet, a watch, a ring,\nI could only imagine. There were sighs and whispers, then the sharp,\nquick click of Mom's bedroom door lock. I waited and waited before I\nheard that scream, Mom's, twice, loud into the night.\nBuzz ran into my room and jumped on my bed, hiding under the pillow.\n\"It's just the television,\" I said, but Buzz didn't come out. I heard muffled\nvoices\u00E2\u0080\u0094my mother's mostly\u00E2\u0080\u0094then the click of the bedroom door, and\nheavy footsteps down the stairs and out the front door. The car door\nslammed and the engine started and the house was quiet again.\nMom walked into my room and put on the light. She hung the habit in\nmy closet, slowly slipping it under the plastic, then turned around and\nlooked at me. She stood there for a while, arms folded as if she were\nchilled. I looked her straight in the eye. She flicked off the light and\npicked up Buzz and put him back in his own bed.\nMom avoided me the next morning. She spent the morning selling\nBuzz on his first day of school, and I checked Georgie's habit for dust and\nwrinkles. Buzz said it wasn't fair that I didn't start school for a few days\nyet. Mom agreed. She hugged Buzz extra tight before she helped him get\n81 on the bus. She squatted down in front of him and ran her fingers through\nhis hair. She looked at him with her \"my little boy is growing up too fast\"\nface, and it didn't wash off with her morning shower.\nLater that morning, Mom got out of her volume ones, the \"do-it-\nyourself\" decorating guide, and flipped to the antiquing chapter. She went\ndownstairs and spread newspaper on the basement floor. She came back\nupstairs and I helped her carry Dad's old rocking chair to the basement,\nthe chair she had started refinishing many times before. She cleaned off\nthe old surface with paint thinner and a rag, and roughed up the glossy\nexterior with sandpaper. But, again, she had trouble with the old chair\nthat morning, trouble actually continuing once she started. She opened a\ncan of satin-finish enamel and stirred it with her brush, looking through\nthe backboards at nothing in particular, it seemed to me. She smoothed\nthe brush against the edge of the can, but she just couldn't get the base\ncoat on the rocker. Mom spent the rest of the morning in the attic with\nher blueprints, probably to get away from me.\nBuzz was playing with the phone again when Georgie arrived at 5:30\nsharp. \"I'm getting closer,\" he said to me. \"I think I'm in the clouds.\"\nThe doorbell rang and I opened the front door. Georgie hugged me\nthen snuck up on Buzz and gave him a peck on the cheek. I saw her old\nred Ford parked in front of our house, newly waxed, as usual.\n\"Aunt Georgie,\" Buzz said, looking guilty. He put the receiver behind\nhis back. \"Guess what?\"\n\"What?\" Georgie asked. Buzz stood on the kichen chair and whispered\nsomething in Georgie's ear. Mom came downstairs and hugged her\nsister-in-law, but Georgie kept her eyes on Buzz, who handed Mom the\nreceiver.\n\"He's trying to call heaven!\" Georgie said. Mom picked Buzz up and\ncarried him out of the room. I nodded to Georgie like it was old news.\nGeorgie fluffed up her hair with her fingers. There was a line under her\nchin where her bonnet strap had been.\n\"Sure is hot,\" she said. I opened the refrigerator and grabbed her a\nbeer. Georgie liked beer in summer. She tilted her head back and\nswished the beer around like mouthwash.\nShe sat down and took another sip. She looked funny licking the froth\noff her lips.\n\"Your mother thinks you need help,\" she said.\n\"I do.\"\nGeorgie looked surprised, the same way she looked when Buzz told\nher about calling heaven. \"I didn't expect that,\" she said.\n\"Not the kind of help she thinks, though.\"\n82 \"Uh-huh,\" Georgie said, tapping the glass with her fingernail. \"What\nkind of help then?\"\nI looked at her eyes, light and clear, the colour of the beer. \"I need\nyour help. Mom needs your help.\"\n\"What is it, Nate?\"\n\"She misses Dad.\"\n\"So do I,\" she said. \"Don't you?\"\n\"She misses him at night.\"\n\"I see,\" Georgie said, finishing off her can. A line ran down her chin\nand dripped onto her blouse. \"Oh dear,\" she said, wiping her mouth with\nthe back of her hand. \"Oh dear.\"\nGeorgie looked me straight in the eye. \"The way a wife loves her husband ...\" she said. \"It's special. It's not like any other kind of love. It's\ndeeper than you or I can imagine. It's the kind of love that creates life. Do\nyou understand? Can you see how she would miss that?