RED CEDAR REVIEW

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RED CEDAR REVIEW

BETTY BELL MIDNIGHT MAZE SERI GRAPH
BETTY BELL MIDNIGHT MAZE SERI GRAPH


Preceding Page: SANDYWINE / Poem By james harkness


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A MAGAZINE OF THE ARTS

PUBLISHED BY STUDENTS OF

MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

CONTENTS / volume one : number one / Spring 1963

RCR / FICTION

5 The Lie / Theodore sjogren

19 Apocalypse / Horace albaugh

33 Halloween’s Children / Walter lockwood

48 Three Sketches / richard slater

The Day Before

Something To Do On Saturday

The Spillway

52 No Road To Damascus / marinus swets

RCR / ESSAYS

28 Improvisation, Haiku, Jazz / pete nye

63 Voices From Underground / melvyn bucholtz

RCR / POETRY

1 Sandywine / james harkness

15 Four Poems / richard ogar

An Afternoon With The Seer

Insects

Twentieth-Century Theology

Final Separation

25 Two Poems / gerald bray

Not All Dreams Die With Awakening

Sometimes

31 The Lizard / philip heald

31 Death Room / james harkness

47 Two Poems / ron gervais

Writer’s Wife

As A Light Sinks

59 Once Upon A Once-Time Night / peggy case


60 Three Poems / melvyn bucholtz




Unknowns

December 6

Grindle


JOHN MCCORMICK UNTITLED SERIOGRAPH MONOPRINT
JOHN MCCORMICK UNTITLED SERIOGRAPH MONOPRINT



theodore sjogren

THE 
LIE

In the evening of the second day he heard her coming up the stairs to the top 
floor of the old wooden house. Outside it was dusk and the room was gray with 
the dim light from the one windowfalling across the bed. He lay still, and out 
in the hall he heard the old woman come along the corridor and stop before his 
door. After a moment of silence, she knocked on it.

“Mr. Simons,” she called. “Are you there, Mr. Simons?”

In the room, Mr. Simons turned over in the bed, onto his stomach, and 
breathed heavily into the pillow. He knew the woman understood he was there; 
there was nowhere else he could be, and she always knew when one of her 
boarders went out.

He lay quiet with his head in the pillow and did not bother to answer.

“Mr. Simons,” she said again. “I do wish you would answer. I've been 
worried about you. We all have.”

And he could imagine that: the small concern that fed dead lives: but he 
tried not to. He lay still in bed and made an effort to control the way of his 
thinking.

When he got home from work—yesterday, he thought, or was it the day 
before, or maybe last week when it was raining—when he came in, they 
were all sitting at the table and he paused on the stairs, saying he would not 
be down to eat.

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“I prepared for you,” she said. “Chicken and sweet potatoes and peas. It's 
all ready.”

“Well,” he said, “Mr Wimple can have mine. I'm not hungry.”

He looked at them all, and felt a wave of disgust pass through him, for 
himself as much as any of them, and as he went up the stairs he imagined the 
landlady shaking her head, waiting for his door to close so she could start talking 
about those men, how they never knew howto care for themselves and after a_ 
certain age were less than savage without a woman; Mr. Wimple not hearing 
and already eating the extra dinner; at the other end of the table Mr. O'Neil 
watching his chance to talk of his duties at the church and the two old sisters, 
who lived at the rear of the house, sitting icily after their brief meal and waiting 
their chance to leave, neither having said a word. He closed the door to his 
room and locked it. That was it; he had enough.

Now, he lay quietly in his bed, waiting for the woman, the landlady, to go 
away and leave him alone. He didn't know if this was his first, second, or third 
straight day in bed. He closed his eyes tightly and listened to the heavy sound 
of his breathing in the soft pillow.

“Mr. Simons,” the woman said, and he could tell she had her mouth to the 
door crack, “you haven't eaten in two days. And today your office called. Are 
you sick, Mr. Simons?”

Lying on his stomach, his eyes closed tight, he pressed his face harder into 
the pillow and felt the dryness of the pillowcase on his tongue. He opened his 
mouth and bit on it. It tasted sour.

“I told them you weresick,” she said. “I didn't know what else to say. You 
wouldn't answer when I called,” she said firmly.

Mr. Simons rolled over onto his back. Still his eyes were closed and he 
brought his knees up close to his stomach and turned partly on one side. If he 
said it was just the stomach flu and he wanted to rest she might go away. But 
now he didn't want to open his mouth and he was even a little afraid to hear his 
voice. It might not even sound like him.

“Can I get you something to eat?” she said; and then she seemed to realize 
that, for all purposes, she could have been talking to no one. “Really, Mr. Simons,” 
she said, “you should at least answer.”

But he knew now that she would go away. There were several moments of 
quiet, and then she said, “All right. All right, Mr. Simons,” and he heard her 
going away down the corridor, down the stairs and at the bottom her door open 
and shut.

After she was gone he lay very still and kept his eyes closed until he felt the 
muscles of his eyelids begin to ache. Although the room was warm, he lay 
under a sheet and two blankets. Outside he heard the cars going by on the 
street and then one of the city buses, stopping at the corner, and after a long 
while a police car went by with its siren on. He waited for another long time 

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to see if it would come back. But it didn’t and all at once he opened his eyes.

Now the room was completely dark. He looked up at the ceiling and moved 
his toes around against the heavy pressure of the sheet and blankets. He 
wondered if he would get up in the morning and go to work. At the office they 
at first would show concern, then anger for his not calling when he knew he 
was sick. He lay and wondered how long he had been sick without really 
knowing it.

Always, at the office, he told himself how all the people of the world worked 
because they had to eat and how it was not important that work give you 
anything outside of that. There were supposed to be people for whom it was 
not like that. But he would not let himself believe it and was not convinced that, 
even if they liked their work, they would do it if they did not eat by it.

About a year ago, one night after work, he went to a theater instead of going 
straight to the boarding house. Before the feature they showed a movie of an 
African tribe that greatly impressed him. The tribe lived in some part of the 
country which was quite barren and all the days were spent in constant search 
of food. It showed how they chased a giraffe for five days and, when at last 
they killed it, how they ate even the skin because it was too tough and thick to 
make into clothing.

The movie stirred something deep inside him, and he got up and left without 
seeing the feature. For hours that night he walked aimlessly, through the heart 
of the city, down through the factory district, out into the residential area and 
back. All through his body a desire for the struggle and the constant involvement 
of the hunt flared vivid and drove him on as if with actual hunger. Looking 
around him, at the paved streets and the tall buildings of the city, he felt some 
basic life had been lost to him. His mind and body felt cramped and dry. He 
needed to breathe, and around him there was no air. He needed life, needed his 
heart to open. But he was drowning in milk and honey.

By dawn he arrived back at the boarding house, threw himself on the bed, 
and with a quick swing of his arm sent the alarm clock in pieces across the 
room. He felt he was saved. Tomorrow he would quit his job. His life had 
found an answer, had heard the voice of reason, and soundly he slept.

By noon the sun was shining in brightly. He got up, sat in a chair by the 
window looking out at the street and tried to figure how to begin a life with 
survival directly involved and every act thus meaningful. But now something 
was wrong. The voice of reason had changed. In the day the world looked 
different and facts were clear and harsh and hard to avoid in the new light. Not 
knowing what to do he sat by the window and felt the fire die slowly within 
him. In his experience the life he dreamed of did not exist. At last he rose, got 
dressed, and went down to the office. He could barely talk to give a reason for 
his absence in the morning. And he promised it would not happen again.

Down the hall now he heard Mr. Wimple open and close his door and go 

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down the stairs and out into the street. His evening walk, he thought to himself. 
Once around the block and back. If he would just cross the street—but he 
wont, he thought; he's forgotten how.

Then, lying in bed, he discovered he hated Mr. Wimple. Or maybe not hate 
because it was not that positive; it was more like nausea, the way you view food 
when you yourself are sick. Well, he thought, maybe. But what day is it? He 
tried to remember if the landlady had said. He realized he was a little mixed 
up, slightly out of context, and his stomach was not so good. He put his hand 
down under the covers and wondered if it would get worse progressively. The 
world gets worse progressively, he thought. Progressively progressing. And while 
he was feeling his stomach he heard the landlady climbing the stairs again. His 
stomach muscles were tight and he held his knees up as far as they would go 
to his chest. 2

Outside the door he heard the landlady set something down on the floor.

“I have food for you,” she said. “I've thought it over, and if you don't open 
the door I'll use my key and come in.”

He lay still, and he looked up at the ceiling in the darkness.

“Well,” she said, “I'm coming in.”

Then he said, “No,” and was surprised that anything came out at all. His 
voice sounded right and now it seemed crazy that he had worried about it all 
that time. “You better not,” he said.

“What did you say?”

“I said no.” He took a deep breath and talked loudly, too loud he thought. 
“You better not. I don't know why. Please go away.”

“Don't worry, Mr. Simons,” she said. “I have food. It will do you good.”

He heard the key in the door, and he said, “No. Go away. Please,” but she 
came in, and he worried that perhaps she could not hear him or even that he 
was not really talking, that his voice was somehow not being heard and he was 
trapped within this thing called Simons, unable to get a message out.

When she came in, he saw her outlined in the door, the faint light of the 
hall behind her and falling yellow into the room, and he watched as she went 
across to the desk and put the tray down. At the window the night was solid 
black and she pulled the shade and opened the window crack at the bottom. 
As she passed the lamp in the corner, she turned it on, and Mr. Simons closed 
his eyes.

“You should let fresh air in,” she said. “This place is too stuffy. It's not 
healthy, not a little bit.”

He heard her moving around in the room, moving the night table over to put 
the tray on it, putting the phone on the floor with a faint ring and a groan as 
she knelt down, and then she got up and turned the quilt back.

“Don't do that,” said Simons. “Don't touch me!”

He heard her step back from the bed. He knew he had scared her, and he 

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felt angry and then foolish. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I didn't mean anything. I'm 
not well.”

“I thought you were too warm,” she said.

“No,” he said. “I'm all right.”

“Can I get a doctor? There's a man down the street we always call when one 
of our roomers gets sick.”

“No,” he said. “It's kind of a thing I've had before. A doctor won't help.”

“I brought some soup and crackers and a sandwich.”

“The one thing I can't do is eat,” he said. “I know that. If I can go long 
enough without eating maybe I can kill it.”

“Kill what?” she asked.

“You wouldn't understand,” he said.

He realized with the talking it was getting a slight bit better. Inside he 
began to ease up a little.

“I might,” she said. “I've had roomers a long time now. Before we had a 
farm and lived with a family come from the South and I've had a lot of experience 
taking care of sick ones. Rooming like this you meet a lot of people.”

“TIl bet,” he said.

He lay on his back under the warm, coarse texture of the sheet and fixed his 
eyes steadily on the smudged white plaster ceiling. Secretly, without showing it, 
he was glad the woman came and now, for the first time, he relaxed the grip he 
had on himself and felt with relief the taut muscles of his stomach slacken.

“Listen,” he said, “sit down, won't you?” and he felt some more of the pressure 
go. She stood with her apron on, her arms folded on her heavy breasts, and he 
looked over at her now.

“What was your husband like?” he asked. “Talk about your husband.”

“Well,” she said, “he liked it on the farm. We came to the city after we 
couldn't make any money at it. We were lucky to get this place. We were here 
five years before we got it.”

“Tll bet he wanted to go back,” said Simons. “He wanted to go back. Didn't 
he?”

“Yes,” she said. “Once he retired he wanted to. He wished he had it to live 
on again. He liked the place all right.”

“Ah,” he said; he nodded his head and let it fall back into the pillow.

“Don't you think you better eat something?” she said.

“No,” he said.

“When my man was sick I always gave him plenty of hot soup and tea. I'll 
get you some tea later.”

“No tea,” he said. But he wanted her to go on. He wanted to listen hard to 
her words and make them seem real. “How did he die?”

“My husband?”

“Yes.”

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“Well,” she moved in the chair a little. Simons watched her while something 
seemed to come back to him. It was like a dirty idea he could not get out of 
his head; he could not shake it. “He was retired two or three years, around the 
house and all. And then one night he died, sitting up by the window he died. 
He was older than me. He married late and I was only seventeen.”

Simons closed his eyes, and put his hand on his stomach and felt it coming 
back. For a moment he was very much afraid of it.

“I think you better go,” he said.

“Are you all right? Can I do something?”

“No,” he said. “You go now. I’m all right. You go and come back later.”

When she left, he brought his knees up again and did not hear her descending 
the stairs or the door close to her apartment. It was dark again, and he turned 
over so his face was buried deep in the pillow, his breath moist and hot on the 
cloth and on his cheeks, and he started to laugh, letting his breath out evenly 
at first and then laughing harder and harder. It was a release for the thing in 
his stomach and he did not try to stop it, having his face in the pillow so it was 
not too loud anyway, and when it was over he lay very quiet under the covers 
and remembered how once, when he was a boy, he had fallen in what he thought 
was love with a girl and, one day after school, saw her with another boy under 
the bleachers by the football field.

They did not see him and he ran the long way home without stopping. First 
he felt only relief that they had not heard him outside the fence that surrounded 
the bleachers. Had they known he didn’t know what he would have done. It 
seemed absurd, terribly unreal, and running home he felt his mind deny it, and 
his running seemed as if in a dream.

That night at supper the food had made him nauseous, but in the company 
of his parents he had to hold on tight to himself and pretend that nothing was 
wrong, because if it were said aloud, if he thought about her kissing the boy, 
he felt he would fly into a thousand pieces. Then in bed he thought about her, 
and began to cry, putting his head under the covers so his parents would not 
hear; he cried hard until it all seemed to disappear, until he cried it all out and 
there was nothing left inside him at all and, being empty like that, he felt quiet 
and peaceful.

But now he couldn’t do that and he felt there was nothing he could honestly 
get rid of, no way to empty himself. There’s nothing worth it anyway, he thought, 
nothing worth the effort, and no meaning. Now he lay still, the laughing over, 
and as he expected it hadn’t helped. Already he felt it coming back to his 
stomach; his private demon, driving him farther and farther into his own absurdity. 
In the beginning he called it loneliness because he didn’t know what it was. 
He remembered the first time it had made him do something foolish, walking 
in another city, through a park, and how the trees were all dark and quiet in 
the summer night. There was a river and a place where they rented canoes with 

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the lights of the city beyond it. On this side of the river a woman was sitting 
on a bench under the light of a lamp, and there were moths flying around the 
light so that it flickered faintly on the ground and in the trees. At that time 
there were mostly couples walking, and when there were none very close, he 
went over and sat down on the bench beside the woman. He did not really 
look at her, but he felt her stiffen.

“Don’t get up. Please,” he said. “I just want to talk.”

But he felt her harden and a wall go up so thick he heard clearly the despair 
in his own voice. All he said came out in a kind of breathless panic, and he 
could not calm himself.

“I don’t mean anything. I haven’t been here long. I just thought we could 
talk and I don’t mean to insult you by it.”

“If you don’t get up this minute, I’ll scream,” she said.

“Please,” he said. “We can talk. Then I’ll go away.”

“You see if I don’t scream. I can tell about you pimps. You see if I don’t.”

“It’s the night,” he went on blindly, because he couldn’t stop now. “There’s 
a wonderful feeling about it. But it’s wrong to see it alone.”

Then she started to yell, a high-pitched insistent scream, and he got up and 
ran as fast as he could, the woman’s voice dying away behind him and the park 
flashing by until he was out on the street, and he went quickly to the hotel and 
got into bed. He hated the woman. She had made him feel dirty and perverse. 
He only wanted to talk but now he felt like all the things the woman had imagined 
were a part of him, had become true because of his action which had implied 
them, and it was early morning before he was able to sleep.

He felt all women were as that one. Because of their own fears and distrust 
you couldn’t communicate with them. He hated himself for trying, for needing 
to try. And he hated the waste.

One morning while shaving, he looked at himself and saw that, from then on, 
each day was one step in the wrong direction. Everything he was and would be 
seemed quite absurd and he could not shake a growing feeling of loss. In the 
city, in the office where he worked and out walking on the streets, he saw the 
young ladies a man looked for and knew that in his life he would never have one 
of them. And those he knew he could have he had no feeling about. The others, 
the good-looking ones and the charming ones, he could only look at, and if once 
he went out with one, the second time she was busy.