\"\n\"I remember how they danced when you sang for them,\" I said. \"I remember feeling bad for you because you didn't have someone to dance\nwith.\"\n\"There you are,\" Georgie said. \"Your mother misses that. It's not that\nshe doesn't remember your daddy. It's that she remembers him too\nmuch.\"\nAfter dinner, Buzz and I left Mom alone with Sister Georgeanne. They\ntalked late into the night, past Buzz's bedtime. Every so often I'd hear\nMom cry out, and I imagined Georgie dancing with her, holding her up,\ntelling her what steps to take.\nBuzz ran into my room that night and put his head on chest. \"I think\nMom's crying,\" he said.\n\"You got it wrong,\" I whispered. \"Georgie's teaching her how to sing.\"\nBuzz giggled. \"She's pretty bad, then.\"\nI flicked his ear with my finger. \"She'll get better. You wait and see.\"\nBuzz fell asleep before Georgie left. I apologized to Georgie and\nthanked her for not getting angry about the habit. She kissed me on the\nforehead.\n\"Where is it?\" Mom asked. She looked away, like Buzz did when she\ncaught him with his finger in the dial.\n\"I'll put it in your car, Aunt Georgie.\" I went upstairs to my room.\nBuzz was sleeping on his back\u00E2\u0080\u0094it was the only time of the day he didn't\nlook like he was up to something. I opened my closet door and took the\nhabit off the rack. Both collar tips poked through the plastic covering. I\npulled off the plastic and laid the habit on the bed next to Buzz for a minute. It seemed right there.\n83 It took Mom and Georgie a while to say good-bye. It was dark outside\nwhen I put the habit in Georgie's car. I looked back at the house to see if\nGeorgie and Mom were watching me, then stuffed the bonnet under my\nshirt and folded my arms over it. Georgie hadn't noticed the bonnet\nwasn't in her Ford, or if she had, she didn't say a word. I think she noticed. I felt good, knowing she'd be back for it soon.\nBuzz put one hand over another and thumped on my chest. It was his\nway to wake people up. He had seen it so many times on medical shows,\nthe way doctors brought people back to consciousness. That's what he\ntold me, in his own way, when I yelled at him for pounding my chest in\nthe middle of the night.\nHe grabbed my hand and tried to pull me out of bed. \"Please, Nate,\"\nhe said. \"Hurry, before he's gone.\"\nI jumped out of bed and looked out the hall window. There weren't any\ncars in front of the house. Buzz tugged at my arm and led me down the\nstairs. His hair was messy and it stood up in the back, grazing my arm\nwith each step.\n\"I got Dad!\" he said. \"You were right. There are poles in heaven!\"\nBuzz pointed to the telephone. The kitchen light was on, reflecting off\nthe white phone plastic. The receiver was on the table, and the cord dangled close to the floor.\nBuzz jumped up and down. \"He misses us. We can go visit him. Ask\nhim how we get there.\"\n\"Buzz, you can't call heaven. You just can't.\"\nBuzz pointed to the telephone. \"Pick it up, Nate. Hurry!\"\nI lifted Buzz with one arm. \"Listen to me,\" I said. \"I was playing a joke\non you. You can't call up there.\"\n\"Talk to Dad. He misses you too.\"\n\"It isn't Dad.\"\n\"Ask him what it's like up there. Ask him what the number is so we can\ncall him tomorrow. I forgot what numbers I did.\"\nBuzz stood on the kitchen chair and put the mouthpiece against my\nchin. I put my ear against the receiver. The connection was bad, a loud\ncrackle, a hiss, but I heard someone on the other end of the line. \"Who's\nthere?\" I asked.\n\"It's Dad!\" Buzz screamed. I was ready to hang up when I heard my\nname through the din. I made a face at Buzz. \"You told him my name.\"\n\"He already knows it,\" he said. \"Tell him I miss him. I'm gonna get\nMom.\"\nI pressed my ear against the receiver. I thought I heard Dad call my\nname, low but clear, as if he was sitting behind me in the VW, but I knew\n84 I had imagined it all. Mom followed Buzz down the stairs, and the line\nwent dead.\n\"He hung up,\" I said. Buzz's eyes started to water up. Mom made a\nface at me. \"But he wanted me to tell you something, Buzz. You're only\nallowed one phone call in heaven. It's like jail that way. So he told me you\ncan't call him anymore. But he said to look for him at night.\"\n\"Where?\" Buzz asked.\n\"Look at the moon, Dad said. Look at the moon, the stars, the sky,\nand he'll give you a sign.\"\nBuzz ran upstairs and stood on his bed, pressing his nose against the\nwindow.\nMom was talking insulation the day after Georgie's visit. She found the\nvolume two I had placed on her book shelf, the \"b\" section of the \"do-it-\nyourself\" decorating guide that I had bought at the supermarket. Fiberglass batts, expendable aluminum foil, Mom wasn't sure, but she talked\nexcitedly about getting on with the attic.\nFirst she wanted to finish what she had started in the basement, and\nshe spent most of the day there, putting a coat of enamel on the rocker\nbetween laundry loads. She let me help her, but when she saw I was getting paint everywhere except on the rocker, she asked me to go upstairs\nand check the mailbox, then to get her a glass of juice, then to watch for\nthe weather forecast on the noon news. Each time I returned to the basement, the mess I had made was gone.\nDuring one of my trips, I blasted one of Dad's albums on the stereo,\nand as I descended the basement stairs, I heard Mom singing. She was\nscrubbing her hands in the washtub. She didn't hear me come downstairs, because she never sang to be heard; in fact, I never knew she\nsang at all. She had a sweet, soft voice, almost as nice as Georgie's. She\nleaned over the washtub, swinging her hips, shifting her weight from one\nleg to the other. She shook-her hands over the sink, rocking back and\nforth to the beat of her song.\nWhen she turned around to dry her hands on the towel on the clothesline, she saw me. The blood rushed to her cheeks and she covered her\nface with the towel. I took the towel from her, placed it on my head, and\ntied it under my chin. \"You lead,\" I said, humming loud and flat as we\ndanced clumsily across the basement floor. Mom laughed long and hard,\nin a way I hadn't heard in a long, long time.\n85 Contributors\nSean Brendan Brown teaches English at Washington State University and has had\npoetry published in Ariel, Re Arts & Letters, Sunstone, Rocky Mountain Review, Sisyphus,\nWeber Studies, and the Windsor Review. His fiction has appeared in Pinehurst Journal and\nThe Silver Web.\nKaren Connelly is living in Avignon, France. Her first book won the Pat Lowther Award.\nShe is now working on a book of short stories.\nWilliam Cross' translations of Richard Exner have appeared in North America and the\nUnited Kingdom. He is currently at work on a collection of short stories.\nRichard Exner is a German poet-in-exile now living in California. His work is gaining recognition by the major newspapers shaping literary reputations in the German-speaking\nworld. Translations of his work are also beginning to bring him notice in North America.\nRichard Harrison lives in Toronto. His latest book is Recovering the Naked Man (Wolsack\n& Wynn, 1991).\nC.E. Hull was bom in 1965 and lives in Sydney, Australia, where he works as a poet and\nartist. He received his Bachelor of Creative Arts from Wollongong University, New South\nWales, in 1987, and has published in magazines in Australia, Canada, U.S.A., India, and the\nU K. His first manuscript of poetry In the Dog Box of Summer has been accepted by\nPenguin Publishers, Australia.\nCatherine Hunter is a poet living in Winnipeg, Manitoba.\nJohn Isaacs is a pharmacist and writing instructor at the University of Pittsburgh. He is a\nrecipient of the Raymond Carver Short Story Prize. His work has previously appeared in\nPRISM 30:1. First North American Rights for \"Georgie's Habit\" purchased by Carolina\nQuarterly.\nJoan Lennon is a Canadian living in Scotland with her husband, four sons and a cat named\nJeoffry.\nOscar Martens has work forthcoming in Event, Prairie Fire, and Queen's Quarterly.\nVan Newcomb is an artist living in Baltimore, Maryland.\nChristian Petersen now lives in Williams Lake, B. C. His fiction has appeared in Event,\nand is forthcoming in various other magazines. The \"Monaco\" story is \"one for the boys.\"\n86 Alison Touster-Reed has work collected in two volumes, The First Movement, and Bid\nMe Welcome. She has been widely published in the U.S.A., Canada, The United Kingdom\nand Australia in various magazines, including Carolina Quarterly, Jeopardy, Midwest\nQuarterly, Southern Poetry Review, Oxford Magazine, The Fiddlehead, Queen's Quarterly,\nThe Cambridge Poetry Magazine, Poetry Wales, Poetry Australia.\nGayla Reid grew up in Australia and now lives in Burnaby, B.C. She has only recently\nbegun to write fiction.\nMary Walters Riskin lives in Edmonton, Alberta, where she works as a freelance writer\nand editor. Her first novel, The Woman Upstairs, was published in 1987. She has since\ncompleted a collection of short stories and is now working on a second novel.\nJerry Saviano is a student in the creative writing programme at the University of Hawaii.\nAlice Tepexcuintle is a Vancouver based performance poet, rattle manufacturer and university drop-out.