Gradually he saw himself as the kind of ordinary guy who while being able 
to enter the race would never win it. Again, like that time when he was a boy, 
everything became unreal and he wanted badly to run.

At night in his bed at the boarding house, he got in the habit of remembering 
the look of various women he saw during the day, and, for a short time, he made 
serious love to them in his imagination. All his hopes and needs rose within him 
and were for that brief time fulfilled. For moments before sleep he found peace 

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and pleasure until one night he had an orgasm while thinking of a particular 
woman.

Immediately after that he felt ashamed and perverse, and he resolved never to 
do it again.

But at the end of each day he wanted that woman, whom he thought he loved, 
and because he knew he could not have her ultimately he didn't want even to 
speak to her. By night he couldn't help thinking about her while in bed, and 
when she changed jobs there was soon another one, and after that another, so 
that there was always some one he wanted but could not have except in his 
thoughts.

But each night when it was over he couldn't help feeling soiled and dirty. 
Soon this shame became mixed with the desire and it was with him all the time, 
rising up when he saw certain women, and the shame undermined each moment 
of pleasure. It began to eat him hollow.

Now he lay sweating under the covers and felt that still he could hear his 
own laughing in the room. He felt afraid and turned over on his back and 
looked at the wall and the ceiling and at the darker shadow that was the door. 
Outside the traffic was lighter, he could hear that, and he thought the sky looked 
brighter too. Maybe it will be morning soon, he thought, and then he lay quietly 
and didn't think of anything for a long time.

When the light went on he thought that he must have been asleep. At first 
he could not see, and he heard the landlady say, “You see. He hasn't touched 
the food.” When his eyes adjusted he saw that Mr. O'Neil, from down the hall, 
was with her. He closed his eyes quickly.

“Well, Mrs. Fink,” said Mr. O'Neil, “Ill just stay here for a time. Why don't 
you go fix some tea?”

He heard the door close and Mr. O'Neil move a chair over by the bed. He 
did not open his eyes, and he lay very still.

At last he couldn't stand the silence nor the presence of Mr. O'Neil. What 
did he want, anyway, he thought, and who the hell asked him? He lay still a 
little longer. If only he could sleep and never see another person. They were all 
absurd and he did not believe in them or want to commit himself to their illusion. 
But what was he doing, sitting there quietly, waiting? “Listen,” he said, “what 
do you want?”

“Mrs. Fink told me you're pretty sick,” said O'Neil.

“I'm all right,” he said. Still he kept his eyes closed. “I kind of wish you 
would go.”

But Mr. O'Neil did not answer. Nor did he get upto go.

“I don't want to seem rude,” he said. “I'm all right; but I don't feel like 
seeing any one.”

Perhaps Mr. O'Neil nodded. “I know,” he said. “With some of us it is like 
that during the crisis. Then others need to talk. In time I can be of help.”

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“Whatcrisis?” he asked.

O'Neil leaned forward in the chair, a little over the bed, and Simons opened 
his eyes and looked at him. “The re-apportionment,” said Mr. O'Neil; “the inner 
crisis that arises sooner or later in all of us.”

He closed his eyes and turned over in bed to face the wall. He pulled the 
sheet up over his head and held one hand to his eyes until he saw orange 
amoebas swimming in a purple pond. Softly he began to laugh. :

“All sickness is a crisis,” said Mr. O'Neil. “It is a sign from Him that all is 
not right within us. It is a time when we must choose the right way and heal 
the festering in our hearts.”

After a while, he thought he had better stop laughing. He did not want to 
lose control: he wanted it to stay funny. He turned over to look at O'Neil. “Til 
bet you know all about demons,” he said. “Don't you? You know all the signs.”

“Yes,” said O'Neil. “No man is free. Each has his own demon.”

“We are all free,” he said seriously. He turned and look at O'Neil; inside he 
felt slimy and sick now; it was not funny. “We have absolute freedom, absolute 
choice, and nothing is above us,” he said.

“Ah!” yelled O'Neil, and he stood up so fast he knocked the chair over. He 
started to pace up and down the room. “Fredom is your demon,” he said. “Fre- 
dom!” He went over and slammed his fist on the desk, and then he stared steadily 
at Simons, who sat up and threw the sheet off himself.

“Yes,” he said. “It's freedom. It's nothing. It's everything I am and am not. 
But you can't touchit,” he said. “Nothing can touch it.” Then he sat back 
against the wall. What was he doing? What did it matter? Why should he argue 
about nothing? He had to shut up and hold on, let it all slide off, not let any of 
it touch him.

“Give me your hand,” said O'Neil. He came over to the bed and stuck out 
his hand.

“No,” he said. “Get out. Leave me alone.”

“Let your heart pass through me to the knowledge of God,” insisted O'Neil.

“Get away from me,” he said. He tried to lie down. O'Neil was in the way, 
with his one knee on the bed. |

“Kneel beside the bed and pray with me. Pour out your soul and drive the 
poison from your heart. Purge, cleanse yourself, drive out this demon at last!”

“Get away,he said. Inside he was tense and ready to fly apart. O'Neil 
came forward and put his hands on his shoulders and tried to make him kneel. 
“No,” he said, “damnit,” and he struck out and knocked Mr. O'Neil to the floor.

He fell back speechless against the headboard of the bed. What had he done? 
He looked at O'Neil on the floor. He grew numb, his head seeming to spin off 
away from him. The room and the bed and the four walls began to whirl away 
into the dark and he felt himself crying haltingly into the sheet. “Why?” he said. 
“Why did you come? I didn't ask you. I didn't want your fear too.”

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He put his head down and cried himself into a void, pushing himself back 
into a numbness, without the noise or pain of sense. When he felt O'Neil's hand 
grasp his shoulder he did not resist. Through the blur he saw O'Neil's rumpled 
hair, his smashed upper lip and the bright blood under his nose. He got out 
of bed and stood up in front of O'Neil.

“Now kneel.”

He got down beside O'Neil, his arms out on the bed, and he put his head down 
obediently.

“Say Our Father,” said O'Neil.

“Our Father,” he cried.

“Whoart in Heaven”

“Whoart in Heaven”

“Hallowed be Thy name”

“Hallowed be Thy name”

When Mr. O'Neil left, Simons got back into bed and lay quietly on his back 
without any of the covers pulled over him. For a long time he lay in the dark, 
with his eyes open looking at the ceiling, and when the night began slowly to 
thin he got out of bed and stood for a while by the window. There was a fringe 
of gray rising above the buildings; the street was empty, and he saw steam rising 
from a sewage drain in the cold morning air.

Once he thought he was going to laugh again; but it was only a reflex, and 
he knew the laughing was over: there was no need for it now and nothing to 
gain. He was not worried about himself. He had no feeling at all. There was 
no tragedy when you yourself were not real, and there was no pain. He enjoyed 
the lack of sensation. His stomach was relaxed. He did not mind thinking; in 
fact there was nothing to think about. All was clear and a mild warmth of 
knowledge filled his head. He looked out of the window and it was pleasant 
now that all reality was gone from it.

He stood for a while and then went into the bathroom; in the sink he let the 
water run, and he looked toward the window.

Morning was beginning to dawn. The gray was rising above the buildings, 
and a few lights were on in the buildings across the street. The night was 
over. It had been a long night. “Yes,” he thought, and he spoke the words aloud, 
hearing them as from a great distance, “but after all. It was only a lie.” And 
he turned from the window, let the water run over his hand, and then quickly he 
slashed his razor down three times across his wrist, holding his arm carefully 
over the sink to make it clean, letting it all go honestly down the drain.

RcR / 14


Four Poems/RICHARD ogar

AN AFTERNOON WITH THE SEER

Madam Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,

Had a bad cold. . . .

—The Waste Land

Someone’s plucked the current

From the seeing-glass

And forgotten to shuffle the deck,

She said in a torrent

Of plum-colored rage. Alas,

This place is always a wreck . . .

Where in the world is Albert?

(The spirit behind the scenes,

She added as a joke.)

Well, you know the future’s a flirt . . .

You don’t win her with chocolate cremes . . .

Would you care for a smoke?

If I hadn’t forgotten palmistry

We could pierce the mirror that way . . .

Ah! these deplorable mental lags . . .

Tea! . . . Won’t you have a cup of tea? 
Then we’ll see where the Trade Winds play . . .

O . . . hell . . . where has Albert hidden the bags?

15 / RCR


INSECTS

Vacant shuttles

Weave the wind. I have no ghosts, 
An old man in a draughty house 
Under a windy knob.

—T. S. Eliot

I sit alone in this over-stuffed room 
Watching my shadows crawl across the walls 
Like spiders, or their ghosts;

Black clouds of smirking thunder shadowing 
The faded gods on their Olympus

Of yellow paper peeling

Mock Pan fiddling with his pipes.

Perhaps I should explain:

A steady rain began with my birth, 
The night sky bellowed unflashed 
And the stars strode by, oblivious. 
Two-faced rain,

Floating the flowers and rotting their roots.

Above my head a bare bulb rocks, 
Haloed with a haze of bugs, like 
Frenzied memories, flocking to a light. 
(The insects here are brown and brittle, 
Bark-fragments of a blasted tree.

Squeezed between the fingers,

They show no blood.)

What are these memories but dreams 
Turned inside-out?

I should write them down,

Pluck their wings

To walk on doddering feet,

But I cannot remember which are true, 
Which false ....

RCR / 16


What matter,

After the bulb has burst,

The wire snapped with too much heat? 
I will write them down.

Once through the mind

Both dream and memory are past:

This is enough for me.

TWENTIETH-CENTURY THEOLOGY

The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhou- 
nawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed 
and later on life down through all Christian minstrelsy.

—Finnegans Wake

In the garden of Adam

The ticker-tape typed

The Word (Paradise, down 4, apples, up 3):

The slither-snake laughed to see such sport

And the sun ran around with the moon.

Had the Tree mooned them mad,

Or had they a legitimate gripe?

(I’m bored as hell, said she:

No comment, the Creator’s retort.

Said he, Who needs a fille when the world is jeune?)

Whatever the reason they had,

They’ve left us alone with the snipe

(The Crash must be considered quietly,

Said the Presidential Committee’s report)

While the lark runs around with the loon.

17 / RCR


FINAL SEPARATION

Corpses are slabbed

In the sea’s cold room

Amidst the praying of ferns 
And the uncertainty of darkness.

These dead are their own monuments: 
Within them is sufficient stone.

Their six feet of water

Is bitter only briefly—

Until the philtre of the moon, 
In filtering motes of glow, 
Conjoins claw with claw,

Ball with string, 
Swelling the rustling womb.

The young flow forth like blood 
From the virgin’s loins.

The wheel turns smoothly,

The axle is well-ground.

No creaks.

But we cannot return to the sea,

Filled with apologies:

We have left gills

And swimming with tails 
Behind with the afterbirth.

Ships only gloss the surface:

The creases fill.

Our occasional offerings do not float, 
But lay heavy in the sand, 
Crushing the weeds.

The drowned ones never know each other 
And, in the darkness, 
Never see the moon.

Poor rusted wheels.

rcr / 18

CAROL HILLMAN FIGURE NO. I OIL ON CANVAS


HORACE ALBAUGH

Mother, white skinned and white haired and furrowed: like the snow beginning 
to melt on a hillside, with the black earth muddy underneath and breaking 
through where the skin is melted thin so that the mud runs down the snow 
furrows. He knew it wouldn’t be long before all the snow skin was gone and 
the hair falling too through the cold hair gone, and she would finally be naked 
after all in the spring because the sun is too strong now in the coming spring 
and has burned away all but the end of winter. He was on the ninth step of 
the attic staircase, and winter was over him, falling under the spring, rocking 
white and thin in the chair in the great fireplace. The ninth stair: hollow, there 
were only two long, tarnished nails holding it down, enough, now, anyway,

Figure without caption.
APOCALYPSE


Mother was careful on the stairs, funny as a frog is funny when he tied its leg 
to a coil of the electric range and turned the knob on simmer, funny that way 
when she came down the stairs or went up, not touching the ninth step, stretching 
her flaking skinny legs over it and holding onto the banister, funnier if he tied 
her leg to the stair, and more, if he drew out one of the thin long nails and put 
it through her foot on the step and down into the board. When the spring was 
well set in, when it laid winter away, after the apotheosis, when everything was 
ended anyway, but not now, not before the apotheosis, now when she wrapped 
her crusted snowing fingers around the arms of the rocker only, then, maybe, 
her foot on the ninth stair. He giggled, spilled some of the tea over the rim 
of the cup he carried so that it ran onto his hand and soon it burned him and 
reminded him and he touched the top of his head, the bald area on top that 
winter had shaved there so she could let the candle drip wax on it and when the 
place was covered with soft wax and wax ran into the hair that surrounded the 
bald place, she set the candle there. It was burned about half way down and 
he had remembered anyway.

He opened the door.

Good: it was very good to remember without having to be reminded by 
winter’s candle: when the candle burns all the way down, then bring my tea, you 
mustn’t forget and let the flame blow out or then if the flame goes out time 
won’t go on and there will be no tea, you will forget, so keep it aflame and when 
it bums down and you feel the flame come down and touch, then bring my tea.

The attic was filled with winter, but black, as if he were under snow breathing 
snow, so far under snow that no light came through.

“Ach-” said winter spitting snow from her mouth and the candle light 
flickered running into her eyes and she caught it with the ach and clamped 
her cold gums together and the candle light began spinning around in her eyes, 
and the ach! and the lights in her eyes spinning faster and brighter in her eyes, 
winter so hot, the fever of the flame in her eyes and the ach! as her bony fingers 
curled and a memory grasped him hot between the legs and he spilled the tea 
the candle went out.

“Ach!”

“I’m sorry, Mother, I’ll get another cup,” but he couldn’t see her in the black 
and the fireplace was blacker yet, only the sound of her rocking and the snow 
falling in the fireplace.

“Ne me paries pas! Froid, froid, ach,” so he turned taking the candle off his 
head, getting the wax under his nails.

“Sabocles?” It was Bea, at the bottom of the stairs, calling up to him, Bea, 
small and soft and calling, “Wo bist du?”

Roughly, coming down in the dark now that the light was out, “Ich bin 
hier, naturlich, mit Mutter.”

“Pourquoi? Sabocles?”

rcr / 20


More words from her, more questions, ever words and Bea interrupting 
asking wondering but she wouldn’t come up to the attic in the dark so at least 
it was only her words that touched him.

Again, “Pourquoi?” her questioning, ever asking, bringing sun to winter, 
bringing sun ever since the death of Father, Father who once sat high in the oak 
chair and told, told in the silver flow of his thoughts, Tu es meus filius, speaking 
now only in the memory of degeneration, because he grew old: Father, thin and 
sick grinning lying in the bed, and Mother sitting beside him, her face split in a 
half-cry while she endured the delirious obscenities:

“Mentula venit-”

Her wet globe of an eye melting down her red cheek, and Bea the Madchen 
at the other side of Father, so young was she, unbloomed:

“Ich breche dich-”

And he had turned away no been thrown away thrown flat against flat 
marble by the slash of the axe: Father’s finger trembling pointing to the center 
of the bed, his hard little eyes staring into him sick, Pour te, Sabocles, pointing 
to the center of the bed:

Pater conturbaverat.

And later, with the split of her face open quivering, winter had said, Warte. 
Er ist alt, Sabocles. . .

He looked down at Bea silhouetted in the doorway.

“Virgo vulsa!” he called, watching his words bounce step by step down to 
her, and the edges of the steps chiseled them and sharpened them but they 
weren’t sharp enough when they struck to go in. She only winced, so harder, 
“Vulsa!” and he glanced up, toward winter, and whispered, “Sanctus” to the fireplace 
in the falling snow, falling so fast that soon only the mud would remain, 
he would have to hurry, “Venio-”

“Be quiet, Sabocles.” She turned away from the staircase.

“Stercus—”

“Shut up!” from around the doorway from her, and he ran down the stairs, 
stepping hard on the ninth stair, and into the hallway, the sudden light.

“Tea, tea, I spilled her tea, give me another cup.”

“Go to bed, Sabocles,” and her words were very gentle, it was hard to be 
angry and he said, “Please, Bea, tea.”

She smiled. “Very well,” she said, going into the kitchen, “I’ll get you another 
cup. But then you must let her be.”

“Danke, Bea, danke,” and he reached into his pocket, wanting to show her 
now how he loved her for the tea, “Eine Zigarette?” he offered.

“Nein.” She flipped on the kitchen light and turning to the sink filled the tea 
kettle. The water came out with a splash of foam and liquid, melted, the 
snow was melting above the ninth stair and there wasn’t much time left. She 
went to the stove, stopped, and he saw her eyes slowly widen, the tremble came

21 / RCR 


to her lips, and turning he remembered, as her scream ragged untwisted from 
her mouth and thrashed its length about the kitchen, twisted close around the 
body of the frog, then lay still. He moved in front of the stove, to hide it, and 
he saw her face red, felt its heat, and she reached out, to hurry from the kitchen, 
but as her hands reached out, her fingers spread and straightened, her stomach 
caught her, her mouth opened, she grabbed the edge of the sink, and he heard 
it fall wet and thick against the enamel.

And the snow is about all fallen!

She turned to him, her mouth wet, two small trickles at its corners, her eyes 
closed, “Nochmal,” she said, “Sabocles, it’s begun again,” and she turned from 
the kitchen.

The telephone. He caught her halfway through the dining room, around the 
waist, squeezing her around the stomach to stop the cry, and she fell, he hung 
to her waist, falling with her, on her.

“Don’t cry, bitte, nein, amo te,” pressing his hand over her mouth, wanting 
to press her eyes closed too because the cry was louder in them, her arm was 
out, toward the telephone, her breasts were rising, collapsing, and her throat, 
“non, Bea, non, mon Dieu, mon Dieu,” pressing more against her throat, crying, 
feeling the tears in his throat as he felt the pressure of the blood in her neck 
until she seemed to heave once, sighing, and fell away quiet.

He got up. The snow is about all gone. I must be there, and the winter was 
rocking above in the great cold fireplace, and shut, shut to him, but it would be 
warm again, the apotheosis, once more, before spring, with fire in the eyes of 
winter, amo te, venio, white and snowing all away, encore, encore, I must, not 
since the shutting up of the ninth stair when she found out what he had done 
and shut him off, but it was for you, winter, fur meine Mutter, ma mere, ma mere, 
and he pulled the phone until the cord came loose.

The stairway to winter, to winter falling before the coming of spring and 
spring would take her before he, he stopped, the ninth stair, the mistake, his 
great mistake, warum? warum? why did I, my God? Hot, hot and wet, and I 
mustn’t touch winter now, too hot, melt away all the winter, he felt his neck wet, 
the tiny quick pulses of his throat, can’t get by the ninth stair, but winter is up 
there and fire will come in her eyes amidst the snow. He shut his eyes, hard, 
until a little white flame burst under his lids. I was beautiful to her, she loved 
me then, winter and all the earth in the bed, winter and rapture, Deus and Dea, 
Dei in the rapture, and then the shutting up of the ninth stair, sic gloria transit, 
everything transit with his mistake. The white burst was dispersing, diffusing 
through his eyes and mind, calm, calm, come to me, and he leaned against the 
banister and held tight to it. It was so easy now, lift my foot over the ninth stair, 
slowly, so up, up to winter and the consummation of snow, apotheosis before the 
spring, before the rape of winter by the spring, non, le printemps, non, it must not 
be yet, but give to me, encore, ma mere, ma mere, ma belle, ma deessee.

RCR / 22


“Hast du mein— Nein? Warum kommst du denn?”

“Ich—” and what am I to say, ma mere, there is no tea, I have no tea for you, 
“aber, ich bin hier, ich, meine Mutter,” foolish, I am saying it all wrong, foolish.

“Und?” and her voice was impatient, he had no tea for her.

He pulled a match from his pocket and struck it against the sole of his shoe. 
“Rauchst du?” and again the impatience cold with the ice of her breath.

“Nein, ich rauche nicht,” what am I to say?

“Then go away, I don't understand, why do you light the match?”

The fires were beginning to flame in her eyes, and he struck another match. 
He stepped closer. She was so white, so white in the wavering circle of light, 
crouched in the great fireplace, in the rocker, her fingers curled on the arms of 
the rocker, her hair breaking away white from her furrowed head in long tufts, 
and the eyes, black and sunk, but carrying the two tiny fires of the match, spring 
fires spinning around and around, whirling within her irises. My God, ma mere—

“Get out,” scratching like chipped ice cold across his thighs, “get out, 
Sabocles,” and it must be now, before the spring, give me just a while, for it 
would soon be too late, hadn't the doctor said, perhaps a month, perhaps through 
the winter, sic gloria transit, but the winter at best, at most, yet give me the 
apotheosis, once, encore, ma mere.

“Must I call Bea to take you away?” scratching his thighs and how she bent 
forward over her lap, her shoulder blades jutting out long and white like the 
naked wings of a plucked chicken, but whiter, snowing. “Once,” raking his groin 
and passing up, through the stack of the chimney above her, “once no one would 
have dared to speak English in this house.”

The flame of the match burned down to his finger and thumb,he dropped it, 
everything fell away black in the snow, the tiny fires racing in her eyes gone, 
only the cold, another match, wo ist ein Streichholz, light for her eyes.

“Nowit is all fallen away,” in the snow everything falling, “his decrees are 
rotted, you don't remember, I don't remember, Bea has forgotten. Were he here, 
by God were he here! But you, Sabocles, you, filth of my womb, you— Ach. Get 
away. Let me alone to die. It isn't long. The years of retribution are almost done, 
almost finished in this hole of your atrocity, this ashy hole. Go away.”

He heard her sigh, icy mist falling from her gums in the snow. She is dying, 
I cannot be robbed, the fires, a match, apotheosis.

“Bea!” icy as he touched her, cold spit spattered from her mouth, “Bea!” as 
he pulled her from the rocker in the fireplace, God, the bed, my father's bed, 
across the floor, icy in his arms, clawing chilling at his arms, “Nein, Sabocles, 
ach, nein, bitte, bitte,” to the staircase, covering her mouth, her cold gums munching 
at his hand, he slipped, she broke her mouth away, “Not the ninth stair, 
Sabocles, don't let me touch it,” and he, “Touch it, touch it, 'm alive, ma mere.”

“Ach, Sabocles, it's he, it's he!” |

Her mind, her hate and loathing, running through his blood, can you be so 

23 / RCR


cruel, can you say it, leaning against the banister, the words, no longer icy, stinging 
now in their heat, “ minor, tu minor es in his shadow,” laughing coals.

He held her arm tight and with his free hand drew the hammer from his hip 
pocket, the ninth step was under his foot, I knew, all these years I've known, but 
it's taken her words to know it real, there is no more hurt for me, ma mere, the 
words are all the hurt, and none is left.

“Sabocles?” he could feel her long red neck staring in the darkness, “Sabocles, 
was ist das—” and so now there is only the ultimate repayment, the assertion 
of my pain, and he stepped down stair, holding her arm, and stooped and 
felt for one of the long nails of the ninth stair.

Dort! and he slipped the claws of the hammer under its head, it groaned 
pulling from the wood.

“Nein! Sabocles, ach, nein—” as he pulled her burning foot onto the ninth 
board and held it there placing the tooth of the nail over it and pressing down 
until his fingers cried out as she was crying, until the head of the nail seemed 
almost to cut the palm of his hand, until he felt the nail break through the skin 
and sink, and strike the bone and then he grasped the hammer and brought it 
down and raised it in her scream and brought it down, felt the nail go through 
and strike the wood and drove it deeper, further into the ninth board.

“Sabocles?” and it was Bea at the door, the door opened, light fell through, 
showed him blood upon his hand, Bea leaning in the doorway, beginning her 
scream, and ma mere, ma mere, tearing at her boiling hair.

Bea's scream. He dropped the hammer, it was all done. Slowly, exhausted, 
leaning on the banister, he went down to Bea, she was curling on the floor, on 
her knees bent, losing her head and her scream in her scarlet arms, “Bea, Bea, it's 
all over, das ist alles, no more,” and ma mere, all snowed away, raging on her pin 
melting behind him.

He bent over Bea, to make her look at him, to see it was all right and over.

“Sabocles?” In short quick flames, “Sabocles, my son?”

He turned. She was standing rigid, a thin red line melting from the corner 
of her mouth, rigid standing on the ninth stair, she smiled, the line broadened as 
the skin split more at the edge of her mouth, and she took hold of the banister 
and raised her foot and the board of the ninth stair came up with her foot and 
the ninth stair was opened after all the years, and smiling she opened her dress, 
pulled it up and away, bared her burnt thighs and scorched corolla and she bent 
down and reachedinside the ninth stair and scooped up the ashes in both hands 
and carried them to her scorched corolla and pressed them up between her legs 
inside of her, “Minor, inferior es, eras, eris, minerus in imo!” and her eyes caught 
the light from the hallway for an instant and blazed, and he fell under the weight 
of the ashes the final assertion and felt his skull push in against his soft convulsing 
brain until the burst, the brilliant glistening burst into silence.

RCR / 24


Two Poems/GERALD BRAY

NOT ALL DREAMS DIE WITH AWAKENING

two tickets to Chicago please

and shuffled his feet

sir

Goin North, Boy?

to the wrinkled old man

well sir we got relatives up there and im goin to help —

They ain't gonna understand you up there you know that, Boy?

well its just me and my son and we —

You know your boy is gonna be goin to school with white folks? 
my boy knows his place

He might even sit next to a white girl in his class.

my boy knows what's right

Suppose he start playing with the white kids white girls and boys? 
he gonna play with his own kind

Suppose he started thinking he was equal? 
ibroughtmyboyupright heknowshisplace he —

An suppose he wanted to marry a —

MY BOY AINT GONNA —

Don't go interrupting me boy, now don't take your son up there so he got to 
mix with Radicals and Communist and Atheist now do you?

no sir not no more i suppose

But black dreams after a thousand backdoors

And uncountable seats in the rear

Often evaporate in the heat of the day

Leaving only a stain pointing the way

On the road called progress

25 / rcr


SOMETIMES

— Sometimes I feel like a motherless chile — 
wonder how we gonna get through the week 
wonder how we gonna sleep 
we got a floor 
got no ceiling

Sometimes I feel like it ain’t worthwhile

come in reelin

wife down kneelin 
kids out stealin 
gotta stay drunk 
can’t go on 
not for long 
gotta stop drinkin 
try a little thinkin

Sometimes I feel like I ain’t God’s chile

devil’s son

that’s me

black me

blacker inside than out

had five dollars

buy bread milk heat meat?

you wrong

bought 80 proof poison

for ole black me

rcr / 26


Sometimes I feel like gettin a job

we got the black quota full

we’ll call you . . .

in a little while

sorry don’t need no thick arms and strong backs 
black backs

well what did I want with four years in school

Sometimes I feel like I shoulda stayed in school

Son! look at yo paw

I ain’t got no schoolin i get along 
What’s good enough fo yo pa is . . .

What-you-wanna-go-taschool-fo-nigger

can’t get no place

got nough educated nigs down here

get you a good job

like a good black boy

Sometimes I know that you gotta go on

I gonna put down the bottle

(said that last time)

gonna save my pay

(that’s old)

gonna love my kids and treat’em right

(ha)

gonna hold my wife

(you ain’t gonna do a goddamn thing)

know somethin buddy?

you goddamn right

27 / RCR


In the western world, successful art 
has come to mean, among other things, that which gives pleasure through 
the realization of the painstaking perfection of the work itself. Thus we 
have had an abundance of symphonies, lyric poetry, complex paintings, 
and other works of art, finished, complete, consummate. Our frame of 
reference is acclimated to the carefully polished gem, and attributes less 
value to that which is beautiful in simplicity, and, more important, to 
that which is created through instantaneous inspiration — in short, to that 
which we term “improvised.” The theory of improvisation is not so 
simple as it may seem; the word itself, as applied to art, is indeed often 
misunderstood. To explain it further, let us turn to a Japanese form of 
poetry, the haiku, and to an American form of music, jazz.

Haiku poetry is ideally, the outstanding example of the art of poetic 
improvisation. The traditional foundation of haiku is an ability to achieve 
an almost mystical kind of insight. The creation of a haiku is the result 
of an instant of such insight, termed a “haiku moment.” It is difficult for 
a westerner to understand the training that permits the haiku moment to 
occur. Were we to understand, we should have to become familiar with 
the whole vocabulary of the haiku art. This includes the whole substance 
of expression, that is to say not only the meanings of symbols and the form 
of the work, but the philosophy of the art of haiku — in essence what we 
must know to appreciate the beauty of haiku poetry. This is indeed difficult, 
for to understand it fully, we must understand its roots in the

rcr / 28

IM 
PRO 
VI 
SA 
TION, 
HAIKU, 
JAZZ


oriental philosophy of Zen, and the belief in placidity and mysticism 
through meditation. —

The writing of a haiku is an act of improvisation, but this does not 
mean that such a poem is created without preparation, that the haiku is 
the result of some sort of artistic magic. The poet can only write a haiku 
after he is spiritually prepared to experience and understand the physical 
occurrence or object that inspires the poem. In addition the poet must be 
familiar, to the point of habit, with the actual structure of the haiku, with 
its three lines of five, seven, and five syllables—no more, no less, in 
perfect alignment— so that the poem comes almost simultaneously with 
the experience of inspiration. By insisting on this temporal limitation, the 
beauty of a haiku comes from its immediacy of communication, not from 
juggling words, ideas and meters. The training for writing good haiku is 
not through learning to polish work to perfection, but first to develop the 
ability to recognize “haiku moments'; and then, through experience and 
increasing mastery of the idiom, to improve the technical and spiritual 
beauty of the “moment” without losing the freshness of instantaneous 
creation and communication. This is the true essence of the art of 
improvisation. :

The American jazzman, whether he realizes it or not, is bound by the 
same restrictions, trained in the same manner, and judged by the same 
standards as a writer of Japanese haiku. For jazz, like haiku, is a planned 
and controlled, but specifically and instantly accidental, art. As the haiku

29 / RCR

essay by PETE NYE


Figure without caption.
writer must learn to use words and sounds, so must the jazzman learn to 
make his instrument respond to what sounds he wants produced. As a 
haiku writer must be familiar with the nature and the idioms of haiku, so 
the jazz musician must be familiar with the vocabulary of music — chords, 
cadences, tempos, sonorities. The writer of haiku writes within a tradition, 
as does the jazzman, for both strive to create spontaneously something finer 
than, yet still a derivative of, what has already been done.

Finally, to be fully successful, both jazz and haiku artists must be able 
to recognize honesty of emotion in order to communicate complex feelings 
on what is necessarily a fleeting canvas. The jazzman is not trained to 
polish his work, note by note, to fineness; for like the haiku poet, his inspiration 
and interpretation must be almost simultaneous. The only training 
possible is (as it must be with the Japanese poet) a willingness to exist on 
the hazy and mystical edge of instant inspiration; and a familiarity with the 
idiom, developed almost as second nature, necessary to articulate, organize 
and put into context a fleeting insight of beauty.

With these skills under his fingers, either artist can expresss,, by the use 
of a few simple images or notes, a feeling we may only sense but not be 
able to name. What makes good haiku and good jazz is the capturing of 
the unexpected, the sudden expansion of the mind prompted by a statement 
of a fleeting, yet complex nature. We are awed, in fact, that any man 
could conceive such an idea in any amount of time, much less in the scant 
instant between inspiration, execution, and communication.

RcR / 30


PHILIP HEALD

THE LIZARD

The desert’s sifting sands ’neath blazing sky 
Give rise to liquid heat in waving wands;

Far in the distance nature shows a lie 
Where vacant fish inhabit topless ponds.

A tall spiked cross in green defiance leans 
Alone; its quivering shadow blocks the heat

From Heaven, and a lizard slowly gleans 
Replacements for its rubber wrinkled meat.

The constant sun climbs upward to its crest 
And pulls the cross’ shadow towards the East;

But still the lizard stays, content to rest; 
Oblivious, it gleans its meager feast.

Against the blue a craven vulture flies;

For when the shadow’s gone, the lizard dies.