\n87 The Vancouver International Writers\nFestival is pleased to present the fifth\noff-site event at UBC co-sponsored by\nPrism International\nForemost Italian Writer\nDacia Maraini\nwith\nGenni Gunn\nDacia Maraini's bestselling novel, The Silent Duchess, and winner of the\nprestigious Italian literary prize, Premio Campiello, has just been published in\nEnglish by Peter Owen. Contemporary writer and alumni of UBC Creative\nWriting Department, Genni Gunn, is Ms. Maraini's Canadian translator.\nThe Frederic Wood Theatre\nThursday, October 22 ~ 12:30pm\nVANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL\nWRITERS FESTIVAL\nGRANVILLE ISLAND\nOCTOBER 21-25\nINFORMATION 681-6330\nPROGRAMS AVAILABLE AT: FINE BOOKSTORES, COMMUNITY\nCENTRES, LIBRARIES AND OTHER OUTLETS. p? 1\nliadleheaa\n1992 Wilderness Writing Contest\nBetter Homes and Gardens\n(including cats & vegetables)\nSince so many seized the opportunity to address nature issues and ideas\nwe've decided to offer a contest with a slightly different twist,\n(and yield to the overwhelming pressure from vegetarians and felinophiles).\nInterpret the title as imaginatively, or as literally, as you like.\nSubmissions to be no longer than 10 pages per entry;\nthe deadline is December 15, 1992.\nTo permit blind judging, please submit entries without your name\non individual pages.\nType your name on a special sheet.\nNo submission previously published, or accepted for publication,\ncan be considered.\nThe Entry fee is $16 and includes a year's subscription to\nThe Fiddlehead. Please send a self-addressed envelope and\nCanadian postage if you wish the manuscript returned.\nPrizes in honour of Fred Cogswell\n$200 each for Poetry, Fiction, Non-Fiction.\nWinners, and honourable mentions,\nwill be published in\nThe Fiddlehead.\nSend submissions to:\nBetter Homes & Gardens Contest\nThe Fiddlehead\nUNB PO Box 4400\nFredericton NB\nCanada E3B 5A3 1990 is International Year of Literacy.\nFive million Canadians cannot read\nor write well enough to function in\ntoday's society. Every Canadian has a\nfundamental right to the freedom that\nliteracy gives. You can help. Become\na literacy volunteer. Write to your\nmember of parliament. Read, and\nread to your children.\nFor more information, or to\nmake a donation, contact:\nCanadian Give the Gift\nof Literacy Foundation\n24 Ryerson Avenue\nToronto, Ont. M5T 2P3\n(416) 595-9967\nCanadian Give the Gift of Literacy is a project of the book\nand periodical industry of Canada. A NOVEL IN 3\nDAYS?\n15th ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL\n3-DAY NOVEL CONTEST\nLabour Day Weekend, 1992\nANVIL PRESS of Vancouver, Canada is pleased to\nannounce the 15th Annual International 3-Day\nNovel Contest (formerly sponsored by Pulp Press). The\ncontest will once again be held during the Labour Day\nWeekend, September 5-September 7,1992.\nSince its inception in 1978 as a barroom challenge, the\n3-Day Novel Contest has gone on to garner international\nattention and a reputation as the cheeky and\nuncompromising rebel of literary forms. Attracting\nwriters, both professional and first-time, from around the\nworld, the contest remains in a league of its own: The\nworld's most notorious literary marathon.\nSince its birth, interest in the contest has grown steadily,\nnow attracting over 400 writers annually.\nContestants can enter by sending an entry form to Anvil\nPress (address below) postmarked by September 4, and\nincluding an entry fee of $10. For a copy of the rules, an\nSASE (International Reply Coupons if from outside\nCanada) will ensure prompt return.\nFor more information, contact Brian Kaufman or Dennis\nBolen at\nAN , LPR [SS\nLITERAKY PUBLISHERS\n#15-. . s,B.C. Creative Writing M.F.A.\nThe University of British Columbia offers a Master\nof Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing. Students\nchoose three genres to work in from a wide range of\ncourses, including: Poetry, Novel/Novella, Short\nFiction, Stage Plays, "Periodicals"@en . "PR8900.P7"@en . "PR8900_P7_030_004"@en . "10.14288/1.0135398"@en . "English"@en . "Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library"@en . "Vancouver : The Creative Writing Program of the University of British Columbia"@en . "Materials provided for research and reference use only. Permission to publish, copy, or otherwise use these images must be obtained from the Prism international: http://prismmagazine.ca"@en . "Creative writing Periodicals"@en . "Poetry--Periodicals"@en . "Canadian literature -- Periodicals"@en . "Prism international"@en . "Text"@en . ""@en .