JAMES HARKNESS

DEATH ROOM

Near the oaken door

From

Narrow wooden shoulders

A dark

Familiar bathrobe 
Hung heavily 
To the floor.

Preceding Page: WILLAM ARSCOTT BUTTERFLY PAINTING COLLAGE

31 / RCR


KAREN NUGENT PATTERNS LITHOGRAPH

HALLOWEEN'S 
CHILDREN

DANNY THRALL walks briskly down the River Boulevard, which, at three o'clock 
in the afternoon, is burnt with the deep umber of sun and fallen leaves. As he 
nears Brown Street curving towards the river, he skips three or four times and 
shrugs his thin shoulders as a tingling wave of warmth passes up his back. He 
wears a red and brownplaid hunting jacket and jeans. He is warm, and walking 
has made his armpits slightly damp. On both sides of Brownstreet, piles of 
brittle leaves twirl and shift, and grotesque pumpkin faces stare out at him from 
cushioned window seats. Behind one of the pumpkins he sees an old sheet 
being fit for eye holes. It is the afternoon of Halloween.

It has been a long day already for a Saturday. From nine to twelve in the 
morning he quarterbacked the Burton ninth-grade team to a slaughter against 
Remley Jr. High. The score was 31-0. Then he and Jimmy Conkle and Buck 
DeVries stood around the park for an hour afterwards talking about the 
Halloween Sock Hop that night, making jokes about going trick-or-treating. 
Last year they all went—as brown-faced minstrels, arm-in-arm. But this year 
it's the dance instead.

As he looks up from a straw-sheave and pumpkin decoration on the porch 
of Jimmy's neighbor, he catches blurrily the outline of a brown pigskin bearing 
down on him. But his hands are tight in the pockets of his jeans and Wham. 
he takes one on the shoulder.

“Hey, whatta you trying to do, wise guy?” he yells. “You want a punch in 
the mouth?”

Jimmy Conkle rocks cockily back on his heels and laughs. His shoulder and 
chest bulge in his brown wool crew-neck, and a navy blue knit stocking cap 
envelopes his skull.

33 / RCR

walter lockwood


“What’s the matter, Danny babes? Did I hurt you?”

“Shutup and go out for a pass.”

Danny picks up the football and Jimmy takes off across the lawn. Danny 
watches, feeling for the rubber strings. The ball is cold and hard. Jimmy gets 
three lawns down, and Danny brings the ball close behind his ear. He leans 
back on his right foot, raising his left, then his cocked arm snaps free like a 
willow branch and whips upward in an arc, the ball spiralling from his 
stretched fingertips—spiralling up beautifully and high-soaring against a pale 
blue sky. Jimmy digs hard over the fourth lawn, expectant, puffing; the ball 
turns down from its apex, seems intent on reaching the basketing arms. Then 
Danny groans. The ball falls lifelessly to the earth followed by a clutter of 
dead leaves and branches. Jimmy throws down his arms and brakes to a stop.

“Nice shot,” he yells down the length of the lawns.

“It was there,” Danny yells back.

They both scamper for the ball, reach it at the same time, and fall to wrestling 
for it. Jimmy has it for a moment, but Danny pops it from his hands with a fist, 
rolls quickly over and springs triumphantly to his feet with the ball, leaves and 
dirt clinging precariously to his wool plaid jacket and his fine blonde hair. He 
looks at Jimmy, his great bulk sprawled on the ground, and laughs.

“Hey, clumsy,” he says. “You’re really going to that dance tonight, huh.”

“Yeah. So is Buck. Marianne’s going to be there, babes.” Jimmy pushes 
himself up on his elbow.

“You going to dance with her?”

“Guess so. Why, do you want to?”

“No. No, I don’t like to dance.” Danny flips the ball up in the air and 
catches it one-handed. His face is cold, the soft white fuzziness of his cheeks 
stained blotchy red. He thinks, the things come up too fast, the dancing . . . 
everything. Last year it was football every night. You practice and practice 
and finally can count on it and then it’s something else. You can’t win. You 
really can’t.

“So whatta you going to do?” Jimmy asks, pushing himself to his feet. He 
wrinkles up his flat, meaty nose and crosses his arms.

“Oh, I don’t know. Go I guess. Unless I think of something better.”

“Like what—” but Jimmy is interrupted by the skidding screech of a bike. 
A tall, gangly, emaciated boy with a pimpled face tries to make a grand entrance, 
but loses his balance during a side-ways skid and falls perilously beneath pedals 
and sprokets. He slides for a number of feet before coming to rest, a tangled 
mess of spokes and legs in front them. They laugh uproariously. Buck DeVries 
cautiously unties himself, surprised that everything is still intact.

“Yeah. Go ahead and laugh. It’s real funny. You guys have got a great 
sense of humor.”

Danny goes over and picks the bike up.

rcr / 34


“Gee,” he says, smiling at Jimmy. “I didn’t know giraffes could ride bikes.” 
“They can’t,” Jimmy says, giggling.

Buck struggles to his feet. He has a large grass stain on the hip of his khakis 
which he vainly tries to brush off.

“Goddamit. My ma’ll can me for this.”

Danny twists the football up and spins it on one finger. “You shouldn’t be 
so clumsy.”

“Hell, I can’t help it if I’m not as beautiful and graceful as you are, All- 
American!”

“Hey, can it, you guys,” Jimmy says. “Let’s go down to Moran’s and get a 
coke.”

But Danny doesn’t quit. “You’re jealous,” he says, crinkling up his nose.

Buck snears but says nothing. So they walk together, Danny in the middle 
with a hand on each of their shoulders. Jimmy flips the ball up, and Buck keeps 
his hands poked in his pockets. Danny knows he has no better friends than these, 
and as the autumn wind flips the long wool collar-tips of his jacket up flat against 
his cheeks and smoke from gutters of burning leaves envelopes them at moments 
then whispers away, he wishes he could hug them both hard to his face and say 
that he loves them more than anybody, more than God even; that they should 
never leave the autumn Saturdays or Halloween but stay together forever. . . . He 
suddenly leaps ahead and glances back over his shoulder.

“Hey! Hit me with a long one!” Beneath him his feet begin to fly.

Moran’s soda bar is hot and filled with heavy wool coats: pompoms green 
with interlaced white above milk white sweaters and short pleated skirts—baby- 
cheeked cheerleaders. Danny shivers, their faces turning to him and fusing with 
iced cherry cokes and a forest of yellow straws. He raises his hand, begins 
scratching the back of his head. Buck and Jimmy grin and walk to the bar. 
Danny stumbles after them, keeping behind.

“Hey, some game, huh.” Jimmy grabs a pompom and jiggles it in Margaret 
Hughes’ face. Marianne Scott turns and looks at Danny. One of her blue-grey 
eyes is partially covered by the soft swing of her long black hair. Her face is 
flushed white, like sun on snow.

“Sure was,” she says shyly. “You really played good, Danny.”

Danny grins a little, and continues to scratch the back of his head. He wishes 
he had carried the ball now, but Jimmy has lost it to Margaret Hughes, who 
cuddles it gently like a teddy bear on her tummy.

“Yeah, he’s our hero,” Buck says, embracing him with a long bony arm. “How 
about a speech, hero.”

The girls giggle, and Marianne spins around on her stool. Danny looks at her 
and blushes. All he can muster is “Aw . . and a sharp elbow in Buck’s side. 
Buck grunts and quickly drops his arm, moving back to the girls.

Fifteen minutes pass. There is much talk of the dance. Danny sits on the very 

35 / RCR


end stool sucking coke slowly through a crushed straw. Then Margaret Hughes 
has to do her hair, and the cheerleaders file out, chattering. Danny throws his 
straw on the counter and swills the coke.

“Hey, you guys,” he says. “Whatta you say we do something crazy tonight. 
You know. Leave the dance a little early or something.”

“Leave early,” Jimmy says. “You nuts? All those girls are coming.”

“All those girls? Yeah. But what’s so hot about them?”

Buck slaps his forehead. “Jeez, are you nuts? Did you see that Marianne— 
God!”

“Aw. She’s not that great. Besides, I don’t mean leave right away. You know 
—after a while.”

“What’ll we do?” Jimmy asks, screwing up one side of his face.

“Something crazy. Put shoe polish on our faces like last year and go out 
somewhere.”

“Where?” Buck asks.

“Jeez, who cares. Anywhere.”

Buck frowns and looks at Jimmy. Jimmy bounces the football on the counter. 
Old Mr. Moran tells him to stop. “I don’t know,” he says. “Let’s talk about it at 
the dance. If you can think of something good, I’ll go. Okay?”

Buck gets up from the counter. “Me too. Now let’s get out of here. My ma’s 
having dinner at six.”

“Terrific!” Danny says. “Listen, I’ll think of something. Just wait. I’ll think 
of something great!”

Danny’s house is at the end of Black Street, ten blocks from the river. There 
are beautiful new homes on the banks of the river: the Mayor’s, the president of 
Blackstone Pump Company’s, Marianne Scott’s; but his is not new or beautiful. 
It is a big house, three stories high, with thin board siding that is hard to paint. 
His mother had him do it in dark grey the summer before—she saw it on the 
Mayor's house. It turned out dismally, but she won’t change it.

He hates the outside of the house except for the huge vine arbor which ends 
just below his bedroom window on the third floor, and it is only pretty in the 
summer, covered over with the heart-shaped green leaves like it is so the wooden 
frame doesn’t even show, but in the fall and winter is like a skeleton stuck against 
the wall.

He looks away from it coming up the walk. The sun is nearly gone, and beneath 
the trees it is dark. He thinks, the house is scary sometimes, not like a 
home really—but at least different on the inside. The baby is there and his 
mother. His father, too, but his mother—yes, her most. As he turns into the 
driveway, he sees a light and pumpkin glow from the side window. He smiles and 
sprints to the back door. When he is inside, the screen bangs behind him.

“Danny, is that you?” his mother yells from the kitchen.

“Yeah, mom.” He throws his jacket on a chair in the hallway and slips off 

rcr / 36


his shoes without untying them.

“Danny,” she says as he appears at the kitchen door. “Where have you been 
dear? I haven’t seen you all day and it’s nearly dark.”

He goes to the refrigerator and automatically looks in. The apples are spotted 
and withered.

“Danny. Honey, did you hear me?”

He slams the door shut and squeezes his hands into his pockets. “Jeez, mom. 
It’s only 6:15. Anyway, I was home to change after the game. You were gone.”

“Don’t be sharp with me, darling.” She frowns babyishly, her full lips turning 
in a half pout. He smiles a little. She is very pretty and young for a mother. He 
is proud of how she looks. Buck’s and Jimmy’s mothers are older and lumpy. Mrs. 
Conkle is nice, though, really more like a mother than his. But his is very pretty.

“Aw, mom,” he says. “Let’s eat. Okay? I’ve hardly had anything all day.”

“You haven’t! Well, mommy will fix that fast. Gerald! Have you found a 
sitter yet?”

“Hell no!” his father yells from the living-room. “Every damned one of them 
is gone tonight!”

Danny seats himself at the vinolite kitchen table, and stuffs a carrot slice into 
his mouth. “Where are you going?”

His mother tsks and turns to him. “Honey, don’t talk with your mouth full. 
We’re going to a masquerade party at the Mayor’s house. Didn’t I tell you? Wait 
a sec and I’ll show you my costume!” She runs quickly through the living-room 
and into her bedroom. His father swears again, slamming down the receiver of 
the phone. She scampers back and yells at Danny to close his eyes. When he 
opens them, she has on a black pullover rubber mask, a hideous black witch 
warted and festered with a long twisted nose from which tufts of grey hair protrude. 
He stares, and it feels bad to him like when she feeds the baby in front 
of him in the living-room with the blinds open pulling out her big white one 
for the baby without blinking once from the television. He tries to smile but is 
embarrassed.

“Isn’t it a scream!” she says. She pulls it off, contorting her face as the rubber 
tugs against her hair-line. “I found it at that novelty store downtown. The mayor 
will get a kick out of it, I’ll bet.”

Her face is white and good again to him. He sits back and devours more 
carrot sticks, wanting to tell her to throw it away, to go as a princess or something. 
Then his father stomps red-faced into the kitchen and sits down.

“You might as well put that mask away,” he bellows. “We can’t go anywhere 
tonight, Goddammit all.”

“Stop swearing, dear. It doesn’t do any good. We’ll find a sitter. I wouldn’t 
miss this party for the world. Why, we’re the only ones in this whole neighborhood 
invited.” She slumps pensively into the corner of the cupboards and folds 
her arms. “Oh, I wish we could move to the river—but—well, I know we don’t 

37 / RCR


have the money, dear. I'll try that Catholic sitter agency. Maybe they'll have 
something.”

“They're too expensive,” his father says, rubbing his forehead. “Besides, they 
have a bunch of crazy old women who take the jobs to feed Catholic propaganda 
to little kids. Listen—Danny, why can't you watch Todd and let your mother 
and I go to this party. You aren't doing anything special tonight, are you?”

Danny chokes on a mouthful of fried potatoes and can't answer immediately. 
But his mother rescues him.

“Sam,” she says in a scolding voice. “This is Halloween.”

“So what,” he snaps back. “Danny isn't a kid any more.”

“Why, Sam. He's only fourteen. Besides, there's a sock hop at school tonight. 
Remember, fourteen isn't very old for a boy —” her almost wimpering 
tones make Danny feel hurt and very sorry for himself.

“Okay, okay. Forget it. Ill go call the agency.” His father bends over his 
plate and takes a long slug of coffee.

After dinner Danny walks up the two flights of creaking, bare woodstairs 
to his room. It is a little attic room with slanted ceilings on both sides. It is 
warm and gay with red flannel Indian blankets and many football pennants 
in browns and greens and reds and blues on the walls. His closet is open with 
shoulder pads and a red helmet hanging from the top edge of the door, and in 
the center of the room on the floor is an electric football game. Little metal 
men lie scattered around the green metal field, and he sits down beside it and 
sets them up with the ends split out wide but the line closed tight in front of 
the quarterback, with the defensive team the same way. He has marked the 
quarterback, the fastest one, with a pencilled X and can manipulate the blades 
on his feet to make him run in any direction. He bends the blades slightly 
right and sets him directly behind the right guard. He flips the switch on, the 
green field begins vibrating, and the offensive line moves forward: the right 
guard moves strongest ahead turning slightly right with the quarterback untouched 
behind him. A huge gap is opened in the line, through which they zip 
neatly. The linebackers move in but are quickly redirected by the guard. 
The only remaining backfield man turns toward the opposite sideline, and the 
quarterback breaks out into the open. His rightward movement is only slight 
and will carry him easily into the end zone without going out of bounds. He 
leaves the right guard behind, crosses the 50 with no one near him and speeds 
down confidently for the goal line. Danny claps his hands, and gives a whoop. 
Then a tiny bit of blackening tomato seed stuck on the field from a sandwich 
catches the quarterback's front blade, spins him madly around for a moment, 
and throws him off onto his side. Danny bangs the floor with his fist. He pulls 
the plug out violently, and walks over and flops on his bed. He thinks, why 
do they have to do something great? Why think something up? It's better to 
just go out and find something. Jeez, why'd they leave it up to him? He turns 


over, rolling the pillow around his head. The warts of his mother's mask poke 
at his mind, and he wonders how long he and the baby will have to be alone 
in the house with the sitter tonight. Then suddenly he smiles and sits up.

“Yeah,” he says, and slaps the bed. “Yeah. Great!” He bounds out of bed 
and digs in his closet for his shoeshine kit. He finds what he wants—a can 
of black polish — flips it in the air and catches it one-handed. Then he runs 
to his dresser and takes an old bent bugle from the top drawer. Pressing it to 
his lips, he blows a long laugh through it, twirls around, and falls backwards 
onto his bed. “Great!” he says. “Great!”

At eight o'clock the front door opens, and Danny hears his father introducing 
the baby sitter. He fastens his clip bow tie to his collar and pulls a V-necked 
red sweater over his head, then graps his coat and runs down the stairs. At 
the bottom he stops abruptly, face to face with a bulging-eyed old woman. He 
backs up one stair, stunned, but she looks away and pulls off an old grey wool 
coat which she hangs in the hall closet. She carries a black wool shawl under 
one arm and wears a black cotton dress which falls loose and faded from her 
bent shoulders. He works his way around her and slips into the living-room 
where he stares aghast at his parents. His father is irritated and looks away from 
him; his mother returns a worried glance and retires to the kitchen.

“Danny. This is Mrs. Raven,” his father says as she enters the room.

“How do you do, Danny,” she says, offering her hand. Her voice is old 
and cracked, but kind. She has warts on her hand, with also a large one on the 
side of her nose, and Danny drops the hand gingerly and rubs his palm on 
the leg of his trousers. Mrs. Raven walks to the davenport and seats herself 
slowly, leaning on the arm for support. She wraps the shawl around her 
shoulders, then looks up at him.

“Where's your costume, Danny?” she says. “Don't you know tonight is 
Halloween?”

Danny glances at his father, then back at her. “Sure, I knowit,” he says, 
rather proudly. “But I'm going to a dance.”

“Ah, a dance,” she says. Her eyes bulge like toadstools from her head. 
“Whata fine big fellow you are. So brave, too. Why, I didn't dare go without 
a costume on Halloween till I was seventeen or eighteen. Such evil things 
out there.” She glances swiftly at the front window. “Children eaters! You 
have to dress up like them to fool them, you know. Otherwise, they'll gitcha! 
Only eat children, though. Think you're big enough, boy? Huh?”

Danny can only stare at her with his jaw a little open. Suddenly she winks 
at him, and his father bursts out laughing. 7

“Careful, Mrs. Raven,” he says. “You'll scare the big fellow to death.”

There is only a quarter moon in the dark sky as Danny walks down Black 
Street on his way to the school. Ahead of him two sheeted ghosts and a cowboy 
lug big shopping bags and giggle. Dark trees with grotesque arms writh in

39 / RCR


the wind, and across the street a black witch and a skeleton soap car windows. 
Every porch light shines, and Danny shivers in his human clothes. He walks 
faster, wishing that Buck and Jimmy were with him. At Hoyt Street he 
turns — at once a group of gulping monsters surrounds him in the dark and he 
pushes through, knocking a shopping bag to the ground. Someone starts crying 
— a yell blasts the back of his neck, and he breaks into a run, a hard run into 
the street. A moment, and an apple smashes beside him and slides into a 
gutter. He jumps the curb onto the sidewalk, just grazing a stop-sign. There 
are footsteps and laughter behind him, doorbells too ringing, buzzing — the 
lights of the school explode into the sky three blocks up, and he runs, not 
stopping till he sees the ties and sweaters and pleated skirts at the bright door 
of the gym. Then he breathes, tucking in his shirt, tucking back his heart.

White wool socks. Wool socks frizzied with orange and brown yam faces 
moving madly together as he stands in a hallway of empty shoes. Removing 
his, he steps onto the ceaseless creaking rhythm of the floorboards. A comer 
empties, and he rapidly fills it. A blinking juke box blurts song after song, 
and each receives its thorough trampling. Danny feels strange; he is trembling. 
Suddenly, a familiar yell yanks his heart onto the gym floor, and he recognizes 
his classmates; they have been there dancing all the time. He sees Jimmy 
waving to him. He smiles, breathing deeply, and walks across the floor.

“Hey, babes,” Jimmy says. “Whatta ye say? How come you took so long?” 
Danny jumps up and seats himself on the top of the folded bleachers. “I 
got held up figuring out a plan for tonight. Boy, have I got something great!”

Jimmy folds his arms and leans up against the wall. “Hey, Danny, you’re 
not serious, are you?”

“Yeah I’m serious. You don’t want to sit around a dance all night, do you?” 
“Jeez, well. God, Danny, look at Marianne out there.” He motions with 
his hand to the center of the floor where Buck, in a dirt-balled pink sweater, 
is dancing a two-step with Marianne. “Jeez, she even makes that clod look 
good. How can I leave something like that.”

“Come on, Jimmy. You promised you would.”

“Yeah, but hell, Danny.”

“Hey, Danny!” Buck yells over Marianne’s head. “You wanna dance?”

Danny reddens but can’t shake his head because she is looking at him. 
She and Buck start walking toward them, and Danny turns, panicked, to Jimmy.

“Come on, you rats. You promised me.” His lips tighten. At the last 
second Jimmy reluctantly nods.

“Hi, Danny,” Marianne says, smiling. A bath-powder smell surrounds her; 
faint lipstick pink against her soft white face matches a fuzzy pink sweater 
and skirt. “You want to dance?”

“I guess so,” he says, glaring at Buck. He jumps to the floor. She offers 
her hand — he reaches and is amazed at its tiny softness, then amazed that he


WILLIAM ROYCE PHOTOGRAPH
WILLIAM ROYCE PHOTOGRAPH


is holding it. He hunches his shoulders with his free hand stuffed deep in his 
pocket and leads her to a dark side of the floor. He can’t believe he’s joined 
like this to her — her body warmth fuses new with his a moment through their

hands. It’s strange to feel; he hadn’t expected it. He is here on the floor with a 
girl to dance when he has never held a girl’s hand before let alone danced, 
so he remembers he doesn’t know how.

He says, “I don’t know how very well.”

"I’ll show you,” she says. She pulls his right arm around the soft small of 
her back, and lifts his left out to the side. He holds her, unbelievably; up her 
hand goes lightly on his shoulder, his feet moving stiffly as she guides him back 
and forth over six boards with her cotton candy smell an opaque bubble 
around them. Moments pass, then a thump on his shoulder and it’s over. He 
gives up her arms and moves self-consciously off the floor. He thinks she 
looked unhappy when he left.

“Hey champ,” Buck says, laughing. “You looked great out there.”

, “Yeah? Better than you did, stupid.” At that whatever was there is gone.

The floor is a blank behind him, rolled up. He hits Buck playfully in the 
shoulder and smiles. “Hey. Ten o’clock’s the time. Everything’s set.”

Buck grunts and searches out over Danny’s shoulder for a girl.

Danny’s house is dimly-lit and sad looking as he runs across the yard and

41 / RCR


into the driveway. The house reminds him of Mrs. Raven. Through the back 
door and kitchen he goes. In the living-room Mrs. Raven rocks the baby — 
Danny startles her, throws her only a quick hello, and hastens upstairs three 
steps at a time. On the first landing he checks the linen closet for old sheets but 
finds none. Quickly he mounts to his room. He tears the blankets off his bed, 
removes the top sheet and spreads it out flat on his floor. In the center of the 
sheet he cuts a foot-long slit with a jacknife. Then, whistling, he applies black 
shoe polish to his face and neck. Finally, he pulls the sheet over his head, slips 
his old bugle under the sheet, and runs downstairs. He passes swiftly through 
the hallway to the front door, but Mrs. Raven sees him.

“Danny,” she says. “Where are you going?”

“Oh, just out.” He opens the door.

“Come here, son.”

He hesitates, then shuts the door and moves into the living-room. “What,”

he says.

“I see you’re dressed now.” She lifts herself slightly and pulls her skirt 
down over her fleshy grey knees.

“Yeah. I’m just going out for a little while with a couple of friends of mine.”

“Did you believe what I told you earlier?”

“Well. I don’t think so.”

“That’s a good boy.” One egg-like eye winks at him slyly. “It’s just an old 
tale, son. Things like that don’t really happen. God is all you have to fear. Just 
God, Danny.”

She reaches out her hand to him, but he backs toward the door. She moves 
her hand to the baby’s cradle and rocks it slowly. Her black shawl hangs lifelessly 
over her arm.

“Have a nice time,” she says. “And don’t forget what I told you now.

Goodbye, Danny.”

“Goodby,” he says, moving slowly to the door. He turns the knob, feeling 
somehow guilty for leaving the baby — but then he bursts out the door and 
into the street.

In the alley behind Jim Dark’s Barber Shop it is very black except for a 
thin stick of light that filters from the streetlight in front down the crack between 
the shop and the next building. Danny enters the alley puffing and 
sees that Buck and Jimmy have already arrived, costumed exactly as he is.

“Hey, great you guys!” he says, coming up between them. “You bring the 
stuff?”

Jimmy hauls out a large brass cowbell and a miniature American flag on a 

stick. He holds it reverently at his breast, saluting with the cowbell. Buck and 
Danny buckle up with muffled laughter. Then Buck displays his army surplus 
air-raid siren. He twists the handle slightly and a Donald Duck-like noise 
blurts out. Danny blows a sour note on his bugle, and they all laugh together.

rcr / 42


Danny feels the old warmth again, and as they trot together down River 
Boulevard there is nothing in the world that can frighten him. The trees are 
trees above him, sack-dragging monsters are only little kids. Mrs. Raven is 
just an old lady, too. He links his arms in theirs, and they head swiftly for 
the Mayor's house. ,

Secret Street Bridge crosses the river a block from the Mayor's. In late 
fall the river is very low, and under the bridge is a small dried mud beach 
wide enough to walk on. A cement river wall runs the full length of the 
property behind the new houses andrises four feet above the mud strip. Danny 
scampers first down the grass bank to the river wall and without hesitating 
jumps onto the dried mud. Buck and Jimmy follow him quickly, Buck overjumping 
and soaking his shoes.

“Good jump,” Danny whispers, giggling.

“Go to hell,” Buck says loudly.

“Hey, shutup,” Jimmy says, hunching down below the wall.

Danny leads them under the bridge where they stop and huddle together. 
Light from the Mayor's house blazes through a large set of French doors down 
across a stone terrace and sloping back yard to the dark river rippling softly in 
a shimmering gown of thin yellow leaves. Danny shivers, turning to the 
two black faces behind him.

“Those are the doors,” he whispers.

Buck and Jimmy nod uncertainly.

“There's another set exactly opposite those at the front of the house. When 
we get up next to that terrace, we lie down, see, and when the coast is clear, 
we take off through the doors and scare the pants off '°em. That's all there 
is to it.”

“That's all there is to it,” Buck says mockingly. “Well, what if the other 
doors are locked and we can't get out, huh?”

“Don't sweat it. Why would they have the doors locked at a party?”

“For wise-guys like us,” Jimmy whispers.

“Hey, you guys aren't chickening out are you?”

Buck glances at Jimmy. “Chickening out? Not me.”

“Me either, Danny babes.” Jimmy rubs his hands quickly on his sides.

They move quietly crouched against the cement wall. Buck comes last, 
holding the tail of Jimmy's sheet, Jimmy the tail of Danny's. Danny leads— 
he thinks: Jungle Jim leading a great safari through the murky swamps of 
deepest Africa, gripping his elephant gun-bugle tightly beneath his sheet. 
Monster crocodiles everywhere. Pythons and hairy black widows that suck the 
brains from your head. A muskrat scampers into the water ahead of him and 
his heart shrivels. Buck yells and slips sideways in the mud, soaking his shoe 
again.

“Jeez,” Jimmy whispers. “What was that?”

43 / RCR


Danny takes in a deep breath. His heart beats madly. “Oh. Nothing but a 
muskrat. Why? Did it scare you guys?” He laughs weakly.

“Hell no,” Buck says loudly.

“Sh-h-h.” Jimmy turns and whacks him on the shoulder.

“Hey, cut it out!”

“Sh-h-h!”

“Okay, okay.”

They move slowly onward, crouching lower now. When they reach the 
edge of the light filtering downward from the French doors, Danny stops 
and turns around, squatting on his haunches.

“Listen now, you guys,” he whispers. “We run up to the terrace one at a 
time, see. When we get there, we get down on our stomachs fast. Okay?”

“Okay,” Buck says. “Who’s first?”

“You are,” Danny says. “Go ahead.”

“Not me dammit. This is your idea. You go first.”

“Yeah, Danny babes,” Jimmy whispers. “You go first.”

Danny looks at both of them, then up at the terrace. “We’ll go together.”

They nod reluctantly. Danny peeks again at the terrace. There are people 
moving around inside but none are near the doors.

“Let’s go!” he says. They scamper up over the wall and toward the house. 
Beneath them the grass cracks. Each step-beat pounds loudly in Danny’s ears 
—then a noisy swoosh of grass as he slides belly-first up under the terrace. 
Two more swooshes follow; they wait, listening. Latin music blares unceasingly 
from inside with laughter crashing now and then but always the constant hum 
of undisturbed talk underneath. They lie, hardly breathing, on their stomachs. 
A rhythmic clapping starts along with shouts. The music is turned up. Bongo 
drums. Shouting grows louder, whistles. Buck is first to his knees, peeking 
cautiously over the edge of the terrace.

“God,” he says.

Jimmy quickly rises. “Jeez, what’s she doing!” He glares at Buck with 
white eyes.

“What’s the matter with you guys?” Danny asks. “Huh? What’s going 
on.”

“Jeez, look at that, Danny babes. Gol, I don’t believe it.”

“Well, what is it? Get down for cripes sakes. They’ll see you.”

“Sh-h-h. It’s a woman, babes. Without hardly any clothes on!”

Danny gets a strange feeling in his stomach, that he has never seen a woman 
bare-naked before except his mother’s white one which was different, only being 
for the baby. He sees another curtain before him today, rising, first the hands 
and holding the softness of a pink girl dancing, and now here, now. Things 
he waited for piling up in one night if he just looks up. Just look up. The 
music is wilder. Shouting caves in over it. He rises to his knees. There she is 

rcr / 44


back to him life-size in black pants and thin-strapped bra twisting her hips 
madly hands out. A semi-circle of gaping masks stand at the front of her. She 
is young and very white. He lies quickly down again, guilty, like he was at the 
Boy Scout paper drive when he found dirty books but couldn’t concentrate 
with Buck and Jimmy over his shoulder. They still watch, though, their white 
eyes gleaming.

“Hey, Danny-babes,” Jimmy whispers. “Quick, she’s turning this way!”

Buck puts his hand to his forehead. “God, look at that. Jeez!”

Danny rises quickly, catching the last motion of her arm as it flings the black 
bra to the floor. For an instant there is a hot, burning place in his stomach, 
a flash only—then suddenly his heart and guts turn cold freezing, up he stands 
paralyzed with cracked eyes staring at the black warted rubber witch-face 
shaking hideously at him.

“Hey, sit down!” Jimmy whispers loudly.

Buck grabs the bottom of his sheet and yanks him to the ground. He 
kneels, bending forward. Saliva rapidly fills under his tongue.

“Let’s get out of here. Come on you guys!” He tugs at Jimmy’s sheet, but 
Jimmy knocks his hand away.

“Are you nuts? Just shut up and watch, babes.”

“Yeah. Jeez, look at that.” Buck’s mouth is open.

Danny grabs them both by the arms and pulls them over backwards. “Come 
on you guys,” he says. “Come on! Please!”

“What the hell are you doing? Leave if you want to. I’m not.” Buck twists 
his arm free, gets back on his knees.

“Whatsa matter, babes?” Jimmy asks. “Huh? You scared?”

“Hell no,” he says. “Hell no you rats.” He leaps to his feet, dashing 
frantically towards the wall, ready to jump. Flying tennies, then suddenly the 
edge, water splattering filling his shoes up his legs until finally he can balance 
and wade back. He sprints, heels hitting heavily on the mud strip and wind 
singing on his ears. His feet slog and pucker in his shoes, under the bridge in 
thirty seconds, up over the grass bank. The hard cement of Secret Street makes 
running easy. Soaring. Up, up he goes. Secret Street left to River Boulevard 
and over a cliff to the shivering moon. Grabbing black trees, crooked evil arms 
with warty hands plucking the back of his collar. Where can he hide? Blackness 
is over his shoulder reaching: Run!

The old house is dark and staring in the silent street, empty now of Halloween’s 
children. His stomach aches. He pounds it with his fist, but it won’t 
unknot. He stands looking at the skeleton arbor clinging desperately to the 
side of the house. He thinks of it sucking. A black widow. Sucking the insides 
out. Tears burn his eyes, scorch white furrows down his cheeks. He leaps to 
the front porch, slips through the door past Mrs. Raven and the baby without 
looking, up the stairs three flights to his room. He slams his door, reaches for 

45 / RCR


the bottom of the sheet tearing it up around his scrawny ears, but it won’t 
come off. He drops sobbing onto his bed, the sheet falling about him. Downstairs 
the baby cries in an endless drone.

For many minutes he lies there. His eyes get sticky. He turns over on his 
back, leaning up on his elbows. The house is quiet. He gets to his feet. There 
is only silence: it pounds his ears. He listens for the baby, but nothing comes. 
Heat rises in the back of his neck. He goes to his door, slipping quickly out 
and down the stairs, shoeless. The second landing down he stops, gets to his 
knees, crawls to where he can see the living-room through the bars of the 
bannister. There is the baby, a still stone in its crib—eyes shut, mouth shut— 
pale. Beside the crib Mrs. Raven sits wrapped in her black, hanging shawl. 
Her head is bent; incoherent guttural noises belch from her throat. On her wide 
lap is coiled a long string of black beads which she fingers slowly, her eyes 
closed.

The blood drains from Danny’s face. He kneels frozen, clutching the frayed 
neck of his wrinkled sheet. His red eyes bulge from his blackened face. “The 
witch,” he whimpers. “No, no. Not the baby, too.” He glances at the front door, 
then back at Mrs. Raven. He thinks: she’d get him, too. Only twelve steps 
away, but she’d hear and get him like the others. He backs slowly up the 
stairs. A thousand wooden squeaking noises pound his head — he feels the 
blackness close in again, reaching dumbly out for him with blind man’s 
fingers. There is no way, he thrashes in the trap. Nowhere to hide, to run, to 
scream his brains out. Up! That’s all! Up he goes on all fours flying, fingernails 
gouging wood for speed, the thing behind grabbing at his spine. Through his 
door fast shut, locked. No time! The window sticks, groans—a graveyard 
wind sweeps in, moaning. The moon is there before him, small, liquid in the 
black sponge sky. Behind him he thinks he hears the doorknob jiggle. Feet- 
first out he goes; but the arbor is not there, he hangs horrified from the 
window ledge, his legs flailing. He hears the door open inside. His foot finds 
a wooden rib of the arbor; down he drops to a lower one, his arms stretched tight 
from the ledge. Footfalls thump slowly across the room, nearer, louder; his 
fingers twitch, loosen—down he drops feet catching first, then hands grabbing, 
gripping the ornamented arbor top. Suddenly, a crack rips the darkness. Nails 
pop; the arbor teeters. Slowly the skeleton with its petrified nails ripping huge 
rotten chunks from the house, tips backwards, down. . . . Danny yells, reaching 
desperately for the ledge. His fingers touch but can’t hold. He screams. Within 
the dark frame of the window he thinks he sees a face—a black warted rubber 
face, floating, smiling. Then the sky and dark treetops roll quickly by him. A 
bomb explodes in the back of his head.

Once he opens his eyes. Mrs. Raven and the man from next door stand 
horrified over him. Between them a tiny white princess drops her star-tipped 
wand and grips her daddy’s leg, screaming. Then there is only darkness.


‘Two Poems / RON GERVAIS

WRITER'S WIFE

A word, a look — “Conception”, he says. 
Days of nothing — “Enceinte', he says. 
Then, like rain on the tight earth — 
“Typing out a child”, he says.

And I am an Indian summer moth 
Plunging into the flame of him;

Cursing all my moth gods

If I only singe a hairy eye.

AS A LIGHT SINKS

Enormously

past old grapes left by sparrows 
sinks a light as we 
in earnest tones as children whine 
at broken toys speak 
of the beauty

we will create as old men lean 
into the wind we speak 
of the truth

we will seek as puppies sniff 
around the bush we speak 
of the deaths 
we will not fear 
as a light sinks 
Enormously

47 / RCR


three Sketches

by richard slater

THE DAY BEFORE

Pa didn’t get old until one October day when I was seventeen. We went 
for birds back of a farm on Baldwin road, with the guns on the back 
seat, driving slow on the dust. Pa said “Well, we'll try this place ahead 
there.” I was watching an oak leaf caught on the windshield wiper, thinking 
it would fall off when we turned into the driveway. I said “Oh, you 
know the guy that owns this place? I didn’t know you knew him.”

“Why, old Carl Hammond lives here,” Pa said. “Used to fire for me 
on the Grand Trunk. Known him thirty years.” The leaf didn’t fall when 
we turned in. I pulled it out from under the wiper after we got out of the 
car. Pa checked the chamber empty on his twelve-gauge automatic, 
stooped under the strand of barked wire at the edge of the corn, and 
stood up. “They’re in the corn. Let the dog work it,” he said. “We’ll get 
up at the other end.” The sun had a little way to go before the sky got 
cold. Pa was watching the corn; dropped down on his right knee and 
said, “Get down. More, more.” I saw dead grass stems close to my eyes, 
and waited for the hard whirr and the gun. Pa fired and the gun jumped 
to the grass. He held his right shoulder and cried a little. “Jesus,” he said. 
“That goddam arthritis. Should have let you do it, boy.” I looked at the 
sun and said “Well, you didn’t miss him by much.”

RCR / 48


SOMETHING TO DO ON SATURDAY

The Hekman kid was already in the county jail when Dick Deverell and 
me heard about the murder. A big bunch of people, maybe fifteen or 
twenty, were blocking the sidewalk on the shady side of Nepessing street 
in front of the County Press office. Most of them was people we knew in 
town, but some I’d never seen before. Some were big farmers with old 
dusty shoes, except where their overall pants legs made the brown leather 
shine above the dusty part. There was little bits of straw sticking out yellow- 
gray from under their shoe soles, and houseflies moved and lit again when 
the feet moved a little, as the men looked in the window and read the 
special paper.

“Well, he sure got ’em good,” somebody said. Me and Dick got up by 
the window and scrubbed along the brick wall below the glass. The cement 
sill felt stone-cool. While we looked at the pictures at the top of the 
special paper, I blew on some green moss in a crack of the sill and thought 
how lucky the Hekman kid was. I said, “What’d he do it for?” Dick 
raised his head and said something, but a hot, dirty breath behind me said, 
loud, “Got the last one at a hunnert yards. In the head, too.” The breath 
made me dizzy. I didn’t even want to turn around, because I knew it was 
old Squano. He never did anything, just hung around town with a drop 
on the end of his nose. In the winter, the drop was an icicle, and none of 
us kids liked him. I saw the picture Squano meant, the middle one of a girl 
about eleven. She could have been my big sister, only I didn’t have one, 
and she never would be now, because she was lying in a dry sawgrass 
swamp in some weeds that looked like the golden-rod that grows on the 
edges of swales. Just some hair, black on the shoulders of a white dress 
that was pulled up above her middle. The paper told how John Frederick 
Hekman, believed to be mentally retarded, had shot to death his five 
playmates with a .22 caliber rifle yesterday afternoon at about 4 P.M. 
After we got tired of looking at the pictures and stuff, me and Dick went 
over around the jail to try and look through the bars. We got a drink at 
the courthouse fountain on the way.

49 / RCR


THE SPILLWAY

I was twelve the spring I broke my dog’s leg at the waterworks dam. The 
dam was made of two-by-twelve oak planks trapped against the cement 
footbridge. When the ice thawed, water slid tight and brown into the 
spillway, like it was mad at the boards for trying to hold it, and you knew 
if you fell in there you’d get sucked under and they’d find you below the 
falls and put it in the paper. Us kids put boards in the spillway to make 
the water back up until it was going around both ends of the bridge, cutting 
us off from land like people in a flood. I was carrying a plank across 
the bridge when that fool fox terrior Bud got between my legs, making me 
let go to grab the railing. The board dropped on him, and he let out a 
yip, biting at the wood. His left hind leg bone stuck out yellow, with a 
liver-colored center. I touched him, thinking he’d bite me, but he didn’t. 
Another kid held Bud and talked to him while I broke two splints from a 
red willow. I tied them lengthwise on the leg after pulling it straight, 
using strips from the inside of my coat pocket. I carried Bud home in 
my coat, making up a story so I wouldn’t get a licking.

RCR / 50


RICHARD KLINE OIL ON CANVAS
RICHARD KLINE OIL ON CANVAS


51 / RCR


NO

R O 
A D 

TO 

DAMASCUS

marinus

swets

He didn’t walk fast. He just walked on, past the house that 
had been converted into a funeral parlor that shouldn’t 
exist, yet did. He could not remember ever having seen 
any funeral parade ever led by any hearse with the name 
Rauson’s on it. He wondered why Blake had called it a 
marriage hearse, or whether Blake had a hearse in mind at 
all. Had had, he meant.

—How do they stay in business. Impossible. Yet here it 
is, still. Something like old balogna. Should be baloney. 
Never throw it out. That man had shouted from that door 
when I shook that sign twenty years ago. Walking home 
then. Never got there. Home from church. Different 
church, though. How do I redeem a bald spot? Wear 
rolled trousers?

—Always afraid of some authority. Afraid of God too. 
"I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” Gets you

DAMASCUS 

Figure without caption.
REIN VANDERHILL

COLLAGE


in the end. What comes first, fear of God and then fear of authority, or fear 
of authority and then fear of God? Have to look it up in the culture and personality 
text. Toilet training, I suppose. Not afraid of the devil, however. Ma 
didn't make the bogeyman strong enough. Strong bogeyman, weak ma; weak 
bogeyman, strong God. Never wet my pants, though.

—Make the commitment and no more fear of authority. Is this why I ake 
to do it? Who gets the promise, God? Or the man? Or does God somehow make 
the promise?

He didn't walk fast. To walk fast would have been to betray what he did not 
want to betray: that he was drawn to it. And hadn't he always denied that he 
always was drawn to it? —any real commitment that there might bea grain of 
possibility of truth in the event and in the act.

As he reluctantly walked on, he noticed that the squares in the sidewalk were 
not always whole. Where man had intended that the frost-thaw pressure should 
alleviate the pain crosswise, nature found more virtue in breaking through lengthwise 
and crosswise and anglewise. Cracks ran all over. Free floating anxiety, 
he thought, forty desert years of it. : ;

—God disposes. Look for the pillar of fire.

He couldn't find any good reason to go on except that he had decided to go on. 
He had thought about it earlier in the evening.

—And by evening I mean life. I wake and feel the fell of rain, not dust. This 
time I will. Tonight I make an altarcall.

Somehow, going through with it would make up for all the other betrayals of 
promises that he had made: the promise to smoke no more, the promise to 
drink less beer, the promise to drink less, period, the promise to not mortify 
the flesh, the promise to just be nice. He hadn't kept any of them. Well, there 
was a thing he could do and then all the other promises would fall into place. 
After forty years of promises, he would enter the promised land?

—Just like dominoes. Touch one and you're a goner. Something like sex. That 
first kiss. Need a life preserver for that man in the boat.

He saw the crowd at the sidewalk in front of the soda bar.

—That ice-cream palace. Open on Sunday. They all go there after the service. 
They all go, the good and the bad. Go there before too.

It was on his mind. How could such looseness come out of such a tight promise? 
Serve God and visit the ice-cream palace. Bob your hair and serve booze out 
of a cut glass bowl. When the ice melts, you go too.

—Good and bad. Have to remember that. Just making the promise doesn't 
make you good. But then they don't say that it does. You're as bad as ever. 
Just the act, somehow, lets someone else be good for you. That's how they say 
it. Say it and be good in the name of another. Easy enough. Do it and be done. 
Still, ice-cream and a cigarette after the Sunday evening sermon, boys and girls 
alike. Be playing stinky games in a few months. Wonder if they really know.

53 / RCR


Maybe that's the joy of it. Sin, and be forgiven in the act. Be as dumb as ever 
but blessed all the same. Maybe that's why birth is a blessed event. Dumb 
brutes. Funny, those cracks. Ought to plug them up.

He didn't know why he should think of it—that fly contest. His daughter had 
proposed it. “If there were a fly contest [she had proposed it after seeing some 
pigs] and there was a prize awarded for the person with the most flies—say, 20 
flies for the children and 100 flies for the adults—and you won, Dad, what 
would you do with the $200?” |

He didn't know where she had got the $200. He didn't know where she had got 
the fly contest. Yet he had said, he remembered, that he would buy light bulbs 
with the $200. Not that there was so much darkness but that there was not 
enoughlight. Something like Rome and Caesar, he thought. Not love one more 
but other less. But why light bulbs? Why not candles? Out. The old ones 
had no frosted glass and the new were gourd shaped. Killed ostriches. Estriches, 
Shakespeare had it. But he mustn't think of that. Really no relation or structure 
that he could find, at least not in a vegetable way.

—Buy light bulbs to light the way. “I am the way and the truth and the 
life...” Strange father.

He came to the place. Funny, he thought, that they take an old school and 
reface it with yellow brick to make it into a new church. Rotton all over inside; 
nice shiny new heavenly outside. Promise silver for tithes. At least to a degree. 
To high degrees for some. All they sang was “when I walk the golden streets” 
or diamond, or silver or ruby, or some jeweled structure.

—Strange, that a spiritual quest ended in pearly gates. “By the sea of crystal .. .” 
That's how they sang it. All ashore. Topside, mates. Fanny first?

On he went, up the steps and into the place. He was greeted heartily by three 
at once.

—Welcome, brother. An elder in four-in-hand tie approached him.

—Hullo. He affected fierceness.

—Praise the Lord for another beautiful day, eh. The leader's follower. 
—Heh? Oh, yeh. The fierce look faded. He entered the sanctuary.

He walked down the aisle and looked for a seat near the rear near the aisle.

He avoided a seat in front of a woman in a housedress.

—Sit here and get an earfull of “amens”. Can't sit here. Monotoned virgin. 
Johnny one-note. Puts God in a sty with her anthem.

He remembered her well. He was seven and' walked to school. She had taunted 
him one day with cries of “greasy, greasy, Mephibosheth.”

—What a Bible lesson. Learn about a cripple and call a seven-year old a name 
David himself couldn't pronounce. There she sits intoning simple 3-6-2-5-1 
harmony in a booby's voice. No painted woman she. More of a shirt-sleeved 
man. Deviate? Salt of the earth.

He didn't sit in front of the tone deaf virgin. He sat farther down and near the 

RcR / 54


aisle. His legs were long and if he sat behind the hymnal rack he was cramped. 
He wondered whether anyone would sit next to him and whether he would 
smell. Some smells weren’t so bad. Others. Old armpits and dirty hair. Bad 
breath. He wondered whether he would give any money when “tithes and 
offerings” were collected. They never called it what it was. Always “gifts” or 
“presents”. Never money.

—They ought to make it “shall”. Now we shall present our tithes and offerings. 
Makes it compulsory. But that would be obstreperous. Wrong word. Meant 
obfuscating. Like those ob- words. Obscure, oblong, obviate, obnoxious, obese. 
Grease is obese. And now we shall obfuscate thy obese and obnoxious offerings. 
The oblong ushers will obviate down the obscenity and ovulate. You 
will pay for heaven. Praise him.

—Who is your master? “Thou shalt have no other gods before me!” Wouldn’t 
pay to worship money. Church does, though. Collect all kinds of it. Show 
your love of God by giving Him money. Trade in your old bills for a reserved 
seat at the judgment day. He loves you if you give Him money. Take time out 
to beg. No chamber of commerce card required. All solicitors go to the front 
door.

—If someone else sits here, I won’t give any money. No one will notice. Can’t 
make you. Sermon isn’t worth it. Charge admission for a poor sermon. Won’t 
pay. Yet the collectors watch. All “Matthews”. His vocation, but not his 
avocation. Follow you.

As the preacher waltzed to the platform to what sounded faintly like Old Black 
Joe played on the transistor organ, he watched the swaying organist and pondered 
his decision to make the decision. Does one make up his mind to get saved, 
he wondered. He noticed that the preacher’s waltz changed to a nervous handwringing 
as he waited for the proper time to elapse before coming out of his 
prayer. He saw the hornblende hair combed back, unruly above the ears.

—Not unlike Dagwood. But Dagwood looks like a dog. The idea, God spelled 
backwards. Looks like a furnace tender, he does. Can see him with a long 
clinker rake. Throw the coal on the bottom. Down draft furnace there. Smoke 
goes down and out. Never see it again. Must go down the sewers.

As he sat waiting through the rituals of hymns and readings and announcements 
and the sermon, he didn’t think it strange that he didn’t wonder about God. 
God was as real as a broken fingernail. But He didn’t relieve the itch, perfect 
as He was. Auden’s neural itch, he thought. “Liar’s quinsy” came to him.

He hadn’t had quinsy when the formally attired fat dominie had asked him why 
he didn’t still attend his, the dominie’s church where the “true religion” was 
preached—“not like that easy road where you go.” “God hates me,” he had 
replied. “What you preach is that God hates me. That’s what I learned for 
twenty years.”

—And now I decide that he loves me. Just as I am.

55 / RCR


As the preacher with the light voice and the black hair continued the ritual, he 
wondered whether there wasn't some form of seduction involved. One couldn't 
put on such an act completely oblivious of the “amens” and the “yes, brothers”. 
Some assent there.

—I propose and you accept in ha name of the Lord. Behold the bridegroom. 
The choir rose. The choir, directed by William Willson, native, white, effete, 
sarcocarp, embroidered with Vitalis.

—Ratifies the choir's oil with flak from the fingertips. No cracked nails he. 
His goosegrass hair a real ochone for an ad. Strokes it. Choir responds How 
Great Thou Art. Like the idea. How great is Thou if He permits this kind of 
dishonor to be given His name. Real show biz. Feature attraction at Christmas 
a ten-foot candle that explodes and the magic letters C-H-R-I-S-T form in a 
million stars all over the ceiling of the Sunday School classroom. Be sure to bring 
the kids. “There's a wonderful time here for you at Golgatha.” It said so in the 
ad on the religious page every Saturday night in The Times.

And he heard himself sitting asleep in that fat preacher's church removed from 
here, where he lost God in the descant of a demandant tenor whose song was 
always in a Lydian manner. And he heard the voices of the participants of that 
church. They seemed to come through the broken panein the clerestory. One 
clear ray of evening sun of November flirted with the cobweb silk there. Between 
the noise of the sun and the light voice of silence of the black-maned 
preacher before him he heard his thoughts, and echoes of thoughts, coming 
through black frocks of aged virgins with lamps untrimmed who smelled of 
4711 Eau de Cologne. The voices spoke:

Old white-haired elder: Ja, maar Heere, U heeft het belooft.

—But to whom was the promise given?

Reprobate: Is er nog plaats voor mij?

—Oh no, no place for a sinner. Have to be holy and known as such.

Answer from the fat dominine: Och, man, ga terug naar je plaats. U heeft 
heir geen recht van sprechen.

It confused him. Christ ate with sinners, yet here only the pious ones were 
allowed at the communiontable. 7

Old lady: And she always dressed so vroom too yet.

White-haired elder: We moeten neits worden.

—And when we become as nothing, pride will bloom out of our mortified flesh. 
Reprobate: Ja, Mrs. Fretz, The Lord knows me and I feel like the thief 
on the cross.

—He didn't say which thief. Wonder how the Demolen sisters feel. Ill bet 
they still smell like they look. No 4711 ever cured that much old silk. Look 
like oatmeal. Comes out of their pores. Like Mariam DeMolen. She always 
smelled like oatmeal.

He remembered the duet he had to sing in third grade with Miriam DeMolen.

RcR / 56


The refrain had been something about the little “Negro boy is no worse than 
I.”

—Now they don’t sing that because it says Negro. Nothing wrong with “Negro”. 
More wrong with “Colored” if you said that Colored smell like oatmeal. Can 
say that Miriam does but don’t say Negroes do, even if they did and they don’t. 
Smell different though. Smell like old plastic. Must be the soap they use. Collect 
it at rummage sales. Three for a penny. Donated by old virgins of no faith. 
New way to get there. Scrub Negroes clean. Give them soap. Better than blood. 
Scarlet sins whitewashed in blood. Never saw white blood. Hymnology dysfunctional. 
Trade term.

The coalman in the pulpit came through the sunbeam. “And if you think you can 
escape the wrath of God you are pledging yourself to a life of eternal search for 
escape—and death is the realization of that direction. For though Paul says 
‘Death, where is thy sting,’ he was not saying it as some atheist or some 
cigarette-smoking housewife who neglects her children, but as one confirmed 
in the love of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Oh, that blessed name of Christ! ‘Come to 
me, all ye that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’ Yeah, upon the solid 
rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand. . . .”

He heard a chorus of “amens.”

And the noise of the sunbeam and the coyness of the cobweb dinned in his 
ears as he studied his broken fingernail with the crack running diagonally. He 
took his keycase with all the keys and the fingernail trimmer and started clipping. 
The snips were not loud, but he stopped before he got to the broken fingernail 
for the noise he imagined. He smelled his index finger. It smelled like garlic. 
He thought of the chuck roast he had prepared before church.

—Smells like garlic. I rubbed it all over with garlic.

He thought about Molly Bloom.

—Are they all that way? “Yes,” she said. How about greasy Mephibosheth? 
Probably rhythmless too. David did. Made a bastard king, too. Solomon went 
to pot, though. Like a chuck roast. God’s sanction, too. More like a devil’s.

He cut the split nail. It looked like a cabbage leaf edge. All frills and no flower. 
—Sterile nail. Exhibitionist. Like a cheer leader.

And the voices came through the hair oil perfume of the choir’s second number. 
Old white-haired elder: Ontzag voor den Heere is voor mij de grootste 
troost der zaligheid. We moeten bekeerd worden.

Old lady: Did you hear about Miriam Demolen? She had a baby and it 
choked on oatmeal.

Reprobate: Rod, don't grow up like your father. Now, when you get out 
of prison . . .

Then the choir was finished and the voices faded. The high-pitched preacher 
came through with the apostle Paul who finds that nothing can separate him 
from the love of God through Jesus Christ our Lord amen.

57 / RCR


He saw the black ram step off the pulpit down to the carpet in front of the 
pulpit. He felt tense. He knew it would come now, the altar call. So here I 
am, he thought. This is why I came.

He listened. The sunbeam from the last hours of November was lost in cobweb, 
it too lost in shadows of the lofty nave. Impending doom.

Preacher: Everyone bow his head.

—Correct grammar yet.

Preacher still: Every eye closed. Dear Lord: In the gift of Thy precious son, 
our Lord Jesus Christ, we pray Thee to deliver us from the sin of omission and 
pray that Thy spirit will descend upon us to call and urge anyone who feels deep 
in his heart the call of Christ to shed his sins unto Thee and come into a communion 
with Thee; nay, we call upon Thee to create that urge. . . .

He looked up. He saw the embers of blue glisten off the Valentino. Except the 
ears were extended into the horns of stray strands that needed palms. And the 
preacher sweated as though he were keeping a tally of converts, needing a few 
to get in the running. And he heard voices:

One preacher: At Hawthorne, I got twenty-two the first night, sixteen the 
second, and fifty over the weekend.

Another preacher: But Graham got three thousand in St. Paul last year. 
Still the plea went on up front as the organist swayed to the hymn Just As I Am. 
Preacher: O who will drink of the blood of the Lamb and be forever purified? 
Come, come, just as you are. If there is anyone here who feels the need in his 
heart, who cannot go on alone, you need Christ. He died for you. Walk up here 
and He will walk with you forever. He will be your succor. . . .

—Sounds like a lollipop.

. . . Every head bowed, every eye closed. Is there anyone here? If you feel the 
need of Christ, just raise your hand and say, quietly to yourself, “Preacher, I 
need him.” Just raise your hand.

He saw several hands reluctantly hinged, elbows close to the chest as though longing 
to come down, but raised all the same. He saw the inevitable army of 
elders deploying in strategic spots through the aisles to capture those surrendering. 
Like prisoner’s base, he thought.

The black ram was pacing about the congregational ewe, it seemed. His hooves 
glistened in the altar light, his white eyes shining before the nares.

—Where is the Sybil?

The preacher: Come ye. . . .

The organ piped heard melodies. Just As I Am.

He bowed his head. He heard the white-haired elder: “Yes, but Lord, You 
have promised.” He heard the reprobate: “Is there still a place for me?” He 
heard the fat dominie: “Say, man, go back to your place; you have no right 
to speak here.” He heard the elder: “We must become as nothing. We must 
become converted.” He felt like the thief on the cross. He raised his hand.

rcr / 58 


The warmth of a body roused him. The breath of a watcher touched him. An 
outstretched hand came towards him. “Welcome, Brother,” awoke him.

He arose to go to the ceremony of acceptance and rejoicing. And then the goat 
of Babylon shone in the darkness, horns extending to the cobweb; and with a 
cry refusing him admittance to the King’s table until he ate his oatmeal, he fled. 
He fled up the aisle past the albino handshakers, past the red-buttoned missionary 
board, through the doors and past the Sunday School crowd, past Rauson's 
to the safety of traffic and cracked sidewalks, the image of Satan and his angels 
dissipated in the dust of barricades and a road repair sign.

PEGGY CASE

ONCE UPON A ONCE-TIME NIGHT

I




Sweet silver sound sing soft, sing soft;

Cat licked fur, we’re lost, we’re lost;

Heat hungry people run fast, run fast;

Snow swing down and last, and last.

II




Tongue-sharp wasp of petal softness

I weave with you a dirge.

Drink softly love, leap blue and red 
Before eyes already dead to live you.

I drink the branches enclosing me, 
Warm curse to magic-mountain moving.

Steeple chase to dagger doom — and arrive.

III




We hunger hard with our moon-shaped mouths; 
Whisper once through echo-chamber yesterday; 
Send the love dove out in the streets to beg;

And know not what the lost man has to say.

59 / RCR


Three Poems/MELVYN bucholtz

We paused between our differences

Looking head-on with stares 
Anxiously inquisitive, that collided 
Momentarily into another life;

Someplace we dared to be — 
Evanescent bliss in our separate finds 
That transcended now, fusing individual 
Times into one that wasn’t, 
Before.

UNKNOWNS

Silhouette on the street where I walked

During early night, came up 
Short at my figure, paused 
Looked again momentarily 
Frightened with delight.

Drawing closer in that moment 
We looked searching each other, 
Was she the woman I came for? 
Was I her unasked for lover?

Then she felt that I knew

Marks on her face were worse than my not knowing 
At all, and shaded her face in

The already dark night; sadly crying away 
Her smile, moving away down the street . . .

I stood listening to her feet; then sharply 
As if rudely provoked turned 
Quickly to call — remained silent, 
Maybe it was better than my not knowing 
At all.

But thinking back in that moment, 
That clean rush of delight, I know 
How much she had something to say that night — 
But I was too young in my first sight, 
Changing silent gladness to

Sadness, and fright.

rcr / 60


DECEMBER 6

Finally catching itself in Time

Last night

The season came in one silent hush

Opening this morning — white,

No sounds of birds or growing things

But only solemn late burial and

Without bells.

It has taken over waiting lakes

And undecided people have immediately

Come to conclusions they can hardly believe — 
Its being so sudden,

About what and with whom they will make 
The present into memories.

Late in early morning

I couldn't see changing,

I struck a match burning the letter

From a distant lover,

Waking later to find out my reason why.

And today I am wearing a new shirt;

It has taken me twice as long to think 
My way clear before leaving my room — 
But we'll see each other today, 
And if she is slow greeting me with 
Her new eyes, I'll know it took her 
Twice as long to think her way clear 
Before leaving her place this morning.

61 / RCR


GRINDLE

Catsitting like sandfolds

On the carmel floor,

Thinking long-legged thoughts 
In a fallen windows reflection 
Sun's shadowed door; rose 
Stumbling into the motion 
Of the tan afternoon room

staring back,

Then licked down

Her warm shouldered wound.

We looked at each other a minute 
or so,

What stood between instincts? 
Neither could know but Time — 
Caught in the slow-winced opening 
of sliced, black almond eyes,

Grinning at this man who thought 
Himself sly,

Laughing silently at my fear-gripped 
world,

And I was her slave as she nudged 
Head, then her body

Into the master hand's hold.

RcR / 62


AN UNDERSTANDING OF THREE REPRESENTATIONAL WORKS BY INGMAR BERGMAN

VOICES 
FROM 

UNDERGROUND

M. Bucholtz

“Art thus leads us back to the origins of rebellion, to the extent that 
it tries to give its form to an elusive value which the future perpetually 
promises, but of which the artist has a presentiment and 
wishes to snatch from the grasp of history”

—ALBERT CAMUS

In the ancient scriptures of man’s first attempts to order the chaos of the 
different societies in which he found himself, there is the documentation of 
the biographies of cultures — the desires of men to be realized; to be more of 
what it is man is. So the Bible tells of journeys of peoples, of conduct to one 
another as they walked or slept near friends or enemies, of the feelings of 
men’s primal passions to exist, if need be, by the destruction of others. It is 
the story of humility, of opening the gate to the forest of man’s mind of 
reason; entrance to the abyss of the mystery of man’s meaning.

In Arles, Van Gogh walked across the fields, through the rows of workers 
as winds blew their faces tan with season, stopping for moments, catching 
sight of the awesome breadth of fields; transcending himself, groping to understand 
his fusion with the workers, the wild driving growth of seeds of season. 
His hands tensely pushed charcoal across the paper, catching the sweep of the 
bent shoulder, the pain of stress across youth’s face; the violent pushing through 
land of man into the growth of plants, onto the voice of season’s wind, to fade 
like a trace in those winds and return below the roots of plants. His people 
were a language of motion, of appearing and disappearing through the splashes 
of yellow grain in the fire-white of afternoon sun, of the total abstraction of 
nature, the dizziness of black crows flying wig-wag, violently like his own 
spirit over the fields into the sun he could never reach; up to the heart of God 
he died to paint. His letters to his brother, Theo, told of these walks, these

63 / RCR


seizures when he became at one with a larger spiritual feeling that drove him 
into the field of people; into the absurdity of the colored world where he 
drowned and suffocated his final human efforts to exist in himself. They told 
briefly of his search, of day by day coming onto some new thread of that 
fibre of earth they were all bound to eat from and finally feed with the last 
salts of themselves.

Dostoevsky walked in the shadow of men hunting themselves for their 
wrongs, in their most private moments of self incrimination, guilt and finally 
destruction. In the corners of the mind new eyes were looking at the soul of a 
human being who had committed an injustice. They were the persistent voice 
of that soul reminding that in the brightest place he would be haunted and 
forced back into a pitch black corner to huddle in cold, white fear — the 
catastrophe of a man to realize his alienation from the phenomenon that had 
borne him to achieve his separate moment of mistake.

That tempest storm that brews within the wells of man's nature rose again 
like an awesome omen, summoning the fear of men into the fervor of wideeyed 
hate, like serenity that subtly in the half-sleep of men's vigil turned the 
wide ocean into a storm of animal fighting himself to destory that which he must 
revere — the God torn from his place and cast into the realm of man's earthly 
effort; the soul and strength of Melville's Moby Dick, that each man alone must 
hunt within his soul to find and face and declare his existence before. What 
was it for men to face the Godrising at them from the province of earth below, 
leaping out of the sea and smashing them into the oblivion of the uncovered sea 
of their souls?

More than the craft of each of these men separately is their united bind 
to the roots of explaining in their way, the human dilemma. Who are these 
people and why their anxious searchings; how shall we know of their deepest 
admissions — their prophesies, our destinies?

In the emotional lace, transposing subtle imaginings becoming the fabric 
of each man's existence, plays the Orpheus, lamenting his frustrated efforts . . . 
translating to the chords of his instrument words of that nonsymboled language 
of blind man's heart and mind. Each is a manin the vein of epitome, caught in 
amber, preserving and recalling the past, dated to cant the classical odes of 
man's existence in the language of his generation; striving to express the voice 
of tomorrow that arrives as he reaches it; yet before he can dodge the inevitable 
summoning his search has merited, he is dashed on the rocks beneath the 
chorus of Sirens, buried in the waters of dateless time, of irresistible becoming, 
wherein all mortal things, devoid of their distinct places in time, merge and 
foster the seeds of that new Orpheus who rises like a Phoenix in a new time, 
an unexplained place, and travels until he too achieves his death in one human 
passionate lunge trying to conquer the impermanence of man's greed to own 
his becoming tomorrow.

RCR / 64


Ingmar Bergman is obsessed with walking among the shadows of people's 
nature, trying to bring across in one moment the fear of self-guilt the violent 
reaching of man to understand the dizziness of wig-wagging black crows in 
the fire white afternoon sun, the wrath of lone hunting after the God that 
rises from the earth of their lowest depths, smashing them into an oblivion of 
the dark sea of their own souls. His work is like the labors of Sysiphus straining 
to achieve the tomorrow of consciousness and always arriving at the 
defeat that waits at that dark place at the height of each man's highest hill. 
Actors in the Bergman world are shown not as individuals controlling the 
environment or situations in which they become enmeshed, but rather as*beings 
trying to either escape their mistakes among other men, or deny their existence 
as objects involved on the same stage as any living thing struggling to maintain 
its simplelife.

Tennessee Williams mentioned as a pretext to one of his readings: “I 
have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeves; but I am the opposite 
of the stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth, 
I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.” Bergman works in this 
same way. He expresses his feeling like this: “When we experience a film, we 
consciously prime ourselves for illusion. Putting aside will and intellect, we 
make way for it in our imagination. The sequence of pictures plays directly 
on ourfeelings.” It is well that we keep in mind that the creation of truth for 
Bergman exists in introducing into the mind of the watcher that frame of 
reference which includes some mention of a larger world of forces which are 
almost never physically shown within the films. ;

I will discuss three screenplays which I believe deal directly with the 
larger problem of man realizing himself and his talents to the point where he 
has become alienated from the world of other human beings. I will first deal 
with reflection and sudden sorrow, secondly with the problem of the classic 
statement that “the meek shall inherit the earth', only here seeing the forceful 
hand of the warrior turned compassionate, turned crusader for the meek at the 
sake of his own existence. Last of all I will deal with Bergman's presentation 
of that part of man's life when he questions the validity of his entire past 
existence, when the years of his becoming what he presently is force him to 
ask whether somewhere in his life his youthful longings have vanished, and if 
so, why and to where have they gone.

In dealing with the arousal of a man's selfish and finally narrowed soul, 
Bergman shows us a novelist during the time of holiday with his family. Having 
recently returned from Switzerland the writer joins his family on an island 
where they have a home. The remnants of his family are his son, daughter, and 
her husband. It is a time when the children want their father with them, to be 
someone to them alone, to leave his work and recognize them; for over the 
years he has become more obsessed with the completion of his separate writings 

65 | sin


than with those people who love him not as a writer, but as that man he is to 
them.

His wife died years before from an organic brain disease which progressively 
drove her to greater stages of inability to live with others. His daughter has 
inherited this disease but her slipping into trances has incorporated a weird 
prayer ritual during which she believes God will come through one of the 
panels of the house and will receive her obedience. There is easily more than 
one reference to the fact that the God that is constantly waited for is her 
father. For example, while the girl is in one of her trances, praying toward the 
wall, we are shown her father’s shadow falling against this wall as he stands 
in the doorway. He is perhaps the first to know that something is lacking that 
these other people are demanding from his presence, but the last to understand 
how to act.

It is bitter to realize that the situation of which one is the master can 
become decayed and warped with neglect and yet on the return of the master, 
still demand his love and guidance. So we see his son caught between the 
violent rituals of his sister, who has asked him to be her confident, and his 
own desire to be recognized before God; to be directed in his time of inability 
by that master’s word. But here God enters into his own kingdom with a 
blindfold to the feeling of those whom he has created, those who revere him. 
His son is trusting, naively believing always in the coming of God; his daughter 
has waited for God and now seeks to destroy Him for denying her vigil, her 
stretched out, shaking hand of feeble love. She becomes more infused with the 
world of nature aside from man, her sickness begins to mount in volume and 
intensity, and she is frustrated in her efforts to reach the God that never comes, 
the God that lurks near but denies. In one violent moment she strikes at the 
Master’s heart — violating the purity of her brother’s naive searching. Like the 
fever of the growing storm that finally reaches its highest pitch and then 
cracks the sky, so she in one mad rage forces her brother down on top of her 
and splits that soul of man, breaking pride into a calm of fearful self-guilt. 
Suddenly it became clear that the Master must recognize the world of people 
he has split. The treasure of his infinite depths was revealed to his eyes as one 
piece of itself devouring the other, the spreading of a disease of loneliness and 
frustration and denial; the sickness of mortals bound to the task of expressing 
their efforts on behalf of the general nature of mistake in mankind. Thus did 
God discover incest in his home when he returned from the sea; and himself the 
reason why. After seeing the screenplay, I wrote a note to a friend which 
summed my feelings about what Bergman was saying:

When God remains aloof 
From the kingdom real, 
Gleaming love from that

rcr / 66


Lesser life;

And seeks in one final,

Passionful act the ennoblement 
Of his blind virtues

Then God comes down

To find blind virtues

Stript and raped,

His ownself violated

By that warped

Lesser life who merely 
Sought to kiss

His hand.

Bergman achieved an even stronger foothold in levels of man’s blind flight 
for existence when he brought forth a tale dealing with the face of God as 
Death. The play includes the actual figure of Death in combat with the exponent 
of man’s efforts to realize and fortify the strength of a generous and 
and peaceable Lord; a warrior back to his homeland after his struggles in the 
Crusades. It begins strangely in that this is a man who has returned from years 
of battle under the guise of God’s cause and now, after the effort, he encounters 
the wrath of a God he respects apart from his armed legion, separate from his 
weapon and shield, one whose power and domain are not questioned — who 
must be met and dealt with alone, by each man. But we have more here than 
the forces of mortality resisting Death’s haunting presence. The author has 
decided to unveil the conscience of Death itself in pursuit of man, his anger, 
the passion of his mission, and his failure to conquer all men.

Throughout the play we are taken on a journey led by the Knight and his 
Squire. The Knight achieves one after another stay of execution from Death’s 
mission by engaging him in a game of chess, the Knight bargaining for his life 
be rule of the tournament’s outcome. The Knight learns that here is the real 
crusade and the battle is not with his fellow man but with those larger forces 
which move eternally through the domain of man, taking out their wrath 
when they feel prompted to do so. He knows that above all he is a simple 
man whose substance is for the engagement between forces, that he must be 
the champion of one side — that life for him is not to live but to be fought for. 
In his journey, and between moves with Death, he stops through a town and 
enters a Church, seeking consolation on suddenly realizing his mission and 
thinking of the efforts of his life thus far. It must be remembered that he is 
a man who, though not knowing the reason why, maintains that the God created 
to be honored for peaceable and noble reasons is now being contested by the 
virtues of the real God, Death, yet he is puzzled by his own desire to believe 
in the goodness of a compassionate Lord in light of what he sees.

67 / RCR


“Knight: (in the confession booth) Why can't I kill God within me? 
Why does he live on in this painful and humiliating way even though 
I curse Him and want to tear Him out of my heart? Why, in spite of 
everything, is He a baffling reality that I can't shake off? Do you hear 
me?

Death: (behind the grill) Yes, I hear you.

Knight: I want knowledge, not faith, not suppositions but knowledge. 
I want God to stretch out his hand toward me, reveal himself and speak 
to me.

Death: But he remains silent.

Knight: I call out to him in the dark but no one seems to be there. 
Death: Perhaps no one is there.

Knight: Then life is an outrageous horror. No one can live in the 
face of death, knowing that all is nothingness.

Death: Most people never reflect about either death or the futility of 
life.

Knight: But one day they will have to stand at that last moment of 
life and look toward the darkness.

Death: When that day comes. .”

As the Knight proceeds toward the higher country and his castle he gathers 
a few people who travel with him. He gathers people, who themselves are 
living life, and he realizes that he can Be, as long as he has people who are 
alive to defend. A couple and their son, a girl, a smith and his wife, all travel 
with the Knight into the last phase of their journey. As they embark Bergman 
tells of their passage as one recites a benediction describing the innocence 
of those in a blessing before departure.

At the castle of the Knight all are finally seated at the dinner table, the 
Knight tired, having lost the last move with Death. The inevitable enters, pays 
respects to all, and they in return to him. Each announces profession and title, 
their last plea, except for the simple juggler and his wife who are the only ones 
to live after Death has rented the company of the others. Bergman is telling 
that, as the Knight said to Death, God the peaceable and compassionate is within 
each man, is within the man who does not try to identify it anywhere but in 
the life of things around him and the simplicity of each thing's existence; and 
further that. it is in a man whose wife can see in his simplicity this profound 
depth. The play closes with Mia saying to her husband, as he describes the 
vision of the others dancing across into the distant horizon; as he is full of the 
meaning of their gone lives: “Mia (smiling): You with your visions and dreams.”

The heart of the aged continues sounding within, even in the sleep, 
methodically like the sound of a precise mechanism faintly audible beneath 
the carefully wrapped threads that have aged it, have muffled its long-ago 

RCR / 68


voice, have silenced its wild beating. When it stops beneath, we say a life 
has been lived.

Ingmar Bergman made an attempt which he cannot in any way claim to 
have accomplished yet. In telling the story of a man who talks of his sudden 
coming onto the question of what his entire life has been worth, the author 
combines that sense of searching which the naive child uses — making symbols 
so awesome that, though they resemble the person making them, one is unable 
to divorce them from his presence; and the realization of a deep-seated guilt 
that this man has not been at one with that world he was involved in and had 
alienated himself into the world of nature from which he now cannot make 
that urgently needed, that desperately demanded leap back into the world of 
living things called men.

We are to understand that this is a man who discovers that his dissatisfaction 
with mankind has been his blind pursuit of his aloneness and that when he 
achieved it, it was a hollow, lonesome, un-manlike victory. We must remember 
that he is destined to be alone, that it is not unusual if he is seen alone in his 
own memories even in nature, for he is realizing that his persistent searching 
must find and rejuvenate his death which was sometime back; before he dies 
this final time, so that he may be worth dying — so that a man can know that 
when the muffled sound stops, truly a life has been lived.

The play is in the vein of what Wordsworth said about the poem, that it 
is written in reflection; so we find the poem of each man’s life written in that 
separate time alloted to all, through memory; the haze of recollection of gone- 
years, of reflection.

“At the age of seventy-six, I feel I’m much too old to lie to myself. But of 
course I can’t be too sure. My complacent attitude toward my own truthfulness 
could be dishonesty in disguise.” So we meet Professor Isak Borg, the silent, 
the nationally decorated, a mark in his field, a hollow man awed near death 
with the search after his fast slipping memories of the youth only begun but 
never lived. The dilemma of his existence comes sharply into focus in much the 
same way as that of the God who has denied the realm he returns to. While 
talking to his daughter-in-law about his son, his past dispassion on their behalf 
forces her not to accept his new sense of searching and sharing.

“Marianne: You are an old egoist, Father. You are completely inconsiderate 
and you have never listened to any one but yourself. All this 
is well hidden behind your mask of old-fashioned charm and friendliness. 
But you are hard as nails, even though everyone depicts you as a great 
humanitarian. We who have seen you at close range, we know what 
you really are. You can’t fool us. For instance, do you remember when 
I came a month ago (to her father-in-law’s house)? I had some idiotic 
idea that you would help Evald (his son) and me. So I asked to stay

69 / RCR


with you for a few weeks. Do you remember what you said?

Isak: I told you that you were most cordially welcome.

Marianne: This is what you said, word for word; I have no respect for 
suffering of the soul, so don’t come to me and complain. But if you 
need spiritual masturbation I can make an appointment for you with 
some good quack, or perhaps with a minister, its so popular these days. 
Isak: Did I say that?

Marianne: You have rather inflexible opinions Father. It would be 
terrible to have to depend on you in any way.

Isak: Is that so. Now if I am honest, I must say I’ve enjoyed having 
you around the house.

Marianne: Like a cat.

Isak: Like a cat or a human being, it’s the same thing. You are a fine 
young woman and I’m sorry that you dislike me.

Marianne: I don’t dislike you.

Isak: Oh.

Marianne: I feel sorry for you.”

The man has been startled by the reputation he let form about himself, 
hearing the inhuman things he said — shocked that it was his voice, frightened 
that it may be too late to reverse this and come to know these people he’s 
simply walked through. Bergman shows that almost numb searching that the 
aged Isak feels as he begins his discovery of the past, a youth seen through 
yearning eyes that only remember the smell of wild strawberries.

“(Isak) I sat down next to an old apple tree that stood alone and ate 
the berries, one by one. I may very well have become a little sentimental. 
Perhaps I was a little tired or melancholy. It’s not unlikely that I began 
to think about one thing or another that was associated with my childhood 
haunts.

I had a strange feeling of solemnity, as if this were a day of 
decision. The quietness of the summer morning. The calm bay. The 
birds’ brilliant concert in the foliage. The old sleeping house. The 
aromatic apple tree which leaned slightly, supporting my back. The 
wild strawberries.”

“I don’t know how it happened, but the day’s clear reality flowed into 
dreamlike images. I don’t even know if it was dream, or memories which 
arose with the force of real events. I don’t know how it began either, 
but I think it was when I heard the playing of the piano.”

Thus does Isak visit the cemetery of his life, looking into his unfilled but 
readied grave. His eyes cannot believe the visions that come before him, of 
his family, the country, warm winds, and even the romance that Isak had failed 

rcr / 70


such a long time ago. He had forgotten this life and it had forgotten him. His 
sight is like Dickens' Scrooge, awed by what had gone on around him before, 
just realizing it. As Isak and Marianne travel to his son's home they pick up a 
trio of hitch-hikers and the man sees in them the unpredictable, jubilant, free- 
spirit of youth he too once almost knew.

Professor Isak Borg rested quietly in bed, after the trip to his son's home, and 
he has finally been recognized, privately, by his daughter-in-law, whom he 
too now sees. And Isak canrest. ,

“Whenever I am restless or sad, I usually try to recall memories from 
my childhood, to calm down. This is the way it was that night too, and 
I wandered back to the summerhouse and the wild-strawberry patch and 
everything I had dreamed or remembered or experienced during this 
long day.”

“I dreamed that I stood by the water and shouted toward the bay, but 
the warm summerbreeze carried away my cries and they did not reach 
their destination. Yet I wasn't sorry about that; I felt, on the contrary, 
rather lighthearted.”

I have discussed herein, Through a Glass Darkly, The Seventh Seal, and 
Wild Strawberries, in that order.

When what has been mentioned needs to be said no more, when our ears 
have become full with the wisdom we have led ourselves in search of, we shall 
have one word to say —and saying it shall begin our separate journey filling 
other ears and touching heart's reason till we cannot anymore.

71 / RCR


TED JONES RELIEF
TED JONES RELIEF


rcr / 72


RCR / STAFF

Editor-In-Chief / WALTER LOCKWOOD 
Managing Editor / HOWARD SHAPIRO 
Art Director / DENNIS KALLEK

Fiction / JAMES CASH: editor

WEBB MARRIS

JAMES LOCKWOOD

Poetry / PEG CASE: editor

KAREN BEST

Art / DENNIS KALLEK: editor

MIKI ZIPPIN

JAMES DRUM

SKIP DAVIS

JOYCE VINSON

ROGER BERRY

Department Manager / GEORGE GRAEBER

Business Manager / STEVE LEWIS 
Circulations Manager / DON FEINSTEIN 
Publicity Manager / JERRY PETERS 
Secretary / JEAN ZAMBISKI

Advisors / CARL HARTMAN

JOSEPH KUSZAI

VIRGIL SCOTT

CARSON HAMILTON

A. J. M. SMITH

CLARA LAIDLAW


RCR / STAFF

Editor-In-Chief / WALTER LOCKWOOD 
Managing Editor / HOWARD SHAPIRO 
Art Director / DENNIS KALLEK

Fiction / JAMES CASH: editor

WEBB MARRIS

JAMES LOCKWOOD

Poetry / PEG CASE: editor

KAREN BEST

Art / DENNIS KALLEK: editor

MIKI ZIPPIN

JAMES DRUM

SKIP DAVIS

JOYCE VINSON

ROGER BERRY

Department Manager / GEORGE GRAEBER

Business Manager / STEVE LEWIS 
Circulations Manager / DON FEINSTEIN 
Publicity Manager / JERRY PETERS 
Secretary / JEAN ZAMBISKI

Advisors / CARL HARTMAN

JOSEPH KUSZAI

VIRGIL SCOTT

CARSON HAMILTON

A. J. M. SMITH

CLARA LAIDLAW


Figure without caption.